I’ve been looking for a new job recently. I don’t want to leave my current position unless I find something better, but it’s probably time to leave before I get burned out and unsuitable for human company. Right now, I do Internet development for a company that owns a slew of news properties, including two you’ve almost certainly heard of. Our team runs the Web sites and the content management system that powers them.
There are plenty of jobs out there, despite what Hodean & The Gang says, but I’ve been picky about where I’ve applied. Several weeks ago, a former co-worker recommended that I submit an application to a company for which she was doing contract work. I did that, and they invited me to an interview. By the end, I wanted to switch my line of work to something more spiritually rewarding, like coal mining.
Margaret, the HR lady, met me at their development office. (I have changed the names in this story to protect the innocent and the guilty.) She introduced me to Benjamin, a skinny, pale, intense little person.
The first few questions were sensible: he handed me a short program, and asked me to tell him what various parts of the code did and what the output would look like. I felt like things were going quite well — we were talking about the kind of things that Web developers should know, and I sailed through that part. Then it started.
“What,” Benjamin asked, “is a Cartesian join?”
“I don’t know,” I said after thinking a moment. “I’ve heard the term but I can’t define it for you.” I don’t believe in pretending I know more than I do, and I find that people usually appreciate that kind of honesty.
“Umm…okay….” He looked taken aback. “Well, tell me what this SQL code will do.”
“Oh,” I said, “That will return a resultset with all the rows in both tables.”
“That’s right. That’s a Cartesian join.”
Okay, I thought to myself, This guy definitely majored in computer science.
Then we went through the looking glass. “Do you know what a Fibonacci sequence is?”
Nope. Sure didn’t. He explained it, and asked me to write a program to calculate it. I started fumbling my way through it. To understand my frustration, an analogy:
is to
running a real Web site
as
knowing about Monet’s paintings of the gardens at Giverny
is to
running the garden in your backyard.
I managed to get over the sheer irrelevance of the task and came up with a solution, but at that point I considered thanking them and leaving.
The final question was a word problem, and I can’t quite remember the details. Something about having a 7-minute hourglass and an 11-minute hourglass, and having to measure 15 minutes with those two hourglasses. I was dumbfounded. I thought for a second about how to answer, then said, “You know, I have no idea.”
Benjamin shifted in his seat, then said, “Do you want to use the board to work it out?”
“No, not really,” I replied. By this time I was having a hard time controlling my anger. I’m taking time off of work for this? “Well, let’s see how we could solve this,” Benjamin said, and started sketching on the board.
While he was working the dry erase marker, I wanted to ask, “Are these the kind of everyday problems you face here?” but bit my tongue. I also wanted to ask him about some typical situations that a developer at a news company might face (“When an editor e-mails you to ask about the same problem for the 53rd time, what smartass comment should you make?”) but I did not.
Benjamin slunk out of the room looking uncomfortable, embarrassed, and slightly guilty. After he left, I told Margaret, “I don’t have a computer science degree. If that’s what you’re looking for, then clearly I’m not your candidate, as you can see by my résumé.” She quickly assured me that Benjamin was just a hard-core programming guy, and very enthusiastic about computer knowledge.
Margaret had to leave, so she left me with Will, to whom this position would report. Will and I got along famously. We discussed their intranet, how a content management system would help them, how to tie together their branch offices, training staff members how to use an intranet, design considerations, etc. I was feeding them solutions from my bitterly-won experience — basically, I was doing what a consultant would do, only I was doing it for free. We talked for most of two hours, then he showed me out. I thought, “Maybe I won’t take the job if they offer it, but that part sure went well.”
Margaret called me a couple of days later. “Eric, I wanted to tell you this by phone, not by e-mail.” Uh oh. “We selected another candidate who was stronger in ASP, because that’s the language we use.” (To you non-techies, ASP is a scripting language, not an Egyptian snake.)
“Okay.” I was stunned. “That’s kind of funny, because I looked at your public Web sites, and a lot of them are not in ASP. Most of them were in PHP. I know both ASP and PHP.”
