
How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire - chl
http://brookeallen.com/pages/archives/1234
======
BrookeTAllen
Hi, this is Brooke, the original hiring manager. I'm new to HN so please
excuse me if I violate protocol.

I agree, life is about treating people well. However, although I find hiring
is probably the single most satisfying thing I did on my job, it was very hard
emotionally because in the case of nearly everyone I don’t’ hire it is because
they say “NO” to me, and boy, rejection hurts. But at least I have a job and
my candidates usually don’t.

More later but first…

If my site is unresponsive there is this on slideshare:
[http://www.slideshare.net/BrookeAllen1/brooke-allen-has-a-
be...](http://www.slideshare.net/BrookeAllen1/brooke-allen-has-a-better-way-
of-hiring) I've generalized my approach to hiring all sorts and describe it
here: [http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-
nice-...](http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-people/)
…

When I'm lucky enough to talk to programmers I'll describe it this way...

I don’t want to be stuck in Von Neumann’s bottleneck so rather than me
processing candidates in series with the question “Who do I want to hire” I
take an OO approach and send a different question, “Who wants to work for me?”
to my candidates so they can work on it in parallel.

Since hiring is an elimination process I let them eliminate me in the first
rounds. I don’t say “no” but I have to take a lot of it, which can be hard on
the ego, particularly if I judge people too early and start to want one person
over another. Desire is at the root of suffering. (Any fans of the move The
Tao of Steve? Formula for getting the girl: 1) Be desireless. 2) Be excellent
in her presence, 3) Let her desire you.)

I try to be the most flawed (e.g. honest) but-striving-to-be-excellent person
I can be in front of my candidates and hope they will be the same for me (and
magically they are). If we’re not going to be who we are before we start
working together who do we plan on being afterward?

Because eliminating candidates is the name of the game, I concentrate on the
negatives and that way there are only positive surprised later. Arguably many
of my “best” candidates might eliminate themselves, but I’m not looking for
the best – I can never afford them anyway – I am looking for the most
appropriate for my budget, which I state early on and is almost never subject
to negotiation. You cannot increases your desirability to offer to work for
less, and if you are worth more than I can afford than I’m sorry, but I cannot
afford you.

I want what I call hidden talent; those good at doing a job but bad at getting
one. After all, the last thing I want you to be good at on my job is getting
the next one. I'll help you find a better job before I hire you because
afterward we've got to hunker down and get some friggin' work done.

Because I form an intentional temporary community of my candidates, and task
them with something hard but meaningful that benefits them (like learning a
new skill and/or helping each other find work) then by the time I say “yes” to
someone everyone else agrees with the decision. In fact, in 10 years only once
did a person tell me he thought I had made a mistake by not hiring him and the
other candidates were so outraged they jumped all over him and one – who
happened to be a lawyer – offered to defend me pro bono if he tried any funny
business.

I never heard from him again but it is my great pleasure to say he is an
exception in that regard and I count a few of the people I haven’t hired among
my friends. This is a wonderful side-benefit because as I get older it is
harder to make new friends, and it is certainly unwise to treat employees as
friends as some do.

I seldom tell individual candidates what they did wrong, not because I am shy,
but because it can be hard to take and I’m fairly tactless. However, I will
offer a class on how to find work in which I anonymize specifics enough so as
to benefit those who can identify themselves. Also, most people don’t do
anything seriously wrong other than be unqualified or unlucky; no shame in
that.

More later, if you’re interested.

After 30 years I’ve retired from the capital markets and they will do fine
without me, but the markets for human capital are severely broken. Because I’m
not ready to die, stop working, or give up on having a life's purpose, if you
would like me to help you crack this nut then please do not hesitate in
contacting me.

~~~
reledi
_> hidden talent; those good at doing a job but bad at getting one_

I really like this. If you're bad at getting a (good) job then employers
safely assume you would also be bad at the job - it's too risky otherwise. But
often that isn't the case, because there's a lot of "hidden talent".

What can we do to give those people a fair chance? We need effective ways to
discover hidden talent. The process you described worked for you, but it
doesn't seem practical. Too time consuming for both the employer and job
seekers, and not rewarding enough for those who don't get a job out of it.

