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Comment by orangelimesoda | Hacker News Reader

> There's no point being hyper-specific about the exact software packages because that's not what they want

Okay. This makes it sound like they're more sophisticated but it seems more like they are less sophisticated, less specific, and a lot more vague in the job descriptions they themselves create.

If you look at any technical role, game dev or something where people are building important things at scale - there are a lot of specifics. Libraries, methodologies, where if you didn't know them you are nowhere near a fit.

I'm just wondering. It's OpenAI. Surely there is some domain-specific something beyond "has experience shipping front-end and back-end services" since that includes basically everyone.

It makes this job look like a Starbucks role.

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I see where you're coming from, but as someone who regularly interviews engineers, I don't care about specific tech stacks when evaluating a candidate very much either. I can only think of two positions I've worked in where such a thing really mattered.

A good engineer can adapt and catch up without a lot of lead time. For a contractor, I'd be much more specific - but for someone who's going to join my team? I'm looking for a candidate that can demonstrate their problem solving ability, creative thinking and communication skills.

Other than having some kind of experience in the general domain we work in, those "soft skills" are far harder to find than specific tech experience.

This is insane to me.

Not every engineering job is entry level or as simple as most fullstack crud. Deeper into industry you find highly specific well defined positions for a given domain. Soft skills matter more the higher the ladder but id take a killer senior who can be difficult over a team of mediocre staff engineers.

Same here. Most difficult people just need a challenge and a little recognition. Give them an area of ownership and you get both.

So-called difficult people who are actually very talented have clashed with middle management types for a long time.

Yeah, no. If you are digging deep into database internals, query optimization and schema design, it helps to have someone with some experience in the domain. Otherwise your team will spend a few years learning from first principles.

> I'm just wondering. It's OpenAI. Surely there is some domain-specific something beyond "has experience shipping front-end and back-end services" since that includes basically everyone.

Maybe you're looking at this from your own particular point of view too much. I work in systems software, as do many others on HN: our demographic wouldn't be qualified for that at all.

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