Things I was asked to do while job hunting
kylenazario.com
kylenazario.com
On one extreme, a very desirable dev has the luxury of ignoring all but the most thoughtful recruiter pings on LinkedIn. He can also tune out companies that are too small, not tech-focused, don't have a good reputation, whatever. The small remainder of recruiters and companies that he will speak to are much more likely to have their shit together and provide a solid recruiting experience.
On the other hand, if someone doesn't have a ton of options, they end up being much less selective about whom they speak to and where they interview, in addition to being less likely to be recruited by the top players to begin with.
I think this explains the dichotomy of why some people consistently have horrible experiences and some never have them. And then there's the "hint" that if you only have the horrible experiences, there is something you need to strategically change.
You've set your sights too low. A very desirable dev doesn't need to interface with LinkedIn at all.
What has been your path that landed you amazing highly paid roles and why do you think you're not missing out by not hearing from a broader set of companies?
Got my job at Yahoo Travel via Topcoder referal (before LinkedIn existed). Worked there for seven years. Got many many many spams from LinkedIn to my yahoo-inc address when people uploaded the corporate address book and LinkedIn wouldn't let you unsubscribe without making an account. Made enough to pay a mortgage on a bay area house with a single income.
Got recruited to WhatsApp by Brian Acton who was breifly my boss's boss at Yahoo. Worked there for not quite eight years. Made enough to retire comfortably.
Could I have been more highly paid? Probably when I was working for Yahoo, I got a bigger salary when I moved to a startup. I doubt I could have found anything better post 2014 though.
If I was looking now, I would probably look at selected company's hiring pages and/or through niche sites like HN's who's hiring etc.
ADDED: I've been in a sufficiently specialized subset of the industry for a long time that random recruiter emails aren't likely to be interesting. And I know a lot of people at different companies. So I have pretty much a bare bones profile on LinkedIn as I'm not really looking for inbound pings.
They get offers long before they even decide to switch jobs. They simply never had a LinkedIn account to begin with. It's a friend that calls them to tell them about the new project they are about to hire for.
Companies can either spend more on recruiting fees, or more on better devs that will try to get their friends hired...
Yup, half of the team I'm on is made up of people who have worked together in the past and are good. That's how I got the job and how I get all my gigs. I haven't had to really interview for a job since 2002. LinkedIn is entirely unnecessary when you have a large enough network of people who enjoy working with you. The jobs come to you.
In Europe? No. European founders? There are so many in the Bay Area. For some reasons they don't seem to stay in Europe.
For example, I looked at the blog author's LinkedIn profile. Regardless of his level, it's not a good profile in terms of presenting his maturity as a technologist and ability to deliver outcomes. Which lowers his odds of being noticed by good recruiters even at his current caliber of dev. To at least some degree, this contributes to the negative experience he is having.
I don’t like the take-home assessment trend, but I do understand it from a hiring perspective.
I'm sometimes surprised by weird hiring practices at a place I didn't expect. Even different positions at the same FAANG can be completely different experiences.
I would fail this. I have had a lifelong inability to do simple arithmetic mentally. When I had to learn multiplication tables I finally memorized them by using flash cards and a payment schedule set up by my parents.
In fourth grade we had "time tests" where you had to do a page of sums and were graded based on how quickly you completed it. I never finished them in the maximum time allotted because I had to count on my fingers. Even today I will sometimes do that, or I will use offsets from a few sums that I do know. For example, 7+6. For some reason I know 7+7 is 14, so 7+6 is one less than that. Hence 13. Anyone else think this way as an adult?
That said, for every pain I’ve had with math, I’ve breezed through with English and writing. When I was younger doing my SATs, I completely tanked math, but had a perfect score in the English and writing sections.
When it comes to adding and subtracting, that's definitely me!
[0]: https://64.media.tumblr.com/uwQaNeR4EjfyqysnvQFexD3vo1_400.j...
Or use a calculator, who cares. Arithmetic is mostly memorization.
I don't work with software per se but I do write some software in the course of my work, and haven't had any issues from my difficulty with math. (At least, not since having to re-take Calculus and reshuffle my major back in college.)
One of the reasons I originally decided I wanted to work with computers was that (in a general sense) I could tell the computer to do the math for me. I always loved playing with calculators and seeing what I could get them to do.
makes me wonder if comparatively hard things like that, work fine, although some of the easy things don't?
