| ▲ | jakubmazanec 2 days ago |
| The problem isn't AI, the problem is companies don't know how to properly select between candidates, and they don't apply even the basics of Psychometrics. Do they do item analysis of their custom coding tests? Do they analyse the new hires' performances and relate them to their interview scores? I seriously doubt it. Also, the best (albeit the most expensive) selection process is simply letting the new person to do the actual work for a few weeks. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometrics |
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| ▲ | michpoch 2 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Also, the best (albeit the most expensive) selection process is simply letting the new person to do the actual work for a few weeks. What kind of desperate candidate would agree to that? Also, what do you expect to see from the person in a few weeks? Usual onboarding (company + project) will take like 2-3 months before a person is efficient. |
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| ▲ | jakubmazanec 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Candidate would be compensated, obviously. That's why it's expensive. You don't need him to become efficient. Also I don't think it is always necessary to have such long onboarding. I'll never understand why a new hire (at least in senior position) can't start contributing after a week. | | |
| ▲ | michpoch 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Candidate would be compensated, obviously. That's why it's expensive Ok... take me through it. I apply to your company and after a short call you offer me to spend 4 weeks working at your place instead of an interview. I go back to my employer, give them resignation letter, work the rest of my notice period (2 months - 3 months), working on all handovers, saying goodbyes. Unless the idea is to compensate me for the risk (I guess at least 6 months salary, probably more), then I do not see how you'd get anyone who is just a poor candidate to sign up for this. > You don't need him to become efficient So what will you see? Efficiency, being independent and being a good team player are the main things that are difficult to test during a regular interview. | |
| ▲ | askonomm 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And so that self-selects for people who already are unemployed then, right? Most developers I know (including myself) look for a new job while still having a job, as to not create a financial hole in-between. I'd be curious if that doesn't then end up with lower quality candidates who ended up unemployed to begin with? | | |
| ▲ | noirbot 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | And, additionally, it encourages your candidates to still be interviewing while they're on their probationary period with you, since they may be back to unemployed after 4 weeks or whatever. Which creates even more potential issues if they get a much better offer while they're onboarding with you. | |
| ▲ | jakubmazanec 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > self-selects for people who already are unemployed then You can say that about all forms of hiring process. If you're unemployed, you obviously have more time: to spend more time on the take-home assignments (which I hate, see another thread [1]), to add more stuff to your GitHub profile, to go to more interviews, etc. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40200397 | | |
| ▲ | michpoch 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > You can say that about all forms of hiring process Yes, but there's a significant difference between spending a few hours on a take-home assignment and dropping your current employment to spend 4 weeks potentially in another city working full time. | | |
| ▲ | jakubmazanec 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Well, I didn't say it was super practical approach, only that it has the best predictive validity :D |
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| ▲ | noirbot 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'd argue the bigger expense is on the team having to onboard what could potentially be a revolving door of temporary hires. Getting a new engineer to the point where they understand how things work and the specific weirdness of the company and its patterns is a pretty big effort at anywhere I've worked. | |
| ▲ | michpoch 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > can't start contributing after a week. Because you have zero context of what the org is working on. |
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| ▲ | Tade0 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If you work with Boring Technology, your onboarding process has no reason to be longer than a week, unless you're trying to make the non-tech parts of the role too interesting. | | |
| ▲ | michpoch 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > unless you're trying to make the non-tech parts of the role too interesting. Unless your role is trivial to replace with an LLM, you need to understand the business. Maybe not for really junior role, but everything above - you need to solve issues. Tech is just a tool. | | |
| ▲ | Tade0 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You don't have to understand the entire business to start being productive. Particularly when you have experience from other, similar businesses. | | |
| ▲ | michpoch 2 days ago | parent [-] | | I am not sure I follow - when you hire you search for someone who has 100% coverage of the tech you're using and also already works for your direct competitor? Let's say you're hiring manager for a company that compares flight tickets, something similar to Google Flights or Skyscanner. You need three additional Rust engineers. You're located in Palermo, Italy. How do you hire people that would not only know Rust, be willing to move to Palermo, or at least visit occasionally, but also know the airfare business? Even if you're willing to have people remotely, in the same region, how many unemployed Rust developers that know that business are on the market? 0? | | |
| ▲ | Tade0 a day ago | parent [-] | | > when you hire you search for someone who has 100% coverage of the tech you're using and also already works for your direct competitor? Ideally, yes. It's a common occurrence among large organisations. Google and Apple used to even have an anti-poaching agreement. > How do you hire people that would not only know Rust, be willing to move to Palermo, or at least visit occasionally, but also know the airfare business? Rust isn't Boring, which is why you don't do that and hire one of many Java developers and do Java, unless the tradeoff is really worth it. |
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| ▲ | datadrivenangel 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| How do you control for confounders and small data? For data size, if you're a medium-ish company, you may only hire a few engineers a year (1000 person company, 5% SWE staff, 20% turnover annually = 10 new engineers hired per year), so the numbers will be small and a correlation will be potentially weak/noisy. For confounders, a bad manager or atypical context may cause a great engineer to 'perform' poorly and leave early. Human factors are big. |
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| ▲ | jakubmazanec 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Sure, psychological research is hard because of this, but that's not what I'm proposing - I'm talking about just having some data on predictive validity of the hiring process. If there's some coding test: is it reliable and valid? Aren't some items redundant because they're too easy or too hard? Which items have the best discrimination parameter? How the total scores correlate with e.g. length of the test takers tenures? Sure, the confidence intervals will be wide, but it doesn't matter, even noisy data are better than no data. Maybe some companies already do this, but I didn't see it (though my sample is small). |
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| ▲ | kagakuninja 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Might as well use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-meter |
