19 ms·

Joblint: test tech jobs for sexism, culture, expectations, and recruiter fails

212 points by rowanmanning 13y ago

eksith 13y ago
The bubble rules are definitely in order : https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule/bubble.js https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule... I'd argue that the var temptations array is applicable to the "bro-culture" rules as well. It's good there's one for tech : https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule/tech.js https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule... For the life of me, I never understood why any mention of an editor was even necessary most of the time. If there's a local copy of the codebase you're working on, how in the world does that have any bearing on what someone else on the same project is using? If it's major, that's what source control is for. If it's minor and nitpicky (I.E. tabs vs. spaces) plenty of editors can be configured for substitution on whatever standard that's adopted.
- rowanmanning 13y ago
  Thanks, and you're probably right about some temptations being applicable to bro culture. On mentioning editors, I like your explanation of why it's not good. I'm intending on writing a list of explanations for each rule at some point so it's useful to get other people's opinion on them.
  - eksith 13y ago
    Thanks for putting this together. This is one of those nice projects that does more than just solve a problem or acts as a tool; it forces the user to think. Overall, I hope this project goes toward helping people understand the thought process that gives rise to the "job lint" in the first place rather than just fixing the "lint". Eventually, they should learn to act as testers themselves and your explanations on why those lists exist as they are will definitely help.
- calpaterson 13y ago
  The caveat is that if a team does pair programming, it's helpful that everyone is ok with using the same editor. Worth mentioning that fact in a job advert so people know before they interview.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    Good point, pair programming, XP, agile, and all other such nonsense should be added to the rules.
    - danielweber 13y ago
      Nothing is more unfashionable than last year's big fashion.
      - jdhendrickson 13y ago
        Or maybe people were willing to give something a chance, and found that though it has benefits, it's not everything it's cracked up to be? I am a solitary person so I found the entire idea of pair programming repugnant but some people really love it. I don't think it has anything to do with fashion more to do with what some would consider a failed experiment. Did coding this way yield quality code at a faster rate with less stress? Anecdotally I would say no, and that may be why it's called nonsense by some.
- ig1 13y ago
  There's perfectly reasonable reasons to mention IDE, for example some companies have propriety Eclipse (or Emacs) extensions to support their code base or use collaborative work capabilities that are integrated with IDEs. Environmental setup also has an impact, a company might use project files that automatically setup the environment and set common standards. Sure you can come in and rewrite all of those things in your favourite IDE which you then have to manually sync when things change, but that's a lot of overhead. There's also some people who will only work at companies that use their favourite editor (particularly common in Java with IntelliJ) and will ignore job ads which mention Eclipse. It can also act as signalling (i.e "we're willing to pay for you to have the best-of-breed development tools") much like jobs ads which specify developer monitor sizes or hardware (Macbooks, SSDs, etc).
  - rowanmanning 13y ago
    I agree with a lot of what you're saying actually, it's why this rule emits a notice rather than an error or warning. Considering that some of the rules are a little polarising, it would probably make sense to allow people to ignore certain rules. Thanks for the feedback
  - twic 13y ago
    If you do pair programming, you may find it desirable to establish a common development environment, so pairs don't experience friction between one person and another's development environment. In that case, you might want to hire people who know that tooling, or, more likely, you might want to filter out people who have a passionate attachment to some other tooling.
- afandian 13y ago
  Granted, lots of people use text editors. Some use text editors with plugins. But some people use IDEs. Some IDEs have nice integrated features that make a difference in a team environment. E.g. one place I worked we used Visual Studio and I wrote an add-in for running our particular suite of integration tests. In the Microsoft ecosystem the whole integrated thing is very significant. Although I suppose if you were applying for a .NET job the choice of IDEs would be assumed unless stated.
- davidw 13y ago
  If they mention that you must use this or that IDE, it's to let you know that it's probably a bad place to work.
muratmutlu 13y ago
If someone made this into a cut and paste tool online, it'd be pretty successful I think
- muratmutlu 13y ago
  Or some sort of Gmail/Chrome plugin
- rowanmanning 13y ago
  Absolutely. I was planning to, but would happily endorse someone else if they were to build it – the command line presents a barrier to entry for less technical folks. Thanks for the feedback!
frozenport 13y ago
git page would benefit from an example run.
static_typed 13y ago
Seems overly simplistic - an advert from a girls school would appear under the sexism ruleset, an advert mentioning that they have a pool of company cars that you drive would fall foul of bubble ruleset.
- rowanmanning 13y ago
  You're right, for the tool to improve I'll definitely need to work on some of the rules. Consider some of these almost proof-of-concept at the moment.
- icebraining 13y ago
  an advert from a girls school would appear under the sexism ruleset I'm not sure if that's actually a bug.
cottonseed 13y ago
This is great. I've been thinking about the reverse idea lately: a site for gender, cultural and educational-blind job searches and first-round interviews. At the very least, resumes, cover letters and initial skill evaluations could be "linted" and sanitized.
- drakeandrews 13y ago
