Why Hiring Technologists is Difficult

Malcom Gladwell entertainingly speaks about mismatch problems: in essence, most hiring/selection practices attempt to evaluate performance in one area (the job, the task for which the person is being selected) through the use of seemingly related tests that don’t correlate well to performance in that area.

He uses concrete examples of sports, teaching and law, showing how selection criteria used to pick players in drafts, teachers for schools and candidates for law school don’t seem to correlate, or in some cases, negatively correlate with future performance.

It’s not hard to relate this quickly to the kinds of things we do when trying to hire developers, architects, managers.  Unfortunately, the information that makes these studies compelling is good supporting data, and I don’t have that.  Certainly part of the problem is that we don’t have a particularly good measure for quality when it comes to developers, even once they’ve been practicing their art — we don’t have a score that accurately reflects the skill of a developer at developing software.

That is, however, one of Gladwell’s final points — that our desire for certainty leads us to concrete measures that take us astray when subjective measures may, in fact, be more accurate, despite their subjectivity.  Maybe all we really need is a score that aggregates the subjective opinions of those who have worked with you in the past.

Little Bite: Symantec: Systems Engineer

Symantec is looking for a Systems Engineer to work in Toronto, Ontario, Tonga.  If you believe that there’s a Toronto, Ontario in Tonga, then does Symantec have a job for you.

Fiver Media / Anon: Team Lead Game Developer

An ‘anonymous’ company is looking for a “Team Lead Game Developer“.  Any Toronto job talking about ‘game’ or ‘gaming’ without being too specific about it is probably gambling rather than what I would call game development.  And if the “gaming” job talks about Java server-side skills (as opposed to, say, J2ME), it’s further evidence that it’s a back-end for some kind of gambling shop.

Finally, when the posting is anonymous but otherwise almost entirely similar to the aforementioned Fiver Media posting, it’s a lock.  I don’t have any personal experience with Fiver, but they do seem to be the latest in a long chain of names associated with a gambling company whose reputation is far from pristine.  So if you see postings like this one, I suppose it’s up to you to make the call, but you might want to read some of the discussion thread on this post before getting too excited.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers: Director, Technology Infrastructure Services

PriceWaterhouseCoopers is looking for a Director, Technology Infrastructure Services.  I can’t find a good quotable section, but basically they want a high-level manager/leader for Canada in what they’re calling infrastructure services, which seems to revolve around IT infrastructure like the hardware, software, networking, groupware — the kind of stuff that many people would simply group under “IT”.

I’ll grant that I probably don’t qualify for this job, and perhaps I’m a little tired, but … I’ve read this position a couple times and I still don’t feel like I’ve really got a great sense for what the job’s about.  It’s got lots of action-oriented business words like Engage, Establish, Ensure, Enable.  There’s lots of emphasizers like world-class, key, essential, leader, innovation.

Maybe being able to clearly understand the position from this posting is the first requirement for potential candidates.  I don’t feel especially qualified to offer an opinion about it.  In any case, if you read it and it sounds like you, then go forth and talk to PWC about becoming the Director, Technology Infrastructure Services.  Sounds like an important position at a large company, so it can’t be all bad.

Morbid Curiosity: Senior Web Team Manager

Someone is looking for Senior Web Team Manager for “a brilliant ’social network and desktop’ application that is going live this week” who’s willing to take low pay but a big chunk of the business.

I have to admit I’m puzzled; if it’s really going live this week, why not wait for it to go live so you can at least point to the thing and say, “this is who we are”?  Ultimately, I’m not a big believer in work-for-equity arrangements.  If you’re going to take minimal pay to work on a project for equity, why not make it a project of your own devising?

That said, if that arrangement is something you can imagine doing, there’s really no harm in looking into this briefly and getting some sense for whether or not you really buy into their offering and their profit model.

Unspecified: Manager, Application Development

This posting reminds me of one I’ve seen before and linked to CPNI, although CPNI’s current job listings don’t seem to support that theory.  That said, sometimes these things happen when you get into exclusivity clauses with recruiters, so it may still be valid.

