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Comment by _skhan_ | Hacker News Reader

You are proving exactly why we need a standardized way to judge whether a candidate is hirable. All the candidates I see have almost zero history of contributing to OSS or maintaining side projects. Their work history usually consists of some run of the mill experience.

I have to rely on that and absolutely do not expect them to have a green GitHub. I would hate for that to become the norm.

That is why we need to ascertain coding signal. And that is why we need some contrived problem to provide to ascertain within a reasonable amount of time whether a candidate is a yes/no.

You are a unique data point and hundreds and thousands of other developers just don't have that kind of clout (I didn't look through your resume thing).

Also, from a hiring perspective, it's not scalable going through a candidates repos and verifying their worthiness. However, it is fun to talk about them during interviews.

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Oh, yeah...one last thing, before I go...

I'm a unique talent. I'm not God's gift to Programming, but I have a very different kind of backstory from most that you find. I had a hard road, and the uneven terrain that I traveled, has a lot to do with how I became as good as I am. When no one gives you breaks, you are forced to make your own, prove yourself, at every step, and accomplishment becomes habitual. You learn not to overpromise, figure out how to learn new stuff, and check your own homework.

Many of the team I led, had similar eclectic backgrounds. They were all senior-level C++ algorithm developers, with decades of experience. Most were smarter and better than I am.

We all would have been immediately rejected, in barbarous fashion, from today's hiring process.

As it turns out, they have all gone on to do very well, and that makes me happy. I am glad to have been a part of their career. Working with them was a signal honor. They are making their new employers quite happy, indeed, but it took each of them over two years (in a couple of cases, well over two years), to really land, which is quite telling.

In my first three jobs, I never worked with one single engineer that had actually had real software training. I worked with astrophysicists, mathematicians, MBAs, chemists, designers, economists, teachers, electrical engineers, and even other high school dropouts, like me. Even my last, long-term job, was mostly with EEs and physicists, but all the Japanese folks had serious sheepskins. It was a fairly marquée corporation.

Sorry, need to call BS for all the impressionable young readers.

The job of ‘programmer’ takes on many shapes and sizes. Businesses evolve and are different from one another.

You may be very successful in some clusters of business, but how representative is this, let alone your unique experience, to the rest of the industry?

If you’ve never worked with anyone with “real” software training, why would I hire you into a senior position when there are plenty of candidates who have?

I’ve worked at companies back in the day where experienced non traditional programmers have both kick started and ruined businesses within the same job. You may be successful enough to grow a business, but that’s different from scaling or pivoting one.

If you can’t grok a homework program from the first week of a data structures course, why should I trust you to self learn more advanced topics? Why would I spend a ton of time evaluating massive GitHub contributions vs. just watching you code a problem your team would work on for 1 hour?

I have to pay smug kids 100s of g’s because the labor market is so fucked, and there’s no way I’d either trust them to evaluate candidates via code review, nor would I spend their time on that vs. building and learning.

I’d love to not pay children small fortunes, but most very experienced journeymen I’ve interviewed over the years can’t string together dynamic api calls or tell me how things scale, and I get to hire for experience first every time.

If you were able to self teach, then the kid that just spent 4 years snorting adderall and interning and google sure as hell has a chance to, too, and he’s willing to solve my dumb riddles.

The other thing you won’t read: firing people for most managers is awful. A manager only takes so many risks before they learn how to mitigate having to experience this horrible experience. I’d rather reject you than fire you.

Edit: I was one of the impressionable young readers once upon a time, and I set myself back quite a bit taking advice from strangers on the internet. Genius programmers on GitHub don’t sign your paychecks.

You…um…do realize that I wasn’t giving advice to “impressionable young readers,” right?

I was merely recounting my own personal experience, and, a bit more cautiously, opinions. I say “cautiously,” because I know that opinion is a different thing from fact, and I need to be careful to avoid presenting my opinions in a manner that frames them as “facts.” In another thread, I needed to do a mea culpa, where I did just that, and was [rightly] called out for it[0].

No BS at all. It actually happened. Are you calling me a liar? Because that is what it appears to be, and I was under the impression that we don’t do that kind of thing, here. One of my personal postures, is that I stand behind my own words. Please note that I have links to my entire portfolio, and many, many ways to back up (or refute) what I say. I deleted my last anonymous posting account, years ago.

