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> I appreciate the effort put into wording that nicely, but really all you're saying is, "Company, you need me more than I need you, and I expect YOU to jump through MY hoops." This is only true when you're a one-in-a-million talent. It's not going to work for the other 999,999 people.

No it is not. I have a job. I'm too busy taking time out of my day to explain concepts that I barely use and not going to be using at employer who is asking them. That is the broken part. They are passing up on good hires with irrelevant crap because some them don't have the time.

> Why bother with this kook when there's a line of people outside eager to have a shot.

Because the kook that refuses to explain merge sort might be better at the job than the guy who desperatly jumps through hoops.

> Because the kook that refuses to explain merge sort might be better at the job than the guy who desperatly jumps through hoops.

Who cares if the kook is better if the other one is good enough? At some point, "better" hits diminishing returns and is no longer worth it. It's the reason "we only hire the top X%" attitude is wasteful bullshit for most companies.

One of my co-founders made a really interesting observation the other day... the 10x programmer often gets his 10x by leeching the performance of other team members. 10x programmers don't talk through their decisions with teammates, or think about the consequences of their rapid changes on other members, or indeed, the long-term health of the project.

If a 10x programmer turns a 3x team into a 1x team, that super-genius isn't worth having.

And this is why I hate working with primadonnas who think they're brilliant.

How do you feel about hard-working brilliant folks who are humble? This sounds more like resentment to me. "Its hard to keep up with brilliant folks" is not a reason to avoid them. They may make more work, but you get to a different place than plodding along with the herd.

It's not a matter of "It's hard to keep up with the brilliant folks". It's that they are often actively destructive to the productivity of the team. Hence my co-founder's comment.

Brilliant people can often be easygoing and a great benefit to their teams. They do it by moving the whole team forward. They're never 10x individually in that case, but they may elevate a 3x team to 5x.

edit: Find me an engineer who is both brilliant and humble, and I'll bend over backwards to hire that person.

Hm. It could be both. And probably the 'cowboys' we've all experienced are not all brilliant. It doesn't take brilliance to torpedo a team.

And I suggest that 3X a small team may be less than 10X the one person. Maybe a better team is one that supports a brilliant developer, making a deliverable out of their prototype. That's another way to manage it.

ive only met one in my life, and i wouldn't recommend him to anyone... if he was available and i could afford him i would in do it a heartbeat first. he was a 10x with more diplomacy and kindness then any co-worker ive ever had. rare breed indeed.

Yeah, we had that at one of my previous employer. Some guy was really a 20x dev. But he did it at "all costs". That meant working from home, not attending meetings, not answering emails, ignoring the PMs, not mentoring junior devs, not explaining how he did stuff, etc.

Now, we all hate a lot of the above stuff, and many companies handle these things better than others, but it did mean the only reason he was "20x" was because he didn't do 90% of the stuff that was expected of everyone else.

Maybe the company culture needed to change, but until it did, everyone else looked really bad compared to him, even though they were essentially spending their time trying to deal with his crap without help.

To make this a bit more subtle, I consider 10x to be contextual. Some developers will legitimately be 10x in some circumstances but not others. The kind of prima donna you are talking about (assuming they are truly brilliant and not just a Dunning-Kruger case) can probably only be 10x on small solo projects. But there are definitely those programmers who are 10x or even 100x by being a combination of brilliant plus collaboration-minded.

The thing about programming is that it is a relatively easy form of automation of data processing, so whereas a single developer can have multiples of impact far greater than a traditional office worker, and sometimes even greater than the impact of a traditional office manager (because software is more scalable than people), you can get a multiplicative effect when you combine great programming with great programmer management and collaboration. This is where you'll find a lot of my programming heroes. For example, what Yehuda Katz did with Bundler in terms of gathering community input and hammering something into shape to solve a whole host of hairy problems with RubyGems which no single individual could completely grok is inspiring. The amount of impact a project like that has on the productivity of thousands is impossible to quantify. I guess Linus Torvalds would be the quintessential example of that, for his ability to channel the efforts of thousands of developers in a cohesive direction while maintaining an impressive standard of quality.

