Tell HN: A note of gratitude to the people providing answers over here | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: A note of gratitude to the people providing answers over here

123 pointscalebjosue16 comments

A couple of days ago I explained my current job situation and asked for a job.

Here's a note of gratitude to the people answering questions all over the world.

Thanks!

https://calebjosue.gigalixirapp.com/blog.html#gratitude

It's so blase yet awe inspiring that we can all type into this little text box and get feedback, ideas, and help from all over the world.

This whole hiring game is just terrible. People in charge of hiring try to infer all kinds of things about a person based on very fuzzy and superficial data. I understand that hiring managers have to go through huge piles of applications fast. But that indicates that the labor market itself is broken. There should be a bit more randomness in the selection process to give the unusual people a better chance of finding a job (assuming that these unusual people fulfill the listed requirements).

I was thinking about this yesterday haha! :) Reflected on my experience of being hired or going through the process at many places and I just think it could be so much better.

I decided that the way I'm going to hire people going forward is going to be much different. From my own work I realize the most important motivation people have is not money, but intrinsic motivation.

I think we're really looking for people who get that spark in their eyes, who are passionate and excited about something. I think my job as a hiring manager is to understand that, understand what motivates them, and align that with what we need! Haha :)

I find this very interesting. As a hiring manager, don't you first weed out the applicants that don't meet the job requirements/skillsets? And after that, are there other factors you are evaluating for before you assess what motivates them?

I guess what I'm asking is, in the hiring process, when exactly do you assess for this? And at times, wouldn't money be the most important motivation because maybe the person was recently laid off, or is in massive debt, etc.?

Haha! :) I don't think it's necessarily healthy to be forming employer-employee relationships if one person is so coerced by their circumstances. Such people unlikely to be giving their best work, may present other risks, and employers may be incentivized to take abusive license.

I don't think you should hire people for whom money is the most motivation, you won't get the best work, if your goal is the maximize your hiring effectiveness.

I also don't think that's the main motivation for most people, certainly not in this creative industry of software at this time.

Hire people for what excites them if you can align that with what you need is likely to lead to better results.

Random Admissions Above the Bar

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/02/ra...

Yes, and...

I'm concerned that interviewing may perform worse than random. The worst co-worker I had in tech, the interviewer said "in my defense, he gave a great interview".

I'm not suggesting we stop interviewing. Anyone can lie on a resume, and you need to weed those out. But:

- current technical skill set is a poor proxy for the technical skills a candidate will have after a few months on the job - cultural decisions are coloured by prejudice, not just racial and sexual

I think there's a soft limit on quality of decision that only very talented interviewers can surpass.

Hiring is hard. There's big upside to getting it right, big downside to getting it wrong.

Getting hired is hard. Between the qualifications, experience, leetcode nonsense, low barrier to entry, and the sheer number of unemployed floating around, its hard to stand out (in a good way.)

Both sides hate the system. Good people go unnoticed. Bad people end up wasting time and resources.

I'm not sure 'randomness' is the answer (especially if you're the best person for the job but you are beaten out by random-bad-luck.)

That said there's already a lot of randomness in the system. We often have a post that could easily be filled by 3 or 4 candidates. But we only need 1. At that point there's some psuedo-randomness involved - a decision has to be made and a bunch of perfectly capable people will be disappointed.

> There's big upside to getting it right

This is an oft-cited assumption that I would challenge. Is there really that much upside, or is it just wishful thinking? Surely, if you hired Steve Jobs, they might take your company to unprecedented heights. But would Steve Jobs stick around as a senior engineer at some random company? Would you listen to his ideas? You need to hire to someone to a job, there is likely innumerable people who could do it satisfactorily.

Surely the downside to getting it wrong is high, no disputing that. But unicorns are fantasies for a reason.

I'm not looking for unicorns as-such. Sure you do get them, and we have a few, but it's not like every time we go to market we're looking for unicorns.

It's more that getting people who fit our culture, who "get" our approach to business, who get on with their co-workers, who are going to hang around for a while, who are willing to learn.

I'll add my voice to the thankful. I check (lurk) HN every day specifically because I can find info, tips, other views, and meaningful discussions. Users here are amazing, thank you all.

Already I'm not too fond of this entire hiring process(although it is changing slowly), why can't recruiters look at the social profiles, and the work the candidate has done in the past and if you like it, invite him/her for an hour casual chat to get to know their goals and ambitions and that chat will tell you how passionate the candidate is about the technology.

Most candidates underperform in this recruiting process and that uncertain feeling of not being enough(sometimes).

I went through the above blog post and now I feel sad that I'm not in a position to hire OP, because he seems like a humble and super motivated guy people could work with. I have a few tech projects coming up that could certainly use some technical maintainers later, so hopefully those pan out productively in the near future (I do a few technical projects for fun, but like Google, I don't have the time to pay attention to grow them).

At OP, wish you all the best in your hunt, and here's hoping to something going your way for once. Godspeed.

I'll put my hat in the ring and say thank you to the "Who's Hiring" threads going on every month!

This is the most wholesome thing I've ever read here on HN. many people receive help and advice but way too few come back to express gratitude.

Cheers to you dude.

Good luck bro.

I wish you the best I read some of your blog posts in the previous post you made.

I think it’s cool to see people like you that have passion and make website and all that. I admire that ability of people to put these works and thoughts out there for people to see.

Cheers m8 I wish you da best

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