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Comment by devit | Hacker News Reader

They are saying that FAANG can hire just on generic skill because they are large and can probably find some way to use anyone smart and can afford wasting money on unproductive employees, while they (and startups in general) need people to fill specific needs so they select for the specific need instead of generic skills and they don't have money to waste so they try harder to not make mistakes.

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Yep. You could replace FAANG with, say, a large aerospace company. If someone graduated from a good school with an appropriate degree and (possibly) has some relevant work experience, they'll [ADDED: most likely] be fine. Or at least fine enough. Way back when I even got an offer from one such on the basis of a resume and generic cover letter. No phone screen. They didn't even care if I came in for an on-site interview or not.

Smaller organizations can't afford to just play a numbers game and bank on hires being good enough to fit in somewhere.

Generally agree with your characterization. IMHO, It's not even about absorbing unproductive employees, just that there are arguably ways arguably harder to make an employee productive in a startup environment.

Sure, but why start off by trying to seem nice? Can only assume they've been wasting time interviewing people likely to be fooled by that level of bs. Or is it that they don't have a clear view of what level bs is required to fool people? Either way it shows a reliance on bs and some flavour of incompetence.

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