
How to Hire - devy
https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-to-hire
======
hfdgiutdryg
Several years ago, right here on HN, a Google employee expressed shock that
candidates wouldn't bother to open the "red book" and review before showing up
for an interview at Google. I had no idea what the "red book" was. Turns out
that it's a particular algorithms textbook used by several top universities.
That poster was so wrapped up in a particular culture that he was using
colloquial slang to refer to expectations.

That's about the same time I realized tech hiring is almost entirely about
cultural bias. Watching coworkers talk about rejected candidates as if they
were morons for simply having a slightly different approach to, say, OOP
architecture, further convinced me of this.

In my experience, "culture fit", as cited in post-interview discussion, was
almost purely code for ageism. Meanwhile, most of the supposedly technical
stuff was really culture.

~~~
ken
I googled "red book" and found one by Jung, and one by Mao. I tried adding
"computer science" and got one on relational databases, and one on OpenGL.

If knowing "the red book" were so important to Google, you'd think they would
make sure their own search engine knew how to find it.

I have no idea which book they're referring to. For red computer science
books, the only ones that come to mind are Numerical Recipes (probably not a
Google favorite), one version of Appel's compiler book (not really an
algorithms book), and perhaps the old edition of AIMA (though on further
inspection, it's more brown).

~~~
threatofrain
I think the red book is the Robert Sedgewick book, but there are any number of
well-known textbooks for intro to algorithms.

~~~
stone-monkey
Huh - I would've guessed Algorithm Design Manual by Skienna. I have no idea
which book the red book is supposed to be either, but I did read the Steve
Yegge blog post about getting a job at Google in which he recommended reading
it. Since that Yegge article is also used by Google recruiters as a resource
for interview prep (according to Yegge), seemed natural to assume Skienna.

------
almostdeadguy
Interviews for software engineers are the most nepotistic bullshit and full of
every variant of petty bias and discrimination possible. It's absolutely
horrible. If I start getting asked about my hobbies in an interview, I walk,
and you should too. My personal time is none of your business, and if having
to like my hobbies or have them resonate with your project in some completely
esoteric way is essential to your hiring criteria, you need to rethink your
goofy ass life. I look for a job for the same reasons as every other person:
because I have subsistence needs that can only be fulfilled by money, not
because my life is so completely harmonious with your company's bullshit
mission, and frankly you're a weirdo for making candidates have to lie to you
about this.

Another thing I'll add is that if you have any input into the hiring process
PLEASE try to convince your employer to subsidize training and prioritize that
over hiring to a bulleted list of particular technologies a candidate must be
familiar with. I can't tell you how many engineers could very easily get up to
speed with something new, or perhaps are inexperienced and just need a little
guidance and could become incredibly better with the right investment in their
training (including many long time employees at your company, I guarantee it).
I was lucky enough to take a week course from some very knowledgable
instructors at a previous job and everyone I know who took that course was
bettered by it. Startups are frankly lying to themselves if they think they
hire hyper-qualified people anyways, but the entire concept of
professionalized industries that are unwilling to invest in the education and
training of their employees is absurd and something we should all adamantly
reject.

~~~
maccard
> If I start getting asked about my hobbies in an interview, I walk, and you
> should too

To be honest, if someone walked out of an interview with me because I asked
them "So anything you like doing in your spare time?" I'd probably be glad
that they'd saved me some time. A response of "Sorry, but I like to keep my
work and personal life separate" is totally reasonable. I spend more time with
my deskmates than my partner during the week. I don't care if they're into
running/anime/videogames/heavy metal, I just want to know that if I ask them a
question they're not going to get up and walk out of the room!

~~~
almostdeadguy
> I spend more time with my deskmates than my partner during the week

Why would anyone willingly work at a job like this. Why is this ever accepted
to be a good thing. I've done this as well, I've worked 9-9 at a startup and
have come to the conclusion that I was extremely wrong to ever accept this
kind of thing.

> I just want to know that if I ask them a question they're not going to get
> up and walk out of the room!

lmao this is an amazingly stupid excuse that makes no sense

~~~
largefarva68
>Why would anyone willingly work at a job like this. Why is this ever accepted
to be a good thing. I've done this as well, I've worked 9-9 at a startup and
have come to the conclusion that I was extremely wrong to ever accept this
kind of thing.

