Re:Tell HN: A note of gratitude to the people providing answ...
by ttymck on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @01:34AM
(#40294687)
> There's big upside to getting it right
This is an oft-cited assumption that I would challenge. Is there really that much upside, or is it just wishful thinking? Surely, if you hired Steve Jobs, they might take your company to unprecedented heights. But would Steve Jobs stick around as a senior engineer at some random company? Would you listen to his ideas? You need to hire to someone to a job, there is likely innumerable people who could do it satisfactorily.
Surely the downside to getting it wrong is high, no disputing that. But unicorns are fantasies for a reason.
Re:Tell HN: A note of gratitude to the people providing answ...
by bruce511 on Wednesday May 08, 2024 @11:45AM
(#40299440)
I'm not looking for unicorns as-such. Sure you do get them, and we have a few, but it's not like every time we go to market we're looking for unicorns.
It's more that getting people who fit our culture, who "get" our approach to business, who get on with their co-workers, who are going to hang around for a while, who are willing to learn.
Getting hired is hard. Between the qualifications, experience, leetcode nonsense, low barrier to entry, and the sheer number of unemployed floating around, its hard to stand out (in a good way.)
Both sides hate the system. Good people go unnoticed. Bad people end up wasting time and resources.
I'm not sure 'randomness' is the answer (especially if you're the best person for the job but you are beaten out by random-bad-luck.)
That said there's already a lot of randomness in the system. We often have a post that could easily be filled by 3 or 4 candidates. But we only need 1. At that point there's some psuedo-randomness involved - a decision has to be made and a bunch of perfectly capable people will be disappointed.