<story><title>How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire</title><url>http://brookeallen.com/pages/archives/1234</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JeremyMorgan</author><text>The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever since.&lt;p&gt;But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s just a new era, but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding challenge. He got these folks who were willing to learn something, and build and spend DAYS on it? It&amp;#x27;s awesome but it seems unlikely these days.&lt;p&gt;Taking that kind of time to choose the right person, then helping the other people network with other APL folks... that just spreads good vibes all around. I would like to see the &amp;quot;care more&amp;quot; trend spread in our industry. Even now with a programmer shortage companies are still unicorn hunting and making people jump through stupid hoops for jobs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>NoMoreNicksLeft</author><text>About 5 years ago, I moved to another city across the country to work for a small startup. The city was small, candidates were few locally, and maybe fewer still wanting to move there (Lubbock, but my inlaws are nearby, and I liked the idea of my kids getting to see their grandparents).&lt;p&gt;It was the funnest job I ever had, moreso than I could describe. I was hired on as a web developer, but about 3 weeks in they started asking me to help work on firmware written in C for pic microcontrollers. Soon after that, they asked me if I thought I could produce comparable products with commodity hardware, and I found myself trying to write linux drivers for a packet radio (the usb development kit that the chip maker sells... but only provides Windows drivers for).&lt;p&gt;A few weeks in, I had that working. With a dozen other projects on the backburner too, all of them interesting and challenging. They were buying whatever hardware I said I needed, and if I ordered something that turned out to not be so useful, no one ever complained.&lt;p&gt;It was easy to be excited doing all of this. So of course the day after I managed to get a working prototype of the biggest challenge yet, I was shitcanned. Startups run out of money.&lt;p&gt;Now I write stupid web apps for a university. They pay me better ($20,000 more a year, not including benefits, probably more like $35,000 more with those). But it&amp;#x27;s boring as hell. And it&amp;#x27;s not the university&amp;#x27;s fault. The world needs alot of boring stuff to keep running.&lt;p&gt;My point is, if you&amp;#x27;ve found alot of enthusiastic people, it&amp;#x27;s not your HR department&amp;#x27;s competence that gets the credit. It&amp;#x27;s not really those people&amp;#x27;s credit either. You just have a rare job that&amp;#x27;s actually fun.</text></comment>
<story><title>How my life was changed when I began caring about the people I did not hire</title><url>http://brookeallen.com/pages/archives/1234</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>JeremyMorgan</author><text>The first time I got a front page link to my site on HN, it did this exact same thing, which prompted me to move away from Wordpress. Static HTML ever since.&lt;p&gt;But to comment on the article, I think this is a fantastic idea. I do wonder though how he found so many enthusiastic people. Maybe it&amp;#x27;s just a new era, but I have a hard time finding people who even want to do a 1 hour coding challenge. He got these folks who were willing to learn something, and build and spend DAYS on it? It&amp;#x27;s awesome but it seems unlikely these days.&lt;p&gt;Taking that kind of time to choose the right person, then helping the other people network with other APL folks... that just spreads good vibes all around. I would like to see the &amp;quot;care more&amp;quot; trend spread in our industry. Even now with a programmer shortage companies are still unicorn hunting and making people jump through stupid hoops for jobs.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vonmoltke</author><text>&amp;gt; Even now with a programmer shortage companies are still unicorn hunting and making people jump through stupid hoops for jobs.&lt;p&gt;What&amp;#x27;s worse is the companies who try to defend their unicorn hunts when called on it.</text></comment>