You don't need to work at a job for 12 hours a day to wind up spending more
time with your coworkers than with your partner though. I work 9-5, my partner
works 10-6. I leave before she is awake and when I get home we have about 6
hours before we go to bed. So yeah, people willingly work at jobs like that
because they are...normal jobs.

>lmao this is an amazingly stupid excuse that makes no sense

Makes sense to me. Anyone who gets up and walks out of an interview because
they were asked what they liked to do for fun is probably not someone you want
to waste your time with.

~~~
almostdeadguy
> You don't need to work at a job for 12 hours a day to wind up spending more
> time with your coworkers than with your partner though. I work 9-5, my
> partner works 10-6. I leave before she is awake and when I get home we have
> about 6 hours before we go to bed. So yeah, people willingly work at jobs
> like that because they are...normal jobs.

Buddy there are at least 32 free non-sleep hours on the weekend. I think the
9-5 schedule is a ridiculous social phenomenon as well, but if you're saying
"I spend more time with my deskmates than my partner during the week", you're
working more than a 9-5. If you're using "during the week" to mean on
weekdays, this seems like a pretty arbitrary point to make. We live in a
capitalist society, most of our social relationships are determined by
economics, frankly I think it's fucked up to think you're entitled to be best
friends with your coworkers. I'm unhappy that economic decisions beyond my
control mediate my personal relationships, but that affects my politics not my
decision-making around whether someone is entitled to earn a living alongside
me.

> Makes sense to me. Anyone who gets up and walks out of an interview because
> they were asked what they liked to do for fun is probably not someone you
> want to waste your time with.

That's not why you ask these questions for one, because you're basically just
describing me and mostly no one else. But ask yourself why its important to
know what my hobbies are and why I might be reluctant to answer this kind of
question when every single little petty bias you have might prevent me from
getting a job. Consider the position of power you have in this scenario. This
is not a hypothetical either. This will sound like humblebragging, but I had
an interview with a digital healthcare company in the bay area once and was
told I didn't get the job because I "seemed too interested in CS topics" or
something to that effect. Effectively saying they didn't want somebody who was
interested in more than hacking javascript (which I did a code interview in
and did well I thought). I had an interview where an interviewer was able to
learn my politics from a github org I was a member of and didn't get the job
(no idea if that affected the decision or not, they wouldn't explain their
rationale). This kind of thing is why I don't consider these questions
innocuous.

~~~
maccard
> If you're using "during the week" to mean on weekdays, this seems like a
> pretty arbitrary point to make

This is pretty much the universal understanding of during the week. I don't
think it's arbitrary at all. I spend 40 hours a week in my office, and I spend
62 (32 on weekends and 6 per evening on a weekday), so 40% of my waking time
is going to be spent with this person.

> frankly I think it's fucked up to think you're entitled to be best friends
> with your coworkers.

You're the only person who is talking about being best friends with your
coworkers. I'm talking about having a working relationship with people which
means being able to communicate with people. There is lots of gray area
between being best friends and wanting to keep work and personal life
separate.

> But ask yourself why its important to know what my hobbies are

I literally don't care. All I care is that you can communicate in some way.
Saying "sorry I'd rather not discuss that" is fine. Saying "Why do you want to
know about my hobbies, you're just going to use what I tell you to confirm
your biases and not hire me" is antagonistic and makes me wonder "how are they
going to react when I sit beside them".

> and was told I didn't get the job because...