  I was thinking about this recently too and was wondering if one could perhaps set up a service where you would hire a set of ghost writers to rewrite and manually sanitise all of the applications etc. for a job opening for a company (ideally one writer per job opening).
beaumartinez 13y ago
It's a good idea, but penalizing jobs for mentioning pizza, beer or ping-pong is ridiculous. In fact calling those "hollow rewards" at all is ridiculous. They suggest a friendly, social atmosphere, arguably one of the more important features of a job. They also call swearing "unprofessional", as if that's a bad thing. Again, it suggests a laid back atmosphere, where no-one cares if you swear when you're dealing with a particularly nasty bug. A degree of political correctness can be beneficial, but overzealousness like this is counterproductive.
- haldujai 13y ago
  You make valid points, perhaps there should be a boolean for whether professionalism is desired or not. Personally I prefer professionalism at the very least in the job posting, I don't particularly care if it's laid back and neither does anyone at a firm in the financial industry or most Fortune 500s.
  - ig1 13y ago
    There's definitely a lot of developers who won't work at places with business-style dress code (suits, no jeans, etc.) in the financial industry.
    - haldujai 13y ago
      I agree, what I mean to suggest is that the developer of this software was not necessarily wrong to mark those as hollow because there is a (probably) larger amount of developers who don't mind business-style, hence the suggestion for an option to enable/disable.
      - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
        I'd prefer the suit, but note that referring to the toggle as "professionalism" is going to go right up the nose of the ping-pong players.
- tommorris 13y ago
mathattack 13y ago
My first thought is that this is a great filter. My second thought is how is this any better than the automated resume screens that companies use on candidates?
- Kliment 13y ago
  It's not any better. It's fighting back.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    The challenge is I can't think of anything better. It just seems like if one complains about too many guns in their neighborhood, there are better solutions than mounting a machine gun on the roof. Perhaps I have sympathy because I'm a "Take the entire of resumes from HR" type of person. When I was job hunting, I thought that the screening mechanisms for jobs were all pretty bad, so I don't have a "Go to site X for better." I wonder if the net effect of this will be people sanitizing their offerings to hide their culture. Or will it be like attracting like?
- Cthulhu_ 13y ago
  > My second thought is how is this any better than the automated resume screens that companies use on candidates? This one will actually scan the content of the document, instead of just distributing the applications into two halves and outright discarding a random half. Easiest way to cull hundreds of applications for a single job advert.
  - mathattack 13y ago
    Forgive me for being naive, but don't the HR applications scan for keywords?
temphn 13y ago
This is the same kind of person who would write software to find anti-Islamic comments had he been born in Iran, or to hunt down dissidents if born in China. The kind of person who reflexively genuflects towards the current state-sponsored ideology, whatever it is (quick test: is Obama on your side?), because he loves the rush of feeling holier-than-thou. As an example, the lint checks that "bro culture" is bad, but female-friendly (like Minted.com[1]) is assumed to be good. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Very predictable. Like any neo-Puritan, he then comes after profanity, and beer, and even (god forbid) competitive-sounding job descriptions! His vision of the startup future: an HR drone stamping on a programmer's face, forever. So how about thoughtlint? Avoid hiring rowanmanning, or anyone on their helpfully provided list: https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint#thanks https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint#thanks People like this will spend their time being Adria-Richards-esque thought police rather than shipping code. Contrast with Max Levchin, who actually sold a startup for a billion-plus dollars: http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-... Max Levchin: The notion that diversity in an early team is important or good is completely wrong. You should try to make the early team as non-diverse as possible. There are a few reasons for this. The most salient is that, as a startup, you’re underfunded and undermanned. It’s a big disadvantage; not only are you probably getting into trouble, but you don’t even know what trouble that may be. Speed is your only weapon. All you have is speed. If you want to work in an environment full of rowanmannings, that is your prerogative. Many others will select out and find places where people who enjoy bullying others with modern taboos on gender and the like don't self-appoint themselves as priests. Do you really want a team member who spends their free time getting people to upvote their new heretic-finding software to the top of HN? [1] http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-particular-things-Minted-does-to-be-female-engineer-friendly http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-particular-things-Minted-...
- duairc 13y ago
  This is total nonsense. Reverse sexism is not a thing. Of course "bro culture" is bad, and of course female-friendly is good.
  - 13y ago
Suresh-Urs 13y ago
nice idea.
dawkins 13y ago
I would move "frontpage" to its own warning category, not just "notice".
sally888 13y ago
Mentioning gender is the biggest sin? Wow.
- rowanmanning 13y ago
  Hi sally. A sin? Definitely not. The reason gender mentions is an error is because it's actually illegal for a job spec to discriminate either way in terms of hiring. If you're getting false negatives with this rule, please let me know and I can revise it :)