Ultimately, I think there’s too much detail missing to give a full review, but if you’re interested in a senior role in a company that does payment processing with what sounds like a Microsoft/Java technology mix, it may be worth trying to learn a little more.  And when I say a little more, I really mean the basics, like “Who are you?  Where are you located?  What does this job pay?”

ONESTOP Media Group: Java Developer

ONESTOP Media Group is looking for a Java Developer:

Onestop Media Group is looking for a creative, problem solving developer. This position requires an individual with experience taking a significant role in several past projects. You will be expected to design, build, document and test your solutions in a team environment. The company wants your input on software development processes and system design.

The Good
Actually, the primary thing that attracts me to this posting is humor, the visible human nature behind it.  This isn’t the HR-sanitized posting, or the carefully phrased list of role and requirements of a big company, it’s a simple posting with a little humor:

Please apply with a cover letter describing why you would fit into our company. They are read, and it’s a good way to differentiate your application from the dozens of bots who will also apply for this job.

The dual-head workstation and coffee sound good, too.  The location’s a good one, down by Metro Hall, pretty central and pretty lively.

The Bad
They don’t sound like they’re looking for a terrifically senior candidate.  The mix of PHP and Java would not be surprising in a professional services environment, but it’s a little less obvious in what looks like a kind of product company.  But the biggest flaw is the pervasive one: there’s not very much information to go on.  We don’t know much about the work, the process, the compensation, and so forth.  Just because you’ve got a simple posting doesn’t mean you have to leave quite so much stuff out.  So, as usual, if you’re interested, you’ll have to talk to them.

YMMV
Because they haven’t specified, I can only make assumptions about the compensation, but based on the experience they’re looking for and the overall tone of the posting, I’m assuming they want someone with decent skills and ambition, but not a great deal of experience, and are going to pay accordingly.  Maybe a $60k job, for instance?

In Summary
If you like what they’re doing, or you think what they’re looking for sounds like you, this might be worth further investigation.

Guyana Sugar Corporation: Information Systems Director

This is not even remotely ‘Toronto’, so I won’t dedicate much time to it.  It’s not even on the same continent, which is what makes it interesting, we don’t often see postings so far afield.  The Guyana sugar corporation is looking for an information systems director to join them in Georgetown, Guyana, South America, and I guess they expanded their search all the way up here.

Autodesk: Parallel Computing Researcher

Autodesk is looking for an Parallel Computing Researcher:

This position is an opportunity to conduct basic and applied research on the most challenging opportunities for parallel and distributed computing for computer graphics and CAD applications. As part of a team of researchers you will contribute to new advances in methods for multi-processing for computer graphics and simulation applications especially as it relates to multi-core parallel programming and help guide corporate technology strategy.

The Good
Well, first of all, it’s Autodesk, a well-known company with interesting products, and a reasonable reputation as an employer as far as I can tell.  And secondly, parallel computing is both interesting technically and likely to be a growth area of computing, as multi-core computing continues to look like the future of computing performance.

So, spending time to research a technically interesting and growth area of computing to help set strategy for a large, well-known software vendor sounds pretty compelling.

The Bad
The usual.  Not a lot of information on location, process, compensation, technology, etc.  If it weren’t for the fact that the company is well-known and the work sounds interesting, there’s not a lot to go on.

YMMV
Your mileage may vary when it comes to the technology.  They’re not specific, but my first instinct is that they’d be looking for people with a pretty-level way of working, comfortable with C/C++ and possibly even occasional bits of assembly.  Then again, my instinct could be off — certainly, one way to deal with multicore computing is to look at languages that are built with distributed computing in mind.

It might also vary when it comes to the patent process.  I’m not a big believer in software patents, to putting my energy into research which is going to be patented by Autodesk might chafe a little.

In Summary
If you think you’ve got the right skillset for this position, this could be pretty exciting.

Brainhunter: Structs != Struts

This posting has appeared innumerable times in my RSS feeds, and yet, after all these postings and all these repeated viewings, Brainhunter still doesn’t know how to spell Struts, the most popular, if aged, Java web framework

Please, for my sanity if nothing else, fix the spelling!