Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lsc | Hacker News Reader

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But the all-day interviews have the same problem. I interviewed at some startup in SF...

I mean, this was me looking for my "job with low standards" so I was going through recruiters, right? That's how you get a job with low standards. You put your resume on dice and include a phone number. Answer the phone. Wade through all the bullshit jobs that have nothing to do with your skill-set. Find jobs you could reasonably do, and say yes to the interviews.

In my experience, this means that I'm competing, mostly, with people that don't have other options... people that can't get jobs through people they know, because they just aren't that good. For a lot of complex reasons, well, that's exactly what I needed at the time.

I negotiate with the recruiter and $150K is within their range. I mean, I'm... not 100%, right? lowered expectations. So I should be looking for less. But I've never had any problem asking for too much; at worst, they laugh and offer me something lower, right?

Anyhow, so I show up at this place and they grill me for the usual 8 hours. I mean, it's not too unpleasant; there's beer and food and everything you expect, and they seem to be really into me. The guy who is going to be my boss gives me his email and tells me to send him an email so he can get things started over the weekend.

The business guy is, well, he's a business guy, but everyone else seems like people I could work with; people I'd get along with, and the skill level was right in there; even in my reduced capacity, I wouldn't be holding the team back.

At the end of the interview, they ask what I'm looking for, money-wise. Now, like I said, I negotiated this with the recruiter, so I said $150K, but I noted I could probably be talked down some, and I mentioned a lower sum, one a friend who has worked for me for most of his career recently got.

The mood immediately changed. We said our goodbyes, and I left. I did email the boss, but total radio silence.

I never heard from these people again. I eventually got the recruiter to tell me they didn't want me, but...

Personally, I'd be less pissed I spent 20 minutes on a coding problem for them at home and then didn't hear about it.

I can relate to this comment and the others that replied to my original. I guess my overall view is that far too much time is wasted and it is mostly preventable. As a senior developer I have a detailed LinkedIn profile, a few recommendations, some side businesses and startups I have been involved in, a portfolio website showing off websites and apps I've built, a tech focused blog, a GitHub and a Stack Overflow. Right there if you just spent 15 minutes reviewing my profile you should have a pretty good picture of who I am and what I am capable of. If you need to see a 3 hour coding exam and have 8 hours of interviews on top of that I think you are just not decisive. I think a lot of it is people rationalizing with themselves that having gone through a "thorough" interview process of tons of candidates and lots of time that they somehow found the best candidate when it's a lot of noise IMO.

Yeah.

My favorite method, really, on both ends of the fence? Just hire the person and start them working, for pay, with the understanding that this is still an evaluation type deal. If it doesn't work out? if I'm the one being evaluated, at least I got paid for the time. If I'm doing the evaluating, seeing some one actually work is a way better indicator of, well, how well they work than anything else.

The problem with this method is that it doesn't work if you are trying to hire someone that values stability away from a stable job. You are limited to people that are unemployed or that don't value stability.

This can work well if the person currently functions as a freelance consultant or is unemployed but has worked as a consultant in the past. Also, ideally you have a specific small project for them to work on. Finally, you have to be able to pay them the market rate. If all of that fits (rare) then it's a great choice.

> This can work well if the person currently functions as a freelance consultant or is unemployed but has worked as a consultant in the past.

Sure, that's a lot like what I was getting at with the whole valuing stability thing. It can also work if the person being hired is having a hard time finding a job.

>Also, ideally you have a specific small project for them to work on.

Actually giving them a project, you know, meeting the legal definition for "contractors" is super rare, at least on the middle where I work. I do see it happen, but it's usually those "10x" programmers who get those jobs. Or it's jobs working for poor companies that pay very little.

In the middle, you find people like me, usually working through corporations (or in my case, whole chains of corporations) that end up paying the contractor on a W2... the idea being that the irs is less likely to reclassify the kid if someone is paying payroll taxes somewhere - because the work does not make the legal definition of contractor.

As an aside, I think most of this shell game isn't about legal liability; it's about making it clear to the other employees who is a temp and who isn't. From a legal perspective, compared to what you pay a body shop, firing someone just isn't that expensive. My belief is that the major cost in firing someone that is performing okay is in morale of your remaining employees. firing your contractors first allows you to have the flexibility to fire someone without making your full time folk feel like they might be next.

>Finally, you have to be able to pay them the market rate. If all of that fits (rare) then it's a great choice.

See, it's not rare, and it happens at all pay grades. Different pay grades have different rituals and ways of arranging things, though. Right now I'm working as a "contractor" - I'm going through some shady body shop, but I actually sit at a desk in the office and eat the free food with the employees. They pay okay, and the expectation they set was that I'll be a contractor for a year, I mean, assuming things work out, and then if we like oneanother, they'll hire me full time at the end of the year.

That kind of arrangement is really common in this industry when the economy is good. They need people now, and I can be a person now, and if they like me, well, that's an easy hire. If they don't like me, or if market conditions change before the year is out, they can let me go without damaging employee morale as much as firing a full-timer. (similar arrangements, with less emphasis on you becoming a full-timer at the end are common when the economy is bad.)

I like it 'cause I'm going through a company that I mostly own, and it gets a bunch of money corp to corp which I can use to pay my people to see if my business can get off the ground, (it pays me, too, on a W2, and buys me mediocre health insurance) and if at the end of the year, it does take off, well, I quit, and hey I was a contractor, right? that was the deal. and if my business doesn't take off, I've got a foot in the door at a decent big company where I might want to actually work for a few years, you know, put something on my resume besides abject failure.

But, as far as I can tell, this arrangement is super common. Actually going through a corporation you own part of is less common, but not unheard of.

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