Here's What Top Coders Are Saying About Hiring Practices

July 28, 2014 at 6:00 AM by Rob Stevenson

Are your ears burning, recruiters? Because some of the best coders on the internet are talking about you, Screen_Shot_2014-07-27_at_10.56.56_PMpossibly right at this very moment. YCombinator's news aggregator, Hacker News, is chock full of some extremely articulate, talented, and overtly harsh professionals. Most of the content concerns technical developments in the engineering field, but the nature of the users (entrepreneurial spirits, many of them tasked with team building) means that they commonly discuss interview tactics and experiences with recruiters.

Hacker News functions similarly to Reddit, except for a considerably higher bar for content quality, a more complex and restrictive algorithm for determining front page stories, and a limited scope of topics. 

To get a taste for the relevant content and tone of Hacker News, here's a handful of posts illustrating the sort of recruiting and team building issues that are on the minds of top coders. Bear in mind that while the actual content is usually insightful, where you'll probably find the most value is in the comment threads, where experienced programmers take off the gloves and debate the finer points of candidate assessment and what truly makes a great engineer.

 

How to Rip Apart a Programmer's CV

Ask HN: How to fix recruiting from your known groups?

Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice

How We Hire

How I ended up conducting successful tech interviews with just 1 question

 

A word of warning, the comment threads on HN are not for the faint of heart. Having grown tired of the inevitable decline in content that internet communities always experience as they grow, HN has gone to great lengths to ensure they don't suffer the same fate. Part of this attitude is reflected in the no-holds-barred tone of the comments, as users will regularly poke holes in the content of the posts or the comments of others. The bright side is that while users may eviscerate content or deplore the acts of a shoddy recruiter, they usually pair commentary with anecdotal evidence of what's worked for them in the past, or at the very least, how they'd prefer interactions or hiring practices to be managed.

In many comment threads where team building is discussed, users recount stories in which they were assessed via inappropriate or unrelated criteria, explain the sorts of attitudes that make for strong, engaged, productive team members, and pick apart traditional means of qualifying talent. After all, who better to know if someone is truly a strong coder, than a strong coder themself?

What sort of insight have you gleaned from the Hacker News community? Leave a comment or tweet @EnteloRob!

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