
'We only hire the best' - I don't believe you - neiljohnson
http://fragile.org.uk/2011/05/we-only-hire-the-best-i-dont-believe-you/
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autalpha
This "we only hire the best in [city name]" truly frustrates me and frankly it
is such a big turn off for me. I've interviewed with a few of these, and when
it comes to salary negotiation they always give the reason: "we really want
you, but the number you give us would create disparity/inequity between the
current employees."

Alright, let's look at the word "best." Is there anything better than best?
Maybe bestest or most best? Come on, you CANNOT have a team of people where
everyone is "the best." If you decided to make an offer to me, that means I am
the best then? Everyone's best is different, therefore salary needs to be
different for each "best." If I am the best, then what's the problem with me
getting what I asked? If you want to give off the hype that you're a "big boy"
company then back it up with real big boy money! But oh no, if you work for
us, then that means you can use our "awesome" brand to sell yourself later.
Like Google or Facebook.

This is exactly like the usual situations: "I have a great idea, could you
make this web app for me for free or for 2 small bags of peanuts? It will be
the BEST addition to your portfolio." Remember those people?

I know, it is negative. But I get so enraged sometimes thinking about this
kind of cliche and messaging some new "startups" are using. If you want to
hire the best, then pay top money. You're not Google--get over it!

~~~
steve_b
There's definitely a hierarchy of bestness:
<http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/monologues/14topgun.html>

Hopefully that will calm the well-founded rage.

~~~
autalpha
"I don't imagine you have any questions, so I won't even ask. Good luck,
gentlemen. I'll see you in the air. Class dismissed. "

Awesome!

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fizx
I'm trying to think of what the phrase means to me:

"We only hire people with demonstrable (1) CS knowledge equivalent to a BS CS
from a top5 school (2) a track record of productivity exceeding their peers in
a challenging environment (name-brand internet co, vc-backed startup, etc)"

There are places that set the bar that high for some of their engineering
groups (rarely all groups). I wonder what percentile this corresponds to.

Clarification edit: "CS knowledge equivalent" doesn't require actual degree.

~~~
anonymoushn
"A BS CS from a top5 school" is not to be taken as a sign that the candidate
can code his or her way out of a paper bag or solve trivial problems he or she
has not encountered before.

~~~
potatolicious
I hear that. I've been doing a lot of interviewing lately and the typical
caliber of your CS graduate is, um, abysmal, regardless of school.

One particularly alarming trend I've noticed: if you have a masters or PhD in
CS as a straight-shot (i.e., no years working in between), odds are you have
_no_ idea how to code, and no amount of extremely advanced theoretical CS
knowledge is going to save you when you can't put together a for loop in less
than 5 minutes. The worst part is that some of them seem to have been under
the expectation that their advanced degree would allow them to skip ahead on
the track, and the best we're willing to give them is a junior position not
much better than what we'd give to a fresh undergrad with no experience.

Being insanely smart is not at all correlated with being insanely capable, it
would seem.

~~~
stcredzero
_Being insanely smart is not at all correlated with being insanely capable, it
would seem._

Sometimes, both seem to be correlated with being insane, strangely enough.

But seriously, all that's needed is about 50 tidbits of knowledge that could
be given in one longish presentation, PLUS the ability to synthesize
information and act on 2nd and 3rd order implications of the knowledge.

I once met a coder who had a PhD in Mathematics, and fancied herself a good
Object Oriented coder. However, the module that she wrote had nothing but long
class-side methods, entirely consisting of loops with multi-variable iterating
indexes, recursively calling cut-and-paste slightly modified versions of
themselves. (No, I am not making this up!) And, get this -- the multi-variable
iteration, could be replaced with a short, simple loop putting judiciously
written Objects into a Dictionary and taking them out again. (This was
objectively demonstrated twice!)

------
wyclif
I can't count how many companies I've seen post jobs in the past month that
use this bromide. It's getting a bit timeworn now. Do these companies really
feel that using this phrase improves the quality of their hires?

~~~
jarin
I've been getting hit up by companies lately, and it's been a little bit of a
put-off for me when they say things like that. Not because I think it's
something bad for a company to want, but because I suffer from Impostor
Syndrome sometimes, especially during interviews with recently-funded startups
(despite the fact that people I have worked with tell me I am a very good
coder).

It probably has something to do with the fact that on paper I know I look like
a terrible candidate (not only am I not a Stanford graduate, I'm a high school
dropout).

The problem is there isn't really a good way to quickly pre-screen candidates
other than by looking at their credentials. Experience counts, but education
seems to be more heavily-weighted in startups. You can pretty reliably tell if
a candidate is good or not by going through their Github account, but it might
be asking a lot to expect hiring managers to go through all of them.

~~~
mgkimsal
"You can pretty reliably tell if a candidate is good or not by going through
their Github account, but it might be asking a lot to expect hiring managers
to go through all of them."

Well, a hiring manager's job is to find strong (best?) candidates to fulfill
the company's needs. I suspect for development positions reviewing public code
(github, sf, etc) when possible is going to yield better results than looking
at what, if any, university someone went to.

"Well, not everyone has the ability to contribute to public projects!". Boo
hoo - not everyone can afford to go to fancy universities either. Why is that
a better criteria than reviewing the work of people who've made their work
available for review? Because filtering based on university and stated
experience is easier on the hiring manager? You're optimizing for the wrong
results then.

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jodrellblank
_A graders hire A graders, B graders hire C graders._

Apparently nobody hires B graders, so this can't be a problem.

~~~
michaelochurch
The argument behind this statement is that "A players" are secure in their
ability and want equal peers they can learn from, so they hire people as good
as they are, while "B players" are fundamentally insecure and will hire "C
players" who aren't really a challenge to them.

There are a million problems with this logic, but first among them is that A
and B players know what they are and that their level of security (or
insecurity) is equal to their actual ability. It's not really true.

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quanticle
If you have to say that you're hiring the best, you're not. Programmers may be
less social than most, but word still gets around. If you're truly the best,
you won't need to advertise that fact, programmers in the area will already
know and will be beating a path to your door.

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Bud
Anyone using worn-out catch phrases in interviews is not "the best". Which
means, they didn't hire "the best" recruiters to do their supposed hiring of
"the best" for all other types of employees. Which means, they're liars.

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tzm
Agreed. The "best" is relative... likely based on perceived capability and
anticipated compatibility within the existing culture of an organization.

I'm curious to know what assumptions are made that define "best". To me, I
look for team dynamic as an indicator.

