[alexashka]

The bigger story here is that given that she's clearly way above average at what she does - she couldn't find a job for a year and did this as a last resort - an act of desperation.

Which also did not work out - she ended up with Elance. If we measure success by job vs no job, then yes, otherwise... eh...

People 'say' they want creativity, passion, etc - but in reality, most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck. If you know you're in a cushy spot, do you want to hire people who are way better than you?

Nope.

The job market is broken, and most people you know are the reason why. The people holding down the jobs are interested in keeping it that way - or else they'd get replaced.

Imagine a basketball player who could choose his/her own teammates and knew that if he/she gets kicked off the team, nobody will hire him/her ever again... They'd rather see the whole team destroyed, they'll get to collect cheques a while longer that way.

With regular jobs - this is much less obvious but truth of the matter is - there are too many young people hungry to replace the old, that the only way to prevent the whole system from beginning to collapse is to impose classicisms in subtle and not so much ways.

[poof131]

While what you say can often be true, it is a sign of weak leadership. Strong leaders promote the best people and thereby lift themselves and the whole team. Bad leaders see strong subordinates as threats to their power and suffocate the team. Not saying there aren’t a LOT of bad leaders out there, but what you describe isn’t a law everywhere.

The bigger point I think is your first sentence. She’s way above average and couldn’t get a job for a year. “Woe is us, the shortage of qualified candidates“. Like I was telling one friend who was complaining about not being able to find someone good, “The reality is you can’t find someone good at the price you want to pay.” There’s a shortage of talent that wants to live in a one bedroom apartment with their family for scraps of equity while the boss lives in a mansion and makes millions, that’s the real shortage in SV.

[alexashka]

It's how you define 'qualified'.

Here's from her blog:

"Professionals i admire were calling my work impressive, but the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”."

Here's another:

"despite my 10 years of marketing and social media experience and despite the reach of my latest campaign, i was told i wouldn’t be that person."

This lady is clearly qualified. She's just not a good 'culture fit'.

I get that a fair bit myself - there's an apparent shortage of iOS developers and I happen to be one looking for work currently. Do you know how many companies explicitly say 'do you have a bachelor of computer science? no? ok bye'?

A lot! A college graduate being able to do iOS should be a 'wait, he/she must be good, that's unusual', instead it is straight to the garbage bin.

I could of course just start straight up lying on my resume and get better results but I just can't bring myself to do it.

Which means the hoardes of shameless liars who will say anything to get the job, get ahead. So it goes...

[joshstrange]

I don't mean to nitpic but I tried to go read some of her blog [0] and it almost drove me crazy.... Someone buy her a Shift key! Lowercase "i"'s by themselves cause my skin to crawl as-is but she doesn't even start sentences with capitals.

[0] http://eatwritewalk.com/

[pinewurst]

"Professionals i admire were calling my work impressive, but the person interviewing me was saying he couldn’t contextualize my experience because i “hadn’t worked at facebook or google or studied at stanford”."

This was explicitly from some doofus at Airbnb. One can at least hope that outside the Unicorn Ranch (and the FaceGoog) that people are more reasonable.

[dandrick]

Is she qualified? Maybe.

My question is, what are the qualifications of the person that actually got the job?

[CaptSpify]

I constantly hear "We can't find any good techs". After interviews, I ask how it went, and I constantly hear "He was great, but he wanted too much money!"

So I whistle and get back to work. I've tried bringing it up before, but it just seems to fall on deaf ears.

[MollyR]

Several of the companies I've worked at had this exact issue. So we'd hire a few people fresh out of college train to them to an acceptable standard, then watch them find another higher paying job. Leadership refused to pay good developers, their market worth. It might be important to note the CEO from the uk, where I hear developers are paid less than America.

[CaptSpify]

> It might be important to note the CEO from the uk, where I hear developers are paid less than America.

I've heard that too, but I also hear they work less hours, have better vacation, and other benefits. You'll have to balance something out if you really want great employees.

