<story><title>What is the engineering hiring bar?</title><url>http://blog.interviewing.io/the-eng-hiring-bar-what-the-hell-is-it/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gregdoesit</author><text>The article could be a_lot_ more concise. Here’s what I got out of it as the takeaway:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; And that helps us understand why Recursive Cactus spends so much time practicing. He’s training himself partially because his current company isn’t developing his skills.&lt;p&gt;Exactly. Recursive Calculus wants a better job, (a lot) higher pay, a better environment. So he spends time prepping for this.&lt;p&gt;And companies who can offer all of this, and get a lot of interest already, they are selective, minimising false positives in the hiring process. They expect working code in the coding challenge, a good attitude and some other skills like demonstrating decent systems design. Recursive Calculus also preps so much as his interview process to his current place was different and he _really_ wants to nail these interviews, get a bunch of offers and get into a bidding war before saying bye to his current workplace he’d love to leave for something better.&lt;p&gt;There wasn’t really any actionable thing in this article that I found, or applicable advice. The end.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>The actionable thing is the graph about two thirds of the way down - passthrough rate vs performance.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the whole point of the article. Two possible conclusions:&lt;p&gt;One is that companies are cargo-culting hiring, and have absolutely no idea what they&amp;#x27;re doing. Clearly whatever the process is supposed to do, it&amp;#x27;s not hiring the &amp;quot;best people&amp;quot; by any realistic metric.&lt;p&gt;The other is that the process is working as intended, but the actual goals are not stated. This might be true if the aim is to hiring difficult and stressful for candidates to discourage job hopping. (Other interpretations are also possible. [1])&lt;p&gt;If a company wants the &amp;quot;best people&amp;quot; it needs to follow up hiring with performance tracking, and identify and reward the people and hiring practices which increase performance. [2]&lt;p&gt;If companies want hiring to continue as a social&amp;#x2F;political game which stresses and discourages developers, the system is working for them, and they don&amp;#x27;t need to change it.&lt;p&gt;Startups need to decide what kind of company they want to be. [3]&lt;p&gt;[1] IMO there may be a strong element of corporate narcissism in the process. It&amp;#x27;s not about hiring good people, it&amp;#x27;s about allowing the CEO and senior management to feel that their company is better than those other companies which hire these people. In reality &amp;quot;these people&amp;quot; may be a bit more than averagely competent, but with a few standouts most won&amp;#x27;t be insanely great or A players or 10X or whatever the goal is supposed to be.&lt;p&gt;[2] Which assumes it&amp;#x27;s possible to measure performance, which is a whole other issue.&lt;p&gt;[3] I&amp;#x27;d bet almost anything that in reality there&amp;#x27;s a lot of &amp;quot;Oh, you were working with X at Y? Awesome!&amp;quot; affecting hiring choices in SV.</text></comment>
<story><title>What is the engineering hiring bar?</title><url>http://blog.interviewing.io/the-eng-hiring-bar-what-the-hell-is-it/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gregdoesit</author><text>The article could be a_lot_ more concise. Here’s what I got out of it as the takeaway:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; And that helps us understand why Recursive Cactus spends so much time practicing. He’s training himself partially because his current company isn’t developing his skills.&lt;p&gt;Exactly. Recursive Calculus wants a better job, (a lot) higher pay, a better environment. So he spends time prepping for this.&lt;p&gt;And companies who can offer all of this, and get a lot of interest already, they are selective, minimising false positives in the hiring process. They expect working code in the coding challenge, a good attitude and some other skills like demonstrating decent systems design. Recursive Calculus also preps so much as his interview process to his current place was different and he _really_ wants to nail these interviews, get a bunch of offers and get into a bidding war before saying bye to his current workplace he’d love to leave for something better.&lt;p&gt;There wasn’t really any actionable thing in this article that I found, or applicable advice. The end.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>commandlinefan</author><text>It seems like a lot of these discussions end up being something along the lines of &amp;quot;the standards are bad because they exclude me, therefore there shouldn&amp;#x27;t be any standards at all&amp;quot; (just with a lot more words).</text></comment>