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0 pointsmidasz2y ago0 comments

I'm going to defend this method of hiring a little bit. To me, having at least a bachelor of IT already proves you have software engineering skills. The coding tests are just a quick check if you haven't lied or anything. The first month is trial basis anyway (both ways) so if the candidate is not on-par technically it's a quick goodbye.

I don't care about parties either but if I'm going to have to work with you I need to know you fit in a little, creating software is collaborative. In real life, in real companies you are not solving leetcode problems all the time - so why hire based on that? Person A is super intelligent but abrasive and person B is half as smart but super easy to work with. 100% of the time I pick person B.

> having awareness of software principles is really worthless

This is nonsense, you are already expected to know this

> I've seen files with 13k lines of if/else/switch, how do you test that shit .-.

I've seen those too, but don't pretend that's unique to a specific country. There are shitty software developers everywhere.

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4 comments · 3 top-level

saiya-jin2y ago· 1 in thread

Yeah this is typical junior code ninja opinion. Folks with 20+ years under our belts know damn too well how humane aspect is more important than literally anything in long term.

My wife for example is a doctor. They have cabinets of 4 GP, 1 of them as we found out is a proper sociopath with very unstable personality when things are not perfect. He is driving whole cabinet which employs 10 people to the ground very effectively, wife is running away and hoping it will collapse only after she got out legally. If it wasn't for psycho moves of this guy that cabinet would thrive. While he is consistently being reported as a great doctor by his patients. She is moving into another cabinet where head of it understood it extremely well, and is super picky about people from personality perspective.

People here on HN love stories about experts saving the world, they as experts see themselves in that position. In real life, thats hardly ever the case, most long term problems come from people and not how you solve technical challenges. Once you covered this by far the most important aspect, then of course professional excellence is next step. Never make the mistake of changing the order of those 2, ever.

hef198982y ago

Completely agree. And as someone who didn't fit culturally as often as I did fit, this is a two way street (ignoring the very extreme ends of the spectrum).

Having a brilliant misfit at the wrong position can tank a team.

AlexeyBelov2y ago

You interpreted the interview in the most charitable way, and the commenter in the least charitable way. Why do you think they are possibly abrasive? Why do you think asking about Friday night parties, drinking alcohol or swearing (happened to me) is a high-value signal?

Lets assume we are talking about a reasonable candidate with good social skills, and a higher-than-average tech skills (that would be a charitable interpretation of the original comment).

seec2y ago

You chose social convenience and niceties over quality work. That’s fine for an established company with secure revenue but in the long run it’s not going anywhere. If the less nice but more competent people gets hired by one of your competitors you basically provided the ammo to kill your business. But I guess whatever, most of the timer hiring managers are found in companies who stopped evolving.

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