[ravenstine]

> Talk about life with your candidates

> I have one simple rule: I don’t want to work with people whom I wouldn’t invite for coffee. When hiring a remote team member, I always talk to them about their life plans or favorite books. This small talk shows me whether a person will be a good fit for our team.

This is fine, so long as you recognize your own biases and don't expect to be mirroring yourself on to other people. Humans looking to make an honest living are not your personal canvas. If you look for people who can get along with you without necessarily expecting them to be your "bro", then being chummy with candidates should be acceptable. Be sure to accept people with different interests and personalities.

[throwaway38493]

Also, chat with your lawyer and HR team (if you have one) to make sure you understand the bounds of what you're legally allowed to ask. "Life plans" can include topics that are illegal to ask about in the US, and probably elsewhere: https://www.betterteam.com/illegal-interview-questions

[MuffinFlavored]

What if I don't read books? Am I instantly not allowed to be on the team? :(

[cik]

All joking aside that's one of my filters for any hiring, and whether or not I'll work with someone. Someone who doesn't read, or hasn't read recently (tech, econ, whatever), I find is then missing all sorts of other things that make it a bad experience.

[imsofuture]

As an insatiable reader: yikes!

There has got to be such a poor correlation between reading and being a good hire, I'm shocked you'd admit to seriously using such an awful filter for hiring. Hiring people that are most like you in appearance, philosophy, mannerisms, hobbies is a TERRIBLE way to hire.

[smallbigfish]

I bet they should also be the same color.

[kareemm]

I find there to be decent overlap between readers and intellectually curious people. It's hard to be intellectually curious if you don't read.

[watwut]

Many if not owerwhelming majority of people who read do read same story or kind of book over and over. It is called preference.

[slimsag]

Funny, that is one of my metrics to measure the pretentiousness of a work environment and whether or not a company will be a SV flop or not.

[internet_user]

Companies where people pretend to be well-read are SV flops, or otherwise?

Not obvious where the "funny" part is.

[dvtrn]

That's an interesting filter.

(tech, econ, whatever)

So if it's "whatever", if you asked me if "Do you read?" and I replied "I read several street signs on my way over here", would that count?

[JAlexoid]

Reading books is overrated. I don't read books, but read a tonne of papers and magazines. I bet I'm much more in tune with current tech and econ, that someone that reads books released 5-10 years ago,

[dumpsterdiver]

If you don't read books then how are you qualified to label them as overrated?

[noirbot]

I'm legitimately curious what books you'd recommend as tech reading? I'm sure it's out there, but outside of reference docs/books, I'm not sure I've really read much of any books that were directly relevant to my job from a technical perspective.

I've read plenty of articles/post-mortems, watched tech-talks, and read docs for new tools and languages, but I've had job applications specifically ask about the last technical book I've read and I've never known what they thought I should have been reading...

[invalidOrTaken]

Talking to a friend recently I realized the last book-book I read was Developer Hegemony, which heavily subscribes (as do I) to Rao's concept of the corporation as an entity pathological by nature...maybe not the best thing to allude to in a job interview.

[baud147258]

Does reading HN count? That the most tech/econ/whatever reading I'm doing

[aogl]

Whenever I answer that in interviews, the interviewer (if a techy) always smiles and nods. So I guess so.. HN counts..

[craftinator]

So if I am blind...