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Comment by ScottFree | Hacker News Reader

> Sounding desperate.

Why is that a negative signal? The company has the opportunity to get top talent temporarily down on his/her luck for a reduced rate.

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Confidence and desperation hardly ever align. Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky.

Standard: not saying it's fair or endorsing this, explaining how people think and feel about it.

Yeah, it's a heuristic.

People who know what they're doing will over time become more confident.

People who don't know what they're doing will over time become more desperate as they run out of places to fail at.

You could do a lot of work to figure out the difference between someone who knows what they're doing and someone who doesn't. But it's a lot easier to just notice if they look confident or desperate.

Unfortunately, being confident is actually super easy if you're willing to practice it. Much easier than actually being good at anything.

Also unfortunately, being confident is really hard if you don't know how to practice it. And the skill is orthogonal to most other skills. So if you're good at something, it might actually be harder to control how confident you appear to others.

> Confident people who plan don't get desperate. Desperate people don't make good decisions. People who let themselves reach levels of desperation are either extremely unlucky (unlikely, but not someone you want on your team regardless) or chronically make bad decisions. At the worst, they're a person who chronically makes bad decisions and thinks they're unlucky.

Disclaimer: I'm saying this for your own benefit, but your comment comes across as incredibly naive, and I would never endorse you as an interviewer with this attitude.

There are life circumstances which one can literally not plan for, and which can derail even the most well-conceived of plans. Chronic illness, war, natural disasters, etc., all come to mind. Give all the examples you want regarding how one might conceivably prepare for one of those things, but it's pretty clear from your opinion that you've never experienced one of these yourself.

Just realize you can both be right. Everything you say is true, but parent is also. Confidence and the projection of ability to get the job done is important. Also when you are 40+ chances are you are going to be hired as a senior developer who has influence on team culture, this makes confidence and positivity even more important.

Sounds like you're arguing based on the "real world", where as the grandparent is based on people's perceptions of it. That perspective is widespread however, whether fair, accurate or not.

Those things you list are pretty rare, though. And I say this as one who is both disabled and has seen more than anyone's normal share of bad luck.

I wouldn't rely on a confidence as a stand-in for skill. Maybe it's cultural, but I don't trust people who are extremely confident during interviews. Interviews are stressful experience, people who come across as super confident[1] are suspicious.

On the other hand I'd hire a humble person based on this single trait alone and wouldn't regret most of the time. Humility is an exceptional marker for a good coworker. The best people I interviewed knew their limits and were eager to point them out.

[1] not overconfident, i.e. claiming to know more than they obviously do

Unfortunately in all parts of life confidence sells. If he gets an interview and gives off the signal that he will take anything, odds are they will pass figuring there is a reason he will do so. Same concept unfortunately goes for looks a lot of the time. If you walk into an interview not well put together its going to work against you. This can be mitigated by youth but when you get older you no longer have this luxury. I'm early 40's and I make sure that a couple months before I start thinking about changing jobs I up my workouts, change my diet etc to appear in shape and more energetic. It has zero reflection of my true abilities but people are judged by their looks and unfortunately older people are double so.

Would you want to date someone who seemed desperate to get into a relationship? Who seemed like they were having trouble getting a relationship at all, let alone a good healthy one? Same principle.

it's not a relationship, it's a job - you don't have to fall in love with every candidate.

The same reason that "what's your biggest weakness" is such a stereotypical interview question. It's all about stories. If you can prove you're the best with math or with certifications or whatever, that is only a protection for yourself. But if you have a good story that is a protection for whoever you tell the story to.

What's your biggest weakness is all about your ability to tell a good story about a failure that you're responsible for. Because if you have a good story then the person responsible for you can retell the story to the people that they answer to.

Yeah, Joe messed up big time and then left the company and I was responsible for him, but listen to this great story that he told me about why everything was going to work. Clearly this failure was from external forces that shouldn't be held against me. Anyone else would have failed; it was inevitable.

Desperation isn't a good story for anyone. Yeah, I left Joe in charge. And he told me that he knew what he was doing. But he also seemed really desperate (and everyone could tell), like he would say whatever he had to in order to get the job. Yeah, this is clearly all my fault and I should probably be fired too.

It is a signal the the person isn't top talent. Because if they were they wouldn't be desperate

I think mostly it just makes other people uncomfortable.

Well if this were sports and people had fixed time commitment contracts that makes sense. But for at-will employment, they're likely to move on once they're not desperate. You want a good fit, not a bargain.

Companies don't see them as top talent on account of being unemployed.

Becuase top talent usually don't get desperate. It's a bad way to judge someone, of course, but there aren't many good ways, and when hiring, you want to play it safe: not hiring a good candidate is way better than hiring someone who turns out to be bad. So, if you notice something that looks like it might have been a red flag, you take notice.

"not hiring a good candidate is way better than hiring someone who turns out to be bad."

is it though? CA is at-will employment, so there's literally nothing stopping a company from firing someone that isn't working out (besides timidity on the part of the person who would have to do the firing).

"when hiring, you want to play it safe"

personally, i'd rather tell some people it's not working out than miss out on incredible talent because i'm too scared to fire someone.

i prefer to lean into strengths, not try to shore up weaknesses.

"top talent usually don't get desperate" there are many reasons why people look for jobs, on their own timing, and with their own reasons. reading 'desperation' into someone's application is projecting your own fears and experiences onto theirs without actually taking the time to learn more. it's lazy.

> is it though? CA is at-will employment, so there's literally nothing stopping a company from firing someone that isn't working out (besides timidity on the part of the person who would have to do the firing).

Last I checked, I was 9700 kilometers away from California. Not everybody on HN is from Silicon Valley.

> personally, i'd rather tell some people it's not working out than miss out on incredible talent because i'm too scared to fire someone.

Then you've never seen one bad hire destroy whole teams.

> reading 'desperation' into someone's application is projecting your own fears and experiences onto theirs without actually taking the time to learn more.

This thesis has no null hypothesis. The same arguments could be applied to about anyone who's perceving any emotions from other people, in any context, aside from listening to a person narrate his emotions out loud. See, none of us have any emptathy or eye for emotion, we're all just projecting something of our own. And if you, or anyone, has any counter-argument against this clearly absurd statement, the same counter-argument could equally rebute yours as well.

> Last I checked, I was 9700 kilometers away from California. Not everybody on HN is from Silicon Valley.

So... you have strong labor where you live? Where do you live? Employment is not at will? Everyone gets a contract with a specified time? Saying you live far away doesn't address whether employment is at-will where you live.

> Then you've never seen one bad hire destroy whole teams.

Nope, never have. Ever. My anecdotes are as good as yours.

> This thesis has no null hypothesis...

Lots of word salad there, let me break it down for you: without speaking to someone to learn more, your interpretation of "desperation" based on their resume or what jobs they apply for alone is a projection of your own insecurities. Maybe they like several of the jobs at your company and could do them equally well. Just because you would feel "desperate" if you did that doesn't mean everyone does. All your gymnastics about hypothesis and arguments don't actually address any of the real issues that the post is about. Pretty self-congratulatory about knowing words.

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