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    Mentioning gender != discrimination. "We are looking for smart men and women to join our team" isn't sexism. In fact, it may be the opposite - deliberately mentioning that the company welcomes women, which in your system would achieve the opposite effect. "We don't believe in typical tech industry culture and strive to create friendly environments for both males and females." will also trip your filter. As an error to boot - not even a warning. or perhaps even more benignly: "We are an online retailer for women's fashion." This isn't full of shit either, consider the following excerpts from real job postings: "As a top ten defense contractor we take our responsibility very seriously, and we are privileged to support our customers and the men and women who get the job done."[1] "Accenture is committed to providing veteran employment opportunities to our service men and women."[2] "Shopbop is the premier online shopping destination for what’s new and what’s next in fashion and style, offering women around the world the best selection from both established and emerging designers."[3] "We are an Equal Employment Opportunity/Drug-Free employer; we encourage veterans, minorities and women to apply for job vacancies."[4] "The University of Massachusetts Amherst is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to apply."[5] "Since 1901, Our Enterprise customer who is a Retail giant has offered a wide variety of quality apparel, shoes and accessories for men, women and children at our stores across the country."[6] I'm sorry, but keywording on generic nouns and pronouns is not at all a good idea. [1] http://jobview.monster.com/Engineer-Sr-Test-20-Job-Alpharetta-GA-125235734.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Engineer-Sr-Test-20-Job-Alpharett... [2] http://jobview.monster.com/Federal-Virtualization-Engineer-Job-Washington-DC-126083355.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Federal-Virtualization-Engineer-J... [3] http://jobview.monster.com/Sr-Software-Development-Engineer-Job-Madison-WI-126066197.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Sr-Software-Development-Engineer-... [4] http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Altoona-PA-126004034.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Altoona-PA-... [5] http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Amherst-MA-125965776.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Amherst-MA-... [6] http://jobview.monster.com/Senior-Software-Engineer-Enterprise-Job-Redmond-WA-124636558.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Senior-Software-Engineer-Enterpri...
sally888 13y ago
Mentioning gender is the biggest sin? Wow.
mduerksen 13y ago
This tool might be useful for quickly sifting heaps of job descriptions, but it is easy to fall victim to attaching too much meaning to its results. Putting anyone into a category because of the wording of his statement is generally only of limited use. You'll get a lot of false negatives - in this case, it won't save you from wasting time interviewing with an abusive employer who was smart enough to game political correctness and legal. And some false positives - There is no employer without issues, but some issues weigh much heavier than others. I would rather work for an employer who is clinging to some sacred technology than under a devious manager. If I would rely on the wording, I could detect the former, but not the latter. That said, this filter still can be useful, as soon as the rules become more sophisticated (they will, as the author is aware of this). But if it does, and becomes popular, be certain that this will also used by the other side, creating a race similar to spam vs. spam filters.
telephonetemp 13y ago
Would using the expression "guys and girls" in a job ad be sexist? Joblint would catch it.
- skrebbel 13y ago
  The transgenders would burn you down.
  - monksy 13y ago
    That makes me wonder... what is the population of transgenered individuals in the US. From the looks of it I could just find a number of 3.4% or 700k at the time of the UCLA study. However that also includes Lesbians, Gays, and Transgendered people.
- JackC 13y ago
  Yeah, this is something to avoid in general. There are some people who hear "girls" the same way you do, so "guys and girls" translates as "men and women." But there are also some people who hear "girls" to mean, well, girls, so this translates as "men and girls" and sounds very weird. As people get older (say, from 20-year-olds to 30-year-olds), the balance shifts more and more toward the latter and more and more of the women you talk to will think there is something wrong with you if you call them girls, even if you also call men guys. So yeah -- seeing "girls" in a job ad would make me guess the workplace consisted mostly or solely of young men who weren't used to being around women, and I would only apply if that was what I was looking for. Whether you think that's a problem is up to you. (I happen to think there are good reasons that some women don't like being called girls, even in the "guys and girls" context, but it's sort of beside the point in terms of writing a job ad, right?)
  - aestra 13y ago
    Let me ask you a question (assuming you are a man) Would you like to be called a boy? Imagine being addressed like this (in a group of 90% women) "Hello ladies and boys" Wouldn't that feel insulting? And weird?
pekru 13y ago
Sample test data for joblint. A team comprising of few Python superstars, vim gurus, emacs superstars is now looking for a software crafts(wo)man who would be interested in being part of the team to juggle a pool of challenging problems and use cutting edge tech to find solutions that are of top quality and guarantee a win over competiton. We pay better than competition, fail fast to learn early. We provide catered lunches from the best restuarants around. And inspite of tight deadlines, we would encourage a healthy work-life balance and not promise hollow benefits like beer/pingpong/nerf/dart/pool etc.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  Your point here, as I understand, is to subvert the test by mentioning e.g. beer specifically not being a perk. This illustrates an interesting problem of parsing natural language, but IMHO this should still give the same negative result anyway: why is beer an important consideration in a job ad at all? You should rather spend the space telling me more specifically about what the job entails. You get a pass for talking about beer if the job involves classifying craft beers.
  - pekru 13y ago
