Author Topic: "Training out the stupid"  (Read 13872 times)

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Offline CerebusTopic starter

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"Training out the stupid"
« on: December 14, 2020, 02:40:28 pm »
Elsewhere, Cjay said:

Quote from: CJay  date=1607931196
Through the years I've bumped into one or two like him who survive on ignorance of management and have been sent on so many training courses to try and educate the stupid out of them [my emphasis] that, on paper, they are the best qualified in the business and as such are flameprooof.

Heh, heh. That phrase made me giggle.

I wonder if Cjay has hit on an explanation for a phemomenon that I've encountered quite a lot. When I've been in a management position and hiring people I've noticed that there are a lot of people out there who, on paper, are well qualified, but in practice are useless. They are the people who always seem to have the industry qualification du jour for the industry that they are in, sometimes a list of them that almost mirrors industry fashions over the years. So for programmers and support people they've often been a "Microsoft certified whatnot", or in communications it's a "Cisco certified whatnot" and so on.

When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #1 on: December 14, 2020, 04:28:02 pm »
I've always taught my daughter that "ignorance can be cured, but stupidity can't".

When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics.

Here's a way that might fail...

Imagine someone that really does have a lot of experience, and has disinterred many skeletons. Their head will be full of the interesting rare cases. In a real-life situation they might well do all the obvious diagnostics without thinking about it[1]. They might be expecting/hoping that you will be testing their expertise, not something a trained chimp could do.

[1] hence on this forum I will indicate how something could be dangerous, but I won't give any indication that something might be safe. There are too many very obvious (to me) things that I won't have mentioned, but they might not be obvious to someone else. E.g. pull plug out of mains socket (not just turn off at the socket), or work with one hand in your back pocket.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #2 on: December 14, 2020, 05:33:54 pm »

A good interview question is to let the interviewee explain in detail something they've designed or worked on.  This will very quickly reveal their depth of understanding and the "level" they are comfortable working at.
 
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Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2020, 05:38:14 pm »
Here's a way that might fail...

Imagine someone that really does have a lot of experience, and has disinterred many skeletons. Their head will be full of the interesting rare cases. In a real-life situation they might well do all the obvious diagnostics without thinking about it[1]. They might be expecting/hoping that you will be testing their expertise, not something a trained chimp could do.

My experience has been that when asking someone to explain something fundamentally simple in their field, three things become obvious and a fourth thing sometimes surfaces:
  • Do they understand the basic fundamentals of this system?
  • Do they have an understanding of the finer subtleties?
  • Can they communicate their understanding?
  • Do they have anecdotes about the times that something was broken when what looked simple wasn't?

I think point (2) is what you're talking about, and my experience says that it rapidly becomes obvious if someone has this kind of detailed experience from having dealt with interesting corner cases etc., often indicated by trotting out a (4). The folks that, even though they look great on paper, need weeding out are the one that can't hack stage (1). No (3) is a side effect, and tells you whether you should risk putting the engineer in question in front of customers, or whether they should be only be deployed behind the scenes with their peers.

Again, the phenomenon I'm talking about here is the one of people who apparently have all the qualifications on paper, often of specialities, but who just plain don't know how to do the basics, sometimes as basic as "trained monkey" level. Cjay's comment was initially prompted by discussion of a qualified, apparently highly experienced, EE who seems to regularly ask questions that the untrained, unqualified hobbyists end up answering for them.

I started noticing the phenomenon I'm describing in my ISP days. We were looking for intermediate to high-end network engineers. I kept on seeing people who had CCIE qualifications (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) but who in practice had no knowledge on how to do half the things that a "certified expert" ought to have been able to do according to the [tested] syllabus for that qualification. After a bit of floundering around, I found that not only did this particular class of "certified expert" not know the "clever stuff" but that they didn't know the basic fundamentals of IP networking. Hence I started, apologetically, asking interviewees to talk through a very basic IP networking example that anyone who "knows IP" ought to be able to satisfactorily explain.

Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #4 on: December 14, 2020, 05:48:40 pm »
I remember interviewing someone who had a PhD in EE, I was looking forward to talking to them because they had some quite interesting stuff on their resume but they turned out to be hugely disappointing and didn't really seem to know much of anything practical. It seems there are some people who are just very skilled at taking classes and passing exams. I don't know that "stupid" is the right word for it, but some people just lack the practical ability to do things that are not part of a structured course.
 

Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #5 on: December 14, 2020, 05:53:30 pm »

A good interview question is to let the interviewee explain in detail something they've designed or worked on.  This will very quickly reveal their depth of understanding and the "level" they are comfortable working at.

