6 ms·

In general, I just don't like trying to describe people with science. That's a personal philosophy that I don't think I can really convince anyone else of if th

by smtddr 12y ago

In general, I just don't like trying to describe people with science. That's a personal philosophy that I don't think I can really convince anyone else of if they don't already believe it. But specifically: >> Do not allow team members to contribute feedback based on "culture fit". I'm aware of how culture fit can lead to unfair discrimination, but throwing it out entirely I think is like "throwing the baby out with the bath water." I think culture-fit is important to have the right "vibe" in the office. Unfortunately, I know that "vibe preservation" can lead to aforementioned discrimination very easily but I also believe the "vibe" does exist and damaging it results in problems. >> Try to eliminate phone interviews entirely. They don't add value, but do amplify noise. If phone-interviews were 100% gone, then we'd need 2 in-person interviews. The first interview asking pretty much the same questions that could have been done over the phone. I think phone-interviews help screen out obvious bad-fits early on without investing too much time. >> Never interview a candidate with more than one interviewer From my own experience I've seen 2 interviewers describe a candidate almost completely opposite from each other and I found it incredibly fascinating to see how different 2 people witness the exact same event at the same time. Everyone being aware of those differences and the rest of the team knowing how the interviewers think day-to-day, I think gives balance. >> Have lunch with candidates if you like, but don't make lunch a Q&A with the candidate. What would you talk about at lunch if not Q&A? Or are we assuming that you specifically mean prohibit question to the candidate but expecting questions _from_ the candidate. >> Script your interviews. While I do think it's important to have some kind of benchmark sequence of questions, I think more is learned about the candidate(and I learn more about my potential new coworkers) when it feels more like an organic conversation rather than those scripted conversations I endure when calling AT&T about my malfunctioning LAN line. Or maybe you don't mean scripted in that strict of a form. Incidentally, do you have some kind of script notifying you when you're mentioned on HN? Sometimes it feels that way. You kinda "non-organically" appear when someone mentions you. :-P

danielweber 12y ago
I think culture-fit is important to have the right "vibe" in the office What kind of "vibe" are we looking for? Are people writing unit tests? Are they respectful to each other? Is devops easily reproducible?
- smtddr 12y ago
  Too hard for me to define. Like not hiring because the candidate didn't have "passion". I realize how frustrating & annoying it is to be disqualified based on such of an ambiguous intangible concept - it borderlines on nonsensical, but I strongly believe it exists.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Do you also believe that you can reliably assess it in a face to face interview with a candidate? How sure are you that you're not just assessing a candidate's ability to be confident and unflappable in a job interview? Have you ever had the experience of hiring someone who did amazingly well in their interview and turned out to be a total zero on your dev team? I'm very wary of subjective signals I get from interviews.
    - smtddr 12y ago
      >>Do you also believe that you can reliably assess it in a face to face interview with a candidate? Nope, I don't. I absolutely believe there is a significant margin of error there but I also believe that, as human beings, we have to accept that we cannot be standardized plug-n-play hardware rather than try and come up with an algorithm that we rely on to tell us if a person is a good candidate or not. FWIW, I'm also against standardized testing in schools. You just end up people who are groomed specifically for those tests and in general the word "standardized" is kinda opposite of "diversity". >>How sure are you that you're not just assessing a candidate's ability to be confident and unflappable in a job interview? For dev jobs, at least you have background checks on past employment and/or education, a few coding tests and discussions around them to at least know this person isn't a totally 100% Grade-A Fraud. But indeed it is possible to end up with someone who just guessed right & prepared before hand for your questions then totally falls on their face the first month on the job. >>Have you ever had the experience of hiring someone who did amazingly well in their interview and turned out to be a total zero on your dev team? I'm very wary of subjective signals I get from interviews. I've seen this happen in at&t, more than once, where standardized'ish interviews were easy to guess and some people just knew exactly what to say and nobody applied any fraud-detection. But I admit I've also seen this happen in heavy culture-fit oriented interviews that still manage to leave something out. e.g., maybe the candidate actually gets frustrated easily and becomes very difficult to work with. If they did well in the interview then you never got to see what happens when they don't do well. Personally, I think this is just the chance we have to take as a society. If we really try hard to apply algos to humans I think we'll end up with a bunch of problems. I can see people grooming themselves specifically for those algos and I just don't think that's healthy for standardized interviews or standardized tests in schools. But indeed, this is all touchy-feeling-fuzzy-intangible-indefensible stuff. There's a movie called Gattaca: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ That kinda talks about this and it turns out people get different impressions from this movie. Some people think what the main character did was unjustified fraud and some people think it's society that treated him unfairly because an algorithm said he was unfit for the role.
wtbob 12y ago
> I'm aware of how culture fit can lead to unfair discrimination Well, it certainly leads to discriminating against people who don't fit into the team culturally. But really, is that unfair? Isn't the goal of a software team to produce great software, not to be a force for fairness or justice or anything else? If people with much in common work better together than do people with little in common (which I believe is likely to be true), and if the team works together, then isn't it better to hire people with much in common?
- tptacek 12y ago
  Yes, that is unfair! The whole reason we have the ADA and anti-discrimination laws is that plenty of people would rather just work with people that look and talk and think like them, and in fact believe they are more productive that way, and we as a society have decided that's NOT OK. As you accurately perceive, there is wiggle room in the law. You can in fact discriminate against candidates based on their political leanings, their taste in music, and their hairstyle. Those things do not define protected classes under the law. But you should not do that, for the same underlying moral reason underpinning the fact that you can not do that because of someone's religion, gender, or race, no matter how ineffective or unproductive working with someone of a different race might make you.
  - smtddr 12y ago
    >>Yes, that is unfair! The whole reason we have the ADA and anti-discrimination laws is that plenty of people would rather just work with people that look and talk and think like them, and in fact believe they are more productive that way, and we as a society have decided that's NOT OK. Sensitive/controversial/potentially-just-plain-wrong opinion incoming: I completely agree with this. But, as a black male, I don't want someone who's racist to be forced to work with me. Extreme out-of-the-park example; I don't want the KKK to be forced to hire me because of affirmative-action or something. That'd be awkward for all of us! I'd prefer to get at the root of the problem and change society's views such that nobody needs to be forced to hire me and they do it because they like me and think I'll be good at the job; and being black doesn't bother them. If someone doesn't hire me because I'm black, I suspect it's better for me than being hired anyway and having all kinds of odd social cues happening in the office because someone(s) is trying really hard to hide their racism but it slips out every now 'n again. Maybe there's a catch-22 in my reasoning. To solve racism, people need to be exposed to more people different from themselves but I don't want to be exposed to racist people until they're not racist anymore.