So being 10x, 100x, 1000x is possible, but it depends on working on the right problems with the right people.

"the 10x programmer often gets his 10x by leeching the performance of other team members. 10x programmers don't talk through their decisions with teammates, or think about the consequences of their rapid changes on other members, or indeed, the long-term health of the project."

I wouldn't call that person a 10x programmer. I think that the only meaningful way to define a 10x programmer is someone who has ten times the contribution to the company's bottom line of an average programmer (i.e., someone who would actually deserve to be paid ten times as much as an average programmer, but could probably be hired for far less than that). However, if someone produces 10x more code than the average programmer but "turns a 3x team into a 1x team", then their net productivity is negative and they should be immediately fired.

>At some point, "better" hits diminishing returns and is no longer worth it.

Well the whole point throwing out CS trivia questions is to find the better candidate. It is the diminishing returns... by simply restricting your candidate pool to people that have the time to jump through hoops.

Yea but he also might just be a person who only works on the stuff they like and shrek the other stuff. No job is all roses otherwise you wouldn't get paid. You need people who can work within others processes. Attitude trumps talent 90% of the time.

I'm not suggesting to dump all forms of interview but I think having a process with multiple hoops to jump through is a waste of my time. Through my experience it gives them way too many opportunities to find a reason not to like me and rejecting my application. The only time I accept hiring processes with more than two interviews is when I'm unemployed. While employed I ask about the process and if I don't like the process... I don't bother.

>Yea but he also might just be a person who only works on the stuff they like and shrek the other stuff.

Yeah normal interview questions can give answers to that.

> or in those rare times when the hiring market favors candidates

Which is... right now. I think this strategy could absolutely pay off. And your objection seems to be that if you say these things then the company isn't going to hire you - that's the point. It isn't a negotiation tactic, it's "I am taking this interview procedure as a reflection of the company as a whole and that gives me sincere reservations as to whether I'll be a good fit".

No, I wouldn't recommend this when you're fresh out of college. But many experienced developers absolutely do not know their worth - you shouldn't have to go through that crap when your resume clearly states you are capable.

> Which is... right now.

As long as you have the right skills and live in the right area. I live in Dallas and want an embedded job. If it weren't for my clearance, nobody would give a shit about me.

Wow, OK. I suppose this is fine for someone who doesn't actually want a job, or in those rare times when the hiring market favors candidates. But in most cases, the company will just move on to the next resume in the pile. Why bother with this kook when there's a line of people outside eager to have a shot.

The thing is, not all companies do this. And there a LOT of other companies besides Google and The Usual Suspects. Heck, there are a lot of companies that aren't "tech companies" but they still employ developers. And they are probably less likely to do the whole "grill you on Data Structures 101" thing than Google. It's something to consider...

I'm at one such company. I'm one of a 4-person dev team in the marketing department of a major lawfirm. My interview consisted of a conversation with another developer about code, both my github/portfolio and how we see development in general.

I had an offer an hour later and this is a fantastic place to work.

I actively avoided places with broken processes and it paid off in spades.

Is the compensation competitive? I've gotten the general impression that sometimes hiring is more broken than other parts of the company, and that the more competitive positions can sometimes have more frustrating interviews.

Not really, but I also put in a sub-40 week and the only thing that matters is that I get my work done.

I'll make the Work-Life Balance > Compensation choice every time.

"Heck, there are a lot of companies that aren't "tech companies" but they still employ developers."

Exactly this! IMO these are some of the best types of jobs too. You generally have real problems to solve and can see the impact you are making in the business.

That's if the business lets you make an impact, since you'll probably be in a "cost center" etc...

Very much disagree. I'm in one of these kind of businesses and I pretty much work directly with the COO and have a lot of say in how we get things done.

Get in, figure out how things work and how you can be useful and then build a reputation of getting things done.

My same experience. I have worked in a few non tech/software companies. From my experience the non tech companies really appreciate what you are able to do for them if you go about it with their best interest in mind rather than what you want.