And someone with dyslexia can write an amazingly good novel, I presume.
> comment the living hell out of my code
I like comments too, the "Why" type of comments :-)
This was my exact experience learning to the multiplication tables in 4th grade. Although my payment was watching tv or playing video games. The only one I really learned was multiplying by 8 bc my dad made more effort for me to learn it (he was programmer).
I also use random "tricks" for arithmetic, like when multiplying 6 and 7, I'll do (37)+(37) instead because I've memorized 3*7=21 and the addition is easy with no carries
Math is the real challenge though. When I was in business school I tutored a group of students who were... struggling. They simply lacked the ability to handle things like basic graphs in economics, solving equations, never mind the most simple differentiation to find a maxima/minima. It was a frustrating experience. I couldn't make up for a general lack of even high school math.
And read any number of books out there on first year bschool experiences and you'll find similar.
There are absolutely successful people who are in that category. But Math is a major roadblock for many people.
Fortunately I don't need to use my fingers.
If anything being asked to do mental arthimatic in an interview should be a red flag that the company has a code base that could be full of horrible undocumented nonsense.
The trick for code readability is to always make the compiler do the math. const time_ms = 30 * 1000; This is much easier to read and maintain.
I suspect you won't reply, this being a throwaway, but was there any ADHD involved? That's what I've gradually settled on for myself, not the "bouncing off the walls" bit, but the bit where you have trouble focusing on anything but the things that are "interesting" to you (and then HYPER focus on those things).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyscalculia
I think what the prior poster was describing is more what I have which I've taken to calling "having shit memory". Can't remember numbers or names, can't learn foreign languages well at all. Had trouble in elementary school with doing multiplication tables fast because I couldn't memorize 7s and 8s, so I'd solve 8x8 by doing 6x6=36 (easy) and then 36+6+6+8+8 to complete the square.
I can teach myself optimal control theory, but my speed and accuracy at arithmetic is just getting worse as i can use google as a calculator. I did fine in physics and math courses in college because you can use calculators, and because I always picked the easy questions first, and then ran the answers back through to prove they were right in order to find sign errors and such.
Btw from that Wikipedia article, about ADHD:
> In 2015, it was established that 11% of children with dyscalculia also have ADHD
And yeah, I don't really have ADHD and don't have dyscalculia. You said you have ADHD and sounded like you were describing dyscalculia.
(Actually I also don't have ADHD -- I'm something else than the other ones who replied earlier in this thread.)
I also reason 7+6 by going down or up from 14 or 12, but I would not characterize myself as having dyscalcula of any severity.
I feel a lot of math is made easier once some facts become so simple they're memorised. I can do large arithmetic quite easily in my head due to having the basics memorised.
The 10s are a freebie, and the 2s can be done by most people without much effort, for numbers under 100. 5s are just half of the 10s. 9s are just 10x - 1x. 11s are adorable. I'd wager most people internalize little tricks like these for all the multiples of single digit numbers and the lower double digits. Of course, if you do math in your head all the time, eventually you memorize frequent combinations.
Anybody who can trivially multiply high doubles digits or 3 digit numbers in their head is exceptional.
Astute readers will notice I don't consult with anyone underneath me--I may have them review anonymized applications or meeting notes, but I think having the peers you'll work with involved in the hiring process causes too much nepotism, cargo culting, and embarrassing displays of "stump the chump". As a leader, I know the skills I need, and I know who will jive with the team structure. I don't need people wishing I had hired X over Y or turning down people that may be smarter than them.
It's a great way to do "fresh out of school" hiring, though, where there's no meaningful signal to look at (grades and school are trash) and good people aren't self-selected out the way they are later.
Not all of them are bad, and some of them can be fixed, but it's naive to think the only relevant discussions are related to skills.
In fact, plenty of women themselves would fail this test.
There is also nothing about your hiring that would not be biased. This sort of "let's chat and see how we feel about it" is the most biased way of inteviewing - it tends to produce hires that are from similar background, preferences and personality as interviewer.
Again, as I said in a separate thread, I don't have a standard checklist of questions and just go with the flow of conversation.
For example, you ask "what du you think about meritocracy?"