that's awful, I'm sorry that happened to you.

~~~
almostdeadguy
> You're the only person who is talking about being best friends with your
> coworkers. I'm talking about having a working relationship with people which
> means being able to communicate with people. There is lots of gray area
> between being best friends and wanting to keep work and personal life
> separate.

Christ, you literally compared it to your relationship with your partner,
forgive me if I'm just following your argument.

> I literally don't care. All I care is that you can communicate in some way.
> Saying "sorry I'd rather not discuss that" is fine. Saying "Why do you want
> to know about my hobbies, you're just going to use what I tell you to
> confirm your biases and not hire me" is antagonistic and makes me wonder
> "how are they going to react when I sit beside them".

Being an interview candidate who is under the microscope and being a coworker
are two completely different experiences, and my relationship to you as a
candidate will be extremely different than as a coworker. The communication
I'm provided as a candidate is usually not frank and honest. I often won't
even get feedback because companies are afraid of being sued, so the process
is often a total black box. If we're drawing the analogy between an actual
working relationship and the experience of an interview, everything about the
latter is artificial because I need to work to live and am generally willing
to jump through whatever hoops you need me to. Meanwhile you are going to
conceal your actual thoughts until you have to make a yes/no decision about if
I'll have to worry about not getting a paycheck at the end of the month to pay
rent.

This entire experience is a lie. I get that there are difficult, arrogant
people out there, but stop prying into the lives of your candidates to try to
suss those out and have a little empathy for people in this experience.

> that's awful, I'm sorry that happened to you.

Look in the scheme of things my grievances are minor, tech has a much larger
problem w/ racism, misogyny, transphobia, etc. and those biases are much more
prevalent in interviews. I want tech workers to have some recognition of their
position within the structure of society as workers with relative privilege
who could make their jobs easily accessible for anyone instead of nickel and
diming candidates over bullshit. Start seeing yourself as an actual worker
with compatible interests to other workers and not as a gatekeeper or emissary
for your boss.

------
gz5
The article is great but the statement that most folks feel cultural fit is
about "hiring people you'd want to have a beer with" doesn't resonate with
what I have experienced. Is that how "most people" define "culture fit" in
your experience?

For example, we do hire for culture fit, but we define culture fit along
vectors such as:

\+ How do you attack problems \+ How do you communicate and collaborate \+ How
do you deal with rainy day scenarios \+ How do you learn and grow \+ How do
you teach and mentor \+ What do you need (and not need) from your teammates \+
What type of work enviro do you thrive in

~~~
badlucklottery
>Is that how "most people" define "culture fit" in your experience?

The issue is many companies that rely on "culture fit" _don 't_ objectively
define what it is. So it often becomes a dumping ground for whatever dumb
biases and subjective criteria folks involved in hiring might have.

If your company actually has a hard definition of your internal culture and
uses that in comparable fashion across candidates, I don't think that's what
the author means.

~~~
drstewart
The same exact problem exists with technical skills, so I'm not sure why
you're singling out culture fit.

And when companies do add objective metrics like whiteboard problems, everyone
freaks out how it's not comparable "real world" (aka subjective)

~~~
smt88
Whiteboard problems are not objective. They have multiple solutions, and a
human subjectively judges how good the given solution is and how good the
thought process behind it was.

~~~
scarface74
I've had countless number of times where I've had to sketch out an
architectural design both during an interview and during my job with CxOs.
Being able to communicate your ideas are important in the real world.

On the other hand, I had one whiteboard interview where I had to write
psuedocode for a merge sort. I was offered the job but I turned it down.

------
rsweeney21
Patty brings a fresh perspective to hiring and compensation for software
engineers. I think she has done a lot to move programmer pay away from
"programmers are interchangeable cogs" to "pay based on value to the
business".

I joined Netflix when Patty was the head of HR. Bethany, who she mentions, was
the recruiter that reached out to me. Their recruiting process was masterful
and it started with Bethany's first message - "They got you first, but they
underestimate how valuable you are." I had joined Microsoft right out of
college, worked there for 7 years and was feeling very under appreciated. She
had taken the time to look at my LinkedIn profile and write a message tailored
for me. She probably used that line on a lot of people in my situation, but it
worked! So I opened her message.

The rest of the process was like staying at the Ritz Carlton. They treat you
like a celebrity. It's a carefully crafted candidate experience. It's really
impressive.

Side note: Anthony Park was my manager when I joined Netflix. He's hands down
the best manager I've ever had and he's brilliant. You should try and work for
him at Netflix if you can.

~~~
ken
> "pay based on value to the business"

How is this computed? Since almost no programmers have collective bargaining
agreements, in practice this seems to mean simply "who can negotiate the
best".

Frankly, I think I'd rather the industry mature enough that we can be
interchangeable cogs. Then we wouldn't spend so much time arguing about
meaningless trivia like programming languages or coding style.

~~~
skrebbel
I think that at Netflix it just means "pay more than anyone else will".

------
clay_the_ripper
I feel like articles like this don’t actually say much. “Don’t hire for
culture fit” doesn’t mean anything. The author basically says “don’t just hire
people you’d want to have a beer with” and then goes on to say that they do
hire for cultural fit by looking at their ability to solve problems and
overcome challenges...which is culture fit. If your culture is “we hire people
not who we like to drink beer with but those who solve problems” well then
that’s culture fit isn’t it?

Obviously every company is going to hire for cultural fit. Every company has
values that they build around to create successful teams. I would never hire
anyone that I didn’t think fit in with our team...why would I do that?Some
companies value different things than others. So don’t go around saying “we
don’t do culture fit”, yes you do, you just define culture fit differently
than other businesses because that’s your “culture”.

