
We only hire the best means we only hire the trendiest (2016) - indy
http://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/
======
guuz
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940)

------
beat
So here's the thing... hiring at larger, growing companies often means weeding
through a stack of a hundred resumes, for one or two or five roles. Most of
those resumes need to go away. The interview process, for competent
candidates, is going to cost you at bare minimum a half hour of one person's
time for initial screening. A quality interview is going to take a couple of
hours each for a few important people - managers and senior/lead tech staff,
for engineering jobs. Considering pg's maximum about maker schedules, the
hiring process is _very_ disruptive for the productivity of some of your most
valuable tech staff.

So you want to get rid of 19 resumes out of 20, without ever interviewing
them. And for that, you need heuristics. And those heuristics are, in all
likelihood, going to be biased and stupid in some ways.

For example, I will automatically reject any resume that has more than two
typos. I consider it evidence of carelessness - I don't care if you can't
spell, but I do care if you don't bother to run it past someone else who can
for editing.

The danger is that a heuristic - any heuristic - for filtering out resumes
will inevitably lead to missing some candidates who would excel in the role.
Oh well. I'm not going to waste time interviewing every possible candidate,
just hoping to catch that magic person. It's irresponsible.

~~~
lynnetye
I'm a web developer who has been thinking about engineering hiring and culture
a LOT over the last 6 months. I'm confused about employers' desire to cast a
wide net, only to filter through applicants thoughtlessly. Instead, why don't
engineering teams save time and energy by articulating their specific
engineering values, and sharing that information up front? Be honest. Say
divisive things. This will allow job-seekers to self-filter. Your goal is not
to attract every software engineer. Your goal is to attract the people you are
most likely to hire. (Career pages can be fluff, and job descriptions are dry
and uninformative beyond a list of technologies.)

I've been working on Key Values
([https://www.keyvalues.io](https://www.keyvalues.io)) for many months now
trying to do just this: surface details about actual team members, day-to-day
processes, and a team's engineering culture. At least this way, we as
engineers can be more informed when deciding where to apply, where we'll
devote hours/energy interviewing. Of course engineers might be skeptical or
have questions, but at least we have _something_ to respond to.

Ultimately, neither job-seekers nor employers want to waste time and energy
interviewing people they aren't culturally aligned w/. Maybe the lesson here
is that engineers should seek out the teams that care about what they care
about, whether it's mentorship, high quality code, or work/life balance. I
know it's controversial (especially here in HN), but is salary really more
important than doing work that is exciting/challenging/energizing/stimulating
or feeling valued/appreciated/respected/passionate?

~~~
cwyers
Applicants do not self-filter. If you've ever read resumes for a job listing
that haven't been prescreened, you'll be blown away by how many people refuse
to self-filter even for basic fitness for the job. Put out a job listing
asking for a college degree, and you'll get applicants who are still in school
with their graduation date two years in the future looking for an internship.
That's an extreme, but people will apply for jobs they are very much not fit
for. Frustrated job seekers will often submit things under the assumption that
"the worst they can do is tell me no" (they're not wrong). If someone is
receiving unemployment benefits, they may have to apply to X number of jobs
every week/month in order to qualify. The incentive of the applicant is to
apply to as many jobs as possible and get one.

~~~
regulation_d
As an applicant, I don't self-filter from positions I think are interesting,
because I've gotten several offers from companies after to applying to jobs I
wasn't technically qualified for.

Some companies are pretty strict about their qualifications. For some, the
qualifications are more like guidelines. But if the position is interesting,
I'll take that chance.

~~~
setr
and for some, they're just nonsensical. Like when you see 5 years min.
experience with Swift

------
alskdfji
This was the most depressing part to me: "Another person I know is in a
similar situation because his group won’t talk to people who aren’t already
employed."

It's a long story, but both my wife and I have most recently been at places,
in a small-medium city, that have had huge turnover in the last several years
due to mismanagement (her entire unit, except for her, left twice while she
was working with them; we've lost about 30% of our employees in the last few
years). She was pressured to resign after returning from her maternity leave
because, as far as I can tell, they figured out they could cut her position
and offload the work onto others while she was gone. So she's stayed home to
raise our child. I haven't lost my position, but every week brings a new
clusterfuck of horrors that I'm running out of ways of coping with.