I'm curious about some of the questions you ask / things you say to get the conversation going
(Btw seems a bit random to pick different topics with different people, then how can you compare?)
The more open I am, the more open they are, and we both leave with a better understanding.
Personally, when I interview I try to observe the physiognomy of the subject. I look for defects like weak chins or sloping brows.
An informal survey of social opinions is also useful. If the candidate asks "How old is your grandmother?", he's inquiring after your Freemason's lodge number, which is a reliable sign of a good fellow.
As you say, you should always keep the atmosphere light and informal. A snifter of brandy, for example, never goes wrong.
You'll meet the candidate anyway, right, for a walk, or over a lunch, and what are you going to talk about anyway, then. Might as well make that conversation a bit "deeper" so as to get more info about each other (goes both ways I suppose).
1. a disrespect for psychological boundaries.
2. a system that seems primarily to probe for cultural markers.
Seems like a useful tool, to me, if combined with more standard things like coding skill tests etc. Thanks for the idea.
Do you answer such questions too? If the candidate later asks you "What would you bring? And do with a million dollars"
Plenty of them who tell you from their own initiative, quite quickly. Like they could not wait for opportunity too tell me about my inferiority. So he likely does not have to fish all that much.
The other complicating factor is that people who are smooth and don't talk about these openly, pretty often are on practice even more biased. But in ways that are harder to prove, but do very real damage.
I wonder what are ways to trigger people to show off they have such opinions, during a job interview, but not come off as sexist oneself (in case instead they're kind and good judgement people)
> people who are smooth and don't talk about these openly, pretty often are on practice even more biased
I'm curious about if you have some examples
If they're smooth talkers, I'd guess you'd notice such things via what they do not what they say?
It's about deeper, more open ended questions usually acting as ice breakers to understand their experience better and to steer into follow-up discussions and into more casual conversation. This will naturally lead to opening up more and revealing more about themselves. It's not the ability to answer the question, it's what the answer might be that potentially reveals any such bias. And yes, you will need to counter your own biases for this, but so will any interview format unless you are a robot.
However, your employer no longer contributes to the premiums, which are very difficult to personally front if you dont have an income.
You can buy temporary health insurance to cover yourself between jobs, but it typically is only useful for catastrophic injury, as the deductibles are extremely high to keep the price down.
So this process doesn't really scale to companies competing for talent globally.
There's also no review - you mention wanting to avoid nepotism, cargo culting, etc. but how do we know that you aren't doing that?
How do you ensure you are not applying bias (unconscious or not) to your hiring?
Studies have shown that most people hire people who are like them, which reduces diversity - and studies have shown that diversity is a net benefit to teams.
the best way to avoid bias is to get recommendations from people outside who do not benefit from my choice.
if i hire people like me then asking those same people who else to hire will not help to improve diversity. the only way to improve diversity is to explicitly select for it. asking the team won't make much difference here.
the only time where asking the team is useful is when i want to make a technical evaluation, but even there i need to be careful that the feedback does not allow team members to reject candidates who are better than them.
There's no reciprocity of respect going on, it's all about "I'm perfect and everyone else is broken".
if i am one of those chosen leaders, then this is not "my leadership should trust me because i am good" but "i became a leader because they trust me"
if hiring is my responsibility then it's just that. i am responsible, hence i make the decisions. if i hire the wrong person, then i have to take the responsibility for that too.
if i ask my team, and follow their recommendation, it is still my responsibility.
but please consider where i am coming from:
i mainly work with junior engineers who don't have enough experience to judge others.
i work in a country where personal favors to friends and family are the cultural norm. it's not even considered corruption, it is expected, and almost required that someone recommends their friends or relatives regardless of the actual qualifications.
because of that, embellishments of qualifications is also common.
in order to trust someone with hiring recommendations i need to work with them for a while to be sure we understand each other and know the goals of our company. especially when it comes to decisions about diversity.
that said, if you can make a good case why we should hire someone, i am not going to dismiss that, but i'll listen. i'll consider recommendations, but i am not giving the team a vote. this is not a democracy.
> that said, if you can make a good case why we should hire someone, i am not going to dismiss that, but i'll listen. i'll consider recommendations, but i am not giving the team a vote. this is not a democracy.
Asking the people who work for you to talk to the person and give your their thoughts on them doesn't need it make it a democracy. But it can help you make better decisions.