~~~
namelezz
Are there ways to help those talents get together and start their own
companies? Otherwise, they may go to interviews and keep getting rejected.

~~~
Retra
Do you think those people who are not good at selling themselves are going to
be good at convincing people to buy their stuff?

~~~
dllthomas
That depends on why they're bad at selling themselves. For instance, if they
get ridiculously self-conscious when the conversational focus is on _them_ ,
that shouldn't get in the way of selling something else.

~~~
owennoah
Hi, I'm Noah and I head BD for Better Work World, the organization I have
started with Brooke to help firms hire the way he did. As for the above
comment, this is true but the larger point is that, if the job isn't
explicitly a sales position or doesn't require gaining internal agreement
(like, say, many managerial roles)`one's ability to sell one's self in an
interview is somewhat irrelevant, wouldn't you agree? Think about it: if you
are a coder and happen to have several social anxiety issues, you would
probably be an awful interview. But who cares? The market for coders is so hot
it seems that has been largely accepted, albeit implicitly, but for less hot
positions, not so much. We believe candidates win and hiring managers win when
you focus on getting people to DO the work as opposed to talk about doing the
work. When Brooke hired this way he found people he would have never hired
through reviewing resumes, so thats a win for both of them, and those whom he
did not hire-- many of whom had been unemployed-- would usually quickly find
jobs elsewhere because they were given the opportunity to do relevant work,
network, etc. To me, that beats the standard, "what's your biggest weakness?"
line of questioning any day of the week.

------
sekasi
I've done a LOT of interviewing, recruiting and ultimately a lot of saying
"no" to people.

Over the years I've landed on a series of personal rules on how to do just
that.

1\. Always explain rationale around the No, to help them improve 2\. Always
let people down gently reinforcing positive notions as well, you never know
what state of mind they are in. 3\. Always respond to requests for more
information

This takes me a lot of time in my professional life, but it's making me a
happier person. Ultimately, it's people's lives you're dealing with. You don't
owe anyone anything, but life is about treating people well.

~~~
kazinator
Then there is the perspective from having heard "no":

1\. Never believe anyone's rationale regarding their "no". They acted on
instinct, and made up a clever story to afterward to convince themselves it
was a rational decision. Or worse: it was some prejudice that they are
consciously covering up. Or perhaps some internal reasons that they don't want
to discuss with outsiders like sudden news that affects all hiring activity
(but this news can't be made public yet: even the fact that there is such
news).

2\. Don't take it personally.

3\. Never press people for more information: waste of time.

~~~
RobertKerans
I don't do the actual hiring, but sit in in one of the two interviews, and as
a team we carefully discuss each candidate. We've got a good team, the work
environment & people are great, hiring process is solid enough. And we all
agree that, _almost_ without exception, we can tell within about thirty
seconds of meeting them whether someone is likely to be hired. I _assume_ this
is overwhelmingly common? Bar sending a polite rejection letter, we would
often prefer not to explain the actual whys[1], as often they are personal.
Kudos to the OP (and yeah, it would make you feel good), but I'd tend to agree
with you on this.

[1] that being said we always, always try to give some constructive feedback
if asked.

~~~
lsiebert
I, seriously, don't understand how this works, unless your candidates
appearance and accent are your main tools for judging a candidate. I would
prefer to think that's not the case. If you were teaching a new member of the
team to make such a decision, what would you point to?

What's more important, is I don't understand how anyone could possibly improve
their 30 second impression.

I guess it could be that you believe this to be the case, and are remembering
wrong. Why don't you note this down after 30 seconds, and then check it only
after you make a decision to see if you were correct?

~~~
RobertKerans
Yes, I admit there is an element of hyperbole (for 30 seconds probably read
30seconds - 5 minutes depending, and that alters if a candidate [ie for a
junior position] is nervous and it takes time to get them to relax somewhat).

Appearance is important, and I've never been in an interview situation where
it wasn't? Unless you're insinuating choice based on ethinicity (more aimed at
_pmf_'s response to your comment). Which is completely irrelevant, as are
accent/sex/other discriminatory factors that make zero difference to how
someone is likely to work within a team.

As I've said in other comments, there is a serious element of external
preselection based on geography and company sector, there's nothing
particularly underhand going on.

~~~
king_jester
> Which is completely irrelevant, as are accent/sex/other discriminatory
> factors that make zero difference to how someone is likely to work within a
> team.