    >> should rather spend the space telling me more specifically about what the job entails. hmm. based on my experience, I can say that not every team/firm that is hiring would know for the fact as to what is the exact thing the recruit would be doing once on the job. In smaller organizations, there would anyway be lots of confusion on this. Bigger organization, it would be HR drones adding to the incoherence and drama. So, said simply, "We need folks who are smart and who could get things done. Prior knowledge of alphabus-betabus-gammabus-deltabus --- zettabus would be a definite advantage but is no way a mandatory requirement. Look us up, get to know what we do and if interested, write back so we can talk!" could be one simple template that could be used by just about anyone. Isn't it?
    - ronaldx 13y ago
      A fair point, thanks, but I still think the company would be better served by nailing down what they need in employees rather than nailing down whether or not there is beer.
remy25 13y ago
Remy Ft Yc Misery Loves Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw via @youtube
remy25 13y ago
Remy Ft Yc Misery Loves Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw via @youtube
remy25 13y ago
Remy Ft Yc Misery Loves Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw via @youtube
remy25 13y ago
Remy Ft Yc Misery Loves Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw via @youtube
remy25 13y ago
Remy Ft Yc Misery Loves Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw via @youtube
remy25 13y ago
Remy Ft Yc Misery Loves Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw via @youtube
remy25 13y ago
Remy Ft Yc Misery Loves Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw via @youtube
remy25 13y ago
Remy Ft Yc Misery Loves Company http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3JcSeCyykM&sns=tw via @youtube
ninetenel 13y ago
well this is pretty fucking dumb
seanhandley 13y ago
It's a fun idea but you'd have to be sifting through a lot of jobs to make automating the task worthwhile. I'd be worried a decent job would slip through the cracks because of being filtered out. I'd suggest the best way to find jobs you're interested in would be to filter things with an inclusive filter, rather than an exclusive one. After running joblint, you'll end up with a list of jobs that survived, rather than ones that stood out. I can't see this ever being genuinely useful during the next time I'm job hunting. I can see it being useful for recruitment companies who want to sanitise their listings, though. Maybe commercialise a site that can handle that as a service and aim it at them?
mrgoldenbrown 13y ago
I think this is a great project even if no one ever actually runs it against a real job description. By listing and categorizing the various rules, rowan has spurred a great amount of discussion on what makes a good job application.
reginaldjcooper 13y ago
If you haven't yet, you should do machine learning on actual job postings from companies that typify certain undesirable traits–assume Oracle is synonymous with "hates freedom"; one could find common words and phrases from Oracle job postings and add them to a "hates freedom" rule.
mrcactu5 13y ago
how about checking for racism? http://www.inc.com/vivek-wadhwa/face-of-success-blacks-in-silicon-valley.html http://www.inc.com/vivek-wadhwa/face-of-success-blacks-in-si... http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-24.pdf "According to U.S. Census Bureau data, in 2008, blacks and Hispanics constituted only 1.5% and 4.7% respectively of the Valley’s tech population —well below national tech-population averages of 7.1% and 5.3%. You hardly find any blacks in positions of leadership in Silicon Valley companies. There is at least an unconscious bias."
- etfb 13y ago
  An intriguing idea! Can you suggest some language that would set off alarms for you? Related: Douglas Hofstadter's satirical article on exactly that topic, which you reminded me of and which I'm glad I could remember enough of to find: http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html
jachwe 13y ago
Nice job, funny idea! Mentioning Dreamweaver should be handled as an error rather then a notice. :-)
nraynaud 13y ago
Creating a new working environment straight jacket are we? It's in diversity that we strive, we need bro companies, black tie/white shirt companies, and everything in between. Moreover I'm pretty sure that the boringnest job posting would have a very good score with this.
sequoia 13y ago
Cool! One feature suggestion: a .joblintrc file or configuration option. Some people are very proficient with Eclipse or Vim & would actually prefer to work with it for example. Nice tool- I hope recruiters & HR authors use it!
sameerg 13y ago
whatever job spec i pipe, it tells "No issues found with the job spec!"
andyl 13y ago
Political correctness, enforced by a software busy-body. Mind your language people - neo-puritains are watching!
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
This is as useful is the filters recruiters use on candidates. You can make up your own mind as to whether that is negative or a positive comment.
lsc 13y ago
the problem is that you are evaluating the recruiter, not the job. There are many places, most famously google, which have shitty recruiters, but are actually decent places to work. (Google is legendary for it's poor taste in recruiters. I've known a few people who didn't like it an left, but most of the people I know there seem to think it's pretty good. The weird part, to me, is that it seems like the time between "I don't think google is great" and no longer working for google seems to be... shorter than at most companies.) Really, it's a lot like the problem employers have; resumes and interviews are a shitty way to evaluate potential employees... but what else do you have? This is an example of the same thing in the other direction. The style of the recruiter is a shitty way to evaluate company culture... but what else do you have? Either way, if you know someone on the inside? that's going to be your best channel for evaluation, really, in both directions. But... that has all sorts of other problems, many of them having to do with only being able to move within your existing social group.
marsvskittens 13y ago
Does anyone know what font that is in the screenshot? It's rather nice (disregard the fact that all fonts look nice at that size).

