
Your “high bar” is wrecking your team - brhays
http://brandonhays.com/blog/2018/06/19/your-high-bar-is-wrecking-your-team/
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wuliwong
My boss just dropped the offer salary for a new candidate by 25% because they
weren't from a top tier school...I really hope they still accept b/c I
_really_ need the help! I know that's a bit different than what the article is
talking about but still similar reasoning. They were the strongest performer
on every metric we have and for no other reason than the name of the school
they did their graduate work at, they are getting a significantly lower offer.
Really makes you question the value of the metrics in the first place, doesn't
it?!

~~~
simonhamp
That’s disgusting. It also feels a little bit sabotage-y, especially as you
need the help.

I’d be questioning why I still want to work for a company/people who would
make those kinds of decisions...

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sharemywin
I always assumed A player meant worked 60-100 hrs per week, but they expected
you(not directly) to write 40-50 on your times sheet. And only paid for 30.
But, don't worry your changing the world.

~~~
oligopoly
> But, don't worry your changing the world

By creating a new innovative way to deliver ads to consumers.

~~~
gtt
Like it or not, economy needs ads.

~~~
majewsky
Economy has functioned by word-of-mouth for millennia. Ads as an industry are
relatively new (maybe 300 years).

(Sure, word-of-mouth is a form of advertisement, but OP clearly refers to the
ad industry, so I'm going with that meaning.)

~~~
jhall1468
How much are you willing to pay for every advertising supported site you use?

~~~
milesvp
Apparently there was a study related to this this recently.

[http://timharford.com/2018/05/how-much-would-i-have-to-
pay-y...](http://timharford.com/2018/05/how-much-would-i-have-to-pay-you-to-
quit-facebook/)

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cirgue
Our best devs are consistently people who don’t have CS degrees and have good
creativity, patience, curiosity, and who have some code to show that isn’t
buzzword-chasing nonsense.

~~~
RealityVoid
I think it's even less than that. I think the critical element is interest. I
think even an average individual can have valuable contributions to a codebase
if: a) the requirements, what needs to be achieved and standards of quality
are clear b) they are interested in contributing.

That's it. I think the bar for software development is pretty low at the time
being (but I'm not in the SF area, so maybe my outlook is myopic and limited
to the local scene) and you can improve things noticeably if you just...
care... and think things through. A feat quite hard in our days. Heck, some
days, I can't make myself care,and sometimes I don't feel like pushing and
doing things right no matter how much I wish I could. I _know_ I'm capable,
I've done it before, had high focus spurts where I did stuff nobody else
could. But I simply don't feel in lately. Sometimes it's hard to even push
myself to do usefull things, and I'm pretty severe regarding my performance.

So, caring about the end result, in our days, I think, is in pretty short
supply. Much shorter than most people think.

~~~
btschaegg
> [...] you can improve things noticeably if you just... care... and think
> things through [...]

This. Also: What the blogpost highlights well in this regard is that since the
"bar" is orthogonal to real world skills and/or motivation, not only will you
reject great developers who _do_ (or would) care, there's also some chance you
gather others who _don 't_ instead.

I'm also under the impression that "not caring" in this sense contributes
largely to problems as those discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17164728)

(i.e. just ship what the customer/boss wants, don't bother understanding the
problems or think things through)

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abraae
It's good to have a high bar.

But it's dumb to use someone's academic achievements alone to measure whether
they meet the bar or not.

~~~
commandlinefan
> it's dumb to use someone's academic achievements alone

I'm sure they don't - the author just seems a little touchy because he doesn't
have a degree. I understand - I have a CS degree with a good GPA, but the
school isn't all that impressive. I know it's cost me jobs (because they've
told me). However, it's a pipe dream to think that there will ever come a time
when degrees are irrelevant - unless human civilization changes a _lot_,
academic credentials are going to get more important for programming work, not
less, just as they are for every other field. As long as programming pays well
and is the sort of work you can do sitting down in an air conditioned office
while drinking coffee, it's going to attract a lot of applicants, and
screeners are going to have to screen them. Love it or hate it, the easiest
things a screener can look at that yield the best signal-to-noise ratio are
academic pedigree and reputation of past employers. Since false positives are
riskier than false negatives, they're being logical and reasonable.

~~~
AstralStorm
Are they riskier? The company risks, say, a month of trial time...

They are riskier for recruiters who are enforcing artificial scarcity.

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Xeoncross
If someone does not have any domain knowledge they default to looking for: A)
an authority or B) a demonstration/display.

authority = school, newspaper, official, parent, etc...

demonstration = performance, app, book, video, etc...

~~~
dvirsky
A demonstration is often a very very good indicator even if you have a lot of
domain knowledge. When a candidate shows me something they've built I can gain
a lot of perspective into how they think and work by asking questions about
it.

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pteredactyl
Good article.

I've been coding circles around and teaching Stanford CS undergrad and
graduate students for years.

Feels good since I'm self taught.

I tell them I'm a 'street coder'. They're valuable to me ( the CS students )
because they help me put words to CS concepts I have built in my own mind from
experience.

Nothing frustrates me more than the scenario outlined in the article. The
business folks can and will always say whatever they want that suits the
business. That's their thing.

As the leader of the team and domain expert, you should be able to hire whom
you deem most qualified. And they biz folks can make up whatever BS they want
as long as you're delivering.

That said, I am self-employed in SF. So I don't particularly have to worry
about managers. Except for convincing them to hire me, without the fancy
degree. Fortunately I think it filters out a lot of the pretentious companies
I would not be happy to work with.

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georgeecollins
In my experience this is often fueled by people who have the least
understanding of their "high bar" criteria: management and HR who never worked
at the companies that they think it is really important to hire from or got
the degrees they scan for on a resume. The "high bar" mentality often creates
mono-cultures, which can be effective, but usually not resilient, and
sometimes toxic.

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bargl
I want a high bar for my team, but a high bar that matters to what the
business needs.

I want - passion, compassion, drive, curiosity, etc. That's where principles
are always important for a company to show what is important as a high bar to
your company. The goal is to hire the best people to accelerate your team not
your ego which I think is the point of the article. In other words I agree.

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bg4
Because we as humans will never escape the subconscious constraints and biases
of a pack ordered society, it's woven into our very being.

~~~
rwallace
Beware of casting a float to a boolean. Yes, every group of humans has some
degree of toxic competition and hierarchy, but some much more than others. It
makes sense to look at the ones that have less, and ask what they are doing
right and how to emulate it.

~~~
cecilpl2
> Beware of casting a float to a boolean

That is a great expression and I'm stealing it!

Sometimes it feels like most of my life is spent trying to teach others to
cast booleans to floats. :)

~~~
rwallace
Thanks! Credit where it's due: I got it from a post here a while back, though
I forget who wrote it or what the thread topic was.

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throwaway648
plain and simple: formal education gives a shitload of knowledge you rarely
get otherwise (because students devote lot of time getting familiar with that
knowledge in an environment that supports learning). a good dev with proper
education is better than a equally capable person without the education. that
said, BS degree is bs if you ask me.

