Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

I had lots of questions after reading this. So why was the test given, if it wasn't used to disqualify people? And who came up with this test idea in the first place anyway? Why was it important?

In general, it's a mistake to substitute technical knowledge for ability to perform. You might be a freaking genius, but one that nobody can get along with. So how well this guy did during his technical evaluation is besides the point. Don't hire people that can't construct normalized data models. End of story.

A much more interesting part of the technical evaluation exercise was seeing how people worked in ad hoc teams. Is being mostly quiet, having difficultly with the language, and prompting other people to ask questions a good thing? Probably not. Is it bad enough to disqualify somebody? Probably not.

The dirty secret about hiring is that there are no right answers. There is no magic thing that once you have it, you automatically are perfect for a job. It's technical chops, it's personality, it's social skills, it's communication skills, and so on.

The best part in the comments looks like more of the membership theory: only hire people that you want on a team, and ignore everything else. Probably works great for small teams. I wonder how that would scale, though.

So I didn't get a lot from this. Wish there was more in it.

The notion behind tests like this is to get a feel for your personality, in order to assess "fit". Not necessarily to disqualify people but, for example, if you're not much motivated by money, but are interested in challenging problems, and you're being considered for a lucrative but dull-as-rocks position...it might not work out.

That's the idea at least. In practice, I haven't been impressed by them at all.

I think maybe I did a poor job of explaining myself.

Yes, I understand the things the tests provide. These kinds of tests have been around forever. Personally I don't like them, most engineers don't, but that's not going to make them go away.

My question was about the organization itself. Why measure something if you're not going to do anything with it? So in your example, where you're not motivated by money, but its a job that pays well and is boring, why find that out if you're not going to use it to disqualify someone?

The question in general is this: why measure something if there are no consequences to what you measure? I wasn't trying to say the test was great, I was asking the reason the test was given in the first place. The way I see it, it would have to be disqualifying in some cases. Otherwise, there's no reason for the measurement. Unless the goal is just to create a lot of arguing, which it seems to have done very well!

I think the problem is we like to wave our hands around and say "well, the test informs the decision, but is not definitive". This is just another way of saying that we don't know what we are doing -- there is no plan.

This is probably the root of the author's discomfort. Either he doesn't understand what's going on as far as the evaluation, or there's no reason for it, or both. Don't know. All I know is the guy was smart. That's also not enough information. Lots of smart folks in the world that I'd never want to work with.

It's the standard corporate CYA strategy. If the hire turns out to be a bad apple, everyone will glare at HR. HR will point to the test results, and sigh "We did our due dilligence, not our fault". And noone is to blame.

Same as with all the IT certification stuff that corporate HR loves to get their hands on.

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