This is just plain ignorant. Every single place I have worked has had its
share of everyday sexism and racism, and that includes how current employees
act in hiring interviews. You claim to not notice these things, but what you
are saying is that you don't consider those things valid differences that may
affect how someone perceives your team or work environment. How can you ever
confront issues in your workplace by shoving your head in the sand?

------
JeremyMorgan
The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact
same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever
since.

But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder
though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it's just a new era,
but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding
challenge. He got these folks who were willing to learn something, and build
and spend DAYS on it? It's awesome but it seems unlikely these days.

Taking that kind of time to choose the right person, then helping the other
people network with other APL folks... that just spreads good vibes all
around. I would like to see the "care more" trend spread in our industry. Even
now with a programmer shortage companies are still unicorn hunting and making
people jump through stupid hoops for jobs.

~~~
FooBarWidget
My Wordpress blog used to go down because of HN. I fixed that as follows.

1\. Use the Wordpress supercache plugin.

2\. Put Apache behind Nginx, and limit the number of Apache processes to ~6.
This way you're effectively using Apache as a "PHP app server", simulating an
architecture similar to Passenger/Unicorn. Nginx acts only as a buffering
reverse proxy, shielding Apache from slow clients.

Why this instead of running Wordpress/PHP through Nginx using php-fpm? It's
because Apache is just easier: mod_rewrite rules work automatically, etc.

~~~
nilved
This is first time I've seen the words "Apache is just easier" in that
arrangement. I think php-fpm is significantly easier to set up than Apache and
expect it to be more performant with less resources.

~~~
okaram
This probably depends more on experience, and which OS/platform you're using;
although I don't do it a lot, I've configured Apache servers several dozen
times, whereas I've only done nginx a couple of times, so it is 'easier' for
me.

Also, on ubuntu (and centos, but haven't used it in a while), it is something
like 'apt-get install apache-mod-php' and everything is there :)

------
shortcircuit01
This story reminds me of how broken software engineer interviewing is. Imagine
if a company decided to hire software engineers by giving them five 6-sided
dice. Then they have to come to the company building and roll each dice once
every hour. And during that hour they have to dance and sing in front of
someone while being recorded. If they roll all 6 on all 5 dice, their dancing
and singing will be judged by the committee! And if the committee likes their
performance they might get the job! The acceptance rate is 0.01%, the company
is so elite. And this company is also complaining about a software engineer
shortage. They wish they could find more good engineers!

It's pretty obvious which company (or group of companies) I'm referring to.
The interviewing process of these companies has done great harm to the
software industry. And now they're trying to do further harm by using it as an
excuse to get cheap foreign labor to reduce salaries.

~~~
bvanslyke
Palantir?

~~~
selimthegrim
I believe he or she is talking about Google.

~~~
twright0
Google's acceptance rate is well above .01%, just using basic reasoning.
Google employs tens of thousands of engineers, which means they would have had
to reject hundreds of millions of candidates for the role of software
engineer.

~~~
theatgrex
You're hired!

------
smacktoward
I wonder how much of this kind of thinking can be traced back to a persistent
startup-culture problem: the delusion that the people who work for you are, or
even _should be_ , your friends.

If that's the lens you're looking at candidates through -- as people
auditioning to be your friend -- of _course_ you'd feel you're obligated to
help them through their job search! That's what friends do for each other.

But the people who work for you -- and even more so, the people who have only
_applied_ to work for you -- are _not your friends._ You can (and should!) be
friendly with them, of course; but you can't have a real, true friendship with
them, because you have power over their lives that they don't have over yours.

Moreover, if you try to just ignore that power differential and relate to your
employees like they're your old dorm buddies, all you'll find is that the
power differential poisons the relationship. They'll constantly be second-
guessing their own reactions to you, out of fear of negative job consequences.
You'll constantly be second-guessing _your_ own reactions to _them_ , out of
fear of appearing to play favorites. And they'll all be second-guessing _each
others '_ reactions to _you,_ out of fear of someone brown-nosing their way
past them on the career ladder.

It's the same reason why it's always a bad idea to date someone who reports to
you -- you can never have the kind of relationship with them you have with
someone outside the hierarchy you sit at the top of. Suspicion and jealousy
and gamesmanship taint it from the moment it begins.

The solution to all these problems is to learn, understand, and internalize
the distinction between _colleagues_ and _friends_ \-- two groups of people
you owe very different things to -- and then act accordingly.

------
bjterry
Google cache since site is down:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bfmrmRK...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bfmrmRKzUdEJ:www.noshortageofwork.com/pages/4063+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

~~~
bbcbasic
Pastebin for posterity when case Google Cache expires:

[http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=QtePMR26](http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=QtePMR26)

------
BrookeTAllen
Hi, this is Brooke, author of the original story.