The problem is, now she's wanting to return to work, and has a job offer, but
it's in another state, and it's created a situation where basically I have to
give up a job and probably career, or she has to run the risk of her career
dying off because of lack of opportunities in the area.

So if I take time off to watch our child while my wife rebuilds her career,
and maybe move to a different career myself, somehow I'm penalized? Pardon my
language, but fuck that.

I'm also in my early 40s, so there's that.

I'm starting to feel like my life is ending, really, like opportunities are
just vanishing left and right. It's odd because up until this point I always
felt optimistic, like there was always something out there for us. My wife
comes from an elite school, we both graduated with Ph.D.s from a program in
the top 5 in our field (according to dubious rankings), if you're into that. I
don't mean this narcissistically, but I just feel like there's this huge
discrepancy between what I know my wife and I are, in terms of work ethic and
competency, and what our opportunities are.

~~~
the-dude
Raise the child, build a business from home.

I would sign for it in a heartbeat.

~~~
matrix
Small kids are a lot more work than many people realize. Ditto building a
business. Trying to do both at once without being financially independent
first is not a choice anyone should make if they can help it.

~~~
Consultant32452
Building a business, particularly a consulting business, is pretty easy and
doesn't take financial independence, especially if it's IT related.
Incorporating is easy, you can do it online. Then call up ye olde consulting
firms and have them find business for you until you build up a customer base
that calls you directly when they need work done. Do this enough and soon
you'll have so much work you'll have to farm it out to acquaintances (your
first employees).

------
chirau
I disagree with this article, to some extent at least. Perhaps it's specific
for trendy companies and startups. Most of which are just looking for the next
shiny object, true.

However, when you look at companies that move the needle in different
industries, companies that have repute, market share and profitability, they
couldn't care less what is trending these days. They look for domain expertise
and excellence.

I have friends who work at Renaissance, the hedge fund. The company couldn't
care less about your grasp of the latest ML framework or Keros or whatever you
were. As long as you know what you are doing and are exceptionally good at it.

Having worked, full time, at Microsoft, I'd say the same goes there and at
Apple, Oracle, even Google for the most part. They don't care about what is
trending, just prove your weight.

I think this conclusion was drawn from the companies that make the most noise
but are actually not major players in industry. The same companies that are
hot for a minute until they meet their eventual demise.

The most robust, relevant and profitable companies out there basically say, 'F
__* trends, show us your worth in salt '.

It's the hippie companies that ruin it all yet dictate social media
conversation...for the 2 minutes their company is hot, then it dies.

Long live domain expertise and exceptionality.

~~~
driverdan
Except all of those companies put an unreasonable amount of weight on degrees.
Good luck getting Google to talk to you if you didn't graduate a top collage,
let alone not having a degree.

~~~
Delmania
There are advantages to going to college over a boot camp or self learning. In
fact, CS and SE degrees are ones that pay for themselves. If you're not
willing to put in the work, that tells me you won't last long at Google.

~~~
Datenstrom
Being self taught I haven't learned a single thing in college. Besides
networking I do not see any advantage.

> If you're not willing to put in the work

Why should anyone who already knows everything for a degree have to waste 4-6
years of their life?

~~~
Delmania
I'm sure you don't know everything. Looking at your profile, I see the words
"technician" so I am thinking you were trained at some point.

~~~
Datenstrom
Yes the Navy "trained" me by saying "here are 20,000 pages of documentation on
the E-2 Airborne Early Warning aircraft avionics, now go fix it".

That has nothing to do with my CS studies, of which I have learned nothing
from college and could have CLEPed a BS degree on day one if it was possible
and moved on to a masters where I should have been initially placed.

> I'm sure you don't know everything.

I never claimed I knew everything.

~~~
cableshaft
How many classes did you take in college? Because my first few CS classes I
didn't learn a whole lot from either. It wasn't really until the 200 and 300
level classes that I started learning anything substantial that I hadn't
picked up on my own beforehand.

