> I would really like to know what risks (other than useless non-technical HR keeping their jobs) there are after candidates have past a certain threshold for quality, particularly for junior positions.
It's harder to deal with emotional kids than it is to deal with incompetent engineers. Maybe that's why those non-technical HRs might not be as useless as you think.
> You made the mistake to assume that we are idiotic enough to be emotional for job interviews.
And that's a risk that could potentially be spotted by a competent HR.
> It's harder to deal with people who think they are competent and know it all than emotional kids.
Maybe, but juniors are (unfortunately) seen as a commodity by the market. Commodities are about uniformity and adherence to some standard, rather than uniqueness.
> And that's a risk that could potentially be spotted by a competent HR.
It's a risk that could only be spotted be HR, don't know about the "competent" part. There would be no emotional-kid risks to speak of if it weren't for useless HR.
> Maybe, but juniors are (unfortunately) seen as a commodity by the market. Commodities are about uniformity and adherence to some standard, rather than uniqueness.
It's making even less sense now. If we are commodities and it's all about uniformity and standard, why do we see senior engineers complaining about this, too? It also makes no economic sense to spend so much time and effort on elaborate bullshit on "commodities". I don't mind being a commodity if the standards that you speak of exist, and I don't want to be unique. But guess what? It's the HR that wants us to be the unique commodities.
The most difficult people I've worked with were not because of technical reasons, but due to reasons outside of that: inability to disagree constructively, unwillingness to compromise, or just general assholes. That kind of stuff.
Someone without the required technical chops can be useless, which isn't good, but these people can be worse than useless as they can derail and/or demoralize an entire team. I've seen it happen; it's not pretty.
This isn't unique to younger people, but in my experience the risk is quite a bit higher in younger people. I say this also as someone who, in hindsight, was quite difficult to work with when I was younger for various reasons. As I've grown older, I've learned a thing or two and I think that now I'm actually a fairly nice person to work with (I hope so, anyway...)
Everything else being equal, I'd rather take someone with a 9 (out of 10) on soft skills and a 6 or 7 on technical skills, than someone with a 3 or 4 on soft skills but a 10 on technical skills.
> Everything else being equal, I'd rather take someone with a 9 (out of 10) on soft skills and a 6 or 7 on technical skills, than someone with a 3 or 4 on soft skills but a 10 on technical skills.
I agree, I've even had to reverse my own team's policy on this at work : I used to think the technical stuff was the most important and pushed my team towards hiring exclusively the technically smart people, but I have been proven wrong over and over again by those "smart" engineers I vouched for.
"Smart" isn't just technical skills anyway. You can have all the technical chops in the world, but if you never listen to anyone else, insist on doing things the One True Right Way™, and are unable to admit that you're wrong, then effectively you're not actually all that smart, are you? "Smart" is really a combination of skill and attitude.
Indeed, the smartest people I've met are the nicest people to chat with and always ask questions instead of affirming themselves. As you point out, skills + attitude is the smart way since everyone wants to be around a nice and skilled person.
It's harder to deal with emotional kids than it is to deal with incompetent engineers. Maybe that's why those non-technical HRs might not be as useless as you think.