212 points by rowanmanning 13y ago

The bubble rules are definitely in order : https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule/bubble.js https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule... I'd argue that the var temptations array is applicable to the "bro-culture" rules as well. It's good there's one for tech : https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule/tech.js https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule... For the life of me, I never understood why any mention of an editor was even necessary most of the time. If there's a local copy of the codebase you're working on, how in the world does that have any bearing on what someone else on the same project is using? If it's major, that's what source control is for. If it's minor and nitpicky (I.E. tabs vs. spaces) plenty of editors can be configured for substitution on whatever standard that's adopted.

rowanmanning 13y ago
Thanks, and you're probably right about some temptations being applicable to bro culture. On mentioning editors, I like your explanation of why it's not good. I'm intending on writing a list of explanations for each rule at some point so it's useful to get other people's opinion on them.
- eksith 13y ago
  Thanks for putting this together. This is one of those nice projects that does more than just solve a problem or acts as a tool; it forces the user to think. Overall, I hope this project goes toward helping people understand the thought process that gives rise to the "job lint" in the first place rather than just fixing the "lint". Eventually, they should learn to act as testers themselves and your explanations on why those lists exist as they are will definitely help.
calpaterson 13y ago
The caveat is that if a team does pair programming, it's helpful that everyone is ok with using the same editor. Worth mentioning that fact in a job advert so people know before they interview.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  Good point, pair programming, XP, agile, and all other such nonsense should be added to the rules.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    Nothing is more unfashionable than last year's big fashion.
    - jdhendrickson 13y ago
      Or maybe people were willing to give something a chance, and found that though it has benefits, it's not everything it's cracked up to be? I am a solitary person so I found the entire idea of pair programming repugnant but some people really love it. I don't think it has anything to do with fashion more to do with what some would consider a failed experiment. Did coding this way yield quality code at a faster rate with less stress? Anecdotally I would say no, and that may be why it's called nonsense by some.
ig1 13y ago
There's perfectly reasonable reasons to mention IDE, for example some companies have propriety Eclipse (or Emacs) extensions to support their code base or use collaborative work capabilities that are integrated with IDEs. Environmental setup also has an impact, a company might use project files that automatically setup the environment and set common standards. Sure you can come in and rewrite all of those things in your favourite IDE which you then have to manually sync when things change, but that's a lot of overhead. There's also some people who will only work at companies that use their favourite editor (particularly common in Java with IntelliJ) and will ignore job ads which mention Eclipse. It can also act as signalling (i.e "we're willing to pay for you to have the best-of-breed development tools") much like jobs ads which specify developer monitor sizes or hardware (Macbooks, SSDs, etc).
- rowanmanning 13y ago
  I agree with a lot of what you're saying actually, it's why this rule emits a notice rather than an error or warning. Considering that some of the rules are a little polarising, it would probably make sense to allow people to ignore certain rules. Thanks for the feedback
- twic 13y ago
  If you do pair programming, you may find it desirable to establish a common development environment, so pairs don't experience friction between one person and another's development environment. In that case, you might want to hire people who know that tooling, or, more likely, you might want to filter out people who have a passionate attachment to some other tooling.
afandian 13y ago
Granted, lots of people use text editors. Some use text editors with plugins. But some people use IDEs. Some IDEs have nice integrated features that make a difference in a team environment. E.g. one place I worked we used Visual Studio and I wrote an add-in for running our particular suite of integration tests. In the Microsoft ecosystem the whole integrated thing is very significant. Although I suppose if you were applying for a .NET job the choice of IDEs would be assumed unless stated.
davidw 13y ago
If they mention that you must use this or that IDE, it's to let you know that it's probably a bad place to work.