As a parallel example, I commonly discuss issues of my project with others in my company; people outside the project (the reverse is also true). When it comes time to make a decision, it's _my_ decision, but having their insights allows me to make a better decision.
and of course for any technical decisions i do ask my team, because i want them to take ownership of their work. i'll have to have a good reason to override a teams preference on how to solve a problem.
with hiring it is rather that, unless i can't decide myself between multiple candidates, the teams input is not going to make much difference, and it might make things worse if they don't agree with my choice. (asking them and rejecting their preferred candidate feels worse than not asking)
Maybe not exhaustive or rigorously scientific, but seems like there are plenty of valid data points that can be collected from these activities.
I dont think theres any one perfect foolproof system but yours is closer to the "more good than bad" end.
I agree having their potential coworkers interview them is tricky and prone to traps. There are upsides to it, but downsides too -- depends on those individuals. For an applicant, one is very much walking thru a minefield where just one misstep or "thumbs down" can blow it up, and if that happens one's time gets wasted, and both sides can miss out. Its fine to result in "legit" rejections, but an ideal system tries to minimize the chance of bogus ones.
its tricky
There's so many red flags. I hate these philosophical questions, you're just trying to prove you're clever. I hate contract periods, it's just firing people with cover. I hate that you make these decisions unilaterally, you clearly think you're good at hiring but this just means you're not asking others to help with your blind spots. You refer to yourself as a leader, which just makes me cringe.
But most importantly, you clearly have no respect for your team because you don't believe they can interview without being horrible humans. If nothing else, wouldn't the candidates want to meet their peers?
Everyone's allowed to hire however they want, and that's a good thing... means there's lots of jobs for different types of people. But I have a strong feeling you have high turnover and a pretty bad company culture based on the way you talk. Or, you've never really built a team, just hired a few one-off people.
If you're reading this, please don't hire this way.
I generally have very little professional experience in the fields that I apply for and no education so, for me, getting hired has usually been a matter of showing that I have a work philosophy that aligns with the goals of my peers and an ability to quickly learn the actual work.
I think your view on this comes from a bit of privileged perspective where you're looking moreso to fulfill contractual obligations in a field that you've already proved yourself in and not one where you're looking for a culture-fit that fosters development.
I personally definitely aim to hire awesome people regardless of their experience.
I write a lot about how I hire, if you wanna read more! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24457170
Add those experiences to daily visits to the bizarre, cargo-cult world of virtue signaling, victimhood, and motivational quotes that is LinkedIn and you have a recipe for career despair. LinkedIn is like Mos Eisley mixed with Initech from Office Space.
I hope I never have to job hunt ever again.
Also, companies who "want to hire for inclusivity" but then eliminate candidates based on a few petty personality differences screams the opposite of inclusivity.
Diversity is valuable in so far as having diverse skill sets or diverse backgrounds. Not diverse personalities.
There’s no value in putting people who won’t get a long together in a team. Forming a tight bond and shared culture is ideal.
If everyone on a team has the same sort of personality, you run the risk they will all leave at about the same time for the same reasons, if they become dissatisfied.
If you have at least one 10x person with social phobia who hates interviews, then you can at least dump all the work on them.
I failed a personality test once, by which I mean I decided any company that gave a flowchart reading test for all programmers wasn't a "cultural fit" for me.
Yes. Hiring is totally broken. And/or there is an glut of devs out there to the point where landing a decent offer is really hard if you're going the traditional way (i.e. not having someone from inside rooting for you).
My job market is EU.
US/NY market here
The interviewer explaining that to me was like "we're sorry but you'll have to go through this test even though it's annoying, but that's the rule and we all had to" (big red flag).
So next week I went to that HR company expecting some kind of technical/programming assignment (it was a Python position). Instead had to take part in some weird theater play in which I was playing as a clerk at the municipal office. I was given 30 minutes to study documentation about an imaginary new regulation (related to noise pollution IIRC), and then some actor entered the room and pretended to be a stubborn and angry citizen complaining about that regulation.
After that confusing and embarrassing experience, I tried to explain that I didn't understand the point of this thing since I was applying to a programming job with no customer/citizen-facing component. But they were adamant that it was relevant, because it was a government job, and apparently everybody in government is a city clerk.
