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he's a really talented engineer, crushed our interviews. the funny thing was that he actually had multiple companies on his linkedin at the same time, including
by dazzeloid 1y ago
he's a really talented engineer, crushed our interviews. the funny thing was that he actually had multiple companies on his linkedin at the same time, including ours. we just thought they must have been internships or something and he never updated them (he felt a bit chaotic). but then it turned out he was working at all of them simultaneously.
worked for us for almost a year and did a solid job (we also let him go when we discovered the multiple jobs)
- robswc 1y agoDid he just lie and say he wasn't working at those places? Or did the question never come up? When I used to interview I always had to check a box that said I wasn't currently employed, or they would ask at some point.
- dazzeloid 1y agofunny thing was he had other places on his linkedin under "active employment" but we never really dug into it (until we learned he was full-time there) because he just seemed like the kind of person who wouldn't keep his LinkedIn up to date.
- the_real_cher 1y agoWhy would you let him go if he was doing a solid job?
- deepsun 1y agoSometimes it's NDA. Depends on what company does, but it's hard to imagine a product that does not compete with e.g. Google.
- avmich 1y agoYeah, this looks like a cargo culting. Don't need work, need the guy to belong only to them...
- cududa 1y agoIt’s called team building. You can believe in it or not. You can join a company that values that, or not.
- the_real_cher 1y agoWhere is the line between team and cult? Cults are a subset of teams.
- drewcoo 1y ago> Where is the line between team and cult? Typically employers pay you and cults don't.
- the_real_cher 1y agoCults can provide food, housing, and pay.(scientology employs alot of its members)
- skeeter2020 1y agoWhy do you need to draw a line? Can there be good cults and bad teams? Both have implicit contracts, and a contract requires consideration on both sides. The parties define the value of the consideration, so you can have a junior cult member who feels they are getting good value for what they pay, or a SW dev at an insurance company who feels they don't. I also don't see much difference in your ability to affect your situation if you are unhappy with the current state.
- the_real_cher 1y agoThe whole idea of a cult is negative. Its like saying why cant there be good shark attacks on surfers. Defining traits of cults are that they try to brainwash you, destroy your identity and replace it with one the cult approves of. This can happen to various degrees of severity.
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- Aurornis 1y agoWhen we had an OE person they could do good work if you gave them a lot of time, but getting them to communicate and be present with the team was hell. You had to always be tracking them down, getting them to respond, and working any meetings (which we had few of) into some narrow time slot where they were available. It also drags everyone else down. The team figures out what's going on. They get tired of adjusting their communication around the one person who's always distracted and doing something else. Basically, it turns into a lot of work for everyone else to get work out of the OE person. Like they can do good work, but they're going to make everyone else work hard to extract it from them because they're busy juggling multiple jobs. All of the Soham stories I've read today have been the same: Good work when he was working, but he was caught because he wasn't working much.
- pwthornton 1y agoYes. He could do solid work when you narrowly define it but he probably sank the productivity and morale of people he was working with. Individual performance doesn’t matter. Team performance does. All of this work to find 10x engineers is meaningless if they can’t raise the output of the team itself. People can make their teams better (sometimes with elite communication skills instead of technical), but we should be focusing more on building 10x teams, not trying to find unicorns.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- dazzeloid 1y agotrust. he was not forthcoming when confronted with the "this other company says you are full-time and just went to their offsite - is that true?"
- nickip 1y agoHow was he talented? All the stories are the same. "Talented" etc. But then it leads to he never did any work. How can you assess his talent?
- FootballBat 1y agoAll I hear is "really good at interviewing."
- thepasswordis 1y agoThe people assessing his talent are falling for the same delusion as the people conducting the interview.
- dragonwriter 1y agoIf passing their interviews isn't the same as being a good developer, then those people have to not only admit that the people they hire may not be good at the jobs they are hired for but they themselves aren't good at the job they sell themselves as doing. It's obviously easiest to accept an explanation that doesn't require them to reach that conclusion.
- skeeter2020 1y agoin fairness to some interview processes there are ways you could legit pass a valid interview and then short change the job. We do a problem scenario / proposed solution that's shared a few days in advance. Good candidates (and good frauds) can ace this with strong technical skills, relevant experience and maybe an hour or so of prep time. We'd take this as strong signal, because (and I'd hope more companies do this) we're optimizing for talented candidates, not minimizing people who are going to work multiple concurrent jobs.
- georgemcbay 1y ago> but they themselves aren't good at the job they sell themselves as doing. In my opinion and experience, being a competent developer and being a good interviewer are even less related than being a competent developer and being a good interviewee (and the latter are already very unrelated).
- nyarlathotep_ 1y ago> he's a really talented engineer, crushed our interviews. Think it says a lot about this industry if "really talented 'engineer'" means passing loads of gamified interviews and not delivering things on time.
- StackRanker3000 1y agoBut the person you’re responding to said he did a solid job for almost a year.
- pwthornton 1y agoThat’s pretty faint praise.
- dazzeloid 1y agoHe was a solid middle of the pack contributor on net, but it was clear he was way stronger than his net output just from interactions with him (he had great products ideas, clear technical understanding of many areas, etc).
- pwthornton 1y agoIt seems to me a really talented engineer would deliver more than solid work, no?
- mock-possum 1y agoWhy bother, when you get the paid the same regardless? I don’t know the guy, but I feel like a lot of people are missing this angle - just because you’re technically capable, doesn’t mean you’re actually motivated or that you actually bother to deliver. You can also be lazy and just collect your check.
- ManlyBread 1y agoThis is my experience for the past 10 years I've been working in the industry. As soon as someone finds out I am more capable at something than the rest of the colleagues on the team I get to do all the work in that area yet receive nothing in return. Every time I tried to bring something up as an example of doing something more my achievements were downplayed as part of the regular duties or my mistakes were put on the pedestal instead. There were also calls to do more, even though I already was doing more than the average programmer on the project. Nothing was ever enough. In my current job I aimed to be painfully average at everything I do and so far I haven't seen any difference. I still get the same reviews I was getting all these years and the salary increases are still as mediocre as the ones I was getting when I was trying my best. My only fear is that this strategy might lead to complete stagnation. I am already bored out of my mind and I would switch jobs in a heartbeat, but I can't currently do that due to variety of reasons.