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You're onto something important when you say "companies are looking for ideal candidates – as in they’re willing to wait for them". I've been frustrated by inte

You're onto something important when you say "companies are looking for ideal candidates – as in they’re willing to wait for them". I've been frustrated by interviews where everything is fantastic, from the phone screen to the on-site interview, then at the very last step a Director or VP of Engineering needs to sign off, gets spooked by something really minor, then a previously super-optimistic recruiter sends you the out-of-nowhere "We decided to move forward with a better qualified candidate for this position" email. They're more worried about hiring a single bad employee than rejecting many well-qualified employees. And I grudgingly understand that and the effect it has on company culture, but it's disappointing how arbitrary some of the "might be a bad employee" signals are, and how inept HR and recruiters are at giving you feedback about what you could have done better.

karlkatzke 12y ago
The problem I find with "companies looking for ideal candidates" is that they seem to want great people to show up on their doorstep as if by magic. But great people aren't magically created from nothing: they're grown from a set of skills that shows they can think the right way, and applied to the company's specific technical choices. Shameless plug: I'm a sysadmin trying to turn into a devops guy in Austin, and I'm looking for a devops job. Ruby, Chef, and Ansible, but a but weak in the coding area.
jurassic 12y ago
This happened to me recently. After the final round I had a verbal indication from the recruiter that all the feedback was positive and an offer would be forthcoming. I was pretty crushed when a day or two later an emailed arrived saying they'd decided to move forward with other candidates. A friend at the company told me it was because somebody calling the shots was insisting on the CS degree requirement. Such a stupid waste of time.
- irishcoffee 12y ago
  Was the degree listed as a requirement on the job posting? HN very much likes to poo-poo the value of a CS degree. There is value in it. It proves you can master a variety of topics in 16 weeks, 8 times. (Or part-time while working/spouse/parent/whatever) It proves you can follow through with something over the course of years. It proves you can either work your way through college, are financially mature enough to take out and manage loans, or privileged enough to not need to worry about money. All these things say a lot about a person. I worked through college. Took me 7 years. I was a whiz-bang programmer before I started. I did it for the opportunities it would afford me down the road. I did it to prove to myself I could. College isn't always about the piece of paper. I didn't walk for graduation. My diploma is still in the envelope they mailed it in over a decade ago. I'm not proud of graduating, I'm proud I could persevere. There is value in having a degree. There is a lot of value in having a technical degree. It isn't always about 'having' the degree, its about what it represents.
  - jurassic 12y ago
    I have a degree in a technical field. And a master's degree, too. Both from good schools. But neither are in CS. Was it listed as required? I don't know. Lots of jobs put that down, but usually they don't really mean it. It's just another part of the unicorn job description. The same people who want 10 years of experience in a 5 year old technology are the ones who put down CS degree requirements for every software development job. But, actually, my beef isn't with the requirements. I know there ARE jobs where I'd be out of my depth because I haven't had the formal training and that education has value. I take issue with the fact that they let me get through the whole process before applying the degree filter. If you're going to filter on easily measured boolean signals like the presence or absence of a CS degree, you should do it at the beginning of the process and save everyone a lot of time.
    - irishcoffee 12y ago
      That is a very fair point. I did not consider the timing when responding. I agree with you, if they actually cared, they would have said something at the beginning, not the end.
  - nerfhammer 12y ago
    Whether or not there's value in it, why waste everyone's time if the candidate never had a chance without it?
- hnriot 12y ago
  did you apply for a position that asked for a CS degree? It was remiss of the company not to spot that earlier and save wasting theirs and your time. I would never consider a candidate for a software engineering role that didn't have at least a CS degree. Possibly, EE, but nothing else. I have learned this the hard way, while others have learned to code they very often do so with little regard for design abstractions that are taught in school. Another reason for this requirement is the prescreening that comes with the CS degree. For example, an MIT CS grad has gone through rigorous testing for four plus years, far more than any two hour interview process ever could. I've never hired an MIT grad that didn't work out great. Ditto for some other schools, but especially so for MIT.
jerf 12y ago
"how inept HR and recruiters are at giving you feedback about what you could have done better." It's actually ept and clueful; it's just not on your side. The easiest way to prevent them from giving you a reason to sue them is to give you nothing at all. They are deliberately not giving you any feedback.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
They're more worried about hiring a single bad employee than rejecting many well-qualified employees. Consider that it is repeated over and over like Mantra that a single bad employee in a start-up can be devastating.
- mahyarm 12y ago
  It's not even a just buzz-mantra, it can come from personal experience. You clean up the crap of a team or a specific few bad apples and you can't get them fired because they deliver fast rushed spaghetti code. And they keep on doing it despite repeated requests for them to stop. You can cut it at the source if you have a chance at the interview step although, because your thumbs down will actually mean something at that step. But even that can't be the greatest way to screen these people, you often have to work with them for a few weeks or months to see their good and bad sides. Once they are established in the company it can be definitely be harder to get them removed.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    > you can't get them fired because they deliver fast rushed spaghetti code That is a management problem, not a hiring problem. A couple weeks ago I asked for specific examples in a similar discussion[1]. Most of the responses I got were partially or totally management problems that companies were trying to fix by modifying the hiring process. If your management processes are shit, then you do need to be extremely careful about who you hire, because one bad one can ruin your company. The root cause, though, is management, and the proper solution is to fix your management processes, not hire unicorns. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694284
    - AndrewKemendo 12y ago
      This is funny because if you had watched the "How to start a startup" class you would have seen that almost no time was dedicated to management practices. Across the board on HN and in other hacker spaces, "Management" is universally derided as something worth studying. In practice it is hugely important and impactful but the tech community doesn't seem to care.
prostoalex 12y ago
> Director or VP of Engineering needs to sign off, gets spooked by something really minor You don't have full visibility into his decision-making process. He was obviously briefed on the candidate prior to taking this meeting, previous interviewers could've expressed concerns or divided over hire/no-hire decision, etc.