The full thing went on for 3 hours (I hadn't been informed it would take so long). As a compensation for my time I was given a tuna sandwich (I wish I was joking).
Did you end up taking the job?
I think the blame for this test might lie on government mismanagement rather than the would-be actual employer. There is a rule making vetting by a 3rd company mandatory in the hiring process (to avoid nepotism), but they do the same kind of test for completely unrelated kind of government jobs. I have two friends who had to go through something similar when interviewing for a different local government employer (not IT-related for them, but still unrelated to a clerk job).
That seems extremely reasonable to me.
Last time I was looking, there was a lot of bullshit, but I just ignored it. There are (and always will be) a lot of stupid, difficult people out there. Life will always be miserable if you feel obliged to do what they ask.
That said, one that really pissed me off was asking me to record a self-interview.
I'm fine doing some quick screens that might help weed out spam resumes. But to blatantly say "our time is more valuable than yours" is pretty ludicrous given the state of the labor market.
I actually agreed to do this. I was willing to contract for a a few months until we moved. Didn't matter :(
“Your answers were too normal, indicating you’re hiding something”
Can’t win with these guys hahahaha
I answered that there was no way to know, given that hitting the animal and killing the animal were not the same thing. Semantics matter. One of the professors was really into that debate (during the exam) and said I was right. The other said "What are you talking about... It's a rabbit". I asked what if I hit the rabbit in its tail or foot. He said "It's a rabbit", then curved his hand to mime a rabbit's foot, and said "if you hit the rabbit here, he'll die". I said what's the probability of the rabbit dying given you hit the foot?
The other professor taunted him saying I was technically right.
Anyway... I wrote that, for the exam, we'll consider that any hit is considered lethal, then proceeded to answer the question.
A rabbit who can’t run is easy prey for a fox or a buzzard so... pretty high?
Depends which foot then, I suppose. Probably a rabbit missing a rear foot is going to have a real hard time getting around, but one missing a front foot may be better able to adapt. We'll probably need to do a study to know for sure.
Right, I mean as a direct result of your hit, not in old age of myxomatosis, having had many baby bunnies
To avenge him
(Apparently included something about your childhood and animals?)
1) When I am looking for a job, I get to work with people who are better than me and who will raise me up to their level.
2) When I am looking to fill a job, I get to work with people who are better than me and who will raise me up to their level.
At a first glance this suggests that my ideal hiring system doesn't exist. Thanks to multidimensionality that's not necessarily true, but it's not necessarily false either.
I have a phrase I like to repeat: How you hire is who you hire.
The thing is that they can do it. It's a buyers market - that is if you consider sellers the people selling their know-how and time for a living.
It's like an reverse "cast a wide net" type of situation, where the net is tiny and full of holes, but there are so many desperate people out there that they still catch enough candidates with it to never question their methods.
For example, "Tell us why we should hire you." The classic closing question. Fair enough. But then I get to ask, "Tell me why I should want to have a career here," should be fair game. It's not.
I've sat through far too many (traditional) interviews where they have a "you need us more than we need you" mindset. Ironic, eh. That's a cultural red flag. Just one example, btw.
Culture matters. And it comes out in how you hire. And that determines who you hire, who you retain, or more importantly don't retain.
> (traditional) interviews where they have a "you need us more than we need you" mindset
That's with coding interviews and such things, if I were to guess?
Wait, that person calling him over must be an imposter - surely they had to pass the same cognitive test!
Companies have areas of expertise and areas of weakness - their hiring process might be a weakness, but that doesn't necessarily mean that working for the company will be all bad.
That said, the hiring process is a view into the company culture, and if the view of the culture you get is not good, then working for the company is probably not going to be great.
Then on the other side of the spectrum is the whole leetcode thing where you solve 3-4 leetcode hard questions in 45 minutes while someone is staring and judging you for asking clarifications on questions.
I don’t get why people says X is broken. When processes work exactly as designed. It’s just shitty processes.
The consultancy can hire quickly because they can immediately bill you out. It doesn't mean they're a better/more efficient employer or whatever. But I can understand OP's frustration.
- Initial phone screen explaining my career
- Technical conversation with team lead where we talked about the tools that would be used in the job
- Soft skill screen where we talked about how to handle workplace scenarios
- Final interview with cofounder with some technical content, some cultural
That is the ultimate red flag in my mind.