One of the issues that I have, with today’s Internets Tubes, is that people like to anonymously spew out opinion as fact, and take every opportunity they can, to insult and demean others. I make every effort to avoid that, in my own interactions. Feel free to go through my posting history, and show me otherwise. If I am wrong, I live a lifestyle, where I am required to promptly admit it, and make amends. I believe that I do this.

I have merely written my own experiences and personal story.

It makes me very, very glad to know that I never have to put myself into a position again, where certain types of folks have power over me. I am quite aware that my own story is different from the run of the mill, but being called a liar for telling it, is beyond the pale.

This new world seems dark and depressing, to me. A Lovecraftian “food chain” world, where everyone is constantly battling everyone else; including their own teammates. I used to look forward to a career of excitement, adventure, learning, and being a member of teams, where I was the dumbest member, and it was an honor to be included. I have never been interested in competing with others. I have always wanted to collaborate with others. I am rather saddened to learn how unique this approach is.

In a lot of ways, I got that, and I’m grateful, but I now see that I probably dodged a bullet.

If there were anything I would say to “impressionable young readers,” it would be:

    At one time, some of us looked forward to careers that were not gladiatorial arenas. We woke up, every day, anticipating learning new stuff, and felt honored to be part of a team, composed of people that humbled us, but never humiliated us. We made enough to have a comfortable living, never worried about putting food on the table, and didn’t have envy for our coworkers. We didn’t measure our own self-worth, by demeaning others, and we felt as if we were riding the crest of thrilling new discoveries and technologies. We stayed at companies for many years, because we believed in the aggregate mission, and liked the idea that we were making a positive difference in the world. We became lousy interviewees, because it was an unnecessary skill. We never “hazed” one another, and embraced our differences, as they brought new perspectives into our worlds, challenging us to constantly review our own opinions and worldviews.

    There was, once, a happier time, before The Great Old Ones burst through the portal, and made the world as it is, today. I lived in that time, and am reporting from *experience*.

Damn. Did it again. Forgot to give advice, and only gave experience. I feel very, very fortunate to have had mine. Reading the experiences of others, reinforces this gratitude. I do believe that living a life of Gratitude has helped me, in many ways. I also believe that it has helped others, in my orbit, as well. I’m told that I was a pretty good manager, and I have done a significant amount of unpaid Service work (see: Portfolio).

If merely recounting my own experience and personal worldview is considered a threat, I have no words, other than I truly feel badly for others.

Now, I truly am done with this thread. Have a great day! I sincerely wish you and your family, health, success, happiness, and fulfillment, in all your affairs.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28442939

You are taking a very active role in discourse in a public medium. This isn’t your personal blog, so you’re intentionally broadcasting your experiences to anyone and everyone.

> .. I see have almost zero history of contributing to OSS or maintaining side projects.

Not sure about US, but in EU, the contract from employers doesn't allow you to contribute code without permission (e.g. contributing to OSS, working on side projects, etc), it's very very rare to find an exception.

You can check this discussion few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27843198

> I have to rely on that ..

By doing this, you are not considering employees who are doing nothing wrong, but follow the rules and respect the contract terms.

I never heard of that. I'm originally from the EU and in the country I'm from, employers cannot control what you do in your spare time, and do not automatically own what you do outside your day job. In the US that's much more complicated.

Ask your employer, most people don't know about it.

i’m self employed

> I never heard of that ...employers cannot control what you do in your spare time.

If you are self employed, you might not get the same contract. In our contracts, what has been discussed in the thread was clearly stated by our employer (I asked my colleagues about their older contracts as well).

Very good point. Depends on the company.

I was fortunate, in that I didn't have a "shower clause" in my employment contract, so I was able to do a lot of extracurricular work.

In fact, it was a principal reason that I stayed at that company. They paid me...OK...for doing the work I hated (managing -but I was also a good manager), and let me have enough bandwidth to do my extracurricular work; which was my true passion.

Basically, the work I didn't get paid for, was what I really wanted to do. They were extremely happy with the work I did for them, which did not reflect my true, personal passion. I feel like I was "just going through the motions," as a manager.

But I also firmly believe that if I am given responsibility for a task, then I do it to the very best of my ability; whether or not I am passionate about it, and I'm actually a really decent manager (for the type of team I led).

After leaving that company, and learning (the hard way) that no one wants to work with a 55-year-old engineer, willing to work at half the wages of far less-qualified people (because I already had my retirement set), I was forced into early retirement, and actually achieved my dream, which is writing code to help out NPOs, for free.

> Also, from a hiring perspective, it's not scalable going through a candidates repos and verifying their worthiness. However, it is fun to talk about them during interviews.

