(no title)
lazydon | 5 years ago
When a few teammates and I interview folks, other than the usual official evaluations, the best we understand each other's feedback is through this common language. A language that got unconsciously developed while interviewing and working together for years and our experiences with other folks in the organization.
We are no YC, but what PG is referring to as earnest would be in our language simply "good energy". The opposite of it would be "looks tired" i.e. for someone showing completer lack of interest in what they do. Another ones would be "fighter" (one who doesn't gives up on hard problems) and "pacifier" (one who stays calm and composed that's good for handling production incidents and help team through with difficult people).
To further muddy the waters, I think if the job descriptions came up with more details about the personality traits required for the job, that could help people have better job matches and satisfaction. I know it becomes too subjective if you overdo it but perhaps things like StrengthsFinder can help. On the other hand there's a risk of going too further on altogether a wrong path as it happened with Myers-Briggs.
TheDong|5 years ago
At our office, we have the more normal term of "easy to communicate" and "good culture fit" and so on.
"Culture fit" seems like a slightly more convenient term for applying ingrained racist and sexist biases, but I guess saying any applicants who don't match your racial or socioeconomic background seem "tired" works well too!
I think "looks tired" is also even more convenient for ageism than the usual "that old person didn't seem like a good culture fit".
I know this is a really negative interpretation of what you're saying, but in my experience those sorts of things really are used to filter out people who aren't like you. People of different races, people who have young kids and are thus naturally tired, people who have lazy eyes, people with minor speech impediments. All of those people coincidentally have higher rates of being bad culture fits and looking tired.
I wonder if pg would think those people are earnest or not.
lambdatronics|5 years ago
See, this is why I don't think AI will catch on for making hiring decisions... not because it's going to be biased, but because it can be audited for bias & then corrected for it.