[MollyR]

Our CEO from the uk didn't bring any of those benefits over.

[jbotttt]

To summarise your first paragraph #notallmanagers

[mosselman]

Why do not all managers summarise his first paragraph?

[elbigbad]

Regarding dumb luck, that's exactly how I got my first real job out of grad school. I had specialized in kind of a risky way. It would have made me less generally employable, but more desirable in the sector in which I wanted a job.

Looked like it wasn't going to pan out. I was totally unemployed in a bad market with skills not generally in demand. Student loans were looming and I was just about out of cash.

In a stroke of dumb luck, I went to the grocery to get a 6 pack of beer, a luxury at the time. On the way out, ran into my former boss from an internship who didn't even live in that area of town. She said they just got an opening and I would be perfect, as she knew my skillset.

Weeks later I started my career at my dream job.

[tanker]

This seems like an instance of Job's "A players hire A players, B players hire C players." [1] Results will vary by who is hiring.

[1] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...

[dragonwriter]

> This seems like an instance of Job's "A players hire A players, B players hire C players."

Tangentially, I've always wondered, in that model, how B players ever get hired.

[Outdoorsman]

Interesting comment...

Given the limits imposed by Job's comment, which parameters the construct, it may be that the set of "B Players" are (failed) A players, who've involuntarily been forced a step down the ladder, or, alternatively, they are C players who've convinced some unspecified hiring intermediary that they're on the rise...

However one becomes a B player, by definition, one is constrained...one can only hire C players...dimming the prospects for success...so, for B, there appears to be little chance of ascending, or re-ascending, to A player status...

Whimsical, but fun to think about...

[hibikir]

The right way to think about it is to realize that hiring is a very difficult business, and we all make mistakes. So it's not who they hire, but who they intend to hire. They still miss.

So A players end up hiring B players when they don't want to, and sometimes A players sneak through the B player's filter.

And this is why, when people that are apparently very good leave your company, you have to wonder if you have to much B team, and you are letting them run amok.

[samstave]

Some times A players can fall to B or C due to life circumstance.

Sometimes whole teams are formed with B and C players because company cannot pay A wages/benefits, and it just stays in B or C arena.

I always strive to have people better than me on my team, and support them and keep them happy.

[dandrick]

They hatch from the egg in the chicken or egg equation.

[rzzzt]

Dinosaurs.

[samstave]

Business always finds a way.

[dustingetz]

when B players found the company. For example software companies started by people who aren't excellent at writing software. And B hires C isn't even a bad outcome in that case, the founders may have other advantages and go on to be successful.

[lastsilverback]

Tangentially, by dumb luck. Or they pretend to be C players and get paid as those.

[hackaflocka]

Jobs hired Sculley. What does that make Jobs?

[holografix]

This. Can people please stop quoting Jobs? He was a massive narcissist who propped himself up on other people's work.

This bullshit about A players was just his way of forcing everyone that worked for him to fear not delivering on his absurd expectations lest they become a "B" player.

[wyager]

>most people who work in successful companies didn't get there based on merit but largely, just dumb luck

Do you have evidence for this, or are you just speculating? My experience (based on my employment history and the employment history of those close to me) is that ability to get hired correlates very closely with merit (including technical skill, amicability, etc.)

[lastsilverback]

Do you have any evidence, or you're just speculating on your own experience? Most people would, of course, never admit they got hired based on luck instead of merit.

[wyager]

My point is clearly that neither I nor the person I responded to have presented hard evidence re. ability to get jobs versus merit.

However, I'm more inclined to believe the entailments of my own experience than the informal inferences of some stranger. I encourage everyone else to do the same.

I might argue that I even have "data" in the form of a reasonably large group of professional acquaintances. "Luck" is nothing but statistical noise, and a large number of people and a large number of job applications helps damp down the noise. There is a very obvious trend in the form of more meritorious people performing better when applying for jobs.