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Peroni

7,059 karma · joined December 24, 2010

I'm Stevie. Developer turned hiring/people specialist.

Formerly VP People & Talent @ Permutive (YC S14)

I created Talent Stuff to help startups reduce the complexity, time, and costs of hiring impactful leaders: https://www.talentstuff.com/

Host & organiser of Hacker News London

stevie [at] talentstuff.com

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Peroni··on Ask HN: Does the UK's new anti-VPN law prevent under-18s from working in tech?
>it seems as though a 17-year-old in a tech role would be unable to access a corporate network if it was protected by a VPN.

That's not what the law states. The actual law states ...by prohibiting the provision to children in the United Kingdom of VPN services which can facilitate evasion of OSA age-gating processes so a corporate network protected by a VPN doesn't fall foul of the regulation.

>Given that children can generally work from 13

Not in the UK they can't. Children can work part-time at 14 however they can only start full-time work once they’ve turned 16.

Peroni··on There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him
I once approached Woz about potentially speaking at Hacker News London, fully expecting my email to be completely ignored. A few days later, he actually responded enthusiastically and mentioned an upcoming trip to the UK. He loved the grassroots nature of the meetup and was really up for giving a talk (for free!) to the community. I then had multiple delightful interactions with his wife who managed his logistics.

Devastatingly he fell ill just before his trip and had to withdraw. Fortunately we hadn't announced anything however I still mourn over the missed opportunity to be able to introduce this living legend to our audience!

Peroni··on I built a tool after seeing cheating in technical interviews
I get how your solution solves for on-device cheating tools. Unfortunately, it's really not difficult to have a second device (even just your phone) transcribing audio and processing answers. My point being, if people are going to cheat in interviews, they'll find plenty of creative ways around your tool so I'm not necessarily convinced that tooling is the solution.
Peroni··on I built a tool after seeing cheating in technical interviews
I'd be interested in seeing if I'm in the minority but there's no world where I'm agreeing to download bespoke software in order to participate in an interview.

>I kept seeing candidates produce near-perfect solutions while struggling to explain even basic trade-offs. Some would go quiet for long stretches, then suddenly type out optimal code extremely quickly. When I probed deeper, it became obvious that what they were writing didn’t match their level of understanding.

Why do you need a tool to detect cheating? Your 'analogue' approach here is the correct one.

Peroni··on Have Taken Up Farming
Teachers, Doctors, Nurses, Fire fighters... I can think of an endless list of service based career paths that involve no evil, and are immensely meaningful.
Peroni··on 65% of Hacker News posts have negative sentiment, and they outperform
>most HN negativity is substantive rather than toxic.

This is addressed in OPs post. The vast majority of the 'negativity' I encounter on HN is technical critique rather than criticism or toxicity. I've found HN to arguably be one of the least toxic communities.

Peroni··on LinkedIn Prevents You from Deplatforming
Like it or not, LinkedIn is still by far the most used platform by recruiters (agency and internal) looking to hire. I despise the platform but it's undeniably valuable as your career progresses and the probability of being approached by a recruiter increases.

Ultimately, if you're not looking for work, there's zero value in LinkedIn. Realistically, most people choose or need to look for a new job eventually and in that scenario, LinkedIn is by far the most effective platform to increase your odds on finding a new job.

Peroni··on If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
>The main thing missing from this IMO is an element of chance or randomness, the ability to incorporate “unknown unknowns” into your life.

100% this. When I started working in recruitment, it was literally intended to be a temporary means to an end. I stumbled across Hacker News back in 2010 and accidentally uncovered a niche (tech startups) that has resulted in a career where over the past 15 years has evolved into holding VP level roles at YC startups to now running my own successful recruitment and HR advisory business for startups. I can legitimately attribute that entire path and growth to accidentally stumbling across this website and couldn't possibly have guessed the impact it would ultimately have on my career.