Wow, other than the grief I'm going to get from my ISP I'm so glad to see all
this and when I get a chance over the next few days I'd like to add more.

Some quickies: I've generalized this approach and talk about it in a Quartz
article: [http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-
nice-...](http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-people/)

~~~
bovermyer
You might want to look into Cloudflare to help protect your site from the
HN/Digg effect. Free CDN FTW. Also, great story!

------
deedubaya
When you hire for a _person_ , you find that personality traits are much more
important than what an applicant has done in the past, including passion,
drive, etc.

When you hire to fill a position, all this goes out the window the applicant
goes into the hiring lottery pool to maybe get an interview, and then the
traditional "You could totally goog this IRL, but I'm going to hire you based
off your memory" type of hiring.

~~~
bbcbasic
I find that > 90% of interviews to be the latter, unfortunately. The ones
where I got the job were the former! I am stronger at concepts than memory.

~~~
dccoolgai
The worst is when you have to go through one of those interviews with some
smug hoser across from you whose face is contorted into a rictus grin because
you couldn't recall, immediately from memory, some obscure Junior Year
Computer Science thing. It's just amazing how bad the hiring situation is - It
makes me a lot less likely to look around because I just don't want to go
through that.

~~~
MichaelGG
Yet the number of interviewees with a CS degree that can't even _explain_ a
basic algorithm, like traversing linked lists or binary search, is staggering.

~~~
RandallBrown
It's amazing how the brain can totally blank in stressful situations.

~~~
MichaelGG
Eh I doubt that explains it. In my experience, the response is shock. Not "oh
hmm well, lemme think". It's " I've never written that code since school!
That's a terrible thing to ask! Why would I ever write that? "

Also, for trivial algorithms and data structures, mind blanking is a
potentially bad sign. Like, if you cannot explain the idea of garbage
collection (not necessarily implementation details), then I gotta question
your understanding of your environment.

~~~
lukeholder
I am reasonably experienced programmer who has delivered numerous web
applications and websites. I could not explain to you how a linked list or
binary tree worked - although I am sure I could look them up on google and
understand the concepts given 30 minutes.

~~~
dbenhur
"Experienced programmers" who don't understand linked lists and binary trees
without looking them up are strong no hires anywhere I have worked in the last
three decades. Please stop writing software until this isn't a problem.

* edit: please stop asking people to pay you to write software. Keep writing software on your own until such elementary ideas such as linked lists and binary trees are core to your understanding, then apply again.

~~~
vonmoltke
I have yet to encounter a situation in my career that called for a binary
tree. I use general trees and graphs all the time, but never any of the
specialized forms.

Maybe the problems your companies have worked on did. That's fine. Don't go
telling people to "stop asking people to pay you to write software" just
because they don't know how to use or write a binary tree, though.

I agree with you that I wouldn't hire someone who doesn't understand linked
lists, but I still think your statement is too harsh for that situation as
well.

------
bbcbasic
To generalize the point a bit:

I don't think enough companies are doing enough to help the ecosystem.

Like foresters chopping down the Amazon, or fishers taking the last fish from
the ocean, they want to harvest good talent and then stick them in jobs where
they can be a cog in the wheel it is hard to grow. They expect other companies
to have given them the training or perfect relevant experience.

And then we hear complaints there there is a shortage of hackers etc.!

~~~
humanrebar
I completely agree. I would include supporting open source projects as another
way to practice sustainable development. Many kinds of personalities wilt in
corporate environments that could work (for relatively cheap wages) on open
source projects that benefit everyone.

~~~
bbcbasic
I read Michael Church's blog and from reading that I am convinced that we are
our own worst enemy. We spend our spare time writing open source code, which
then businesses can profit from without having to pay any of their own staff.

I think companies should allow staff to spend some time on open source. It
could even benefit the company by having their name associated with it, making
it seem like a cool place to work, and having CV's coming in the 'we're
hiring' page begging for an interview instead of expensive agencies. But there
you go.

