[larryfreeman]

The best summer intern that I ever hired did not have any programming experience. He was a Berkeley student who had recently decided to change his major but hadn't started taking any programming classes.

When we interviewed him, it was clear that he was a serious student, he was very smart, and that he would work very hard if we gave him the internship. As the hiring manager, I turned him down because of the lack of programming experience.

I was overruled by our CTO. Apparently, the candidate was a family friend of the CTO and the CTO had strong confidence that he would learn programming very quickly.

The Berkeley student was given the paid internship. In an 8 week period over summer, the candidate learned ios programming, identified a problem that was impacting customers, proposed a fix, and was able to release the fix to customers. When he demonstrated the issue and his fix to the engineering team, it was clear that he had spent long hours working with the app.

My lesson from this is that the best candidate may not be the one who appears the best on paper. More important is a very smart candidate who is willing to work very hard.

[lapcat]

> Apparently, the candidate was a family friend of the CTO

> My lesson from this is that the best candidate may not be the one who appears the best on paper.

My lesson from this is that nepotism rules the world.

There are countless unknown people out there who are very smart and willing to work very hard. Not many get the chance.

[flappyeagle]

Who cares. They found a star. Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, JFK & RFK, countless more were megastars and they had unbelievable legs up in their profession. But at the end of the day they performed like crazy.

Nepotism is bad when it promotes idiots to positions they can’t handle. It is GOOD when it ensures talent gets cultivated.

That the CTO was family friends with the kid was terrific luck. Everybody won.

[lapcat]

> They found a star.

The intern fixed 1 bug in 8 weeks. That hardly seems to be star quality.

[GuB-42]

The important part is that started from zero and went through all the steps to production in 8 weeks.

And I assume it is not the only thing he did, presumably he did that in addition to what he was hired for. When he found that bug, he probably did a good enough impression so that the company let him work on it.

Most interns introduce more bugs than they fix, and are usually assigned internal tools and other noncritical code for that reason. A net 1 bug fix is already a good score.

[lapcat]

> The important part is that started from zero and went through all the steps to production in 8 weeks.

Why is that important? That may be personally impressive, but it's unclear how the company benefits from the intern starting from zero.

> And I assume it is not the only thing he did, presumably he did that in addition to what he was hired for. When he found that bug, he probably did a good enough impression so that the company let him work on it.

That's a lot to assume with no evidence. None of this was stated by the OP.

[flappyeagle]

Trajectory matters far more than starting position.

I’ve personally hired people into their first dev jobs out of bootcamp, self-study, and other non-traditional backgrounds.

You can reliably pick winners by testing for mental acuity and observing how much they learn in a short period of time.

An internship is just a glorified interview process. They found a good future employee

[GuB-42]

Short-sighted companies with high turnover probably won't see the benefits, companies that actually give their employees careers definitely will. It is all about potential, what is 8 weeks of internship if you expect your employees to stay for a decade or more? It may not be the culture of Silicon Valley, but the Silicon Valley culture is more the exception than the norm (at least for decent companies).

[loa_in_]

No, nepotism is covering someone who's _failing_ at their duties, yet retaining them due to familial connections.

Otherwise, what are you really mitigating by refusing to hire your CTO's nephew? If he's a strong candidate, it's not pathological and calling it nepotism is pointless at best. Otherwise if CTO's nephew turns out to be a weak candidate and is let go then again, it's completely normal. If CTO's nephew is a bad hire, yet he's retained, then it's nepotism.

[lapcat]

> If he's a strong candidate

"As the hiring manager, I turned him down because of the lack of programming experience. I was overruled by our CTO."

[timy2shoes]

“ The best summer intern that I ever hired” supports that the CTO was a better judge of the candidate.

[lapcat]

> “ The best summer intern that I ever hired”

What's the sample size?

> supports that the CTO was a better judge of the candidate.

No, it doesn't, because the hiring manager's choice never got a chance to show what they could do. Besides, the fact that the nepotistic hire worked out could have been just dumb luck. After all, hiring is a crapshoot, especially hiring interns.

Regardless, this was clearly nepotism, and the question isn't whether the CTO could judge the candidate, the question is whether favoritism was shown toward a family friend, which is indisputably the case.

