Comment by kw_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kw_ | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> encourage employers to view the account and see what sort of questions and answers the candidate is posting on the site

If a candidate feels that there is a very good, publicly available demonstration of their knowledge (be it a project they're involved in, some open-source software, or participation in a technical forum or mailing list), they already have the ability to simply point that out to me in their cover letter, or other communications.

> It's meant to provide another dimension to assess the candidate

This is precisely the problem. It creates an additional dimension, but one that exists only for a subset of candidates and isn't easy to evaluate fairly. That seems likely to create an imbalanced hiring process.

Why should I pay for that? (or implicitly ask the candidate to pay to give it to me?)

Especially the later question especially, [why should I] "ask the candidate to pay to give it to me?", hangs in the air.

Asking a candidate to effectively pay money to apply isn't "the way to their heart". It isn't necessarily legal or ethical either. Joel has described what high demand there is for the "great programmers". Is it plausible that these same great programmers are going to be paying money to be found?

I like Stackoverflow. I spent a month getting 1000+K reps and then realized I should stop and do some work.

I like the idea of integrated SO to job search. It's just that direction that this integration has been problematic, indeed it could plausibly called evil.

Every candidate has different additional dimensions. People aren't interchangeable cogs.

Also, life isn't fair. I don't see what fairness has to do with anything.

I don't see what fairness has to do with anything.

Uh, I wouldn't want to work for a company which showed blatant unfairness in its hiring. Similarly, most worthwhile companies don't want to show such unfairness. The companies that are unfair in hiring probably would be unfair in their treatment of employees once they get hired, etc..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com