There is sometimes push back on implementing things partly because non tech doesn't always understand the benefit. But if you are good at explaining and showing how something will save them money by streamlining a process or make them money by reducing friction somewhere, you almost always get the green light.

My experience is the opposite - many in the company defer to you and your knowledge, whereas at many "tech only" shops there's always an endless debate to be had about language, database, etc. etc.

Yep this is my experience too.

My company, which is a tech company, pretty much does exactly what the author describes as his preferred process: "I strongly prefer code reviews and evaluation of my public code samples and am just not interested in discussing why manhole covers are round or in reliving college coursework from 15 years ago." It's one of the reasons I wanted to work for them, and I think this kind of approach has the potential to be a competitive advantage. It takes more time to evaluate a candidate (though not unreasonably more) but opens up a much wider field of people and—from what I can tell—selects for better fit.

At my company, we do 2 phone interviews, then we do a 4 hour on site paid coding interview where we ask the candidate to code real world problems on a real computer, with an OS/toolset list that we ask them to provide for us. We let them know explicitly what we're looking for (getting it working, getting it right or getting it fast, etc).

This is about as 'real world' as we can make it, and it's generally worked out well. It's still problematic since it requires a physical block of time, and that eliminates some candidates who are currently working, but it's the best we've found so far.

What we do is a "take home test" that's pretty open ended (depending on which role we're hiring for). We basically give the candidate the requirements and they have 48 hours to send us something. Currently for our data science roles, we give them some instructions regarding where to find a specific dataset, and basically say "use data science tools, visualization, etc., to tell a meaningful story about something in this data." We don't dictate language, libraries, or anything. So you can use R, Python, Scala, Octave, Fortran, or whatever floats your boat. Then what we look for are things like:

1. Is it documented well enough that we can deploy and run the code ourselves?

2. Is the code clean, well structured, documented, etc.?

3. Does it run with no errors?

4. Does the output do a reasonable job of satisfying the requirements?

It's pretty open ended, which is itself a mixed blessing. Some people will look at it as an opportunity to really show off and show what they can do, and "flex their muscles" so to speak. Others may be intimidated by the lack of more detailed requirements. It's not a perfect test, but it works pretty well for us.

The one other risk is that the candidate will use a language that nobody here is qualified to evaluate (like FORTRAN), but in practice that hasn't been an issue.

When I get calls/emails/social media pings from recruiters, hiring managers, CTOs, etc...all wanting "a few moments of my time" - I tend to be highly selective. I'll routinely get 6-10 requests in one day, and even a quick 30 min chat is a huge time sinkhole when there's multiples waiting for a response.

My time is more valuable to me than theirs. They jump through my hoops.

Do you mind if I ask how you've positioned yourself to get all of these offers? Are you a visible public figure or is it all through word of mouth?

> I'll routinely get 6-10 requests in one day

I get that in a good month, and 90% of them are clueless and inappropriate.

You would be surprised. While I am not looking, I get recruited often. I probably spend too much time giving recruiters feedback but I can't help myself. I am blunt and honest and recruiters actually respond well to it.

I refuse to take captive positions partly because of the craziness in the workplace but also because I can make much more contracting then what most employers are willing to pay.

Funny thing is now you are starting to see companies looking to hire contractors and wanting to make the contractors jump through these silly hoops (taking silly quizzes, take home projects, etc.)

I always come back with a proposal that includes cost & timeline to complete the take home project. I have gotten a couple gigs that way :)

I tried this with Google and got the "Well... bye" response. I was contacted by a recruiter who said she "specializes in finding candidates who are already employed". As I guess it goes with Google, she didn't even have a position in mind, she just wanted to put me in the generic hiring funnel. Now, I'm not even a developer; I'm a researcher with a PhD in computer engineering, and a BS in physics. I've taken 1 algorithms course in my life, and that was over 10 years ago.