I was a hiring manager for 25 years. I would have killed for this kind of information.

The people I hired were no slouches. It was a big deal, and not to be taken lightly. I loved multi-page résumés.

For a long time when looking for work I got absolutely no callbacks. A friend looked at my Resume and said "You have this huge block of skills you say you have but you have no explanation for how you have them." I explained it was because I got most of my experience from working on OSS software or software for myself and if I listed everything my resume would be ~2 pages & ~4 sides. He said to go for it despite everyone else telling me at my age (18 at the time) my resume shouldn't be that long.

As soon as I listed everything I started getting calls back.

so this basically means people assume you are lying and a fraud, which is another problem that is not talked about enough - it should not be assumed that you are like that, until proven otherwise.

Why? People lie a lot about their skills. The fizzbuzz test was invented a first to filter candidates that said they knew how to code but didn't, and it was very effective at it.

Being able to write software does not automatically imply you are able to write software while on a video call, and while explaining what you are doing constantly.

True, this approach will cause false negatives. But from what I understand, most people in interviewing prefer false negatives to false positives.

Sure, they can go right ahead and keep preferring to pass on exceptional people and hire mediocre people instead who will entertain their circus. Sooner or later they'll find out that won't work so well to stay competitive.

> keep preferring to pass on exceptional people and hire mediocre people instead who will entertain their circus

That's what big companies are all about, there's really nothing new to see here. It seem to be working well for most of them though.

this is exactly the issue - if you cannot take a moment to look at a candidate’s work but can waste 10 hours in leetcode zoom bullshit calls your system is broken, sorry

People making non-trivial contributions to open source projects or coding in their free time are an exception. Most candidates (>99%) have no work you could actually look at.

that’s too bad then. anyone can work on a simple project. how about a simple CRUD app for kitchen recipes?

It is like a cover letter, if you will do half-arsed one it will work against you.

It has to be a good CRUD kitchen recipe app if you want to show it off.

A cover letter won't tell you whether the candidate can get anything done. A small coding project will.

I am not writing anything about small coding project vs cover letter. Tool that I used in my comment is comparison to show common traits of both ... like "white as snow".

Bad - small coding project will show that candidate is a bad coder, even if the code works.

Bad - cover letter will show that candidate has bad grammar, even if person put in the effort.

Good - small coding project will show that candidate can get anything done.

Good - cover letter will show that candidate is willing to put extra effort to get the job.

> Most candidates (>99%) have no work you could actually look at.

Most inexperienced candidates...

One of my favorite pastimes, is following up on GitHub, with people from this joint, or others, that pique my interest.

There's a lot of really awesome stuff out there! You guys rock!

Of course, many of these folks, are...chronologically challenged, let's say. If you've already decided that you will only be hiring folks right out of school, then I can see the problem.

And...to answer the inevitable "You're likely an insufferable bastard" canard, that the conversation ends up at, after we've worked through the other things, I have a LinkedIn profile, packed with testimonials, from managers, former employees, and project partners.

Turns out, I'm actually a really decent human being, and play well with others.

I also worked for decades, for a Japanese company. You won't last long at a Japanese company, if you don't "team" well.

why is this voted down?

He’s obviously wrong.

Most people have various interests and obligations. The number of people who after a day of work in software engineering go on to continue to do that in their free time instead of pursuing other interests is vanishingly small.

Additionally you have people who also just can’t do this, even if they wanted to, due to other obligations.

Obviously there are people who have a very narrow set of interests and leave their office to go to a hacker space but that is such an absurdly small group that it’s ridiculous to even consider them in hiring.

In fact you probably want to avoid having an entire team of people like this in favor of a more diverse group of people.

You are correct. I made a statement that expressed opinion as fact.

It is, however, an advantage that some folks have, and my suggestion is that we should not be required to deliberately hobble ourselves, just because everyone does not have the same advantage.

Of course, a hiring corporation has every right to ignore things like this, and they likely won’t go out of business, as a result. They, may, however, miss talent that could take their business to “the next level,” and risk hiring folks that have become expert at “gaming the system,” and presenting style, over substance.

After my day in software engineering I cannot grind leetcode. Why is it OK to demand people grind leetcode and pass ridiculous circus interviews, but it's not OK to demand they show a personal project they worked on? Both our equally time consuming to pull off.

also, i would rather share code i wrote and go through it than deal with any standardized coding interview. you can derive a lot more from someone’s work than from coding interviews and it is a much fairer process.

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