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Comment by decafninja | Hacker News Reader

The worst are the ones that will somehow dig up your company desk phone # and call you in the middle of the day at work.

Is this something unique to the personalities of people that thrive at sales jobs? I've encountered this sort of behavior with real estate agents, car salesmen*, and of course, third party headhunter/recruiters. They love phone calls, will try to get you on the phone no matter what, and actively try to avoid e-mails/text/etc.

* although, I recently purchased a car a few weeks ago, and nearly all my communication with the salesman was done via e-mail and text. Very pleasant experience, but I wonder if this is the new norm, or if he was a unique exception.

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Firstly: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

Secondly: Yes, people who like talking with people tend to go into careers that primarily involve talking to people.

I have never heard of this maker vs manager schedule thing before. It really resonates with me. I just finished a rotation as a primary contributor on leave from my manager role and was having a real hard time telling people I had to cancel meetings from my normal job bc I couldn’t switch mental gears like that. This link is so very true it’s scary…I had been wondering if anyone was good at doing both, and if I could exercise my brain muscles to be able to switch between the two during the day. Anyone have any luck at that? I feels really really hard.

Hard for me and hard for the author of the blog post.

It's hard for most if not all folks. What you can do is put cons calls in the morning, and do your IC work in the afternoon or the other way round.

The mental switch is one part of the issue, and time fragmentation is the other.

Yea, I assume it would be something like cutting the day in half. PG said to put the calls at the end of the day, so it didn't feel like an interruption. I can see how that would work; similar to what you're saying. I wonder if top-of-game CEOs and people like that are better at switching between IC and manager, or if they are just manager from day one. It seems like Elon Musk may be one of these bright people who can concurrently IC and manage.

My job involves a lot of meetings, and also doing a lot of IC work. What works for me is to take 2-3 hrs every week thinking through all the IC work I need to do and breaking it down into chunks that can be completed in 6-8 1 hour blocks of time. That’s the longest block of time I can hope to find without any interruptions. I break things down to the level that I can write the commit message for the changes I’m about to make. Then I use to time slots to make the changes.

I like this idea. Thanks!

Because getting someone on the phone is a necessary stop along the path to closing a deal. It's also a high bandwidth form of communication, so it's just plain practical.

Would you buy a car with no return policy without speaking to someone or examining it in person? How about spend $200K on a software bundle? Face to face meetings matter for large size deals, and recruiting a candidate is a huge one.

I absolutely agree a/some phone calls are necessary at some point in the recruiting process between recruiter and candidate.

But a lot of recruiters insist on nearly every single communication be over the phone when an e-mail or text exchange would suffice. In fact they'll leave a text or e-mail with no content other than "yeah, so when can we talk on the phone?"

The correct answer is “no”.

I have “fired” pushy recruiters even at the offer stage by walking away. Trying to sell me a job like a used car salesman at a scummy lot when you’ve made me a large offer is a really strange decision.

I also regret not walking away from some recruitment funnels where bad recruitment vibes were indeed strong signals for bad workplace situations.

Communications like what?

A short screen call is pretty standard. Many "candidates" aren't serious, so they show good faith by hopping on the phone. Text only communication is the path to getting ghosted, especially when it comes to emotional topics like salary.

This isn't "a deal", it's a job that someone will spend a huge portion of their time doing for multiple years. Thinking of it like selling a car is exactly why the approach is so problematic.

In my experience, sales people who have very few reservations about cold calling somebody treat it as a bulk process and depersonalize things.

The idea of sitting down and making dozens of cold calls, outbound, would be my own idea of a personal hell. There is not enough money in the world to get me to do that.

It definitely takes a certain personality type.

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