~~~
kyllo
I think it's somewhat of a misconception that most OSS is written for free in
professional programmers' spare time. For small projects yes, but corporations
aren't using their code anyway. OSS projects that are prominent enough to
achieve corporate adoption, often have a staff of core maintainers that are
employed by a company that makes money selling support for that OSS software.
Why? Because corporations are risk averse and using OSS without a support
service contract is a risk they won't take. Unless they are a software company
capable of directly supporting the OSS themselves, in which case you also get
devs contributing to OSS projects on company time.

I don't have statistics for this, but I can easily cite a lot of examples.

On the other hand, there are also a lot of contributors that do it for free
but they are not doing it purely out of the goodness of their own heart
either. A lot of them are doing it either because they are heavy users of the
project and/or to practice and build up their portfolio (read: Github profile)
to help them get a job.

~~~
kbart
Not always. TrueCrypt and OpenSSL comes to mind first. Sure, OpenSSL is more
supported now, but it happened only after Heartbleed panic, when everyone
realised how dependant they are on few overworked and underpaid programmers.
Except several well known OSS projects, most others get only peanut money from
donations.

~~~
kyllo
These are sort of the exception that proves the rule, though. Corporations
don't want to rely on poorly supported OSS projects, they prefer to pay for
support so they can hold someone accountable for fixing it when it breaks.
OpenSSL was a bit of a blind spot in this regard. I think corporations just
didn't realize they were depending on it and/or how much of a risk factor it
was, they learned that the hard way.

------
midnightclubbed
So unless I'm reading the cached text wrongly 38 people read the given manual
and answered programming questions based on it. They then met informally. Lets
say they burnt a day on this.

27 of those people then suggested being taught how to program in APL (after
building a classroom). I'm assuming anyone who didnt want to attend got cut. 3
additional days spent.

They were then given 3 weeks to solve some difficult problems. Estimating they
spent 4 days solving those problems.

They then re-met and were interviewed. Another day spent.

So to get to the end a candidate had to spend best part of two work weeks
doing nothing but learning and programming an obscure language. No time for
interviewing elsewhere, earning a wage, or attending college classes.

I would really hope he cared about the majority of the candidates who spent so
much of their own time and money to be rejected with nothing to show for it.
Most companies would have interviewed a couple of times, given a few hours of
programming/aptitude testing and made a decision as to whether to hire the
person (and teach them the job while paying them a fair wage).

Feel free to vote down if I'm getting this all wrong or an being overly
cynical.

~~~
pcthrowaway
I'd like to offer an alternative perspective. The author was both willing to
hire people with no experience, and provided free training to candidates. I
realize that APL isn't a skill in incredibly high demand, but I think the
author may have helped these candidates out in the long term. The ones with
the most aptitude for programming were able to discover that aptitude (and "a
number" of them were hired because of their investment), and the less apt
candidates got a little bit of training and possibly an indication that if
they are interested in programming they would have to accept putting in a bit
more effort than the more apt candidates.

~~~
logfromblammo
Don't confuse training with education.

Free job training is not equivalent to free education. The latter provides
skills and knowledge for the future benefit of the student. That determination
of future benefit is often made by the student. The former also provides
skills and knowledge, but it is for the future benefit of the employer, and
employer-directed. That represents a foregone opportunity. Any trainee could
have spent the same time acquiring free education, traded it working in a job
that does not require that marginal additional skill, or even wasted that time
on leisure activity.

Trainees should always be paid. In this case, they were paid with in-kind
services upon conclusion of the training program. To do less might have earned
the author a reputation for unethical behavior.

Many companies seeking to hire within the software industry do not recognize
the opportunity costs imposed by their hiring procedures. If you require
candidates to waste an entire day or more on your interview process, yes, you
do owe them something for their time. It need not be settled in cash, but if
not, honest feedback on the results of the interview is the bare minimum
acceptable payment. The interviewees are expecting their lost time to be an
investment, not just a gamble.

------
S4M
This hiring process is great, but requires lots of time, for the applicants
and especially for the hiring manager - I suspect the author was targeting
unemployed people, so they would have time for this long application (he put
his job advert on the New York Times). To be honest, that is what surprised me
the most in this article: that someone who runs a statistical arbitrage desk
has the time for all of this.

