Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#11

Post by spawnthink » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 11:54 AM UTC

lmarcos wrote: post #7

I'm not sure if this is an "American thing", but in (Western) Europe usually a candidate that holds a degree in engineering or has a couple of years of experience is enough to be considered a competent developer. Sure, there are tech interviews and the like, but in all my years of experience and companies I have worked for, most if not all of the colleagues I have worked with were normal developers (which for 99% of…

That's possible, but then doesn't that limit your candidates pool to people with engineering degrees? I'm not sure about the couple of years experience, that's sometimes a miss depending on what they built during those years.

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#12

Post by carmen_sandiego » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

killtimeatwork wrote: post #10

muzani wrote: post #3

You could probably hire someone good in about 2 weeks. I interviewed for my current job at 6 PM, got an offer letter at 8 AM the next day. Most of the people in the company go through a quick hire as well and while there's some bad hires it's more that they're inexperienced/cheap rather than the process. I've had interviews that take months, but I don't really see the value of this. Why do you need 6 people to make a…

> Why do you need to ask them technical questions when you can ask for their college results? Unfortunately, college results are not the most reliable. A in Algorithms class from a world-class CS university means something very different than the same A from some completely no-name Uni where teaching standards are very low and cheating is widespread and accepted. What's worse, even the people from top uni could be ch…

I’m not sure it’s even true that cheating is less prevalent at top universities. It’s probably not something we can know in practice. Anecdotally I saw a fair amount. You could make the argument that people are more likely to cheat to even get in to top schools, resulting in more cheaters ending up there. Who knows.

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#13

Post by techieabc » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

Once you have the candidate, it shouldn't take that long, maybe a week or two, it really depends on how many steps your hiring process. At the company I work at, we have a technical interview and a soft skills interview, and we try to have them all in one day (because with the hight demand of developers, we might miss them if we take to long).

Anyway, what takes more time is actually getting the interview, and this depends on the value your company adds to collaborators. For example, if you're a company with great reputation, salaries, good benefits, interesting projects, you will get good candidates in line. But if your company isn't really "outstanding", finding someone that's truly good will take a lot of effort. Bear in mind software developers have many job offers, in a weekly basis.

This is why it's so important to build an employers brand!!

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#14

Post by aynyc » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

muzani wrote: post #3

You could probably hire someone good in about 2 weeks. I interviewed for my current job at 6 PM, got an offer letter at 8 AM the next day. Most of the people in the company go through a quick hire as well and while there's some bad hires it's more that they're inexperienced/cheap rather than the process. I've had interviews that take months, but I don't really see the value of this. Why do you need 6 people to make a…

Why do you need to ask them technical questions when you can ask for their college results?

What about non-CS degree folks? What about people who graduated 20 years ago?

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#15

Post by Flexi_IT » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

According to our experience from 2 weeks to 2 month depending from the technology stack

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#16

Post by decafninja » Tue, Mar 30, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

carmen_sandiego wrote: post #6

muzani wrote: post #3

You could probably hire someone good in about 2 weeks. I interviewed for my current job at 6 PM, got an offer letter at 8 AM the next day. Most of the people in the company go through a quick hire as well and while there's some bad hires it's more that they're inexperienced/cheap rather than the process. I've had interviews that take months, but I don't really see the value of this. Why do you need 6 people to make a…

The reason is that bad hiring, depending on your current size, is one of the most ruinous things you can do. So people take their time. The alternative is ‘fire fast’ (with caveats), but a lot of places are afraid of doing that. Personally I prefer it. > Why do you need to ask them technical questions when you can ask for their college results? Genuinely no offence, but this one hurt to read!

I would prefer a "fire fast" policy to the egregious and lengthy technical interview process that is common today.

However I've found that the few places that do say they supposedly have a "fire fast" policy, also have an egregious and lengthy interview pipeline also.