“That may be,” she explained, “but this candidate knows ASP frontwards and backwards, and does it all day every day.”
I was getting a little angry. “Let me get this straight, just so I understand. You looked at my development experience, my networking experience, and my management experience, and you selected the other guy because he’s better at ASP?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Margaret said. “They decided they needed someone who can hit the ground running and start developing as soon as he got there.” She thought I was a strong candidate and they’d consider me for other positions, blah blah blah.
My experience designing and building a system that runs several news properties? Leading a development team? Supervising the people who put up the content on the main Web site? None of that stuff mattered because I hadn’t programmed in ASP for 18 months.
I was disgusted, not just with that company, but with the whole process. I had spent over six hours traveling and interviewing, only to have them explain that ASP was really what they were looking for. Why the hell did they have to waste an entire day of my life, when all they had to do was ask a simple question over the phone: “Are you an expert in ASP?” “No, I am not.” “Thanks for your time.”
“Why are you bitching about a job interview, Eric? This is Catholic Light, not the Monster.com forums.” A fair question, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because I’m sick and freakin’ tired of being treated like a set of skills instead of a human being, and I don’t think I need to whip out my copy of Rerum Novarum to prove that in Catholic teaching, workers deserve to be treated like people and not like cogs in a machine.
Thus, it doesn’t matter to the journalists that I’ve written for several publications — including theirs! — or that I’m well informed about national and world events. Most of them still talk down to me and my colleagues because we’re not “one of them.” We’re just “computer guys,” well-paid handymen, with nothing to contribute to the core functions of the business because we can’t possibly understand what they do. Our job is to robotically execute their requests — no matter how ill-defined or self-contradictory.
And when they’re looking around for a new position, many employers don’t care that you can build things or solve problems or communicate with users. They just want to know if you’ve got experience with JSP or .NET or whatever acronym is popular this month. You’re not a thinking human being, you are a thing that performs a function.
Like I said, coal mining is looking pretty good right now.
I certainly agree with you about the corporate attitude towards employees. However, I wouldn’t give their “reasons” for not hiring you much importance. They probably can’t legally (or politely) tell you the real reasons.
When I hire, I turn down all kinds of superbly qualified people for reasons they’ll never know. These might include bad or lukewarm references, wage history, length and number of previous jobs, spelling errors on a resume, personality, body odor, dress, overqualification, religion, age, sex, marital status, whether a spouse works and has benefits, ages and number of children, etc., or some combination of things. Sometimes I have to choose between candidates based on nothing more than a subjective hunch (yet I’m expected to give a detailed and rational explanation).
The working world is not, and never has been, a strict meritocracy. And in my opinion it shouldn’t be.
What you have encountered, Eric, is hypocrisy. That’s what you get when employers have to pretend that technical qualifications are the only criteria.
I hear you, Jeff, and I know what you mean: I’m hiring for an open position right now, as a matter of fact, and just reviewed 61 resumes today (ooh, my head!) However, it’s been my experience, and that of many others, that if you don’t have the Three-Letter Acronym on your resume, you won’t get an interview.
Let me tell you how I start winnowing down the list of candidates. We need two primary technical skills: ColdFusion and MS SQL Server. If I don’t see either one on the resume, I reject the person — we can’t teach them two essential technologies. If I see both, then they’re a possiblity. If I see one, and I also see some relevant experience (they designed a CMS, for example, or they worked for a newspaper) then they’re also a possibility.
Skills are important. We’ve only got three developers, and I’m fairly patient but I can’t teach remedial computing. That being said, I would — and have — take someone who was less qualified, but had experience and good character, over someone with top-notch skills who could not write a coherent sentence.
Don’t be too surprised, Eric, at the lack of logic and consistency in hiring practices.
At my job, a candidate typically meets 3-4 people from the department for an hour or half-hour each, and they each take their own angle: some talk a lot and “sell the company” or the position, while some listen more. One asks the candidate a roster of tech questions about Unix ranging from the easy to the obscure, and that probably is intimidating, but it’s a serious effort to catch the people whose main skill is slinging IT buzzwords. We’ve known some who talk a good game, and nothing more. I tend to have people talk about the experiences in their resume, and I’m frankly disorganized about it.