by smtddr 12y ago

danielweber 12y ago

I think culture-fit is important to have the right "vibe" in the office What kind of "vibe" are we looking for? Are people writing unit tests? Are they respectful to each other? Is devops easily reproducible?

smtddr 12y ago
Too hard for me to define. Like not hiring because the candidate didn't have "passion". I realize how frustrating & annoying it is to be disqualified based on such of an ambiguous intangible concept - it borderlines on nonsensical, but I strongly believe it exists.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Do you also believe that you can reliably assess it in a face to face interview with a candidate? How sure are you that you're not just assessing a candidate's ability to be confident and unflappable in a job interview? Have you ever had the experience of hiring someone who did amazingly well in their interview and turned out to be a total zero on your dev team? I'm very wary of subjective signals I get from interviews.
  - smtddr 12y ago
    >>Do you also believe that you can reliably assess it in a face to face interview with a candidate? Nope, I don't. I absolutely believe there is a significant margin of error there but I also believe that, as human beings, we have to accept that we cannot be standardized plug-n-play hardware rather than try and come up with an algorithm that we rely on to tell us if a person is a good candidate or not. FWIW, I'm also against standardized testing in schools. You just end up people who are groomed specifically for those tests and in general the word "standardized" is kinda opposite of "diversity". >>How sure are you that you're not just assessing a candidate's ability to be confident and unflappable in a job interview? For dev jobs, at least you have background checks on past employment and/or education, a few coding tests and discussions around them to at least know this person isn't a totally 100% Grade-A Fraud. But indeed it is possible to end up with someone who just guessed right & prepared before hand for your questions then totally falls on their face the first month on the job. >>Have you ever had the experience of hiring someone who did amazingly well in their interview and turned out to be a total zero on your dev team? I'm very wary of subjective signals I get from interviews. I've seen this happen in at&t, more than once, where standardized'ish interviews were easy to guess and some people just knew exactly what to say and nobody applied any fraud-detection. But I admit I've also seen this happen in heavy culture-fit oriented interviews that still manage to leave something out. e.g., maybe the candidate actually gets frustrated easily and becomes very difficult to work with. If they did well in the interview then you never got to see what happens when they don't do well. Personally, I think this is just the chance we have to take as a society. If we really try hard to apply algos to humans I think we'll end up with a bunch of problems. I can see people grooming themselves specifically for those algos and I just don't think that's healthy for standardized interviews or standardized tests in schools. But indeed, this is all touchy-feeling-fuzzy-intangible-indefensible stuff. There's a movie called Gattaca: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/ That kinda talks about this and it turns out people get different impressions from this movie. Some people think what the main character did was unjustified fraud and some people think it's society that treated him unfairly because an algorithm said he was unfit for the role.

wtbob 12y ago

> I'm aware of how culture fit can lead to unfair discrimination Well, it certainly leads to discriminating against people who don't fit into the team culturally. But really, is that unfair? Isn't the goal of a software team to produce great software, not to be a force for fairness or justice or anything else? If people with much in common work better together than do people with little in common (which I believe is likely to be true), and if the team works together, then isn't it better to hire people with much in common?

tptacek 12y ago
Yes, that is unfair! The whole reason we have the ADA and anti-discrimination laws is that plenty of people would rather just work with people that look and talk and think like them, and in fact believe they are more productive that way, and we as a society have decided that's NOT OK. As you accurately perceive, there is wiggle room in the law. You can in fact discriminate against candidates based on their political leanings, their taste in music, and their hairstyle. Those things do not define protected classes under the law. But you should not do that, for the same underlying moral reason underpinning the fact that you can not do that because of someone's religion, gender, or race, no matter how ineffective or unproductive working with someone of a different race might make you.
- smtddr 12y ago
  >>Yes, that is unfair! The whole reason we have the ADA and anti-discrimination laws is that plenty of people would rather just work with people that look and talk and think like them, and in fact believe they are more productive that way, and we as a society have decided that's NOT OK. Sensitive/controversial/potentially-just-plain-wrong opinion incoming: I completely agree with this. But, as a black male, I don't want someone who's racist to be forced to work with me. Extreme out-of-the-park example; I don't want the KKK to be forced to hire me because of affirmative-action or something. That'd be awkward for all of us! I'd prefer to get at the root of the problem and change society's views such that nobody needs to be forced to hire me and they do it because they like me and think I'll be good at the job; and being black doesn't bother them. If someone doesn't hire me because I'm black, I suspect it's better for me than being hired anyway and having all kinds of odd social cues happening in the office because someone(s) is trying really hard to hide their racism but it slips out every now 'n again. Maybe there's a catch-22 in my reasoning. To solve racism, people need to be exposed to more people different from themselves but I don't want to be exposed to racist people until they're not racist anymore.