Peroni··on Does anyone run ads successfully?
When there are entire multi-billion dollar industries built on trying to solve the problem you are facing, you can safely assume that the solution is likely more complex than you or I are capable of figuring out effectively. If you're spending +$10k a year on ads, then it might be worth investing a portion of that into a consultation with a small, independent performance marketing agency.
Peroni··on Ask HN: Should account creation/origin country be displayed on HN profiles?
The less HN behaves like a social media platform, the better.
Peroni··on US layoffs for October surge to two-decade high
>Some industries are correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic

The main correction is the staggering reduction in job vacancies. There's no world where I can be convinced that the surging number of redundancies can be explained away as a post-COVID course correction.

If this was just the market correcting itself, we would have the same level of unemployment today as what we had pre-COVID.

Peroni··on Which colours dominate movie posters and why?
Obligatory xkcd (from 2010!) - https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/
Peroni··on Australian anti-porn group claims responsibility for Steams new censorship rules
>You can insist on retail vendors accepting legal tender by law

That's a common misconception. In most jurisdictions retailers can set their own payment policies.

Peroni··on Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
$14.3 Billion seems excessive for it to be a pure aquihire play. There's undoubtedly some IP acquisition (or at least exclusive access to certain IP) involved.
Peroni··on Meta invests $14.3B in Scale AI to kick-start superintelligence lab
Yep. They were quite blatant about it in the article:

>The structure was intentional. Executives at Meta and Scale AI were worried about drawing the attention of regulators.

Peroni··on "AI Will Replace All the Jobs " Is Just Tech Execs Doing Marketing
>And it’s decimated other professions like manual agriculture, assembly line jobs, etc.

When Henry Ford introduced the moving assembly line, production went from hundreds of cars to thousands. It had a profoundly positive impact on the secondary market, leading to an overall increase in job creation.

I've yet to see any "AI is gonna take your job" articles that even attempt to consider the impact on the secondary market. It seems their argument is that it'll be AI all the way down which is utter nonsense.

Peroni··on Anthropic CEO claims AI will cause mass unemployment in the next 5 years
I'm really struggling with Amodei's position because it feels like he (and lots of others) are essentially saying that either AI won't create more job opportunities OR that AI will automatically replace the roles it displaces.

I find both of those positions to be pretty naive which instinctively makes me feel like I'm missing something people way smarter than me (like Amodei) can see but yet never seems to be articulated in these articles.

Peroni··on Show HN: Every problem and solution in Beyond Cracking the Coding Interview
Aline is a bit of a Hacker News legend. She's been active here for longer than most people have been working and when you see how she's built her product, it's plainly obvious that she legitimately understands and sides with the HN community.

I bet the genuine answer to your question is that she knows it's a resource that could help tons of people (at a time when tons of people need that help) and paywalling it means that it won't serve that same purpose.

Peroni··on Ask HN: Stopping YC backed business from advertizing fake jobs at my company
Create a stock response for candidates that are coming to you via their platform that explains they do not represent your company and that you will not review any applications that come via their platform. Include a link to your own careers page and encourage candidates to reapply there if they are genuinely interested in working for your company.

Have you tried contacting the company directly and asking them to remove your company details from their platform?

Peroni··on On loyalty to your employer (2018)
Glassdoor isn't gospel but it is a useful data point.

>How do you realistically tell from outside if a company does treat their people well, or has a difficult culture?

The challenge there is that everyone has different interpretations of 'a difficult culture'. What's important (albeit difficult) is establishing an understanding of the type of environment you thrive in and the types of environments you struggle in. With that understanding, it's important to spend time during an interview process asking open-ended questions that might reveal the aspects you love/hate.