~~~
klibertp
If waiting for 2-3 years before you're able to learn anything substantial is
considered normal - and we're not talking about monasteries and such - then I
think there is something seriously wrong with the system.

~~~
cableshaft
I was already writing various types of software, taken a class in high school,
gone to summer camps, etc, before I reached freshman year of college. There
was plenty of students who had never even touched a programming language
before and it was all brand new to them.

And I still learned things my first year (especially in ancillary classes, I
only took three computer classes my freshman year), I just didn't get much out
of CS classes until sophomore year. One of those classes was a gimme class I
really should have tested out of ahead of time in hindsight, though (basically
computers 101, I had quizzes on identifying what was the desktop, mouse and
monitor).

------
nanodano
When I hear "we only hire the best" it just sounds like generic crap an HR
person added, not a big red flag that they are snobs. I don't think it really
means anything. By definition, anyone hiring anyone wants to only hire the
best. Nobody wants to hire only the mediocre. If I hear things like that I
generally just ignore it.

Anyway, the author makes all kinds of unfounded assumptions. Someone with .NET
and Windows experience may not actually be relevant to a backend Unix system.
Their assumption though is "they don't like Windows people." Is it not
actually possible their work experience was irrelevant? Is the first or most
reasonable conclusion you come to really, 'they don't like windows people."
Seriously?

That is purely an assumption driven by their own stereotypes and opinions.
"They said they didn't hire me because my experience was irrelevant, but I
know the truth. They are bigoted against Windows people! That's the REAL
reason!"

~~~
EpicEng
>By definition, anyone hiring anyone wants to only hire the best

I agree with your overall sentiment, but this isn't true at all. The best cost
money, and the best don't want to work on boring stuff. Most software is
boring. A team of mediocre devs is more often than not just fine to do the job
and it keeps cost down (and turnover likely lower).

~~~
pasquinelli
so mediocre is better than best sometimes?

~~~
gooseus
I'd say so, do you want to drive a ferrari/porsche around your local city/town
traffic? How about if nobody ever saw what you were driving and you just
arrived at locations?

High-end resources are a pain in the ass to acquire and maintain... the best
usually know they're the best and expect a lot of upkeep. The truth is that
most work (as someone else mentioned) is boring and using high-end resources
when lower-end will do is bad economics.

Most times when you get in a car, you're not racing someone else for your life
or pink slips... you're just looking to go to the store and come back. Why
waste half a tank and risk a flat in a racing machine just to go pick up milk?

~~~
huac
The question becomes what you optimize for - optimizing for speed picks you
the Ferrari, optimizing for gas mileage gets you the Prius.

------
orf
> We like to think that we’re different from all those industries that judge
> people based on appearance, but we do the same thing, only instead of saying
> that people are a bad fit because they don’t wear ties, we say they’re a bad
> fit because they do, and instead of saying people aren’t smart enough
> because they don’t have the right pedigree… wait, that’s exactly the same.

This is a great quote and an interesting point. I don't know what it's like in
the US but in the UK it's not unexpected to wear quite formal clothes to an
interview, even if the position is at a very relaxed company.

I don't think I would judge someone for what they wore in an interview, but I
fear I might if they continued to wear something overly formal at work.

~~~
bertil
Also in the UK, and I would definitely not be surprised to see candidates show
up with suits at places where that’s obviously not required. No one cares.
“Pedigree” that’s another question.

I did show up in a tailored three-piece suit with a tie and pocket for my
interview at Deliveroo (a notorious streetwear influencer now). There was an
eyebrow justifiably raised (by a guy in a t-shirt who, I learned afterwards,
was the CEO) and I felt the need to explain that I had another interview for a
very different company just after. That other interview went horribly and I
got the job at Deliveroo! I’d still recommend showing up wearing biking gear.

~~~
dirktheman
We had an interviewee showing up in shorts and t-shirt. Turns out he wanted to
combine the interview with a tee off time in the afternoon. While not
customary (even though we don't wear suits/business attire at our company) he
totally got away with it and it didn't affect the interview.

~~~
philliphaydon
I’ve only interviewed in jeans and a tshirt, never had issue, but was thanked
by one company for not showing up in a suit.

~~~
dirktheman
I did interviews in suit before, but if I ever have to do interviews again I'm
not going to do that anymore. I hate suits, they don't fit me well and I don't
feel comfortable in them. I think it is silly that it is 'expected' to wear a
suit for a job interview where none of the employees wear suits. For
finance/legal it's different matter, obviously.

------
jstewartmobile
It would be nice if the process were a little more transparent.

If people just knew that a company rejected them for reason X, that would make
a huge difference. If X were stupid, they'd know they missed a bullet. If X
were rooted in a misunderstanding, they'd have a chance to clear it up.

There is so much side-channel information used in the corporate hiring
process, and it gets mixed-up in HR far more often than any company is willing
to admit.