A fair amount of the hiring decision is subjective and comes down to how we perceive the candidate’s personality and compatibility with our particular group. I can think of two cases in which I ignored the ‘likability factor’ and supported a candidate who showed an abrasive personality during interviews. Both times I repented of it later, because those people irritated their co-workers, had high turnover among their subordinates, and eventually had to change jobs themselves.
Anyway, back to your experience: it’s even possible that the company you spoke with picked a candidate who was objectively less qualified than you, but would come cheaper: e.g., someone not currently working.
Dear Eric,
You hit the nail on the head at the end of your post. And we can pinpoint the moment of change when we went from Personnel departments to “Human Resources.” I am not a resource, nor a simple or complex bundle of resources, and I don’t much care to be treated as if I were such a bundle.
Logic and compassion dictate that you do not waste a person’s time if they are not minimally qualified for what you want them to do.
shalom,
Steven
RC, the “likablility factor” is crucial. That’s why this whole episode was so bizarre. I got along great with the guy I’d be reporting to (I wouldn’t have had a team initially — it would be just me at first.) Margaret was enthusiastic about me because she’s a former Marine. If I felt like I had been rejected because they didn’t like me, that’s at least a “human” reason and I could live with that.
Not only that, but I don’t bill myself as an “expert” on any particular technology. (I consider an expert someone who almost never has to look up anything, who could write an introductory book on the subject if he had to.) There’s no way I could be: we use way too many packages and technologies. I’m proficient and experienced in all of them; if I weren’t, I wouldn’t put it on the resume. If they’re looking for a SQL DBA, great; I don’t apply for those positions because I’m not qualified and the thought of working exclusively with databases for 40 hours a week makes me queasy.
I’m also thinking that the ease with which you can apply to a company makes submitting an electronic resume worthless. Every solid job lead I’ve gotten — there have been only three of them, but like I said, I’m being picky — has been through personal contacts. I’ve applied to jobs where I fit the qualifications perfectly and never gotten a call. I think that these resume databases with thousands of applications are too daunting for hiring managers. They look at the mountain and then turn to their co-workers and say, “Do you know anyone who can fill this job?”
Steven, you’re right about the switch to “Human Resources.” It was a pernicious change, though it’s not like corporations were perfect when they used the name Personnel. (Full disclosure: my mom works in HR for a big defense contractor, but she’s in charge of making sure people are enrolled in the dental plan and things like that.)
The funny thing was that this position wasn’t completely defined anyway — which is why I was essentially telling Will what this new guy should do. They’re going to end up hiring someone like me anyway, or get a consultant to build a very expensive system for them. Then they’ll be sorry. Muhahahaha!
None of that stuff mattered because I hadn’t programmed in ASP for 18 months.
Haven’t I said that Microsoft is evil? No? Well I’ll say it: Microsoft is Evil.
Umm, Eric. Was it really wise to announce to your current bosses that you are looking for greener pastures by posting this story under your right name?
Yes, Microsoft is evil. And I don’t particularly like ASP — it’s a hodge-podge of different technologies fused together.
As for my employer, I don’t need to keep this a secret, really. If they want to keep me, maybe they could give me a raise. Plus, there are a lot of Eric Johnsons out there….
Plus, there are a lot of Eric Johnsons out there….
How many with the email address:
response@bernini-communications.com
Eric, It seems to me that your mistake was not responding like a character out of the DaVinci Code. The Fibonacci sequence looms large in it, along with word games. Obviously you revealed that you were not a member in good standing of the Priory of Sion.
I know this isn’t the most appropriate question, but what was the solution to the hourglass problem?
The solution to the hourglass problem:
Set both the hourglasses running.
When the 7 minute hourglass runs out of sand, that’s when the 15 minutes begin.
Sand will run in the 11 minute hourglass for another 4 minutes (11-7).
When the 11 minute hourglass runs out of sand, turn it upside down and let the sand run out of sand again. When it does, 15 minutes have elapsed (4 + 11).