| I like that. I was a hiring manager for 25 years. I hired experienced C++ engineers, for fairly hairy algorithm work (image processing pipelines). Leetcode was absolutely worthless. There was no way to test for the stuff we did. The algorithms were nowhere to be found in most textbooks (they could be found in some textbooks that cost hundreds of dollars, though). Also, our company was cheap. They offered "competitive" salaries. This probably reduced our candidate pool by 90%. We were a marquée imaging company (great to have on your résumé), so the only folks that applied, were fairly serious about the job. I had to filter for folks that had the basic tech chops to get into our codebase, and also had the ability to learn the stuff we did. It was challenging. Also, once we hired someone, Japan wouldn't even acknowledge their existence, until they'd been on the team for at least a year. Training them on our algorithms was also a multi-year process, so I hired for the "long haul," and keeping people for many years was important. I didn't look for people that would work crazy hours, but I wanted folks that would be dedicated enough to the job, that they would be conscientious in their work, and put in extra time, if needed (which I was careful not to do too often). I looked for folks that I thought could work in an extremely diverse team; spread throughout the world, and that were capable of treating their teammates with respect; not competition. I did OK. Never had a technical bomb, but I did make a couple of mistakes, when it came to folks that could integrate into the team. They generally found it uncomfortable, and went their way, but that still hurt, because of all the time we had to invest. All very old-fashioned stuff, and probably not representative of most of today's companies. I will say, that, towards the end of my tenure, there, the HR started to get really rapacious. They were run by the Corporate General Counsel, and tended to treat the employees as threats. Shielding my team from them was pretty important, and it meant that I was occasionally called on the carpet. |