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> Rationally speaking, the only people who should prefer interviewing to other things are the people that benefit from hiring talented people, which primarily i

> Rationally speaking, the only people who should prefer interviewing to other things are the people that benefit from hiring talented people, which primarily is equity holders of the company. Citation needed. Most people understand that "adding more people in their group" will lead to "less work per person", so they will benefit from the new hire. I also assume most people see the benefit in choosing their new co-worker, because letting the Boss choose is not in their interests. (I've actually had a boss tell me "I'm not going to take your needs into account because you may not be here down the road.". I made sure I wasn't.) > Some people will just really like interviewing, [..], but clearly they are in the minority given the complaints about technical interviews. The reason people don't like interviews is simple: We're trying to figure out a skill (programming) by proxy (simple exercises and whiteboard sketching). Writing software takes hours or weeks to truly understand a problem enough to write really good code. In fact, sometimes I'm more productive alone with a piece of paper than in front of a computer. It's hard to "test" for that skill.

birken 11y ago
> Most people understand that "adding more people in their group" will lead to "less work per person" In my experience hiring new people doesn't mean less work per person, though it might allow for everybody to specialize a little bit more. At the end of the day companies hire more people so more overall work will be done, not so life is easier for existing employees. > letting the Boss choose is not in their interests But it hopefully is in the company's interests, which in a perfect world are aligned with yours. And if your interests are not aligned with the company, why should you get to help in hiring decisions? If you are a valuable employee, the boss will want to keep you happy and not hire anybody who would jeopardize that. The boss wants to hire talented people so the team accomplishes more. In some perverse scenarios, the boss will make bad decisions, but any random employee could make those bad decisions as well (and if your boss is making bad decisions, you should leave anyways). At least if the boss is making the decisions, you can spend your time coding instead of interviewing. But as stated, if interviewing is a skill that somebody values and appreciates, I think by all means they should find a way to get involved and help the company do it.

birken 11y ago

> Most people understand that "adding more people in their group" will lead to "less work per person" In my experience hiring new people doesn't mean less work per person, though it might allow for everybody to specialize a little bit more. At the end of the day companies hire more people so more overall work will be done, not so life is easier for existing employees. > letting the Boss choose is not in their interests But it hopefully is in the company's interests, which in a perfect world are aligned with yours. And if your interests are not aligned with the company, why should you get to help in hiring decisions? If you are a valuable employee, the boss will want to keep you happy and not hire anybody who would jeopardize that. The boss wants to hire talented people so the team accomplishes more. In some perverse scenarios, the boss will make bad decisions, but any random employee could make those bad decisions as well (and if your boss is making bad decisions, you should leave anyways). At least if the boss is making the decisions, you can spend your time coding instead of interviewing. But as stated, if interviewing is a skill that somebody values and appreciates, I think by all means they should find a way to get involved and help the company do it.