~~~
wolfgke
> If people just knew that a company rejected them for reason X, that would
> make a huge difference.

Give a thanks to the discrimination laws. Companies don't want to give any
leads for getting sued.

~~~
freddie_mercury
The practice is exactly the same in countries that aren't the U.S. And
countries that don't even have discrimination laws.

The fact that companies behave the same in the presence of dramatically
varying legal norms suggests that your belief that discrimination laws are the
problem is baseless.

~~~
wolfgke
At least I know that in Germany before the "Allgemeines
Gleichbehandlungsgesetz (AGG)" (general equality law) was passed, companies
were more open about reasons. Since this law was passed, any openness can
easily lead to a lawsuite against the company where the company has to prove
that they did not discriminate against the candidate. Indeed when the law was
passed there were lots of lawsuits of really untuitable candidates, where the
company could nevertheless not prove up to "valid in court" that it did not
discriminate against the candidate for reasons specified in this law and thus
had to pay the unsuitable candidate some months of salary as compensation.

~~~
emodendroket
US discrimination laws are not that strong. Unless you're doing something
idiotic like telling people "sorry, we didn't hire you because of your
religion" it's hard to win. Of course anybody can sue for any reason of they
want, though.

------
bambataa
What strikes me about this is how little weight recruiters put on referrals
from current employees. I would have thought that being recommended by an
internal employee would get you an initial interview at the very least. Surely
a trusted employee’s recommendation is more reliable than whatever random sift
the recruiters have.

Does anyone with experience of recruitment have any stats on how successful
referred applicants tend to be?

~~~
demygale
I don't think recruiters keep metrics on anything. Once the candidate is
hired, they consider their job done. Companies appear unwilling to measure
recruiting and employee success, so the inefficient hiring processes continue.

~~~
DarronWyke
Depends upon the type of recruiter. An external one will likely have a few
follow-ups, because it's how they get paid. An internal one, however, won't
bother unless the company is excessively on the huggy-feely side.

------
santialbo
I´ve recently been in charge of hiring a lot of people and have probably done
+100 interviews in the last year.

I generally don´t mind the stack/language candidates have been using but I
always value very highly that they have used different stacks and languages
during their whole carrer. When I interview 5+ years .NET developers who
haven't used another language, not even in their spare time, the result is
usually a rejection. Since the time I can spend on interviews is limited I
need to discard candidates based on signals, even if that means discarding
good candidates.

~~~
hvidgaard
I've been at the other end of that scale. I've had a fair few candidates that
have used 10 different stacks, but wasn't truly good at any of them. On the
other hand, I've had candidates with 10 years of C#, but used it in different
settings, web, backend, actor based system, ect, and they blew the socks of
most other candidates. What I look for, is that they show versatility and
depth. The combination is really important.

I usually sift through candidates based on CV, and then a first interview
where I try to asset how good the candidate is at his/hers prefered stack.
Then I throw them in the deep end of the pool to see how they cope in the
unknown. That can be having a pure C# OOP guy write some SML, or Java/VB/C++
guy write Haskell. I've also tasked a guy that worked with OCaml to write some
workflow component in JS.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
"Then I throw them in the deep end of the pool to see how they cope in the
unknown." That's a good sign that the tech interview process is very broken.

~~~
hvidgaard
> That's a good sign that the tech interview process is very broken

That could be the case, or maybe at that stage we're past a verbal phone
screening, 1. interview, and they've been selected for the last round of
interviews. They know before hand what the nature of the interview will be,
including the "deep end of the pool" question. It is far and away the best way
I've found to see how well they can adapt to new things, which is important to
us.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
Do people interviewing for orthopedic surgeon positions often get randomly
asked about the latest antipsychotics in job interviews?

~~~
hvidgaard
did you miss this part?

> see how well they can adapt to new things, _which is important to us_

------
CalChris
Your job, as a job seeker, is to get passed HR to a hiring manager. You can go
through HR, around HR (a buddy ships your res to a hiring manager) or over HR
(an exec or VC flips your res to a hiring manager). You will not be working
for HR. They are merely an impediment to be overcome.

If you wish, you can think of it as the border. You can apply for legal
immigration (lengthy and dicey; think of the immigration and interview scenes
in _Thunderdome_ ), you can have a mule help you across (ideally this should
cost you a lunch; the mule will get a bonus from BigCo), or you can be awarded
special status based on your illustrious and meritorious service to the
glorious republic as determined by and at the sole discretion of its
benevolent leaders.