Agreed. It's perhaps a good idea to give some advance warning to the candidates. Something along the lines of "Please be prepared to discuss a project you have worked on in the past that gives you a chance to explain how you approached the project, and that you can freely discuss.". I say this because (1) people often have confidentiality issues surrounding work, (2) some people, even though they have a wealth of projects to pick from, flounder in choosing one if they're put on the spot. I've been in that position myself and found myself struggling to immediately pick something that was both relevant and wasn't still covered by formal confidentiality agreements or just normal business ethics surrounding client information.

In practice, I'd probably come up with a longer "please be prepared..." formulation that provided some get-outs to work around confidentiality issues such as describing non-work related projects or older projects that might, superficially, seem too trivial for the level being interviewed for.
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #6 on: December 14, 2020, 06:05:34 pm »
A good interview question is to let the interviewee explain in detail something they've designed or worked on.  This will very quickly reveal their depth of understanding and the "level" they are comfortable working at.

That's the way I always started an interview. It puts the candidate at their ease and allows them to present themselves in a good light. Of course I ask questions like "what alternatives did you consider and why did you discard them", "what worked well", "what would you do differently next time".

Typically I would ask them to explain some industry general terms, and the physics behind them.

Then I would move onto a simplified scenario that they might encounter in the job, let them know there are no right answers, and explore the options with them. One example I used was "a toy car manufacturer comes to us and wants us to design traffic lights accessory. What would you suggest?" I'd expect them to winkle out the client's constraints, then suggest a range of implementation technologies, and select the best.

And somewhere in there I'd ask what hobby projects they had done. That tends to sort out the curious from the time servers.
« Last Edit: December 14, 2020, 06:12:01 pm by tggzzz »
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline S. Petrukhin

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #7 on: December 14, 2020, 06:43:31 pm »
There is an anecdote!

The HR Manager reads the programmer's resume: he has everything, knows everything, used everything, etc. I thought a little...
- You know, we have only one day a week working in our company, we provide each programmer with a villa on the coast and a yacht, you can not work at all, just be proud of your achievements, and in every office we have beautiful girls dancing!
- Yes, you're lying!
- What do you do in your resume?
 :)

This is the problem of careerists who can well trump fashionable terms with words that have received many certificates, the value of which is not so indisputable. We know how to pass courses and get certificates, often even without any tests - just pay the money and they will give you everything. And the tests are usually very simple.

I had to work with several foreign specialists from Germany and Italy. Many are very smart guys, they know their jobs well and are able to think. But there were also outright fools who could only follow the instructions. Any event not described in the instructions put them in a dead end. This is in the technical field. In general, management is a disaster - there are a lot of frankly stupid people, but they have the skill to speak economic jargon and look like cool specialists.  :)

The whole World is drowning in bureaucracy... We experienced this in the USSR. The bureaucracy was terrible and at the same time, any student, who barely finished his studies at the university with a grade of 3, had to be hired in his specialty. It ruined us.
And sorry for my English.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #8 on: December 14, 2020, 06:52:53 pm »
The whole World is drowning in bureaucracy... We experienced this in the USSR. The bureaucracy was terrible and at the same time, any student, who barely finished his studies at the university with a grade of 3, had to be hired in his specialty. It ruined us.
A bureaucracy is what you get when the people with get up and go have got up and gone. This is only a bad thing when they are permitted too much power. Otherwise its good to have them pooled together. The rest of us can just skirt around them and get on with life.
 

Offline S. Petrukhin

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #9 on: December 14, 2020, 07:20:04 pm »
The whole World is drowning in bureaucracy... We experienced this in the USSR. The bureaucracy was terrible and at the same time, any student, who barely finished his studies at the university with a grade of 3, had to be hired in his specialty. It ruined us.
A bureaucracy is what you get when the people with get up and go have got up and gone. This is only a bad thing when they are permitted too much power. Otherwise its good to have them pooled together. The rest of us can just skirt around them and get on with life.

I probably misspelled it in English when I called it bureaucracy. I did not mean the arbitrariness of officials and bribes. I had in mind a very formal approach, the lack of any flexibility. Yes, in some areas, people must follow instructions exactly. But I see a bureaucracy in business, when in large companies the paperwork and their turnover are almost more important than the result.
And sorry for my English.
 

Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #10 on: December 14, 2020, 07:22:15 pm »
No, you've got the right word.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline daqq

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #11 on: December 14, 2020, 08:24:28 pm »
My theory is that people who get stuff done are too busy fixing stuff that the people who can't get stuff done broke and don't have time for silly certifications.
Believe it or not, pointy haired people do exist!
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Offline asmi

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #12 on: December 14, 2020, 08:52:28 pm »
When I interview candidates, I always ask about one of their past projects. You can always feel when he/she is proud of the work they had done in that project, and such people usually are very passionate and love telling about it to everyone who would care to listen. This is the kind of people I hire into my team. I want engineers to do things in such a way that they won't be ashamed to publicly talk about it, as that's how I do things myself.

As for certificates - they have zero importance to me, so I always ignore them, as the only thing they prove is that a person is capable of memorizing certain things and remembering them just long enough to pass a test. I mean, everyone who graduated University knows the drill - you memorize stuff the night before exam, you pass exam, you forget 99% of what you memorized by the time you get home from exam.
 
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Offline Syntax Error

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #13 on: December 14, 2020, 09:45:35 pm »
Never confuse a person who is highly capable with another who is just "highly trained".

There are two cost effective methodologies to hire the best candidate...
1) Pass candidates through a lengthy selection process including practical real world tests. For example, get the torque wrench out the toolbox and tighten the engine bolts to 20 newtons. (If you ask, "what's a talk wrench?", do not proceed)
2) Hire any candidate who can read, write, and possibly both. Based on the law that if you put enough monkeys behind enough typewriters you get Leo Tolstoy, if you train them all how to use the office computer system, they will become a collective literary genius. At half the price.

Indeed there are people who can paper a wall with their qualifications, and deservedly so. And there's the rest, who can't even paper a wall. I remember a doctorate with a PhD in AI software. He was possibly one of the most over-educated morons that I have ever met. Artificial and not intelligent. But managers were infatuated by his title. He had to be clever, right? No, he was just qualified.

There is a simple yes or no question you can ask yourself; would I want to be stuck on a desert island with this person, even if they had a night school diploma in surviving a ship wreck?
« Last Edit: December 14, 2020, 09:48:09 pm by Syntax Error »
 
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Offline nctnico

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #14 on: December 14, 2020, 11:51:07 pm »
There is a simple yes or no question you can ask yourself; would I want to be stuck on a desert island with this person, even if they had a night school diploma in surviving a ship wreck?
This is a very good one!
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline The Soulman

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #15 on: December 15, 2020, 12:56:15 am »
1) Pass candidates through a lengthy selection process including practical real world tests. For example, get the torque wrench out the toolbox and tighten the engine bolts to 20 newtons. (If you ask, "what's a talk wrench?", do not proceed)

Newton what? Inch,feet,yard,meter?? Would be the correct response.
Someone who would ask that in return would be raised a few points on my list.

And if that person after that starts talking about thread lubrication or the lack there of impacting the accuracy of the torque,
or any alignment/calibration interval of the actual torque wrench and thermal conditions you now you are dealing with an autistic autodidact.
 

Offline CJay

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #16 on: December 15, 2020, 10:30:39 am »
Elsewhere, Cjay said:

Quote from: CJay  date=1607931196
Through the years I've bumped into one or two like him who survive on ignorance of management and have been sent on so many training courses to try and educate the stupid out of them [my emphasis] that, on paper, they are the best qualified in the business and as such are flameprooof.

When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics.

Problem is that these days, unless you're in a position to find and hire directly, the chances are you're going to have to deal with an HR department and agencies that have no clue  about the role or suitability of candidates so they will take your job spec verbatim and you'll find that people drop through the net because they don't have "Frobnitz certified" on their CV.

I've been on the receiving end of agency and HR department rejections for that reason and I've also known people who were perfect for roles I've needed to fill but I wasn't the person offering invited to interviews, just the person doing the interviewing.
 
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Offline GlennSprigg

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #17 on: December 15, 2020, 12:08:46 pm »
When it's come to the "rubber hitting the road" it's nearly always the people who came loaded with these qualifications who turned out to be the hires that were about as much use as a chocolate teapot. It's been so consistent that I started to treat industry qualifications on a CV as a warning flag. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't interview people qualified thusly if the rest of their CV looked good, but it did mean that I started quizzing people on almost insultingly basic scenarios that anyone competent ought to be able to answer without blinking - the equivalent for whatever I was interviewing them for to pointing an EE at a schematic and saying "tell me how this two transistor amplifier works". There was a horrible consistency that many the folks who came with a lot of "Frobnitz certified expert" qualifications regularly failed to be able to prove that they had an understanding of the [topic/task specific] basics.