[roenxi]

That is a factor in why nepotism is so endemic - people are much better judges of the character of people in their family. This is a clear-cut case of nepotism, although personally I don't see a problem here. Nepotism isn't a bad thing in small doses. This instance is a good example of why not.

[chownie]

That is not the definition of the word nepotism at all, nepotism is just giving family members unfair favouritism.

No definition I've come across requires the candidate perform poorly, where have you come to this conclusion?

[ozim]

For me it would be nepotism if CTO would hire a family friend that was totally unqualified or somewhat unqalified and would cover his ass to keep him in company.

Story in here is not nepotism, it is just that guy had more opportunities than others but that is just the way life is. That is why for example going to university is important - not for knowledge or lectures - but for getting to know people who will most likely be working in the same field.

[quickthrower2]

This so nepotism it could be the dictionary definition.

[loa_in_]

No, nepotism is covering someone who's _failing_ at their duties, yet retaining them due to familial connections.

Otherwise, what are you really mitigating by refusing to hire your CTO's nephew? If he's a strong candidate, it's not pathological and calling it nepotism is pointless at best. Otherwise if CTO's nephew turns out to be a weak candidate and is let go then again, it's completely normal. If CTO's nephew is a bad hire, yet he's retained, then it's nepotism.

[philipswood]

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nepotism

>nepotism

>noun

>nep· o· tism ˈne-pə-ˌti-zəm

>: favoritism (as in appointment to a job) based on kinship

>>accused the company of fostering nepotism in promotions

[StevenWaterman]

There's a difference between

    (is kin) -> (preferred for job)

and

    (is kin) -> (insider knowledge that they're better than expected) -> (preferred for job)

Specifically,

    (insider knowledge that they're better than expected) -> (preferred for job)

would make complete sense and would not be looked down upon. The source of that knowledge is problematic on a societal scale, but not on an individual level.

[watwut]

This is what nepotism is. It does not have to be that the person benefiting from it is incapable. Most of them are normal capable, some better then average some worst.

[bhickey]

> it is just that guy had more opportunities than others

Due to nepotism.

[loa_in_]

It's like saying that grocery store's owner's daughter shouldn't be hired at their grocery store. Of course she's having an opportunity others won't!

[lapcat]

> It's like saying that grocery store's owner's daughter shouldn't be hired at their grocery store.

We're all here trying to tell you that the grocery store's owner hiring his own daughter is literally, indisputably, paradigmatically nepotism, but somehow you don't seem to get it.

[commonlisp94]

I don't think anyone is arguing the owner (as an individual) is immoral. Denying the daughter that won't change anything, and teaching his daughter life skills is an even higher responsibility.

Rather, we are lamenting the inherent unfairness that is often overlooked or not acknowledged.

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> In an 8 week period over summer, the candidate learned ios programming, identified a problem that was impacting customers, proposed a fix, and was able to release the fix to customers. When he demonstrated the issue and his fix to the engineering team, it was clear that he had spent long hours working with the app.

This is actually faint praise that this was the right decision. Finding and fixing a bug (there is no mention of how tricky or complicated it was) is often the warm up project for an internship to get them familiar with the code base before doing something more ambitious.

The fact that the presentation demonstrated “spent long hours working with the app” and not some particular insight or ability is also telling.

As others have mentioned this whole story smells of nepotism.

[mdorazio]

How does one filter for candidates who are very smart and willing to work very hard without having a trusted person already at the company to vouch for them?

[lapcat]

> How does one filter for candidates who are very smart and willing to work very hard without having a trusted person already at the company to vouch for them?

Experience? ;-)

"As the hiring manager, I turned him down because of the lack of programming experience."

This candidate was already filtered out, but the CTO put him back in.

Let me put it this way: if companies can't figure out who to hire, then the fairest selection method wouldn't be nepotism, it would be random. Give everyone an equal chance to prove themselves.

[jyscao]

>if companies can't figure out who to hire, then the fairest selection method wouldn't be nepotism, it would be random

Companies don't optimize for fairness, they try to maximize quality on their end. And many, including myself, would argue that nepotism as flawed as it is, is still superior to random selection.

[lapcat]

> And many, including myself, would argue that nepotism as flawed as it is, is still superior to random selection.

That's an unsupported claim, not an argument. :-)

In any case, if people want to argue in favor of nepotism, then I don't want to hear another word about "meritocracy".