muratmutlu 13y ago

If someone made this into a cut and paste tool online, it'd be pretty successful I think

muratmutlu 13y ago
Or some sort of Gmail/Chrome plugin
rowanmanning 13y ago
Absolutely. I was planning to, but would happily endorse someone else if they were to build it – the command line presents a barrier to entry for less technical folks. Thanks for the feedback!

frozenport 13y ago

git page would benefit from an example run.

static_typed 13y ago

Seems overly simplistic - an advert from a girls school would appear under the sexism ruleset, an advert mentioning that they have a pool of company cars that you drive would fall foul of bubble ruleset.

rowanmanning 13y ago
You're right, for the tool to improve I'll definitely need to work on some of the rules. Consider some of these almost proof-of-concept at the moment.
icebraining 13y ago
an advert from a girls school would appear under the sexism ruleset I'm not sure if that's actually a bug.

cottonseed 13y ago

This is great. I've been thinking about the reverse idea lately: a site for gender, cultural and educational-blind job searches and first-round interviews. At the very least, resumes, cover letters and initial skill evaluations could be "linted" and sanitized.

drakeandrews 13y ago
I was thinking about this recently too and was wondering if one could perhaps set up a service where you would hire a set of ghost writers to rewrite and manually sanitise all of the applications etc. for a job opening for a company (ideally one writer per job opening).

beaumartinez 13y ago

It's a good idea, but penalizing jobs for mentioning pizza, beer or ping-pong is ridiculous. In fact calling those "hollow rewards" at all is ridiculous. They suggest a friendly, social atmosphere, arguably one of the more important features of a job. They also call swearing "unprofessional", as if that's a bad thing. Again, it suggests a laid back atmosphere, where no-one cares if you swear when you're dealing with a particularly nasty bug. A degree of political correctness can be beneficial, but overzealousness like this is counterproductive.

haldujai 13y ago
You make valid points, perhaps there should be a boolean for whether professionalism is desired or not. Personally I prefer professionalism at the very least in the job posting, I don't particularly care if it's laid back and neither does anyone at a firm in the financial industry or most Fortune 500s.
- ig1 13y ago
  There's definitely a lot of developers who won't work at places with business-style dress code (suits, no jeans, etc.) in the financial industry.
  - haldujai 13y ago
    I agree, what I mean to suggest is that the developer of this software was not necessarily wrong to mark those as hollow because there is a (probably) larger amount of developers who don't mind business-style, hence the suggestion for an option to enable/disable.
    - reginaldjcooper 13y ago
      I'd prefer the suit, but note that referring to the toggle as "professionalism" is going to go right up the nose of the ping-pong players.
tommorris 13y ago

mathattack 13y ago

My first thought is that this is a great filter. My second thought is how is this any better than the automated resume screens that companies use on candidates?

