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Comment by mrshoe | Hacker News Reader

Oh, there are plenty of great hackers at Apple. That doesn't mean the company has a "hacker-centric culture", though. Does Apple make "a point of hiring programmers even for jobs that would not ordinarily consist of programming, like HR and marketing", like the article mentions about Facebook? No way.

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Seems like a strange criterion. Would programmers hired to do HR be fulfilled in their jobs? Would they last very long? How does that even work? Do you slip a javascript requirement in the HR position posting? It just seems like you might be missing out on some great HR talent with such an arbitrary requirement.

It depends if you have 1 HR person or something like 10,20+. If it is a large department, having someone from a programming background that is looking for a change could be a big asset if the HR department is primarily dealing with programmers.

Digressing for a moment, what about the reverse, i.e., how long would the average HR consultant last as a programmer? They'd have to organize a swap: the programmer hands over their brain, the HR consultant their mendacity.

Programmers have all sorts of side interests. I wouldn't mind studying and potentially working in linguistics for a while; I don't see why there wouldn't be someone who's into working with people in an HR-ish role.

One caveat: best technical recruiters are former programmers (it's an automatic plus if a recruiter tells me "I'll take your LaTeX resume, I used it a lot in grad school").

I can attest this.

I got called from Google during 2006. The HR guy screened me on the phone with all TCP/IP questions. I was amazed because he knew so much about TCP/IP and UNIX socket. It turned out that he was a former software engineer in Bell Lab/Lucent. It has been the best initial phone screen that I ever have.

Why would a programmer go work in HR?

I don't know. The guy who called said he was working as contract recruiter for Google. Maybe it's due to bad economy or downsizing?

I can imagine a software engineer who is suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome switches jobs from writing to keyboard to talking on the phone.

I'm reminded of JWZ's article http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/phones.html

One of the latest tactics that the headhunters have been using is to begin with a line like ``Hey, I used to be an engineer! But now I'm hanging out here doing recruiting, cool huh?''

Good catch. Maybe I am naive and am fooled.

Maybe I should follow JWZ's step. Selling alcohols is more lucrative than programming!

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