Any which way, get passed HR. Do not complain about HR. Just show your skill
set (networking, interview prep, ...) and get passed them.

~~~
skandl
*past

~~~
CalChris
Doh.

------
delta1
Thought this article looked familiar. Dan please add dates to your blog posts,
Admin please add 2016 to the title.

------
jroseattle
"We only hire the best" is a statement made by those who subconsciously don't
believe they project outward quality and excellence in their everyday
execution. It's as if those on the selling side believe that others see them
as just-another-job, and they need to refute it. It's not a red-flag, but
quite literally ignore the remark -- it's pointless white noise.

As for uninformed biases about tech stack and experience and what-not -- yep,
that's going to happen. It's fairly well-known that hiring is basically a
broken experience, even at the very best of companies. Don't expect everyone
to get it.

In terms of MS stack vs non-MS stack, the reality is it's a hit and miss
proposition. The OP's story about his colleague being competent in general
comp-sci can be matched with plenty of others where the individual's
competency seems to stop at Win32. My advice -- if your resume points only to
MS-stack systems, get something non-MS on there.

I'm in Seattle, we run non-MS systems and I see quite a few MSFT-based
resumes. I'm ex-MSFT and feel I can gauge competency across these lines fairly
effectively. Many companies are willing to give some a chance, but learning
Linux on their dime-and-time? That's a lot to ask.

With all of this, take it with a grain of salt. The common basis most people
are told to follow is "hire slow, fire fast". In reality, this just means be
super-conservative in your hiring decisions. Super-conservative leads to
people "checking off all the boxes" in case something doesn't pan out -- that
way they won't be criticized later.

------
iainmerrick
If Google's hiring is as good as this article suggests, it must have changed a
lot in the last few years. Can anyone point me at an up-to-date article on
Google's hiring process?

Not so long ago, they were _very_ focused on school rankings, GPAs, and
academic qualifications. I always felt this was misguided because it was
nowhere near as objective and quantitative as they thought. More recently they
said they had a big data-driven effort to improve their process, but it was
hard to tell if that really led to new ideas, or if it was just more of the
same veiled elitism.

~~~
meatyapp
I was resume screened/rejected from many no name companies. Google was one of
the only few who took a chance on me and I think that's so cool.

~~~
iainmerrick
That's great!

As an anecdote from the other side -- a friend of mine got referred to Google,
was interviewed but not hired. A year later they called up and asked if he was
still interested, interviewed him again, and rejected him again. Then a year
later they called him again, and... you get the picture!

------
twoquestions
Damn, this paints a picture where only the shiniest candidates matter, and the
rest of us mere mortals should apologize for breathing their air.

How do you know if you're "the best", and if not, how do you become "the best"
(or at least employable), or is this industry a "ya got it or ya don't" kind
of place like music or art, where only the top 10% deserve to make a living?

~~~
jakebasile
This doesn't just paint the picture, it holds a mirror up to the reality of
our industry. If you aren't in SV (or NYC maybe), don't have a degree from an
expensive college (or worse, no degree at all!), or haven't worked for
FB/Google/Apple, you're basically dog shit to any interviewer.

All the clamoring for developers is because so many companies delude
themselves into thinking they should only hire the shiniest candidates, as you
put it, even though there are thousands of other people who could do the job
almost or just as well if they would look at people living in another city,
without degrees, and who haven't worked at a huge company and/or unicorn
startup. As a bonus, people like that (like me!) are generally cheaper since
they don't have to pay the ridiculous cost of living in the Valley, or realize
that making enough salary for a comfortable living without going into multiple
hundreds of thousands is perfectly fine.

------
donretag
"who was tragically underemployed for years because of his low GPA in college"

Who puts their GPA on their resume, or even discusses it, 2-3 years out of
school? I have never discussed GPA or anything about their academic experience
to mid/senior level candidates, nor has anyone ever asked me.

~~~
nanodano
Totally agree with this. If they were tragically underemployed for years, I'd
bet almost anything it was not because of their college GPA.

Nobody looks at GPA, or cares, or even expects it to be there, unless you have
never had a job and have nothing else to put on your resume.

As someone who has interviewed many developers, GPA has never, ever even come
up as a topic.