Kliment 13y ago
It's not any better. It's fighting back.
- mathattack 13y ago
  The challenge is I can't think of anything better. It just seems like if one complains about too many guns in their neighborhood, there are better solutions than mounting a machine gun on the roof. Perhaps I have sympathy because I'm a "Take the entire of resumes from HR" type of person. When I was job hunting, I thought that the screening mechanisms for jobs were all pretty bad, so I don't have a "Go to site X for better." I wonder if the net effect of this will be people sanitizing their offerings to hide their culture. Or will it be like attracting like?
Cthulhu_ 13y ago
> My second thought is how is this any better than the automated resume screens that companies use on candidates? This one will actually scan the content of the document, instead of just distributing the applications into two halves and outright discarding a random half. Easiest way to cull hundreds of applications for a single job advert.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Forgive me for being naive, but don't the HR applications scan for keywords?

temphn 13y ago

This is the same kind of person who would write software to find anti-Islamic comments had he been born in Iran, or to hunt down dissidents if born in China. The kind of person who reflexively genuflects towards the current state-sponsored ideology, whatever it is (quick test: is Obama on your side?), because he loves the rush of feeling holier-than-thou. As an example, the lint checks that "bro culture" is bad, but female-friendly (like Minted.com[1]) is assumed to be good. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. Very predictable. Like any neo-Puritan, he then comes after profanity, and beer, and even (god forbid) competitive-sounding job descriptions! His vision of the startup future: an HR drone stamping on a programmer's face, forever. So how about thoughtlint? Avoid hiring rowanmanning, or anyone on their helpfully provided list: https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint#thanks https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint#thanks People like this will spend their time being Adria-Richards-esque thought police rather than shipping code. Contrast with Max Levchin, who actually sold a startup for a billion-plus dollars: http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-5-notes-essay http://blakemasters.com/post/21437840885/peter-thiels-cs183-... Max Levchin: The notion that diversity in an early team is important or good is completely wrong. You should try to make the early team as non-diverse as possible. There are a few reasons for this. The most salient is that, as a startup, you’re underfunded and undermanned. It’s a big disadvantage; not only are you probably getting into trouble, but you don’t even know what trouble that may be. Speed is your only weapon. All you have is speed. If you want to work in an environment full of rowanmannings, that is your prerogative. Many others will select out and find places where people who enjoy bullying others with modern taboos on gender and the like don't self-appoint themselves as priests. Do you really want a team member who spends their free time getting people to upvote their new heretic-finding software to the top of HN? [1] http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-particular-things-Minted-does-to-be-female-engineer-friendly http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-particular-things-Minted-...

duairc 13y ago
This is total nonsense. Reverse sexism is not a thing. Of course "bro culture" is bad, and of course female-friendly is good.
- 13y ago

Suresh-Urs 13y ago

nice idea.

dawkins 13y ago

I would move "frontpage" to its own warning category, not just "notice".

sally888 13y ago

Mentioning gender is the biggest sin? Wow.

rowanmanning 13y ago
Hi sally. A sin? Definitely not. The reason gender mentions is an error is because it's actually illegal for a job spec to discriminate either way in terms of hiring. If you're getting false negatives with this rule, please let me know and I can revise it :)
- potatolicious 13y ago
  Mentioning gender != discrimination. "We are looking for smart men and women to join our team" isn't sexism. In fact, it may be the opposite - deliberately mentioning that the company welcomes women, which in your system would achieve the opposite effect. "We don't believe in typical tech industry culture and strive to create friendly environments for both males and females." will also trip your filter. As an error to boot - not even a warning. or perhaps even more benignly: "We are an online retailer for women's fashion." This isn't full of shit either, consider the following excerpts from real job postings: "As a top ten defense contractor we take our responsibility very seriously, and we are privileged to support our customers and the men and women who get the job done."[1] "Accenture is committed to providing veteran employment opportunities to our service men and women."[2] "Shopbop is the premier online shopping destination for what’s new and what’s next in fashion and style, offering women around the world the best selection from both established and emerging designers."[3] "We are an Equal Employment Opportunity/Drug-Free employer; we encourage veterans, minorities and women to apply for job vacancies."[4] "The University of Massachusetts Amherst is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to apply."[5] "Since 1901, Our Enterprise customer who is a Retail giant has offered a wide variety of quality apparel, shoes and accessories for men, women and children at our stores across the country."[6] I'm sorry, but keywording on generic nouns and pronouns is not at all a good idea. [1] http://jobview.monster.com/Engineer-Sr-Test-20-Job-Alpharetta-GA-125235734.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Engineer-Sr-Test-20-Job-Alpharett... [2] http://jobview.monster.com/Federal-Virtualization-Engineer-Job-Washington-DC-126083355.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Federal-Virtualization-Engineer-J... [3] http://jobview.monster.com/Sr-Software-Development-Engineer-Job-Madison-WI-126066197.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Sr-Software-Development-Engineer-... [4] http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Altoona-PA-126004034.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Altoona-PA-... [5] http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Amherst-MA-125965776.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Software-Engineer-Job-Amherst-MA-... [6] http://jobview.monster.com/Senior-Software-Engineer-Enterprise-Job-Redmond-WA-124636558.aspx http://jobview.monster.com/Senior-Software-Engineer-Enterpri...