~~~
wgerard
> I would never hire anyone that I didn’t think fit in with our team...why
> would I do that?

Because you might benefit from having someone with a different perspective in
a professional environment.

An older parent might not "fit in" with a team of 22 year-old fresh grads, but
still provide valuable experience and perspective in a way that an additional
22 year-old might not. You can probably extrapolate how this might also affect
women and minorities.

Sure, in an ideal world "fit in" means simply "can coexist peacefully with",
but in practice it can end up being a dog-whistle phrase (very similarly to
"culture fit", which the article alludes to).

~~~
tetrep
> An older parent might not "fit in" with a team of 22 year-old fresh grads,
> but still provide valuable experience and perspective in a way that an
> additional 22 year-old might not. You can probably extrapolate how this
> might also affect women and minorities.

And someone who doesn't do any work might not "fit in" with a team of people
who are doing work, but I'm not going to hire them for the sake of
!current_culture.

There's a reason it's a "culture fit" or "match" and not "culturally
identical" or "culturally homogeneous." The phrase as it is is sufficient and
can describe a healthy way of hiring people who are compatible with your
current team. If we assume our current team has a healthy culture, finding
people who are compatible with it, that can effectively perform their
professional duties without disrupting the ability of other employees to do
the same (and, ideally, improving the ability of others to do the same), is
exactly what we're looking for when hiring someone (other than technical
aptitude).

Sure, it can also be used to illegally or unethically discriminate, but so
could any concept you could conceive of to describe "they won't perform well
with our current team." Before "not a culture fit" was a popular it was "not a
team player."

~~~
wgerard
> There's a reason it's a "culture fit" or "match" and not "culturally
> identical" or "culturally homogeneous."

The problem, of course, being that they often end up being synonymous.

Similarly "family values" is a dog-whistle for "christian values" in US
politics, despite them being different phrases.

> If we assume our current team has a healthy culture, finding people who are
> compatible with it, that can effectively perform their professional duties
> without disrupting the ability of other employees to do the same (and,
> ideally, improving the ability of others to do the same), is exactly what
> we're looking for when hiring someone (other than technical aptitude).

One can imagine myriad ways that this would be used to reject someone in a
really awful manner.

To go back to the parent example: Parents often get up early (because their
kids get up early) and need to be home at a reasonable hour to meet their
kids. A group of fresh grads has no such requirement and might reasonably work
from 11-7 every day, whereas the parent might need to work more 8-4.

The disruption of course being that they only overlap for 5 hours a day and
this could certainly be used as an example of how the parent isn't a good fit
for the team.

> Sure, it can also be used to illegally or unethically discriminate, but so
> could any concept you could conceive of to describe "they won't perform well
> with our current team." Before "not a culture fit" was a popular it was "not
> a team player."

Yes, and we should strive to eliminate them as much as possible.

I'm not suggesting that you should hire assholes who don't work, but that your
hiring criteria should be much more explicit: "Were they abrasive during the
interview?" instead of "do they fit in well at <x company>?" being a very
contrived, simple example off the top of my head.

------
apple4ever
No I will not.

Maybe the problem is everybody has a different definition for "culture fit."
Mine has nothing to with age or personality style (or race or sex obviously).
I've hired plenty of all types of those. But its whether a person will get
along with our team, and will interact appropriately. They don't all need to
be ongoing, or super talkative, or agree with everything we do, but they must
have certain skills to mesh with our team.

I've been in situations where there were people who were not culture fits, and
I've left jobs where people were brought on board who were not culture fits. I
find whether a person fits is much better then their exact skill level or
knowledge. Both those can be learned. Fitting in with a culture is harder to
learn.

Edit: the rest of the article is really good though. Just wanted to address
the one point I disagreed with.

------
hrpnk
One of the better hiring advice I got while working at a consulting company
was to consider hiring a person for a skill or personality trait that does not
yet exist within the company. If in doubt whether to hire or not, the
existence of such skill/trait would move the decision towards hiring.

This way the overall capabilities and knowledge power of the organisation
would increase over time - either by hiring top talent or by hiring candidates
for their uniqueness.

