Hiring the Joker | Hacker News Reader

Hiring the Joker

quarter--mile.com

39 pointssurprisetalk23 comments

As someone who has been described as "mister Wolf" (Pulp Fiction reference) several times I'd say it's hard to market yourself and getting hired as a joker.

If you're THE guy, like when Google hired Guido, then it's super cool story. But for normal folks when you look around for new job it's really hard to get past "oh we need either X or Y".

And when you finally get hired you susceptible to corporate politics. I personally had a few bad stints with higher ups about having low count of commits because as a team lead I would prefer to grow a team member by doing most of the work and passing the task to someone else to drive it past the finishing line.

EDIT: the irony is that small companies that can cherry pick candidates don't need jokers, and big companies who would benefit the most from having such people are deeply trenched in siloes and scripted hiring.

Yeah, I'm (unfortunately) seeing a similar issue even in my case. I've studied engineering in my bachelor's with a niche (but very technically helpful) masters from a top EU uni. I suspect folks are just looking for someone who "fits the profile", because I've cleared every interview I've managed to get through to. But short of getting a foot in the door to get to that first interview, it honestly seems futile.

Self promotion, if anyone (especially from The Netherlands) is looking for a systems engineer with a "T" profile with multiple T's - mechanical/systems engineering, economics, please feel free to reach out via my profile email ID and I'll be happy to prove myself on any technical challenge.

Wow, this was a waste of time. Want to hire good people? Don’t read trash like this.

The easiest way to miss the joker is to trust in confidence. Dunning Krueger is alive and well and the worst professionals and founders run in and pose with bravado. Real passion goes into the details and with persistance. Real passionate people have initiative to do more and will be happy to tell you about it. The key is to have someone in the room who knows what they are talking about and can separate the BS from the truth.

For a much more substantive article on a similar topic, see Dan Luu's blog post which draws an analogy to talent scouting in baseball: https://danluu.com/talent/

In the case of his example (the basketball player), I've followed his story a bit, and what definitely helped was that his first coach fell in love with him and his skill set and gave him a chance. He also famously accidentally made it to the NBA early because his move to a European powerhouse fell through since he had a terrible game when they were watching.

My point is the following: almost everyone needs a chance and an environment in which they succeed. Yet especially in tech we talk in absolutes - this person is awesome, this person sucks. This is especially prevalent in young people, which typically consist a large portion of tech, so maybe there's a connection there.

Sometimes things don't work out because the people and the organization are a bad fit, sometimes it's just chance. If you want to look at sports analogies, look at coaches. You have coaches that have been successful for a long time, but then in another job they're not successful anymore. Things happen. It doesn't say anything about their person as much as it simply did not work out.

Linkedin, how did you end up here?

Yeah, wow, I thought I was going to read an interesting article about basketball stats, instead I got "here's what that taught me about b2b hiring".

The dog’s name? It was Joker.

Employee populations at large organizations are the same as what you get if you would hire people off the street without any interview or assessment. Just like how physical system would reach an equilibrium relative to the surrounding context. Companies can't keep average profile of their employees any better than the random person on the street. Interviews are only ceremonial.

Let me save you a click. It's about how to hire a great employee like NBA player Nikola Jokic (nicknamed “The Joker”).

The trick?

> The best answer is probably just to try harder. Like, 10x harder(internal link). Figure out who did the work(internal link). Consider running work trials.

that article seems to assume that just because you hired someone, they'll stay with you for decades?

They probably will if you pay them equitably - my grandfather stayed with US Steel pretty much his whole career, but back then they payed him enough to send 4 kids to college on one salary.

Total college cost per year for four kids in your grandfather's time: $10k.

Total college cost per year for four kids today: $400k.

Indeed, wages have not kept up with cost of living

While that's partly true (modulo certain exceptions such as the cost of living varying quite a bit from place to place), the comment you were replying to was making a point about the cost of college. Which has grown so much faster than general inflation that it's in its very own category.

I guess I don't see how we can meaningfully measure cost of living without taking into account cost of education.

If a salary these days only puts the kids through high school, then the standard of living that salary buys has fallen drastically in practice.

My BS comp sci degree was a waste of time, to be real. Fairly certain my first job out of college would have been appropriate for myself as a high school senior. One of my parents and two of my grandparents were programmers without needing anything more than a high school diploma. Despite the push for trades, I couldn't even get an interview without a degree even despite my experience. Add in the increase in the cost of living, stagnant wages, plus inflation and it doesn't make a pretty picture.

Trying harder is not a strategy, which leads me to believe that guy knows nothing about the topic.

People are bad at things that don't have quick and clear feedback. It's hard to improve at something if you just reinforce your own wrong ideas.

> Much of what I’ve written above can also be said for hiring.

No, it’s not, lol.

I swear, some of these “authors” have their head so up their ass, they can practically see the light again.

Pay good comp and have a good product is the magic formula you’re looking for.

That will get you lots of good candidates, but you still have to pick the best ones.

Primarily, it will get you lots of candidates, some of them good.

And between those who are good, some of them will be eager to work, and others are eager to coast by.

Hard to predict in all roles, not just technical ones.

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