News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The Engineer Crunch by tptacek on Tuesday February 18, 2014 @02:08PM (#7260279)
That's true but a sloppy way to say it. A more precise way to characterize his argument is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Then: is it an extraordinary claim to suggest that the hiring processes used by most tech companies are doing a bad job of selecting candidates? Are engineers hired through these processes but then fired within the first 6-9 months a rarity? Is turnover generally low? Is hiring so risky that companies working in the middle of a "talent crunch" are demanding that candidates take temporary contracting roles so they can evaluate performance? Is the typical startup engineering team staffed by engineers uniformly capable of production? Are tech company hiring practices carefully designed and executed, or is it more the norm that they're delivered by whatever engineers happen to be available for candidates when they show up? If the latter is the case, isn't it instead an extraordinary claim to suggest that these processes could work at all, given that they're essentially stochastic?

Re:The Engineer Crunch by abc_lisper on Tuesday February 18, 2014 @03:19PM (#7260762)
> Is hiring so risky that companies working in the middle of a "talent crunch" are demanding that candidates take temporary contracting roles so they can evaluate performance

Heh. Somebody had to say this. I don't know what the difficulty is all about. In the SV I have been more to more than 1 interview where I solved all the questions(in a day long interview) and didn't get the job.

Not sure what the high bar is all about.