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Comment by normal_man | Hacker News Reader

This guy probably got a negative reaction because he says "hiring is broken", when what he meant was "my strategy for getting hired is broken." The goal of "hiring" is for companies to satisfy their needs, not to guarantee that every smart person that comes their way gets a job. A "hiring is broken" article coming from the position of a hiring manager would carry more weight.

Also I've never heard of this guy, not sure his handful of Medium articles and cookie-cutter tutorials is sufficient justification for his belief that Google should be lucky to talk to him.

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I've had a 100% success rate at getting an offer once I realized the problem was me. (And I've had some bad interviews in my life before I got there, for sure.)

If the company doesn't extend an offer, it's because I didn't show them the value I can deliver their organization. Either I didn't present myself as a teammate that makes the group stronger or I didn't present the technical skills to make them realize the talent I bring individually.

Maybe I'm lucky -- it's a low sample size.

But I suspect that we all can do better at interviewing and at selling ourselves. Traditionally, that's a weakness in engineers.

It's also why, when I'm interviewing, I try to remind applicants what I need: give me something, anything I can use to sell you to my manager -- to argue "yeah, this cool guy is the right business choice". Help me help you. If you can't, you won't get hired.

You are lucky, it's always possible to fully show the value one can deliver but for there to be another candidate who they decide will deliver more value.

I agree that it's common for interviewees to sell themselves well.

have you read his code ? make a judgement after you have. be empathetic.

No, and I guess I could. But why should I? More importantly, why should/would a prospective employer?

Why interview anyone then? Pick a resume out of a hat and hire that candidate.

Are you asking why someone - who is hiring a programmer, would want to read the code that a candidate might have written? Because it gives a good idea of the coding style, technique, ability to tackle problems, and put together a solution, and ship that solution, all of which are very pertinent when hiring a programer.

Because obviously, you spent time to judge the guy by his "cookie-cutter tutorials", if you are really good judge of a coder, you would judge the coder by the code. Not by tutorials he writes.

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