Lone Coder Blog - A Lone Coder in a Big Pond

Wed Jun 21 13:34:48 UTC 2006

On Sun, 2006-06-18 at 23:44 -0400, Alex Beamish wrote:
> On 6/17/06, Ken Burtch <kburtch-Zd07PnzKK1IAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>         This month I talk about dealing with depression if you are a
>         programmer.
> 
> Hi Ken, 
> 

Hello Alex,

Thanks for your comments.

My article was on dealing with rejection and the low self-esteem caused
by rejection.  It was not talking about how to deal with HR or how to
get hired.  My advice at the end was on what to do in spite of how HR
might treat you, and to do it for yourself and your self-esteem.

By talking about beating HR at their own game, you make it sound like IT
professionals can avoid rejection and if a person suffers rejection,
that it must be their fault for not playing the game properly.  I'm not
sure if that's what you meant.  I believe that rejection is inherently a
part of the current IT industry and hiring process.  Professionals need
to be aware of the emotional and psychological skills needed to deal
with that rejection, which are unfortunately seldom taught.

However, if you want to talk about HR...

> Dealing with HR is quite a challenge. They seem to be quite nice
> people, but their job seems to be a really, really different job than
> what computer geeks do. I think in order to make that meeting with HR
> work, you have to play their game. You'll need the following Important
> Items:

Programmers work with logic all day and sometimes use logic to try to
solve inherently illogical problems.  "The game" of HR people is that
they are called upon to judge someone without sufficient data, which is
inherently irrational.  They create they're own groundless ideas to
justify their decisions.  Since each HR person has their own unique
game, it's impossible to beat them at their own game since you don't
know what the game was until the interview is complete.

> [] Haircut, facial hair trimmed (men only);
> [] The nicest clothes that you still feel comfortable in;
> [] A briefcase if necessary;
> [] Decent shoes; and
> [] A positive 'Sales' attitude.

None of these will score points with HR people.  You walk in with a
beard, and the HR person says (illogically), "Beards mean he's hiding
his face so that means he's untrustworthy...rejected."  "His clothes are
not what my friends wear, he's a rebel...rejected."  "A briefcase can be
used to steal company secrets...rejected."  You're dealing with random,
illogical people.  There is no defense when you're walking cold into
this kind of situation.

Most advice dealing with HR boils down to: "say and do as little as
possible to give them no data on you to make their illogical
conclusions.  Be as bland as a potato because you cannot know beforehand
what criteria you'll be judged on."  Which is the opposite of what an
interview is supposed to be about.

How can a person have a good sales attitude if they have been rejected
so much they no longer believe in themselves?  This is why I wrote the
article.  You can't sell what you don't believe in, especially yourself.

> As another poster mentioned, a job interview is a meeting to see if
> you're a good fit for the company, and if the company's a good fit for
> you. Both parties are selling, and both parties are buying. This is no
> place for "Don't Judge A Book By Its Cover".

How egotistical does one have to be to believe that the parties are on
equal footing?  Putting my quote from "The Word" in context, Wheeler
(the corrupt publisher) confronts Randall (who's uncovered the truth).
Randall says that Wheeler's meeting him because Randall known too much
and they need to negotiate.  Wheeler responds, "...for all your
pretensions of high-mindedness and brain power, you're g***** stupid.
Your opposition would mean nothing to us, would amount to no more than
the inaudible croakings of a small frog in a big pond."  Does anyone
actually believe that an interview is about a two-party negotiation?
The company is trying to fill a hole in the organization tree, and
anybody will do...it doesn't have to be the best candidate and it
doesn't matter if the candidate fits provided the HR people go through
the _appearance_ of doing a job to ensure fit...a job the reality of
which they cannot do.

As I wrote in January, "You can't judge a book by its cover, even if you
measure the cover, have more than one person look at the cover, or are
so lazy that you pay someone to chose a cover for you. People are too
complex to label so superficially."  It's not possible to judge
"fitness" in a job interview, particularly when fitness has to do with
how one interacts with people who are not even at the interview, under
circumstances which cannot be duplicated during the interview. 

I was interviewed for an advanced tech support job at VMWare.  I made it
through three tiers of interviews, got along well with all the team
members I would be working with, demonstrated my Linux expertise and I
could handle the work.  The final interview was with the boss.  He
looked over my recent work on my resume and said, "But you're a
programmer.  You're the wrong kind of person for this job."  His
decision that I wouldn't fit was totally illogical and in defiance of
the facts: I mean, how could I clear three tiers of interviews as a
"plumber" applying for "airline pilot" job, as he implied.  Quite
clearly I had the skills and the fit.  My final thought was, "How did
this idiot get to be a manager at a respectable company?  Guys like that
make companies like VMWare look bad."

The point is there was nothing I could do to thwart that kind of gold
medal il-logic.

[snip]

> Anyway, I'm just hoping my next employer is small enough that they
> don't have an HR department, so I can skip that part of the hiring
> process altogether. (I'm not looking for a job -- I'm just saying.)
> I'd rather drink beer with a bunch of techies and see if we can work
> together, rather than sit a chair with a glass of water in a really
> artificial social situation, trying to make my way through the maze of
> HR-type questions.
> 
> I just wonder what it's like for an HR person to go through the same
> thing. I'd love to be a fly on the wall for that.

I agree.

> -- 
> Alex Beamish
> Toronto, Ontario
> ps Good luck, if you're still looking.

I'm employed, but we all need all the luck we can get.

KB

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Ken O. Burtch                                     Phone: 905-562-0848
Author "Linux Shell Scripting with Bash"            Fax: 905-562-0848
http://www.pegasoft.ca                            Email: ken-8VyUGRzHQ8IsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org
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