I wonder if companies could collaborate to create this hiring process. It
would save hiring manager's time, applicants' time since one application will
count for different jobs, and then a system could be set for candidates to
rank their employees, then the candidate who performs the best get his first
wish, the second candidate gets is first wish if there is still room,
otherwise he gets his second wish, and so on - a similar system is being used
in France for students to chose in which universities they want to go after
competitive exam entrance, basically lots of universities pool exams together.

On one hand it would scale hiring process, on the other hand it's not flexible
and offers have to be transparent (it's currently not the case but maybe that
would be a good thing), and it would hurt the pride of companies who are
ranked in the last position.

In the case of the article, I am sure someone who is able to solve in a
language he recently learn the non trivial software that are mentioned will be
able to land a job at some point. It was written in 2004, maybe Github,
Stackoverflow and Open Source in general are now contributing to that
selection.

------
ChuckMcM
Money quote : _" I started No Shortage of Work to encourage my unemployed
friends to re-frame their status not as a disaster but as an opportunity to
explore new vistas."_

This is something which people often forget, is that learning needs to happen
life long, it isn't a 'did college, check that box.' kind of thing, its about
always learning. Its the first thing I check for when I look at people to
hire.

------
BrookeTAllen
Hey, other then the grief I'm going to get from my ISP this is great that
you're interested.

While we figure out how to get my site working again, I wrote this in quartz:
[http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-
nice-...](http://qz.com/88168/how-to-hire-good-people-instead-of-nice-people/)

and this for Science Magazine:
[http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previou...](http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2007_11_16/caredit.a0700163)

And there is this Slideshare: [http://www.slideshare.net/BrookeAllen1/brooke-
allen-has-a-be...](http://www.slideshare.net/BrookeAllen1/brooke-allen-has-a-
better-way-of-hiring)

------
sunstone
How bad can it get? Several years ago I had a Russian team lead at a software
company who ate code for breakfast (clearly the top guy amongst over 100
coders) and had excellent leadership qualities.

Later, when the financial crisis hit he was out of work and I found out that
he was really bad at interviews. Ever since I've wondered if I was hiring
would I be able the spot the diamond in the rough where evidently, very few
companies/people can. I'm still not sure.

------
fecak
I sometimes consult to clients on improving their hiring process. Candidate
experience is now a topic that at least some companies consider.

This isn't your typical candidate experience - applying for a vague job ad,
being asked to answer 6 puzzle questions, invite to an open house, two days of
free training and then left alone for three weeks, followed by a vote by the
tribe to see who will get the job.

It's definitely a plus that many of the students were hired elsewhere, but
this is likely a method that would only appeal to the unemployed. I hear quite
a bit of negative feelings towards companies that ask for extensive amounts of
time commitment during the hiring process, and this is probably the highest
level I remember.

If most companies asked candidates to go through this process, I expect they
would want (and feel entitled to) some explanation at the end of the process.

~~~
courtf
Good points here. Some of those who left the process in the beginning may have
simply had better things to spend the next month on, not because they were
inferior candidates. I like the tone of the article in general, but it does
smack of a certain entitlement on the employer's part whereby they feel
justified in extracting many thousands of dollars of free work from unemployed
job seekers. Despite the admirable intentions, the caveat that some of those
who didn't receive a job immediately were later hired elsewhere is only meager
consolation, as I'm sure there were significant contributors who were not
proportionally compensated.

~~~
UberMouse
>extracting many thousands of dollars of free work from unemployed job seekers
I didn't get the impression that they provided any value to the person hiring
them. To me it just seems like they got some interesting, hopefully fun
training in APL over a couple weeks. If I was unemployed and had the spare
time (Like I was a couple months ago) that sounds like something I would have
loved to do.

------
Yhippa
In the US are there legal reasons why employers generally are tight-lipped
about why a candidate didn't get hired?

~~~
sosuke
I've always thought so, and I figure it is a case of our sue-happy culture and
a cover your ass tactic "anything you say can and will be used against you"
kind of fear. I'd love to have reached out to some applicants in the past to
offer help, but what if they don't want any?