------
mathattack
_My engineering friends thought Mike’s resume was fine_

If they thought it was fine, they could easily tell HR, "Interview this
person" and just like that, they're past the screen. (I don't know why it too
me so long to learn this.)

------
leroy_masochist
I thought this was a great commentary and it reminds me of the tendency of
early-stage CEOs to say, "we really don't care that much about your current
skill set, we just want to hire athletes" ('athlete' in this case meaning
someone very talented and hard-working).

The message these founders are trying to communicate here is, "we want to hire
people who have the capacity to learn and grow and who are willing to work
long hours, so we'll overindex on those qualities and be accept the fact that
many people who fit these criteria are more risky hires, in that they have not
been doing a similar job at another company prior to us hiring them."

Based on anecdotal observations of many hiring decisions, what these founders
often actually have in mind is, "we want to hire people who've achieved
prestigious milestones". And so they will hire a person whose school
prestige/GPA/employer prestige factor is high, but who is not likely to
succeed in the role.

Anyway the upside of all this is, as OP mentioned, there's a lot of
underserved talent out there.

------
emodendroket
This is an older piece but it's really timeless.

I have some experience because my first job programming was at a small
nonprofit, on a tiny team, doing .NET software, and during the job search when
I sought to move on there were a lot of backhanded complements about how they
didn't expect me to do that well on their evaluations.

------
technovader
I love the format of this blog post (plain text in full width of the screen).

Reminds me of the 90s and is a breath of fresh air (no ads or performance
issues on the page)

~~~
amiga-workbench
The web is responsive by default after all :)

------
larsbars
This is great news for any company who's able to see a few millimeters through
the bullshit. Just hire people who are strong with computer science
fundamentals, any maybe a few others who can play cross-functional roles.
Treat them like a team and create proper mentorship/leadership dynamics. Work
towards a common goal and empower the team. Watch them become one of the more
functional teams in the tech industry.

The companies that hire fresh-out programmers from top schools have such an
uphill battle. They have to handle people who have huge ego's from being
sought after all bickering with each other on the team. They have to deal with
the mistakes of people who think they know how to build something good for the
company but are actually just wide-eyed and pig-headed. And then they have to
deal with the fact that these people who are the "cream of the crop" will
leave in a year or two to another companies' offer because even though this
first company hired with a high salary no company in tech understands how to
promote or give raises from within. It's always about the fresh and shiny new
employee because almost all of tech is broken and once the reality of a
team/person is seen it never meets expectations.

------
dsign
I was there a few years ago: good academic title, good coding skills, some
industry experience. But I also hit a wall trying to get a job ....

My problem was that I was doing it "the right way" which turns out to be the
wrong one. The application process is terribly broken, as somebody noted
above.

Which makes me think, as developers we get this entire hiring thing wrong.
Next time I want a job, I will think hard about a way to hustle it without
entering the application process.

------
dlwdlw
Large companies IMO aren't setup to take advantage of arbitrary levels of
ability. They're antifragile in being able to ingest common denominator type
skills and plod along despite bad engineering. The lynchpins are already in
place BEFORE the hiring/growth phase. New hires that can actually compete with
the established lynchpins only scatter the attention and increase the failure
rate by questioning leadership.

A lean chain of intent is necessary to hit a goal as the slack compounds each
layer down the chain. This is terrible for exploratory action because the
output space is myopically limited but necessary for goal setting. Fatter
chains often produce more total value but that energy is dispersed and the
revenue streams often cannot take advantage of the innovation.

An analogy I like to use is trebuchets and daggers. JavaScript ability is like
a dagger, generically useful but fungible and always in some sort of demand.
Trebuchets are much more complex and much better at doing certain types of
damage but the only buyers are castle seiging kings who may have already
invested everything in a catapult producing supply chain.

Most fields like archaeology or art history don't expect their specialization
to be highly compensated but often fields that go through periods of hype
don't realize their skills can lose relevance. There are a lot of people
learning ML now for example but once commoditization of tools and techniques
happens the actual number of jobs may become too low to have market liquidity.
Unlike A/B testing consultants.

Currently everyone in software can have their cake and eat it too but it's a
position of privilege and luck and often this is forgotten.

------
rb808
The comments about Microsoft tech stack are interesting. The best, most
successful, most reliable most loved by users application I worked on was
distributed C# SOA system windows with a relational database. However coming
off that job I had trouble finding work. Now I work on a Scala/Java/Python
with containers - we have so many problems - its difficult to use and maintain
but suddenly I'm drowning in job offers.

