Comment by mnm1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mnm1 | Hacker News Reader

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This attitude of "you really have to want to work here or you ought to leave" justifies a lot of insanity. I've heard it from companies who make potential employees jump through ridiculous hoops to even get a chance at a job. Here's reality for people who suffer from this delusion: most people don't give a fuck and are just looking for a job. They're applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs (yes, even in software), and expecting them to know everything there is to know about your company just to apply (like providing a detailed cover letter) is downright insane. This is how companies with such an attitude problem attract "yes-people," suckups and other undesirables and miss out on real talent that isn't going to stand on its head just to get a chance at an interview. Likewise, as the article points out, this toxic attitude is just as bad at retaining employees as it is at getting them in the first place. What I'd like to see is the second part of this story. How these people then hired another 50 software engineers with actual talent in the bay area. Most companies I speak to have trouble finding one or two, let alone 50. And all because of an incredibly naive and stupid attitude of the company's execs. This is indeed a case where the founders should have been replaced with proper executives, though I'm not sure 'proper' executives would have made a better decision.

As an aside, one shortcut to weeding out shitty companies is to simply filter out companies that say shit like, "we are on a mission to change the world." That's a guaranteed bad time.

As an aside, my 20-something-SF-resident-friends are flabbergasted when I tell them that I, as a person who's spent his whole life is this start up la-la-land that is SV, have absolutely no interest in "changing the world".

I just want to work on interesting business problems, just like many others just want to work on interesting technical problems.

Yup. It's called having some goddamn boundaries. My work persona is there to clean up some code, write some features, and make the business processes we support work slightly better. For this, I get money, which I take home and enjoy through hobbies, friends, and loved ones. It's a good enough life, and I'm perfectly happy with it.

In my experience, the notion of "change the world" has no age bar sadly. Also, "change the world" is often thrown about in arguably shallow contexts. But then look at how Facebook got started, and it is fair to say that it has changed the world. My point? I agree with you, but I am not sure if that's just cynicism because arguably "shallow" companies have changed the world for real.

Facebook might have changed the world, but I don't think it's for the better.

People are applying to dozens or hundreds of jobs at once? How is that possible? I'm generally only considering 1 new employer at a time, and the most I've ever done concurrently was applying to two companies in CA at the same time.

How could there even be dozens of companies that you'd want to work for at any given time?

Maybe it's different in SF but out on the east coast I've seen people be passed for the wrong version of jQuery on the resume, or literally "not enough eye contact". Applying to jobs out here is kind of a crap shoot where you shotgun out to a ton till you get past enough bullshit to be given in person interviews where you can actually demonstrate your skills

> I've seen people be passed for the wrong version of jQuery on the resume

Well, those people dodged a bullet, then...

I agree, but since its difficult to know that ahead of time, you end up applying to multiple companies

If you're putting jQuery on your resume, you might have bigger problems than versioning.

I interviewed someone recently with FTP on their CV. Now, running a big FTP site, that's CV-worthy. Contributing to an open-source FTP client, that's CV-worthy. But no, this person literally listed being able to FTP a file as one of their "skills"...

Are you kidding? Most people don't care where they work. And why should they? Most places are the same, especially--but not exclusively--for lower paying jobs. Is there a big difference between working at McDonald's or Burger King? Hell, there isn't a big difference working at various tech companies. Most people just don't want to starve and be homeless. You can apply to one employer at a time. And if they don't respond? How long are you going to wait for them to respond? Till your money runs out and you can't buy food or pay rent? Beyond that, while you're sleeping on a park bench with all your worldly possessions? I mean, surely, if you don't need to eat or have a roof over your head, then you have the luxury of applying to one or two companies at a time. The rest of us don't have that luxury. And really, all it requires is emailing your resume or filling out online forms. It's not that hard to apply to multiple places at once.

Plenty of people don't have companies in mind, just jobs in mind.

You could look at all postings over the last month, from many different online sources and in 2 - 3 of the top tech cities. You could probably do it just by looking in a single city.

I wasn't doubting that there are hundreds of companies who would be potentially interested in hiring someone with my skills.

I was puzzled that I would be interested in working for so many different places. I now realize that some people seem to simply not care where they work, at least at the apply-for-job stage. That was the piece that I was missing.

I'm sure they care to some degree. It's not like you don't get better idea of the culture by having an onsite...

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