~~~
tacostakohashi
It would be nice if, at the start of the application process, companies could
ask you if you would like to agree not to sue them in exchange for open,
honest feedback, e.g. notes from your interviewers.

Sometimes its pretty clear if you are not a good match, but sometimes its
really not, and it seems like it would be best for both parties if certain
kind of feedback could be provided, e.g. you were close, please consider
applying in a year or two with some more experience, or we have decided not to
hire anybody due to a later hiring freeze, but otherwise we would hire you -
or, you are a unlikely to ever work in this industry, don't waste anybody's
time with further applications (maybe some suggestions for better fits).

In general, more information leads to more efficient markets benefits all
participants.

~~~
sgustard
I believe one of your legal rights is you can't be compelled to sign away your
legal rights in exchange for something like a chance at employment.

~~~
tacostakohashi
The idea would be that its optional, and the company would still treat
candidates choosing either optional equally during the hiring process - it
would not be a condition of applying.

So, you aren't signing away your legal rights in exchange for a chance at the
job, you get that either way. You are agreeing not to exercise some legal
rights in exchange for feedback, not in exchange for your application to be
considered.

~~~
edsrzf
If you're agreeing not to sue, then the company can use any criteria they like
to hire or not hire you and there are zero consequences.

Imagine you check the box, you don't get the job, and your feedback turns out
to be "You're a man and we don't like to hire men." You have no recourse
because you agreed not to sue.

You can argue that that's obviously illegal hiring criteria and you should be
able to sue anyway, but then you're back to square one.

------
nostromo
I have mixed feelings about this.

It's easy to see what's to love: an open, honest, and collaborative hiring
process with a boss willing to train employees. Awesome!

But he also got about 30 people to spend four weeks building trading software
for him. Collectively that's over two years of uncompensated work, the results
of which the hiring manager may use for free. And from the perspective of the
applicant, how many applications could they complete in a year if all were so
time intensive? 12? 24? I suspect many top applicants would avoid this process
entirely.

~~~
scotch_drinker
From a worst case cynical viewpoint, he got free labor and those people got
free training. It wasn't like he chained them to a desk and then made them get
jobs in PHP. Best case, it was a mutually beneficial relationship entered into
rationally and with eyes wide open. Top applicants might avoid it but people
trying to break in and show what they can do might jump at the chance.

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jlukanta
Google Cache mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1tQlU00...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1tQlU00Ks7MJ:brookeallen.com/pages/archives/1234+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)

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jdudek
This is quite similar to how we hire Ruby on Rails developers. We organise
two-weeks long Bootcamp where we train people in Rails. At the end we offer
some of them to join us as junior developers, with further training during
next year. Those who are not hired still win—they receive two weeks of
training which helps them find jobs elsewhere. We’ve had some fantastic hires
this way over the past two years.

This article made my think that maybe we can do better and provide more
assistance to those we do not hire after Bootcamp.

More details about our Bootcamps are available at
[http://pilot.co/bootcamp](http://pilot.co/bootcamp).

------
fogleman

        So, here is my answer to the question, "What do we owe the people who we do not hire?"
    
        - Information on where they stand.
        - An explanation of what they are doing wrong.
        - Help improving.
    

Things you will never get from companies like Google.

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freework
The best example I've seen for putting together a team comes from my high
school football team. Instead of tryouts, they let anyone play who wants to
play. The best players excel from day one, but the crappy players quit after a
few days. The coach never says to a player "we've decided you aren't good
enough, so you're off the team". It was each players decision that they came
to themselves to leave the team.

The guy in the article pretty takes the same approach. I've always felt the
best way to interview engineers is to go over installing the company's
development environment on their machine. In other words, there is no
evaluation, just expectation of results.

------
seagreen
"So, here is my answer to the question, “What do we owe the people who we do
not hire?”

    
    
        1. Information on where they stand.
        2. An explanation of what they are doing wrong.
        3. Help improving."
    

Nope! You don't owe them those things. Good for the author that they tried it
and it worked out, but it's not a general rule.