karlkatzke 12y ago

The problem I find with "companies looking for ideal candidates" is that they seem to want great people to show up on their doorstep as if by magic. But great people aren't magically created from nothing: they're grown from a set of skills that shows they can think the right way, and applied to the company's specific technical choices. Shameless plug: I'm a sysadmin trying to turn into a devops guy in Austin, and I'm looking for a devops job. Ruby, Chef, and Ansible, but a but weak in the coding area.

jurassic 12y ago

This happened to me recently. After the final round I had a verbal indication from the recruiter that all the feedback was positive and an offer would be forthcoming. I was pretty crushed when a day or two later an emailed arrived saying they'd decided to move forward with other candidates. A friend at the company told me it was because somebody calling the shots was insisting on the CS degree requirement. Such a stupid waste of time.

irishcoffee 12y ago
Was the degree listed as a requirement on the job posting? HN very much likes to poo-poo the value of a CS degree. There is value in it. It proves you can master a variety of topics in 16 weeks, 8 times. (Or part-time while working/spouse/parent/whatever) It proves you can follow through with something over the course of years. It proves you can either work your way through college, are financially mature enough to take out and manage loans, or privileged enough to not need to worry about money. All these things say a lot about a person. I worked through college. Took me 7 years. I was a whiz-bang programmer before I started. I did it for the opportunities it would afford me down the road. I did it to prove to myself I could. College isn't always about the piece of paper. I didn't walk for graduation. My diploma is still in the envelope they mailed it in over a decade ago. I'm not proud of graduating, I'm proud I could persevere. There is value in having a degree. There is a lot of value in having a technical degree. It isn't always about 'having' the degree, its about what it represents.
- jurassic 12y ago
  I have a degree in a technical field. And a master's degree, too. Both from good schools. But neither are in CS. Was it listed as required? I don't know. Lots of jobs put that down, but usually they don't really mean it. It's just another part of the unicorn job description. The same people who want 10 years of experience in a 5 year old technology are the ones who put down CS degree requirements for every software development job. But, actually, my beef isn't with the requirements. I know there ARE jobs where I'd be out of my depth because I haven't had the formal training and that education has value. I take issue with the fact that they let me get through the whole process before applying the degree filter. If you're going to filter on easily measured boolean signals like the presence or absence of a CS degree, you should do it at the beginning of the process and save everyone a lot of time.
  - irishcoffee 12y ago
    That is a very fair point. I did not consider the timing when responding. I agree with you, if they actually cared, they would have said something at the beginning, not the end.
- nerfhammer 12y ago
  Whether or not there's value in it, why waste everyone's time if the candidate never had a chance without it?
hnriot 12y ago
did you apply for a position that asked for a CS degree? It was remiss of the company not to spot that earlier and save wasting theirs and your time. I would never consider a candidate for a software engineering role that didn't have at least a CS degree. Possibly, EE, but nothing else. I have learned this the hard way, while others have learned to code they very often do so with little regard for design abstractions that are taught in school. Another reason for this requirement is the prescreening that comes with the CS degree. For example, an MIT CS grad has gone through rigorous testing for four plus years, far more than any two hour interview process ever could. I've never hired an MIT grad that didn't work out great. Ditto for some other schools, but especially so for MIT.

jerf 12y ago

"how inept HR and recruiters are at giving you feedback about what you could have done better." It's actually ept and clueful; it's just not on your side. The easiest way to prevent them from giving you a reason to sue them is to give you nothing at all. They are deliberately not giving you any feedback.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

They're more worried about hiring a single bad employee than rejecting many well-qualified employees. Consider that it is repeated over and over like Mantra that a single bad employee in a start-up can be devastating.

mahyarm 12y ago
It's not even a just buzz-mantra, it can come from personal experience. You clean up the crap of a team or a specific few bad apples and you can't get them fired because they deliver fast rushed spaghetti code. And they keep on doing it despite repeated requests for them to stop. You can cut it at the source if you have a chance at the interview step although, because your thumbs down will actually mean something at that step. But even that can't be the greatest way to screen these people, you often have to work with them for a few weeks or months to see their good and bad sides. Once they are established in the company it can be definitely be harder to get them removed.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  > you can't get them fired because they deliver fast rushed spaghetti code That is a management problem, not a hiring problem. A couple weeks ago I asked for specific examples in a similar discussion[1]. Most of the responses I got were partially or totally management problems that companies were trying to fix by modifying the hiring process. If your management processes are shit, then you do need to be extremely careful about who you hire, because one bad one can ruin your company. The root cause, though, is management, and the proper solution is to fix your management processes, not hire unicorns. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8694284
  - AndrewKemendo 12y ago
    This is funny because if you had watched the "How to start a startup" class you would have seen that almost no time was dedicated to management practices. Across the board on HN and in other hacker spaces, "Management" is universally derided as something worth studying. In practice it is hugely important and impactful but the tech community doesn't seem to care.

prostoalex 12y ago

> Director or VP of Engineering needs to sign off, gets spooked by something really minor You don't have full visibility into his decision-making process. He was obviously briefed on the candidate prior to taking this meeting, previous interviewers could've expressed concerns or divided over hire/no-hire decision, etc.