Peroni··on On loyalty to Your Employer
My Dad would agree with you. He enjoys his work, he likes the people, and he'll be the first to admit that he's been happy enough with the convenience of it all to prevent him from wondering if the grass might be greener elsewhere.
Peroni··on On loyalty to your employer (2018)
I hadn't considered the idea that my motivation for writing this might be interpreted as a ploy to generate more business. :)

Most of my perspective comes from working for and with startups. There's nothing wrong with a bit of mutual trust and loyalty. I'm simply warning that too much of either can be detrimental.

Peroni··on The Ghosts of Gaelic
>In order for that to happen we need to have stable Gaelic communities to sing the ballads and tell the stories, with formal and informal education that invites new generations into the tradition.

Whilst this has been true for centuries, you can actually see it happening right now in real time with Kneecap (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneecap_(band)) and the incredible impact they are having on popularising the Irish language.

Peroni··on AI fakers exposed in tech dev recruitment: postmortem
>the candidate did not speak any Polish, but was based there and graduated from Warsaw University of Technology. He spoke in broken English, and with a very strong accent that sounded Asian, but these weren’t warning big red flags, and the candidate sounded motivated.

This is ridiculous. According to their resume they lived, studied, and worked in Poland for over 10 years and don't speak Polish? This isn't considered a red flag? This was a screening call and the head of operations categorically failed.

>Communication was a bit choppy, and the candidate did not speak Serbian, despite graduating from the University of Kragujevac, in Serbia. Once again, they sounded motivated, so proceeded to the next round.

So no actual lessons learned from the last time.

Peroni··on What made the Irish famine so deadly
>If anything, we should be proud of britain’s response, especially knowing that it would never get aby kind of gratitude for it.

Some examples of Britain's response:

* Establishing soup kitchens for the starving, where, to acquire food one must renounce your religion, anglicise your name, and abandon your native tongue.

* Provide maize for the starving and destitute but not for free for fear it would generate a sense of self-importance amongst the millions who are dying of hunger

* Maintaining the exportation vast amounts of food to Britain throughout the Great Hunger

* Requiring the starving who couldn't afford to buy food from the British to build pointless walls in order to earn that food

* Forcibly evicting the starving and dying from their homes because they couldn't pay their rent for some reason

* Denying aid to anyone who owned more than a quarter-acre of land, forcing starving farmers to give up their land and become destitute in order to qualify for relief

So, on behalf of all those before me in Ireland; go raibh maith agat.

Peroni··on The quest to find and save the Vasa (2019)
I've been lucky enough to have visited a lot of incredible places and seen a lot of amazing things but the experience of walking into the Vasa museum and seeing the ship in real life is up there with one of the most surreal and breathtaking experiences I've ever had.
Peroni··on Deel vs. Remote, which is the better pick for a US based company?
Extensive experience with both. These days I default to Deel for no reason other than I find them more flexible with obscure requests and niche questions. They are both competitive in terms of price and both have a solid UI (more important than you'd think).

They also love to compete with each other so make sure to share the quotes with both sides and let them bid for your business.

Peroni··on Ask HN: Who has settled disputes in court, and won economically?
I feel like the answers to this will be heavily skewed by the jurisdiction you live under.

Here in the UK, I had an airline hold a substantial amount of my money hostage and they refused to engage in a discussion to allow me to get my money back. I spent ~30mins filling out a small claims court application, paid the obligatory £115 fee, and a few weeks later the airlines lawyers contacted me offering me my money back along with a decent amount of compensation.

Equally, I've witnessed people pursue employment tribunal claims against their employer here in the UK, only for the process to take years, the preparatory effort being enormous, and the outcome being a positive judgement in their favour along with an insultingly meagre financial award. For some, that's still worth it purely for the vindication and validation.

Peroni··on Couriers mystified by the algorithms that control their jobs
They already have: https://www.gmb.org.uk/campaigns/deliveroo/
Peroni··on Neuwark: Autonomous AI customer support agent with human in the loop
I'd recommend reviewing the copy on your site. The first chunk of copy on your homepage is full of errors and it instantly devalues any product you might be offering. Might also want to consider updating your title tags too.
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