~~~
jamesmp98
Sorry, but it's not JavaScript

------
qxzw
How important is GPA?

I will soon get my Master's degree in CS, but it is via the path of least
resistence. Therefore GPA is not shiny. I decided that spending my finite time
and energy can be better, so I concentrated on coding (my own projects) and
socializing, sports and games etc.

When I studied for exams, at point where I knew that I was going to pass, I
shifted to other projects.

Next year when I join the workforce and start looking for jobs, will low GPA
bite me?

~~~
consp
In my experience there are three types. Note: We don't have GPA, but some
companies look at study grades (some only masters, others bachelors grades)
and some even go further back to high school/middle school which would be sort
of GPA.

The types I've met (companies/recruiters alike):

1) Don't care, look at what you think you can do and your motivation for that
assessment. They usually also give some form of shorter first contract or
traineeship with reduced pay while in training but at least you will get a
chance. On the other end, they hire you simply because you have the relevant
skill set and show good work ethics (e.g. can work on your own, which is
somewhat deducible from your curriculum).

2) Select solely on bachelors/masters grades and don't care about GPA/High
school. In my experience this dies out as soon as you have +3 years of work
experience. There are so many levels in this category from only looking at
relevant fields or looking at all even non relevant.

3) Look at GPA/High/middle/etc school grades and everything else to 'properly
select' their employees. They pay good though and usually wear suits, most of
them to hide their incompetence in the field they should excel in (I'm not
claiming they aren't any good, but usually not in what they are supposed to
do).

~~~
mikebenfield
> Look at GPA/High/middle/etc school grades

 _Really?_ There is a possibility that this is my lack of industry experience
talking, but I find the idea that a company looks at high school grades very
difficult to believe. As for middle school... I would seriously wonder about
the basic competence (and sanity) of someone who asked me about middle school
grades.

~~~
positr0n
No I have never heard of a company asking for grades below college. And after
a few jobs plenty of people leave their GPA off their resume completely.

This is in the US. From OP's comment history they are somewhere in Europe.

------
majke
Bryan Cantrill at Surge 2013 "Leadership Without Management: Scaling
Organizations by Scaling Engineers" aka "Middle management, a toxin or a
cancer?"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI)

He said clearly - it _is_ possible to hire only the best.

~~~
dsr_
Step one is to figure out what "best" means for your company and the positions
you have open.

Step two is to figure out how to evaluate that effectively.

------
throw2016
This is a culture of fabricated hyper-competitiveness just for the sake of
making a few feel special. It's completely integrated, cultural and also
immature.

There is really not that much difference between people for the range of jobs
available to create this mythology. The stars or 'the best' are Sergey and
Larry not the people now working at Google etc. Employees could be talented,
efficient but they are like the millions of other faceless people working at
corporations and this is not meant to diminish them.

But the special ones usually made their own way and are know for that. And you
don't have to be a billionaire. There are tons of software folks who have
distinguished themselves. There is a lot of self aggrandizement and pandering
to egos on among employees and hiring companies.

------
mementomori
>By going after people with the most sought after qualifications, TrendCo has
narrowed their options down to either paying out the nose for employees, or
offering non-competitive compensation packages. TrendCo has chosen the latter
option, which partially explains why they have, proportionally, so few senior
devs – the compensation delta increases as you get more senior, and you have
to make a really compelling pitch to someone to get them to choose TrendCo
when you’re offering $150k/yr less than the competition.

What is the "compensation delta"? Is that part of a formula for calculating
expected compensation? For that matter, what is a good formula for calculating
compensation when weighing job offers?

