Top all-time · #1534
Aline Lerner
Personal blog · blog.alinelerner.com · on HN as leenycareerbusiness
Aline Lerner's personal blog at blog.alinelerner.com covers career and business. Since 2013, 49 different Hacker News readers have linked it 93 times, most often “Lessons from a year’s worth of hiring data (2013)”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
making technical recruiting suck less
Most-linked posts?
- Lessons from a year’s worth of hiring data (2013)7 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-06-21
- /7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2014-07-02
- How different is a Bachelor's in Computer Science than Master's in recruiting?6 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2013-05-07
- Resumes suck. Here’s the data6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2014-11-10
- How to interview your interviewers4 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2015-04-22
- /how-different-is-a-b-s-in-computer-science-from-a-m-s-in-computer-science-when-it-comes-to-recruiting/3 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2020-04-24
- Why talent agents for engineers don’t exist3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2014-10-31
- If you’re an engineer who wants to start a recruiting business, read this first.3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-01-27
- Building a product in the technical recruiting space? Read this first3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-04-09
- /ive-been-an-engineer-and-a-recruiter-hiring-is-broken-heres-why-and-heres-what-it-should-be-like-instead/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-02-23
What Hacker News says?
An acquaintance of mine (she used to be a den herself) wrote here about why engineers today don't have agents. http://blog.alinelerner.com/why-talent-agents-for-engineers-...
Comment linking /why-talent-agents-for-engineers-dont-exist/
on “Hi, It’s Google Corporate Development”Submitted What happens when you stop relying on resumes as a story · 448 points
HN discussionAline Lerner is interested: http://blog.alinelerner.com/
Comment linking /
on “Things Many People Find Too Obvious to Have Told You Already”Submitted Resumes suck for hiring engineers as a story · 224 points
HN discussionThis http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-comput... Is what she says about MS degrees in another post. No data or analysis is shown, just opinion.
Comment linking /how-different-is-a-b-s-in-computer-science-from-a-m-s-in-computer-science-when-it-comes-to-recruiting/
on “Lessons from 3,000 technical interviews”Submitted My platonic ideal for how engineering hiring should work as a story · 180 points
HN discussionCongrats, Aline! This is too awesome. Be sure to check out her blog as well, "making technical recruiting suck less." Tons of fantastic content. http://blog.alinelerner.com/
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: Free, anonymous coding interview practice”Submitted Silicon Valley hiring is not a meritocracy (2013) as a story · 129 points
HN discussionthere's a link at the bottom of the post to a list of questions you can ask: https://blog.alinelerner.com/how-to-interview-your-interview... hope that helps.
Comment linking /how-to-interview-your-interviewers/
on “Red flags I saw while doing technical interviews”Submitted Why talent agents for engineers don’t exist as a story · 121 points
HN discussionAsk these questions: http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-to-interview-your-interviewe...
Comment linking /how-to-interview-your-interviewers/
on “Ask HN: Tools or sites you use to scope out a workplace before taking a job?”Submitted Diversity quotas suck. Here’s why as a story · 97 points
HN discussionI found Aline Lerner's assessment of new age recruiting services including Triplebyte to be informative. She may be wrong, and you may not agree with her take, but I do appreciate that she's not trying to bullshit the reader. "Triplebyte, to my mind, did an admirable job of trying to solve the credentialing problem. But their approach was not without shortcomings: 1) not everyone wanted to take their lengthy quiz, e…
Comment linking /ive-been-an-engineer-and-a-recruiter-hiring-is-broken-heres-why-and-heres-what-it-should-be-like-instead/
on “Rethinking Triplebyte”Submitted Anti-competitive practices masquerading as security is a dangerous pattern as a story · 94 points
HN discussionAline Lerner: https://blog.alinelerner.com/ive-been-an-engineer-and-a-recr...
