<story><title>My dad&apos;s resume and skills from 1980</title><url>https://github.com/runvnc/dadsresume</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dkurth</author><text>As Seymour Cray said, &amp;quot;The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it&amp;#x27;s too late.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It can be months (at a high salary) before you really know whether a hire is likely to work out.  I think it makes sense to invest more effort in screening applicants in this case.</text></item><item><author>zackmorris</author><text>If the minimalist resume is appealing, can we also bring back walk-on hiring?&lt;p&gt;In warehouse and construction work, if someone shows up at 7:30 AM on a Monday morning, odds are quite good that the foreman will have something for them to do. Maybe not that day, but maybe tomorrow, or maybe someone on the list above them won&amp;#x27;t show up that week and they&amp;#x27;ll get called. I made rent doing that in my early 20s and they even let me leave early sometimes to work on my internet business because I didn&amp;#x27;t have a family to support and maybe someone else had a bill they needed to pay and wanted my shift.&lt;p&gt;Why again does boutique startup need to interview 500 overqualified people? Hire someone right away and let them quit if they want to and hire someone else. It&amp;#x27;s just business for crying out loud.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>indymike</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve hired hundreds of developers over three decades, and this is completely wrong:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; It can be months (at a high salary) before you really know whether a hire is likely to work out.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s only that way if you make it take that long. You should know if you have a good programmer 2-3 weeks after the hire. Here a couple things that make making great hires hard:&lt;p&gt;* Making it difficult to learn and understand your system.&lt;p&gt;* Having slow and expensive employee onboarding. I&amp;#x27;ve seen companies spend $3-4K (not including the actual laptop) just getting a laptop to a new employee after IT gets done with it. If it&amp;#x27;s super-expensive to make a hire, the incentive will be to keep people that aren&amp;#x27;t getting the job done.&lt;p&gt;* Not looking at work output for extended periods. In short give new people tickets that can be done in a few days at most so you are able to look at work output in six days instead of measuring at six months.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I think it makes sense to invest more effort in screening applicants in this case&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s only so much you can really screen before error in your hiring process exceeds 50%.  Every step you add to a screening process has an error rate, and some are very subjective and error prone. The more screening you do, the slower you go, and honestly, the worst candidates you have to pick from. Why? Because a good programmer will be on the job market for 1-14 days (I&amp;#x27;m not saying you are bad if it takes you longer to get hired, it&amp;#x27;s just what we&amp;#x27;re seeing in our recruiting software right now).</text></comment>
<story><title>My dad&apos;s resume and skills from 1980</title><url>https://github.com/runvnc/dadsresume</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dkurth</author><text>As Seymour Cray said, &amp;quot;The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it&amp;#x27;s too late.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It can be months (at a high salary) before you really know whether a hire is likely to work out.  I think it makes sense to invest more effort in screening applicants in this case.</text></item><item><author>zackmorris</author><text>If the minimalist resume is appealing, can we also bring back walk-on hiring?&lt;p&gt;In warehouse and construction work, if someone shows up at 7:30 AM on a Monday morning, odds are quite good that the foreman will have something for them to do. Maybe not that day, but maybe tomorrow, or maybe someone on the list above them won&amp;#x27;t show up that week and they&amp;#x27;ll get called. I made rent doing that in my early 20s and they even let me leave early sometimes to work on my internet business because I didn&amp;#x27;t have a family to support and maybe someone else had a bill they needed to pay and wanted my shift.&lt;p&gt;Why again does boutique startup need to interview 500 overqualified people? Hire someone right away and let them quit if they want to and hire someone else. It&amp;#x27;s just business for crying out loud.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CamperBob2</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s an awesome saying -- I&amp;#x27;m surprised I&amp;#x27;ve never heard it.  It remains true after a LOT of mutation.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it&amp;#x27;s too late.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The trouble with programmers is that you can never tell what a program is doing until it&amp;#x27;s too late.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The trouble with programs is that you can never tell what a programmer is doing until it&amp;#x27;s too late.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The trouble with programs is that you can never tell what a program is doing until it&amp;#x27;s too late.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>