------
sethrin
Hiring is a cargo cult; there are very few people even attempting to be
empirical. The cynic in me suggests that people hire based on the last blog
post they read about hiring.

~~~
asdfman123
> We always tried to be creative about probing people and their résumés.
> Bethany once decided to analyze the résumés of our best data-science people
> for common features. She found that those people shared an avid interest in
> music. From then on she and her team looked for that quality. She recalls,
> “We’d get really excited and call out, ‘Hey, I found a guy who plays
> piano!’” She concluded that such people can easily toggle between their left
> and right brains—a great skill for data analysis.

Gee, it's like they aren't even trying. It's so unscientific I can't take the
process seriously at all.

~~~
nxc18
Totally agree, this bullshit makes me want to scream. People do the same thing
with emails. Have a Hotmail account? People assume you're a Luddite even
though, in 2018, Hotmail is basically office 365 Outlook, which is actually
just as good, if not much better than Gmail.

A lot of 2004 attitudes persist long after they have any relevance or
predictive power.

~~~
danieltillett
While I don't disagree that most of HR is cargo cult bullshit, the hotmail
signal is real. Having worked in customer support hotmail users really are as
dumb as a box of hammers [0].

0\. The usual exceptions for anything human.

~~~
asdfman123
To avoid this I just use my @aol.com address when applying for technical
positions.

~~~
user5994461
If I may ask. Is AOL an internet provider in the US? Is it still alive and
common?

I only remember it as the chat application before hotmail and MSN messenger.
It's even more ancient and abandoned. Not a good signal.

~~~
asdfman123
I'm being sarcastic. The joke is that it would be the worst possible signal to
send out.

AOL was an internet provider that mostly died out in the mid-2000s. Back then,
"true nerds" scoffed at it -- it was for grandmas and total noobs.

So if you got an AOL email address (which you still can actually do, turns
out), it not only is a relic of ancient technology, but it's a signal that
you're a technology noob in like the 90s.

I just am amused at the idea of sending a resume to a trendy tech company with
an AOL email address. They'd either laugh or flip out.

------
moate
I have to say, this article's thesis is not "Stop Hiring for Culture Fit" and
more "These are good hiring practices have have worked for me." The title
seems to be "How To Hire" with a broad focus.

"Culture fit" is mentioned literally once. I know that's the HBR pagename for
it, but it's a terrible title.

~~~
asdfman123
"I've been successful in my career for various reasons, some of which I may
have no control over. Here's an article I wrote as a way to bolster my
reputation. Also, we like hiring people who are musicians, because it worked
well with this one guy."

~~~
moate
Have you ever read Moneyball by Michael Lewis? It's about how a baseball team
in the early 2000's took a look at market inefficiencies and used it to put
together a great team for real cheap. It's like, how is it possible that a
multi-billion dollar league was so unable to figure out their hiring
process/talent assessment? They have reams of performance data and just needed
to apply analysts to it.

Whenever people start talking about the best ways to hire, I generally just
start thinking about Moneyball and game theory and how most people are just
making shit up with no clue why they're succeeding or failing. Every success
story is equal parts "I worked real hard" and "There are far too many
variables/luck for me to ever possibly be able to account for them
objectively" but everyone like to put a narrative on it and be a hero (or cast
someone as a villain).

~~~
asdfman123
Ego gets in the way of data. The hiring process is set up primarily to make
the hiring party feel smart and powerful, so it's hard to break out of that
and realize you don't really know much.

But it's incredible that it's so prevalent in tech, where people are
supposedly so smart and data driven.

~~~
paulriddle
Not only ego. Other people too. Have you tried acting without ego? It might
piss some people off, because it will expose them. Right in their smug faces.
They will see how free you are and then look at themselves and become MAD.