So she asks me, "How much of your time to I spend writing code?" I tell her, maybe 10%-20%. And then she jumps right into asking algorithm complexity questions and generic trivia: what is the average run time of quicksort, what is 356 in binary, estimate 2^20, etc. I was getting some of them right, some of them wrong, but eventually I had to stop her and say "Look, I don't really know what is going on right now. You told me you were contacting me based on my experience, but now you're asking questions that don't have anything to do with what I do. It sounds like the role you're trying to fill doesn't align well with my experience." That was pretty much the end of the conversation.

It's not even that I feel like I shouldn't get vetted. I should! But do it based on what I know. Ask me linear algebra trivia, or how robotics algorithms work and their time complexity, or ask me about topology or statistics or machine learning. Why are you grilling me on sorting algorithms?

I think if it works anywhere, it's going to be at smaller shops, where they don't have a line of candidates stretching around the block.

Yeah it is not going to work at Google or any of the big guys. Google can get away with this. They earned that right imo. Startups that pay crap or most others shouldn't be able to get away with it. They do because developers are allowing them to.

You're probably the one-in-a-million he talks about. This isn't good advice for the other 1e6-1.

.

"1e6" means "1 x 10^6", not "1^6". (And it always has done, at least for as long as it's meant anything at all.)

> I expect YOU to jump through MY hoops

uh, no. he doesn't expect them to do anything, especially not jump through any hoops, because he doesn't want to work for them. end of story. that's it, there's no catch. have a nice life.

if you don't understand that, it's no wonder you're on the other side of this fence.

also, your use of the word "need" is telling of your mindset.

"Why bother with this kook when there's a line of people outside eager to have a shot?"

Aside from Apple, Google, Facebook, do companies have this? Hasn't industry been complaining constantly that there isn't enough talent?

"Expected response: "Well........ Bye.""

So? The person just expressed their intention to not work for the company. You're acting like the company choosing to pass is now a terrible consequence.

"Company, you need me more than I need you, and I expect YOU to jump through MY hoops."

They're not really asking them to jump through hoops. Just don't be stupid.

And yeah, the company needs workers more than the worker needs the company.

>but really all you're saying is, "Company, you need me more than I need you, and I expect YOU to jump through MY hoops."

Yes...and? That's why they're looking for someone. If you're confident in your skills, why would you be grateful for employment?

Of course that's the response. In the article he states this response to an interview will end it without an offer.

But he's saying it's okay to walk away from what you know from the hiring process is likely to be a bad job.

If you're destitute, desperate and dying on the street, this is bad advice.

If you are already happily employed, this is good advice.

If you are somewhere in between, it's something interesting to think about. Almost as if it were in a long-form blog posted on Hacker News.

> "Company, you need me more than I need you, and I expect YOU to jump through MY hoops." This is only true when you're a one-in-a-million talent. It's not going to work for the other 999,999 people.

(I assume "on-in-a-million" is an exaggeration to mean "exceptional")

How skewed do you think the market is? Many here talk about developer shortage, suggesting an employee's market. But let's assume this is an employer's market, and the employers can really chose: how exceptional exactly does one have to be to afford to be picky about the interviewing process? My guess would be between one-in-ten to one-in-a-hundred. No more.

I think this is really about status. Employees have lower status than their employer. They owe them obedience and loyalty (by law in most countries). Employers even expect a fair bit of deference most of the time. They expect the prospective employee to "know her place", and that includes putting up with dubious trivia questions.

Sure, if you must work at some top hot shot reputable company, you need to put up with their processes, however silly or gruelling. Or you could decide they're not so hot after all, and search elsewhere.

Even then, done right, refusing to jump through hoops raises your status. By acting like you're bargaining from a position of strength, your strengthen your position. If on the other hand you let them taking you for granted, they'll think less of you.

Now there are those who expect spineless sheep. They tend to reject me. Fine with me, I would be unhappy with them anyway.

I agree with everything you said. In my last company, someone was hired into the software team with such a "my way or the highway" type of personality and despite being technically strong, caused so much damage to the rest of the team structure that the net was a negative gain.