sally888 13y ago

Mentioning gender is the biggest sin? Wow.

mduerksen 13y ago

This tool might be useful for quickly sifting heaps of job descriptions, but it is easy to fall victim to attaching too much meaning to its results. Putting anyone into a category because of the wording of his statement is generally only of limited use. You'll get a lot of false negatives - in this case, it won't save you from wasting time interviewing with an abusive employer who was smart enough to game political correctness and legal. And some false positives - There is no employer without issues, but some issues weigh much heavier than others. I would rather work for an employer who is clinging to some sacred technology than under a devious manager. If I would rely on the wording, I could detect the former, but not the latter. That said, this filter still can be useful, as soon as the rules become more sophisticated (they will, as the author is aware of this). But if it does, and becomes popular, be certain that this will also used by the other side, creating a race similar to spam vs. spam filters.

telephonetemp 13y ago

Would using the expression "guys and girls" in a job ad be sexist? Joblint would catch it.

skrebbel 13y ago
The transgenders would burn you down.
- monksy 13y ago
  That makes me wonder... what is the population of transgenered individuals in the US. From the looks of it I could just find a number of 3.4% or 700k at the time of the UCLA study. However that also includes Lesbians, Gays, and Transgendered people.
JackC 13y ago
Yeah, this is something to avoid in general. There are some people who hear "girls" the same way you do, so "guys and girls" translates as "men and women." But there are also some people who hear "girls" to mean, well, girls, so this translates as "men and girls" and sounds very weird. As people get older (say, from 20-year-olds to 30-year-olds), the balance shifts more and more toward the latter and more and more of the women you talk to will think there is something wrong with you if you call them girls, even if you also call men guys. So yeah -- seeing "girls" in a job ad would make me guess the workplace consisted mostly or solely of young men who weren't used to being around women, and I would only apply if that was what I was looking for. Whether you think that's a problem is up to you. (I happen to think there are good reasons that some women don't like being called girls, even in the "guys and girls" context, but it's sort of beside the point in terms of writing a job ad, right?)
- aestra 13y ago
  Let me ask you a question (assuming you are a man) Would you like to be called a boy? Imagine being addressed like this (in a group of 90% women) "Hello ladies and boys" Wouldn't that feel insulting? And weird?

pekru 13y ago

Sample test data for joblint. A team comprising of few Python superstars, vim gurus, emacs superstars is now looking for a software crafts(wo)man who would be interested in being part of the team to juggle a pool of challenging problems and use cutting edge tech to find solutions that are of top quality and guarantee a win over competiton. We pay better than competition, fail fast to learn early. We provide catered lunches from the best restuarants around. And inspite of tight deadlines, we would encourage a healthy work-life balance and not promise hollow benefits like beer/pingpong/nerf/dart/pool etc.

ronaldx 13y ago
Your point here, as I understand, is to subvert the test by mentioning e.g. beer specifically not being a perk. This illustrates an interesting problem of parsing natural language, but IMHO this should still give the same negative result anyway: why is beer an important consideration in a job ad at all? You should rather spend the space telling me more specifically about what the job entails. You get a pass for talking about beer if the job involves classifying craft beers.
- pekru 13y ago
  >> should rather spend the space telling me more specifically about what the job entails. hmm. based on my experience, I can say that not every team/firm that is hiring would know for the fact as to what is the exact thing the recruit would be doing once on the job. In smaller organizations, there would anyway be lots of confusion on this. Bigger organization, it would be HR drones adding to the incoherence and drama. So, said simply, "We need folks who are smart and who could get things done. Prior knowledge of alphabus-betabus-gammabus-deltabus --- zettabus would be a definite advantage but is no way a mandatory requirement. Look us up, get to know what we do and if interested, write back so we can talk!" could be one simple template that could be used by just about anyone. Isn't it?
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    A fair point, thanks, but I still think the company would be better served by nailing down what they need in employees rather than nailing down whether or not there is beer.

remy25 13y ago