Comment by bsvalley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsvalley | Hacker News Reader

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Let me ask you one question though - Can you think of any steps during the hiring process where the interest in a product from a candidate is highlighted?

Besides the usual 15 minute monologue from recruiters trying to do keywords matching, briefly talking about the company (you can google most of it). I can't remember anyone asking me about my vision regarding any products I worked on during the interview process. After that 1st phone call it's not about the product or the company anymore, it's all about testing you like a college kid getting ready for an exam. Now it's about you wanting to join their team. Not them trying to convince you to join.

What would be a solution? Hire people who care about the product, not only the company logo. It's cool if you know how to write a function in order to find the shortest path in a graph. It's awesome if you love using a pen on a whiteboard. How about asking you how you could improve our product? What problems do you think could be solved within a specific industry? So, looks like the hiring process has to be completely re-written.

I've been rejected from a (startup) job because I did not, they claim, appear to be sufficiently enthusiastic about the product.

At the time, I found it doubly strange, since it was one of the most interesting and useful products I'd seen, and because everybody I met at that company had the energy of a Steven Wright monologue drowning in molasses.

Since then, the company appears to have pivoted pretty severely (new business plan, new logo, new offices, etc) so I'm not sure any of it would have mattered at all. Hiring in software is completely broken.

Startups actually care. You often see interest in their product/industry as one of requirements.

But large companies care much less. It's much more important for them to find a person who will be effective with their well defined processes.

Not all startups care unfortunately, it is not specific to large companies :) How many times I hear things like "come join us, we're backed by XYZ", "We have raised $ABC", "our founders are ex people from 123 Inc.". Since there's no brand or value built over time yet, they have to find ways to attract developers. At the end of the day, it's hard to find great developers.

If your mission as an early stage startup is to disrupt the yoga industry for example (no offense to this industry at all), then you might quickly run out of options in terms of product/mission fit if you only use a whiteboard as your primarily evaluation tool. I really believe the hiring process is totally broken because it's not taking into account the ability for candidates to learn and the business impact they could have on a product. It's all about what they know in the moment and what technologies they've worked with.

Ok, if you are going to disrupt the yoga industry, I'll join you even if you are not backed by "XYZ" :D

I probably picked up a wrong example :)

> How about asking how you could improve our product?

I often have ideas along those lines but they are not usually welcome. Improvements of that nature are supposed to come from product manager/designer, not a jira ticket machine AKA dev

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