Everything works smoother in lots of different parts of life if all parties
understand the concept of a Clean No. Not "You can say No but then you still
owe me such and such". Just "No." Anything beyond that is a gift.

~~~
computerjunkie
Lets talk about a simple example. You apply for a visa to X country for a
special occasion (eg; brothers wedding, graduation ceremony et.al). Two weeks
later, you get a response saying "No", just no.

Will you be satisfied that you never got any feedback to why it was refused,
what you did wrong and what to do to fix it?

Feedback, be it good or bad is crucial. I, myself appreciate this feedback,
especially in this scenario the author is talking about. How am I supposed to
improve my self when I don't even know what I am doing wrong?

~~~
seagreen
Feedback is extremely important. So important, in fact, that you shouldn't
rely on _deeply_ compromised sources for it.

People who have just rejected you will never be reliable sources for feedback
(on average). That's what friends, confidants, and inside sources are for.

------
vonnik
FutureAdvisor's in-house recruiter here.

I recently ran a hiring event in San Francisco with Brooke called Staffup
Weekend. Brooke is one of the smartest, hardest-working and most generous
people I know. I read the post linked to above last fall, and worked with him
to bring jobseekers together to work on meaningful projects. The event was
called Staffup Weekend, and it was held in the Chron building on Mission and
5th.

Our hypothesis was: The only thing that correlates with performance is
performance. Everything else -- degrees, pedigrees, buzzwords, interview
skills -- are a waste of time. About 20 people worked through the weekend to
create various apps. They made wonderful things: one was a Chrome extension
that gives you the emails of the founders of the company web pages you visit.
Another was a LinkedIn 2.0 for people who wanted to feature their work and
themselves. We made 8 interview offers and one hire from the weekend, and I
think everyone involved came away feeling like it was worth it. Write me if
you're curious to learn more: chris.nicholson@futureadvisor.com

------
skazka16
I interviewed an engineer today. Probably a lot of companies would not hire
him. He was not that great. I said "Yes" because I noticed a passion and a
huge desire to learn and grow. We'll see if that was a mistake or not.

------
ErikRogneby
I attended a bootcamp at ArsDigita on building database backed web
applications back in 1999. I don't recall now if it was two weeks or three,
but the things I learned in that short time have been useful in almost every
job I've had since. Just knowing my way around Oracle an PL/SQL landed me a
position at a telecom. The bootcamp was free, and at the end of the bootcamp
after a code review I was offered an interview. I declined because I didn't
want to live in Boston. I realize that Philips motives weren't entirely
altruistic but I am sincerely thankful that he took this approach to staffing
up.

------
edem

        Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 9961472) (tried to allocate 19456 bytes) in /home/quest15/public_html/brookeallen.com/pages/wp-includes/taxonomy.php on line 959

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spydum
The real solution here is not to interview people, but to discover people
OUTSIDE of a hiring scenario, and recruit them after you've determined they
would be a great fit (inverting the game). It's just unfortunate that it is
much more effort to invest as the employer, but it is essentially the best way
for everybody involved.

------
alishan-l
As a job seeker having recently completed a web dev bootcamp (with no prior
experience), how might I go about getting my first tech job? Or, taking a step
back, my first interview? I find it frustrating that entry-level positions
seek people with years of experience.

~~~
joshdotsmith
One thing to keep in mind is that "entry-level" means the most junior position
with that company, not "entry-level" into the workforce at large. I found this
equally frustrating in non-technical jobs after I graduated college (with a
liberal arts degree). It's a rather encumbered naming convention.

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grimmfang
Google cache of this page:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1tQlU00...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1tQlU00Ks7MJ:brookeallen.com/pages/archives/1234+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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normloman
This sounds like the job search from hell. Let's break down this trainwreck:

1\. The guy posts a vauge help-wanted ad that implies no experience is
required. Then he's surprised that 300 people applied and none had relevant
experience.

2\. He asks applicants to read a 500 page manual, then solve some programming
puzzles. With no pay. As if the applicants have nothing better to do.

In the rest of the story, the guy does a nice thing for the remaining
applicants. But why does he ask candidates to jump through so many hoops for
this job, especially when, as he states in the ad, experience is not required.
Not every unemployed person has the time to read a manual, waste time solving
puzzles, or attending a class with no guarantee of employment. Some of them
_really need jobs_. Some of them have bills to pay. Some of them have other
opportunities, and can't afford to put their life on hold while you make up
your mind.

------
anon4
Or "How my life improved once I started making friends"

------
soheil
"Resource Limit Is Reached"

this is how

------
sonabinu
brilliant!

