Hacker News Reader

Comment by mabynogy | Hacker News Reader

You wasted hours of people's life for no result. You've probably misjudged the good candidates and excluded them for small details.

You should look at a people deeper. Listen to them more carefully. Try to understand what they are interested in. You don't need their resume nor tests for that. If you feel one is interested by programming, hire him immediatly and try to work with him. If you were wrong, assume your responsability.

If you can't do that, send me your candidates. I'll tell you who are the goods.

View on HN

All talk no action. That's how horrible technical interviews exist to this day. We should all turn away from such discussion since it just wastes hours of people's life for no results as we soon realize that 'interviewers keep asking these questions because they can'

I'm not sure what that first sentence means, but that seems like a bit much of a response for an interview...

A lot of people are "interested in programming" that doesn't make them a good hire, or that they'll ever do the job. I think the interviewer wants folks who can do the job, now.

As the comment above explains, recruiters can do that because we let them do that. I advise people to ask for money to pass a test. The test is the problem's recruiter, not the candidate.

A lot of people say they are interested in programming but very few are. Programming is difficult. More and more people do that for the social position. They should do something they are good at. Most of them who persevere in computers become managers.

If a recruiter isn't able to evaluate someone by talking, he shouldn't recruit people.

Recruiters can do ... what?

I'm also not sure what you mean by "ask for money to pass a test".

Pay a wage for passing the tests.

I'm not a recruiter. I'm a startup founder. And I'm working on hiring people I'm going to work with every day.

As much as I'd like to hire every person interested in coding, unfortunately that would be detrimental to our core mission of building a product. And in the medium-run it'd be bad for everyone anyway because we'd just go out of business.

I definitely learned I can't evaluate people's technical ability only by talking... which worries me. Because prior to this I expected that I would have been able to predict who would be able to code and who wouldn't. Some of my "favorite" candidates before the technical interview wouldn't have been able to complete FizzBuzz.

You should only hire those who are interested by what they do. The others are bad and won't be productive.

If you can't evaluate if you can trust someone (for something), how can your business be successful? Relationships are everything in trade.

Embrace the risk and pick someone. The one you trust the more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com