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Comment by Sir_Cmpwn | Hacker News Reader

Though I fully agree on every point, I worry that IRC has fallen more and more into disuse and finding candidates who use it is going to be more and more difficult over time.

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But the candidates will be much better :)

There are many good engineers who I would have missed on if I used IRC as a filter.

Please provide evidence for your assertion.

If your filter is based on the irc, and the number of people there is declining, basically it means that only the most hard-core users are remaining. And usually that means that they know how to use it.

Sure, if you're hiring people to be skilled IRC users.

But, I think what you're trying to hire are skilled software developers. It's apparently been left as an exercise for the reader to demonstrate any correlation between these two skills.

@munificent as the title of the post states IRC is a filter.. filter used after candidate is selected from a pool of people that have necessary skills, other than using IRC.. The author simply talks about selecting from this pool people that can use simple tools like IRC.

Filter does not mean barrier.

It means they know how to use IRC, yes. It does not mean they're better at anything else.

Obviously the evidence being presented here is that mariusz79 uses IRC, therefore he approves of it being used as a hiring filter :)

So that means that people disapproving don't know how to use IRC? Well, poor souls..

Kids these days can't use IRC, don't know that gopher still exists, never used usenet...

Being a software developer, or admin, or even technical writter, and never even trying to learn how the Internet looked like before everything was turned to Javascript...How sad..

It's like never riding the bike...

Or just older.

Yeah, I just said they will be better:) That assumes they will be older :). Recruiters may not believe that but an actual life experience does make you better:)

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