Comment linking /ive-been-an-engineer-and-a-recruiter-hiring-is-broken-heres-why-and-heres-what-it-should-be-like-instead/
on “Rethinking Triplebyte”Submitted What I learned from reading 8,000 recruiting messages as a story · 87 points
HN discussionAs part of the market research for a previous startup, I talked with plenty of recruiters who would love for their to be a market for software talent agents. If you're curious why such a market doesn't exist, read Aline Lerner's article "Why talent agents for engineers don't exist": http://blog.alinelerner.com/why-talent-agents-for-engineers-... tl;dr: Agents exist when it's hard to get a job. It is not hard to get…
Comment linking /why-talent-agents-for-engineers-dont-exist/
on “When a Unicorn Startup Stumbles, Its Employees Get Hurt”Submitted Building a product in the technical recruiting space? Read this first as a story · 73 points
HN discussionI tried to do something similar a while ago (for eng hiring specifically). It turned out that the number of grammatical errors and typos mattered way more than anything else on a resume. http://blog.alinelerner.com/lessons-from-a-years-worth-of-hi... That aside, what sucks is that attempts to automate resume scoring rarely look at harder-to-quantify features and focus on low-hanging fruit like keyword occurrences...…
Comment linking /lessons-from-a-years-worth-of-hiring-data/
on “Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women”Submitted Lessons from a year’s worth of hiring data (2013) as a story · 65 points
HN discussion> In my experience, an MS degree has been one of the strongest indicators of poor technical interview performance. > Whereas MS degrees used to be a means for departments to begin vetting future PhD students, I believe that the purpose has, in some ways, shifted to be a cash cow for the university in question. > Part of the problem is that CS fundamentals instruction tends to happen in undergrad computer science cou…
Comment linking /how-different-is-a-b-s-in-computer-science-from-a-m-s-in-computer-science-when-it-comes-to-recruiting/
on “Having no experience can be better than having the wrong experience”Submitted How to write stuff that gets on the front page of Hacker News as a story · 59 points
HN discussionI'm just one data point, but having done an MSCS (in person at UT Arlington) I agree - I have no reason to believe that I wouldn't still be in the same place now if I'd skipped it. I was fortunate that my then-employer paid for it, so it was no cost to me and I'm glad I did it, but I'm pretty sure that every job I've gotten since would have been available to me with just my Bachelor's degree. In fact, this recruiter…
Comment linking /how-different-is-a-b-s-in-computer-science-from-a-m-s-in-computer-science-when-it-comes-to-recruiting/
on “Master’s Degree in Computer Science”Submitted Lessons from a year's worth of hiring data as a story · 50 points
HN discussionI wouldn't call 25% an outlier. Also, that's only people he knows. The numbers from interviewing.io (Aline Lerner) suggest that interview performance is arbitrary[0] and that engineers are bad at gauging their own interview performance[1]. The numbers suggest it's far more common than just 25%. [0]: http://blog.interviewing.io/after-a-lot-more-data-technical-... [1]: http://blog.alinelerner.com/people-cant-gauge-the…
Comment linking /people-cant-gauge-their-own-interview-performance-and-that-makes-them-harder-to-hire/
on “Algorithms Interviews: Theory vs. Practice”Submitted Hire from your user base as a story · 42 points
HN discussionI gave a talk at MIT last year, and part of it was going over good questions to ask your interviewers. Here is the resulting list: http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-to-interview-your-interviewe...
Comment linking /how-to-interview-your-interviewers/
on “Questions to Ask a Potential Tech Employer”Submitted Lessons from a year’s worth of hiring data as a story · 27 points
HN discussion> Credentials, including graduate degrees Some people even suggest that advanced degrees are an anti-indicator of ability: http://blog.alinelerner.com/how-different-is-a-b-s-in-comput...
Comment linking /how-different-is-a-b-s-in-computer-science-from-a-m-s-in-computer-science-when-it-comes-to-recruiting/
on “Hiring Is Broken: What Do Developers Say About Technical Interviews?”Submitted Diversity quotas suck. Here's why. as a story · 20 points
HN discussion