Assuming you can act confident without ego. Most of the time you don't even
have the social skills to put forth an opinion in a charismatic way. Weak
voice, weak body language, stuttering, stumbling over your words, unsteady eye
contact, failure to make people laugh and feel at ease. Bam, you lost. Made
fool of youself. If you have no ego, you learn and carry on. It is difficult
to do.

~~~
asdfman123
Acting with true humility rarely pisses anyone off.

Ego and insecurity are two separate things. You can mask insecurity with a big
ego (and people often do that), but you can also be calm, confident and
assertive sans ego if you're comfortable with yourself.

------
ChuckMcM
While I think hiring for "culture fit" is amorphous it is useful to understand
what sort of cultural mismatches your managers can deal with and which ones
they can't. One of the things that people sometimes miss when managing
managers is that they all have their strengths and weaknesses in the
management domain just like engineers have strengths and weaknesses in their
technical domain. So if you have a manager who hasn't learned to prevent
someone from always taking over the conversation and driving it, you want to
fix that problem before you add someone to their team that tends to do that.

Now if you can fix your managers to be good at integrating diverse teams with
a variety of interaction styles, then you can hire pretty much anybody into
those teams and quality managers will empower them and make them effective.
But when was the last time you had an executive that you knew was focused on
improving the communications effectiveness of their line managers?

The trick is that they (the executives) have to know that the investment will
pay off in better management but unless they have experienced it in action
they won't have the internal understanding to value it versus the performance
management goals they have used their whole career up to that point.

The end result is that when someone hires in that the manager can't handle
they write it off to "bad culture fit" rather than figure out how to fix the
manager and the cycle continues...

------
ewjordan
"What most people really mean when they say someone is a good fit culturally
is that he or she is someone they’d like to have a beer with."

This is never how the companies I've been at treated culture fit interviews.
Maybe I've only been at good companies, but typically we're only screening for
dealbreakers and red flags, and the "culture fit" interview is little more
than a chance to relax the interviewee between grueling tech interviews and
have a low-pressure chance to sell them on the company; if they happen to
offer up an offensive statement or shoot themselves in the foot, then that's
on them.

The only situations where I've seen people cut based on culture fit questions,
they've done something really odd. Comment on an interviewer's looks. Talk
unreasonable shit about current company coworkers or policies, or spill
confidential info. Indicate unwillingness to work with people of certain
political persuasions. Outright racism or sexism. So on.

"Like to have a beer with" is a terrible hiring criteria, even if it might be
useful when playing both internal and external politics. But "I'd never be
willing to tolerate this personality in everyday work interactions" is a very
valid reason to cut someone from consideration, and that should be considered
in every interview.

Almost every toxic coworker I've come in contact with worked on a team that
specifically did tech-only interviews, and didn't take culture into account.
YMMV...

------
cheeze
"Culture fit" to me is more of a "am I going to go nuts working with this
person" rather than "would I get a beer with them"

------
ng12
> He came in for a day of interviews, and everyone loved him.

Is this not culture fit?

~~~
tptacek
It is.

------
rhacker
We definitely hire for affinity and wanting to work on specific technologies.
I've been in a few environments where we get the odd man out and suddenly
there is an Ocaml component that only one guy knows how to run...

------
RayVR
I went through the Netflix hiring process in the summer of 2012. I can assure
you that at that time, the hiring process was identical to nearly every tech
company I’ve ever talked to.

If anything, the interview process for my first job in finance was the most
intense and went on for about six months from introduction to offer.

The truth is that this article is more marketing and self-promotion than
anything else.

------
BadassFractal
Good luck trying to squeeze "how to hire" into 5 small sections like in the
article. It's like "how to get rich in 5 sections" or "how to find your life
partner in 5 sections".

Anybody who's hired for a decade or longer knows how much more nuanced the
dance is.

------
FlipperBucket
> He was working at an Arizona bank, where he was a “programmer,” not a
> “software developer.”

That's an example of nightmarish bureaucracy getting in the way of hiring.
Titles don't mean anything in software development. If you don't know that,
your notions of what to do or not to do are suspect.

> Everyone was arguing until Anthony suddenly said, “Can I speak now?” The
> room went silent

VP or not (lots of software devs that aren't supervisors hold VP titles of
Software Dev in various industry), this is an example of a terrible
communicator who is less creative than autocratic, due to insecurity. Again,
so common an archetype that, the rest of the article feels tainted.

~~~
rsweeney21
Anthony was not a VP when he started. The story she's sharing occurred shortly
after he was hired when he was just an individual contributor.

I worked for Anthony at Netflix. He's one of the smartest people I've met.

Also, Patty was making the exact same point as you on job titles. (Note the
quotes.) Netflix didn't care about your title at all when they came
recruiting.

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trapsta
"Google shouldn’t decide the salaries for everybody just because they have
more money than God!” - lol

------
paulie_a
If a candidate passes the fairly simple technical tests all I care about is
culture fit. And it's a simple test. Would I want to work with them and would
I think my coworkers would (the second being more of a judgement call). I am
generally positive on people so that isn't exactly a high mountain to climb.

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RickJWagner
Yes.

A great company should have an eclectic mix of skin colors, backgrounds,
sexes, etc. Diversity is power. But this also includes diversity of thought--
you should have complete liberals, staunch conservatives, atheists, the
faithful, etc.

You'll need an HR department with a backbone, to ensure everybody understands
the importance of being civil. With great diversity comes great (and wide)
perspective.