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#17

Post by andrecp11 » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:19 AM UTC

Flexi_IT wrote: post #15

According to our experience from 2 weeks to 2 month depending from the technology stack

That has also been my experience. Truth is, there are many good developers out there. Maybe they can't be bothered to practice for leetcode (and why should you do it if you do not have 100k applicants per open role?).

In ~4h total time interview you can have a very strong feeling if someone will be a fit culturally and if they aren't incompetent. Give them a chance.

Or you can spend months and many more hours to roll a dice with a bit higher chance of making a better hire...

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#18

Post by muzani » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:21 AM UTC

aynyc wrote: post #14

muzani wrote: post #3

You could probably hire someone good in about 2 weeks. I interviewed for my current job at 6 PM, got an offer letter at 8 AM the next day. Most of the people in the company go through a quick hire as well and while there's some bad hires it's more that they're inexperienced/cheap rather than the process. I've had interviews that take months, but I don't really see the value of this. Why do you need 6 people to make a…

Why do you need to ask them technical questions when you can ask for their college results? What about non-CS degree folks? What about people who graduated 20 years ago?

Do they have a degree in accounting or agricultural engineering? Surely they did some math. And if they didn't, it's fair to assume they don't have algorithms experience.

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#19

Post by muzani » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 2:27 AM UTC

killtimeatwork wrote: post #10

muzani wrote: post #3

You could probably hire someone good in about 2 weeks. I interviewed for my current job at 6 PM, got an offer letter at 8 AM the next day. Most of the people in the company go through a quick hire as well and while there's some bad hires it's more that they're inexperienced/cheap rather than the process. I've had interviews that take months, but I don't really see the value of this. Why do you need 6 people to make a…

> Why do you need to ask them technical questions when you can ask for their college results? Unfortunately, college results are not the most reliable. A in Algorithms class from a world-class CS university means something very different than the same A from some completely no-name Uni where teaching standards are very low and cheating is widespread and accepted. What's worse, even the people from top uni could be ch…

> what's the point of grades anyway

To get a good job :p

This argument applies for every other field, but you don't see civil engineers doing interviews past a week, and even with substandard hires, building are built just fine.

About 20 years ago, it was also common sense that a CS degree from Caltech means more than a 3 month Rails bootcamp, but now they're all treated the same.

Re: Ask HN: How long does it take to hire a good developer?

#20

Post by muzani » Wed, Mar 31, 2021, 3:13 AM UTC

spawnthink wrote: post #4

muzani wrote: post #3

You could probably hire someone good in about 2 weeks. I interviewed for my current job at 6 PM, got an offer letter at 8 AM the next day. Most of the people in the company go through a quick hire as well and while there's some bad hires it's more that they're inexperienced/cheap rather than the process. I've had interviews that take months, but I don't really see the value of this. Why do you need 6 people to make a…

Thank you for sharing your experience. I thought about cutting the process short like you suggested and live with the chances of bad hires but: 1. How do you avoid having a bad effect on the current team when they see churn like that? 2. College results could work for junior hires, but senior ones? Rely on feeling about their previous work experience?

1. Churn is bad, but it's a red flag that goes away. I think how you deal with bad hires matters more. Pushing the burden to the rest of the team (i.e. not firing) or bullying them into quitting is what hurts teams more. There's also a morale hit to having someone do the job of two people while waiting 4 months to hire someone else for the role.

2. For the most part, you just need someone who can do the job. Most people applying for seniors could; it's just a question of how fast/accurate/stable. For the most part, expected salaries tends to correlate with their ability.

Many of the bad hires I've seen were "cheap hires"; they applied for senior positions but were often paid half as much as a senior just because they were from a poorer country.

One guy had more ability as a researcher, less as a developer (he'd get things done very, very slowly, but produced well crafted code and was able to tackle the hardest problems). One guy was a great programmer but had personality issues, often getting into fights. Another scored highest on all the tests, but worked 12 hours/day and got nothing done. So I'm not sure assessments help in filtering most of these problems.