What is wrong with HR?

The Cloudera Sessions in Munich, well that was a great event. Thanks for Cloudera for putting this up.

One thing disturbed me though. During the podium discussion it was said, that people who are equally able data scientist and software engineers are godlike and don't exist.

At first I felt flattered, but then when my ego finally went silent, I began to realize how wrong that statement was. In fact it made me furious.

The HR desaster?

Furious at a lot of people. For one, all of HR. I realized that the only people I was talking to about "job opportunities" were headhunters and consultancy companies. Why haven't any companies contacted me directly? Where is HR?

It seems to me, that headhunters and consultant companies have specialized in being a better talent vacuum, so that companies that need the experts simply need to pay more for getting their jobs done. 

In fact, it seems rediculous that I got a lot more great offers financially speaking from consultant firms than from those companies that need experts directly. Why? 

Wrong ways to look for scientific software experts

Usually people with this so-called godlike expert background are simple people, that tend to not boast about their heroic deeds in their realm of expertise. In fact, I heard a story from McKinsey. A friend that took part on one of their talent finding events, eventually was told he wasn't consultant stuff, because even though he was the only one with the correct answer, he wasn't able to "convince" the other teammates of his arguments. 

Let me tell you this. As long as you put off smart and kind guys like this you will always end up with "these people are god-like and don't exist". What do you think happens with these people? I'll tell you: they'll find an underpayed niche job doing nonsense stuff and focus on things they fancy - at home. Or they might become bloated egoists, having learned the lesson that being smart isn't the thing that matters most. Some others, like me, try to find a way inbetween, feeling neither comfortable being a boasting egomaniac nor being at an useless and/or underpaid job. 

Let me also tell you this, I never considered applying to McKinsey (or their like) because of their rediculous "Assement Centers". And let me also point out, that many of us "god-like" experts (that don't exist) will think so too. You might call us freightened introverts, but you could just as well call us "really focussed". It is ultimately your choice.

One last thing, these unicorns, us science and software loving people, we are not the stinking bearded and acting-all-wierd kind of people. We are just normal...

... and we exist!