Hi Cerebus. Just few bits from my past...
When ever I was interviewing people, (including apprentice reviews etc), I always acted friendly, and tried to put them at ease,
because I know it was a stressful time for them, and so feedback may not reflect their true abilities/capabilities/knowledge. And
when talking to apprentices & new trades-people, I would always do so in an informative & helpful manner, to improve their knowledge
and understanding.  All too often, I've found trades-people just using apprentices for very mundane tasks, for which I would berate
them!  Often they had voiced concerns that if the new ones learn too much, they may loose there job!!!   I, on the other hand, had
always taught everyone everything that I knew!!  :)

Re: Specific questions/answers about knowledge in an interview...
I once was in an interview myself with a major Govt dept, and two of them grilled me for ages, about some specific types of control
systems, unsuccessfully getting the right responses from me. (They were using 'foreign' in-house terms, that were NOT used in the
'outside-world' in the industry...)  They were about to dismiss me from the interview when a light came on in my head!  I said...
"Oh, you are talking about 'Proportional/Integral/Derivative' action!!", so I went on to explain it in detail, verbally & diagrammatically!!  8)
They realized I knew all they wanted, and more, but THEY used different wording. Later that day, I refused their offer as by then I
had accepted an offer from Honeywell Security. Was interesting though...  ;D

Last point...
I've found on many occasions that 'some' so-called engineers have certain technical qualifications just out of school/uni etc, but have
NO people-skills or real-world experience in the field. I always much preferred & had respect for those who had come up through the
proverbial ranks as well. With such hands-on experience, they truly understand how to address people, talk about problems in a
constructive manner, and appreciate how much 'work' is often required to complete certain tasks!  :palm:

Anyway, have a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!!   Glenn. :-+
Diagonal of 1x1 square = Root-2. Ok.
Diagonal of 1x1x1 cube = Root-3 !!!  Beautiful !!
 

Offline bd139

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #18 on: December 15, 2020, 12:23:01 pm »
Interesting thread. I was going to comment earlier but I thought I'd see how it would progress first.

A couple of points I'd like to make.

Firstly, on qualifications. A monkey can pass certifications. This is something I am living proof of. But I did gain significant experience and common knowledge from the certification process. This has enabled me not to step on a few landmines and piles of dog shit. It also opens up common communication ground for working with technology platforms which genuinely does help collaboration. And it allows you to gate staff tentatively based on motivation. With great confidence I can state that a lot of people don't end up with them because they can't be bothered to do a job to completion.

On hiring, you really have no idea what you're hiring until you've worked with them for a bit. I had to let a guy go a few weeks back because while in theory he had all the boxes ticked, he was a complete half arsed dick. To be effective you need to be skilled, have decent interpersonal skills, rigour and be engaged with what you are doing. So keep a trial period open :)

A good thing I found to do in interviews is ask questions which there are no good outcomes for and get them to walk through to a compromise. That's a big decider. The one I always do at the moment is this one:

"So it's 2AM, an alert just woke you up with latency alerts and all the scale-out jobs are failing. You find out that our instances are no longer scaling out and the cloud provider we are using has no node capacity left. How do you resolve this issue?"

My favourite answer for this is was "add it to the status dashboard and go back to sleep as there's fuck all you can do"  :-DD
 
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Offline S. Petrukhin

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #19 on: December 15, 2020, 12:30:35 pm »

"So it's 2AM, an alert just woke you up with latency alerts and all the scale-out jobs are failing. You find out that our instances are no longer scaling out and the cloud provider we are using has no node capacity left. How do you resolve this issue?"

My favourite answer for this is was "add it to the status dashboard and go back to sleep as there's fuck all you can do"  :-DD

A long time ago, I applied for the position of head of the call center. I was asked: "what task do you consider the main one", I answered: "tell the customer to go to hell so he doesn't call again." I was denied a position... People don't like the truth in the face.  :)
And sorry for my English.
 

Offline CJay

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #20 on: December 15, 2020, 12:43:56 pm »
"So it's 2AM, an alert just woke you up with latency alerts and all the scale-out jobs are failing. You find out that our instances are no longer scaling out and the cloud provider we are using has no node capacity left. How do you resolve this issue?"

My favourite answer for this is was "add it to the status dashboard and go back to sleep as there's fuck all you can do"  :-DD

I *love* that one, if the rest of their ducks were lined up I'd have definitely shortlisted them if not offered.

Qualifications are nice to have, they're often 'gateway' things, f'rinstance I've got a bunch of utterly useless COMPTIA ones because they were pre-requisites for other training (I think HP ASE Storage architect was the end goal, it was a number of years ago), when applying for a job I'd add or remove the relevant/irrelevant ones.

