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Comment by vaksel | Hacker News Reader

I'd imagine the incompetent ones wouldn't bother applying to jobs that are "way out of their league".

If you are "sucky" you might still apply for a $60K job, thinking that you might slide through. But you wouldn't bother applying to a $100K job, thinking that there'd be way more competent people applying so it'd be a waste of time

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I'd imagine the incompetent ones wouldn't bother applying to jobs that are "way out of their league".

Never done hiring before, eh?

You'd imagine that, but you'd be wrong - there are a great many technical employees who don't realize they are way out of their league and will apply anyway.

"Hey, I've got 'two years of experience with .NET'! I remember, because it was my birthday last week and on my birthday two years ago I wrote a little digital clock app from a tutorial I found in a magazine. Man, who ever thought ten minutes in Notepad would net me a $100k job! I'm totally going to apply, and when I get this job I'm never working at another Burger King again!"

Upvote for satire!

I'm curious about why this was downvoted.

Is "upvote for x" too reddit-y?

You honestly didn't consider that it might be because the comment was entirely pointless?

I actually thought it was better to be specific about why I liked the parent link, because that way the parent would get more upvotes, which I believe it deserved.

This is not a community concerned with upvotes. It is a community concerned with content, and especially with getting good content as quickly and as easily as possible. We upvote to signal good content. We do not comment to signal good content; that is what upvoting is for. We comment to add content; this can be in the form of insight, correction, elaboration, humor, summarizing a long article well, adding a personal anecdote or expert knowledge, answering a question, or any number of other things. Our comments should not be complaints, memes, or other wastes of space and time.

Before clicking the reply button, ask yourself, "Am I really adding something, or should I stop procrastinating and get back to work?"

OK, I appreciate this explanation. By your rules 'upvote for satire' deserves its downvotes. I agree.

I still don't see why the child-post was downvoted. In my view I wasn't whining there, merely asking.

So I'm skeptical that everyone here behaves perfectly rationally in the context of the community rules you've listed. And I don't view this as a waste of time, because I'm trying to figure out how things work here.

Edit: OK, forget it. I'm taking it too personally. You're right, asking 'why the downvotes' is also not good content I'd like to read from other comment'rs.

Haven't been on the hiring side, but in my experience as an applicant years-of-experience requirements are often inflated and represent wishful thinking. I'll usually apply to anything that lists within 50% or so of what I have, and often still get called in for interviews despite my resume clearly showing I don't meet the nominal criteria.

And on the flip side I've seen a lot of arrogant people on the hiring side who think a given applicant is way out of their league -- but the applicant isn't. It's just that the hiring side folks have preconceived notions, stereotypes and "goggles" distorting their judgment. So, it works both ways.

The ethical policy you're imputing to most 'programmers' in the real world is far from the reality of it.

I regret not having applied to many great opportunities as a younger programmer because I filtered myself out, when many who are worse off never do.

Self-promotion: http://blog.codeboff.in/2010/06/25/good-programmers-are-hard...

You'd imagine wrong, if my past experience is anything to go by.

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