~~~
conanbatt
Great diversity fosters great conflict as well. I heard some studies showed
diversity increases productivity but reduces overall happiness.

------
tomp
misleadingly editorialized HN title, but otherwise a great article.

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tptacek
This is a bit of an annoying title since almost none of the article is about
hiring for culture fit; the better title is the current H1 title from the
article: "How To Hire".

~~~
sctb
OK!

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graycat
We shouldn't neglect to mention _If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers_ as
at

[http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa650...](http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa6506e2f35eaac)

And similarly we should not miss the paragraph in the OP:

> We always tried to be creative about probing people and their résumés.
> Bethany once decided to analyze the résumés of our best data-science people
> for common features. She found that those people shared an avid interest in
> music. From then on she and her team looked for that quality. She recalls,
> “We’d get really excited and call out, ‘Hey, I found a guy who plays
> piano!’” She concluded that such people can easily toggle between their left
> and right brains—a great skill for data analysis.

"Music"!!

WOW! On violin I got through the D-major section of the Bach _Chaconne_. Guess
I should have applied to Netflix!!!

Then there is the:

> Say you need a software engineer. Do you want a senior programmer fluent in
> the best new techniques in search engine development?

Hmm .... My work "in search engine development" is based on some original
applied math I derived in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. So, can
Netflix advise me if my work is "in the best new techniques"? Hmm. Who in
Netflix can (A) give an example of an infinite dimensional Hilbert space, (B)
say what the connection with search might be, and (C) review the "best new
techniques"? Hmm ....

But (A) I've written some C code, but regarded it as like digging a ditch with
a teaspoon, (B) never wrote any C++, (C) never touched PHP, (D) never wrote
any JavaScript, (E) never used Linux, (F) used only a little, simple CSS, (G)
never used an IDE (integrated development environment), (H) never used Python,
R, Matlab, etc.

But I've done a LOT of scientific, engineering software with lots of
algorithms, data structures, etc. I've done a lot in applied statistics and
published peer-reviewed original research in mathematical statistics. I hold a
Ph.D. in applied math from a world class research university.

But, no doubt, I couldn't be hired at Netflix!!!!

My one, short, telephone Google interview stopped when I gave the wrong answer
to their question "What is your favorite programming language?"; apparently
the only correct answer was C++; I said PL/I. I'd still say PL/I. How many
recruiters at Google understood the pros and cons of PL/I versus other
languages?

With all this nonsense, as in many posts in this thread, in hiring for
computer programming, I gave up and am doing my own startup.

I picked Windows over Linux. On Windows I picked Visual Basic .NET (apparently
essentially equivalent to C# but with a different flavor of _syntactic sugar_
), type into my favorite text editor, KEdit with a few hundred macros instead
of an IDE, used ASP.NET for the Web pages, used ADO.NET for the SQL Server
access, etc. Works fine.

If I need Python, etc., then I'll learn it and use it. So far, I have all the
software development tools I need.

For SPSS, SAS, R, Matlab, etc., my work in statistics has always been too
advanced for those packages -- so I wrote my own code.

Yup, I wouldn't get hired!!!

Flip side: I should be able to compete well with the people Netflix, etc. do
hire!!!!

If I need to hire for my startup, then I will emphasize first -- technical
writing.

------
myrandomcomment
This. 100%. This is perfect. I just sent it to my CEO.

------
amanaplanacanal
At the last place I worked, the interview process went like this:

Come up with a list of questions. Ask each person the same list in front of a
committee, and the committee members individually scored their answers. Total
the scores, and recommend the highest scoring person for hiring. Then
Management took that recommendation and sometimes did a second round of
interviews.

Did they hire the best people? Sometimes yes, possibly.

It was at least an attempt towards objectivity. Although there certainly was
discussion that "we want to hire somebody that is going to fit on the team."
Of course the problem with this attitude is that it caters to everybody's
built-in biases, leading to exactly the all the gender and other
discriminatory outcomes we typically see in IT.

I don't think anybody really knows how to do hiring.

