Re:Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
by lifeisstillgood on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @07:46AM
(#5478719)
Thank you for that anti-myth - good developers never need to look for jobs
Re:Dear HN "Who's Hiring" responders
by michaelochurch on Tuesday April 02, 2013 @07:58AM
(#5478761)
It's an excuse to read resumes with the Bozo Bit in the "on" position; if he were any good, he'd have found a way around the HR wall and into a channel that actually works. In which case, why read them at all? Oh, because it's something to do while drawing a monthly salary for it.
The reason for the Resume Blizzard is that it's free to send one. It also gives companies the right to indulge in the myth that they're hyperselective because "we only give an offer to 1 in 500 candidates". It's technically true, because 485 of those were resumes merely scanned for some bullshit reason to reject (e.g. last job was too long/short, state undergrad, lack of buzzwords).
Here's an idea that I had: an online-ed website where you get credits for completing coursework, and sending a resume has a non-zero cost in credits (which is refunded if unopened). It's the best way that I can come up with to make front doors work again.
The first part of the story is convexity, also known as the "10x phenomenon": http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/gervais-macle... . This is generally a good thing, but it's bad in the context of rapid scaling (which is what most VC-funded startups are trying to do) because convexity creates a need to fill specialized job queries fast. In a saner world, companies could hire a generally smart person and give her 6 months to train up. Most VC-funded startups either can't afford that, or don't think they can. They want "plug and play" and that necessitates purple squirrel queries, which creates a job market that leaves them just as unhappy as employees.
It sucks for both sides, but the upshot is that when you get a job, you're generally paid well (perhaps to compensate for the wonky purple-squirrel queries, companies going out of existence, and high turnover).
Incidentally, as bad as our job search latency is, I think it's worse for regular managers at the same pay level. In managerland, the going assumption is that it takes 1 month to find a new job per $20k; for us, it seems to be 1 week per $20k if actively searching. The biggest mess for us is the stereotype that makes active searching dishonorable because "good developers never look for jobs" (which isn't true).