------
danschumann
Are there not plenty of companies that hire only older, more experienced
people? Such as government entities and large corporations? Seems like we
always hear about the pro-youth companies. Perhaps its only silicon valley.

~~~
emodendroket
Silicon Valley is an extreme example, but I don't think it's bucking the
general trend.

------
ex_amazon_sde
Some companies hire by buzzword. Some by looks / first impression / "culture
fit" / age. Some care about real skills and behavior.

That's pretty much it. Go hunt for the latter and you'll be fine.

------
Balgair
A lot of people in this thread need to read about the Secretary Problem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem)

This method would help solve a lot of the issues people have with hiring and
applying to jobs. The argument is then how to set N correctly.

------
newusertoday
I think reason people don't want to hire windows/.net is because of very low
signal to noise ratio. This makes detecting a good developer very difficult
from bad developer as 9/10 times it is a waste of time interviewing them and
after doing this for a while u develop unconscious bias towards some
technology/platform.

------
keithnz
is this a problem just in areas with the big trendy companies?

I've always liked working at smaller companies as it always feel like what you
do is more significant and a lot more diverse. I know other smaller companies
< 30ish people and they tend to like broader experience and people who can get
stuff done. School background counts for little.

------
JepZ
Yeah hiring seems to be something hard. I mean it is not as simeple as writing
a value to every candiate, sort them and choose the best, but instead you have
to individually rate each candidate while considering the effect it will have
on your existing company.

------
swolchok
This article is from 2016, per the main page at
[https://danluu.com/](https://danluu.com/) . Can we get a (2016) in the title?

------
babesh
Institutional bias is perpetuated this very way.... Who do you think was more
likely to go to the elite school given the same or inferior test scores?

------
dustingetz
Pattern matching has problems but it also evolved because other signals are
even weaker, I'd like to see an analysis centered around this idea

~~~
humanrebar
Evolution works over many generations and is most pronounced when there is an
evolutionary advantage. Certain kinds of "pattern matching" could be vestigial
like wisdom teeth or less important than other things, like freckles and
moles.

Point being, maybe the company has great sales or some unassailable market
advantage. They could form an untested hypothesis around their hiring
preferences since the success of the organization is largely unaffected by it.

------
jerianasmith
Whether you are trendy or not, what counts is your expertise in your niche.
You just have to prove your worth and you are good to go.

------
Yahivin

        body {
            max-width: 960px;
            margin: auto;
            padding-top: 2em;
        }

~~~
ksk
There is a school of thought that the user should be in charge of resizing a
window.

------
vog
It's strange that this article does not appear in the RSS/Atom feed:

[https://danluu.com/atom.xml](https://danluu.com/atom.xml)

Is that feed broken?

I was quite surprised finding this via my secondary news sources (HN, etc.)
rather than my primary news sources (RSS/Atom feeds of blogs I follow).

~~~
pvdebbe
I think there's a simple answer to this: this is an old post and thus won't be
covered by the "10 newest posts" feed.

~~~
jwilk
It's from March 2016.

Source: [https://danluu.com/](https://danluu.com/)

------
jamesmp98
There not enough developers to fill the demand though!

------
dzonga
then what happens to us from no name schools ? get interviews only to be told
you're too early into your career.

------
senatorobama
Why is this guy so obsessed about salaries?

------
makesthingspos
Is ToolCo Google and ProdCo Microsoft?

~~~
tmccrmck
Judging by his resume... yes.

------
ben_jones
Good for them honestly. We can only hire the best who aren't recruited out of
college by Google, Facebook, etc.

------
Lxr
I just want to say that I absolutely love this no-frills type of page -
tapping the link on mobile and instantly getting nothing but content is such a
pleasant surprise!

~~~
whostolemyhat
I find it really difficult to read on a laptop though, due to the long lines.

~~~
faitswulff
I've been using Firefox's reader mode to good effect lately. I'd give it a
try, or something like it for Chrome.

------
a13n
Does anyone else find full-width text hard to read? I had to actually turn my
head. Instantly closed the page.

~~~
arkadiytehgraet
It is truly funny how first people want 4k monitors but when an application
actually uses the given size at full, they cry about "oh, it is too wide", and
we end up with disgusting design of web pages with ultra-narrow column of
content and wide empty (or ads-filled) columns by both sides.

~~~
dustingetz
Do you run your IDE with one file 4k fullscreen?

~~~
wolco
One file full screen is the best. SublimeText searching allows you to remove
the file nav bar. Complete freedom and less junk.

------
TijmenAlberink
first impression is important, but clothes dont make the man

~~~
emodendroket
But there are plenty of fish in the sea and one man's trash is another man's
treasure. On the other hand, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

------
frwntfwtr
Dnsnd

------
SQL2219
What the hell does top 10 school mean anyway? Top 10 most expensive?

------
lolive
That's why it is supremely important to read through the lines, and discern
which trend will last long and which trend won't.