It is however always informative to check the dates (and even times) on training certificates, one tech i worked with (for a very short period of time) had *every* service qualification under the sun for one particular manufacturer, turned out he and a few of his former colleagues had a pile of cheat sheets and he'd done them all on two consecutive days.

Even though he had a level of basic competence he was never 'good' and he was 'let go' without reference after he punched a client who'd become frustrated with his work.
 

Offline madires

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #21 on: December 15, 2020, 01:24:15 pm »
I started noticing the phenomenon I'm describing in my ISP days. We were looking for intermediate to high-end network engineers. I kept on seeing people who had CCIE qualifications (Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert) but who in practice had no knowledge on how to do half the things that a "certified expert" ought to have been able to do according to the [tested] syllabus for that qualification. After a bit of floundering around, I found that not only did this particular class of "certified expert" not know the "clever stuff" but that they didn't know the basic fundamentals of IP networking.

I've made that experience too, over and over again. That's why I don't give a damn about fancy certificates. And it seems that I'm the lucky guy who has to clean up the mess the highly trained "experts" have created. You can find them everywhere, even working for Cisco or Juniper.
 

Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #22 on: December 15, 2020, 01:38:12 pm »
On hiring, you really have no idea what you're hiring until you've worked with them for a bit. I had to let a guy go a few weeks back because while in theory he had all the boxes ticked, he was a complete half arsed dick. To be effective you need to be skilled, have decent interpersonal skills, rigour and be engaged with what you are doing. So keep a trial period open :)

I'll let the world in one of my hiring tricks. This works so well that I've kept it a closely guarded secret over the years because it doesn't work if the candidate knows it's a tactic but my hiring days are over, so it's safe to let the cat out of the bag.

In my first job where I was a manager hiring folks I had a candidate come in for interview. I had several seats to fill and the interview went well. I was pretty confident about the chap in question, a bloke called Steve, so at the end of the interview I told him we'd shortlist him. I hadn't made my mind up at this point whether he was getting the job. It happened to be lunchtime when we'd finished the interview. So, I said "OK, we're done, interview over. Do you want to come down the pub for lunch, on us?". Let me make it clear, at this point I was just being sociable, no ulterior motive. So we toddled off to the pub. In the next hour I found out twice as much about him as I had during the interview. He'd relaxed, the interview was officially over, and he was much more himself than "Steve sitting in an interview" was. By the end of lunch I was certain he was the man for the job. He joined us, did a great job and was still there after I moved on.

Since that experience I have deliberately set up future interviews for just before lunch and done the same thing. Do the interview, make it clear that the interview is over and that we're "off the clock" and then offer a pub lunch. It's worked fantastically well over the years. I've had people who performed terribly during the interview who've come over great once the pressure is off, and I've had people who appeared great during the interview who quickly became obvious non-candidates once they were talking away from their "prepared for interview" topics. It's got me some great staff over the years, and it's helped me dodge a few stinkers. Anyone subjected to this little subterfuge got told about it after they were hired.

One guy I hired, Rob, told me that he hated interviews, found them difficult, and prior to me hiring him had had difficulty finding a job. He told me that it had taught him that it was best to "just be himself" in interviews. We kept loosely in touch for his next couple of jobs or so and he said that what he'd learned that day had stuck with him and made his next few moves much easier.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #23 on: December 15, 2020, 01:41:18 pm »
I've made that experience too, over and over again. That's why I don't give a damn about fancy certificates. And it seems that I'm the lucky guy who has to clean up the mess the highly trained "experts" have created. You can find them everywhere, even working for Cisco or Juniper.

Having had to clean up after Cisco Professional Services or Juniper Professional Services have been in the place I know exactly where you're coming from.  :)
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline CerebusTopic starter

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Re: "Training out the stupid"
« Reply #24 on: December 15, 2020, 01:49:58 pm »
Anyway, the thing that rang a bell in Cjay's original comment was the idea of the person that had been a serial problem, and that management had repeatedly sent off for training in the hope of "educating the stupid out of them" (that phrase still makes me chuckle). I've known one or two, but having done my best to avoid the larger companies where that kind of thing gets allowed to happen I haven't had any "on the team" so to speak in a very long time. Thus my initial emphasis on the hiring side of things; Cjay's comments made me think that perhaps this is where the highly qualified but actually useless candidates I'd seen over the years had come from.

So, has anyone any experience of seeing what Cjay described happening in real life? Stories? Anecdotes? Tales of revenge?
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 


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