Hacker News Reader

Comment by renewiltord | Hacker News Reader

Everything is just signal, strong or weak. In my experience, those who are applying to both computer-screened jobs and human-screened jobs are not suitable to work with me.

It's just like if you write that you are an expert at JAVA, GIT, and Python. Java is not an acronym. Neither is git. Is it unfair that I judge someone negatively for this? Perhaps you would consider that so. For me, it's just signal. If I'm wrong repeatedly, I will have a higher hiring cost and someone will beat me in the market. I am making those choices for the business on a hundred different axes constantly. I have no problem trusting my intuition here.

View on HN

Don't worry, it sounds like you're an absolute nightmare to work with, so I doubt any of the candidates that didn't pass your filter are missing out on anything. Win win!

Well, I see it as us not being a match. It is good that those who don't want to work with me have all the information required to do so. I try to be as transparent as possible.

I, on the other hand, would pass this filter and highly appreciate working with someone who maintains it.

Not spelling it JAVA or GIT is a minor, but important detail in an industry full of acronyms. People who miss out on small details like this are also make massive mistakes elsewhere in their work and tank the productivity and morale of their teams as a result.

To be fair, misspelling "Java" as "java" or "JAVA" is both a signal about Java knowledge and a signal about understanding what's canonical English usage in the U.S. So it's somewhat biased against non native English speakers.

But at the end of the day, software startups want hackers. And hackers know how to spell Java.

I didn't list "java" as a misspelling. It could theoretically refer to the command line program of the same name that the applicant knows about.

Spelling it JAVA means you are ignoring that it could stand for an acronym. I don't see how that's biased against non-native English speakers; languages other than English have acronyms. I suppose it could perhaps against speakers of languages that don't have the concept of uppercase/lowercase; but then wouldn't you expect speakers of these languages to reproduce the (unfamiliar) name "Java" exactly?

The funny thing is that while talking about attention to detail you say things like '...miss out on small details like this are also make massive mistakes...'

Given that this is a forum and low stakes, I just find it rather amusing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com