Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#31

Post by calltrak » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 12:01 PM UTC

Yes. I am a software developer with 20 years experience. I stopped looking for work as interviewing these days just sickens my feckin happiness. It was so so so so much more straight forward in the 1980's. The last interview I had, they gave me a take home project that I wrote in Golang. It was supposed to be the topic of discussion at the interview. That's how they sold it. Took me a day of my life to write ( time I won't get back) They never even mentioned it once in the interview. The guy just sat there unprepared asking me "random assed questions" that popped into his head about god knows what. Dumb as a box of rocks questions at that.

I told them they are wasting my time and walked out. This may look small in of it's self but I have hundreds of "doing stupid interview stories". They can shove their j.o.b arseways.

And don't get me started on Indian recruiters calling me all the day long and I get into the.... say What?, What? What? What? What? wishyywagywokkiewakie what? click.

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#32

Post by runawaybottle » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #9

tolbish wrote: post #8

Perhaps you would gain some insight by turning your question on its head: Why haven't you switched companies? What it is about the job market that makes you unwilling to leave your current gig?

I'm with harshalizee. I've got good pay, good benefits, good co-workers, and sane management. Work's a bit boring. But I've been around the block enough times to know that things can get far, far worse, and not much better. So if you want me to move, you'd better have something spectacular. Not just good - I've already got good. And if you think that you have something spectacular... are you over-rating or over-selli…

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#33

Post by b20000 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

i’ve talked to some companies asking if they need help with projects (contracting) and every time they say they are looking to fill roles with employees. makes no sense?

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#34

Post by b20000 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

larrykubin wrote: post #3

If the interview process weren't so exhausting, then it'd probably be easier to get people to switch jobs. Getting a ton of emails lately, but have zero desire to grind leetcode, do take home tests, and interview with 6+ people when I already have a job.

this!

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#35

Post by b20000 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

_ah wrote: post #14

Technical people are expensive (and hard to fire if they don't work out), which really raises the bar for minimum qualifications and skills. There's no room to "take a chance" on anyone anymore. As a HM, most candidates I see are woefully underqualified. The great ones are beyond my (quite reasonable) budget. And I've seen this on the other side too: recruiters contacting me always want to hire me for mid-sr IC role…

hard to fire? all contracts are at will?

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#36

Post by h2odragon » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

tolbish wrote: post #26

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But when you make a top-level comment here, other people do feel free to reply...

Your response was irrelevant to my questions, since the goal of my questions was obviously to understand just the OP's mindset, not an unrelated person's mindset.

When you speak in public, others may feel invited to join in the conversation. This is a good thing.

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#37

Post by azemetre » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

I recently accepted a job two months ago but when I was interviewing it was a complete disaster from my perspective.

The worst were companies that were hiring frontend developers (what I specialize in) but during the interview process they ask questions about the backend or creating microservices (Qs more advanced than basic crud/pagination stuff). Like the only person available to interview was some BE dev writing microservices asking very basic questions about JS.

Github was the absolute worst at this, applied for an accessibility FE position and the online assessment was to create a REST api. I just abandoned the process. Other companies were asking Qs about the frontend at least.

I feel like I can put up with the interviewing process from Facebook or Google because those companies pay the absolute best in our industry; most companies aren't paying the best but they all want to interview like they are FB. It's completely odd. Companies like Capital One, Fidelity were asking LC hards and paying below industry averages.

Another thing that I will absolutely never do are take homes, they are often too cryptic and while everyone says "spend no more than 3-hours" it feels like you need to put in 40 to stand a chance against those that do. They also require zero effort from the company. I want them to have some skin in the interviewing game. This is why I prefer white board style interviews, at least we are both awkwardly solving a problem. There is nothing absolutely worst than having a great talk with the HM and completing a take-home to only get completely ghosted.

The process for the position I accepted was this: spoke to recruiter, spoke to HM, "on-site" where I spoke to 6 different people in a 3-hour span with a decision being made that day. Probably spent a total of 5-hours interviewing. This is a decent company too; while pay is average for my location they give employees equity, have 401k matching, and an ESPP.

I think the onus should be put on companies. They often lament about candidates but the interview process is anything but accessible or reasonable.

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#38

Post by ev1 » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

azemetre wrote: post #37

I recently accepted a job two months ago but when I was interviewing it was a complete disaster from my perspective. The worst were companies that were hiring frontend developers (what I specialize in) but during the interview process they ask questions about the backend or creating microservices (Qs more advanced than basic crud/pagination stuff). Like the only person available to interview was some BE dev writing m…

You see, what they want to pay for is a frontend only person and what they want to hire is someone that has 30 years of experience in frontend, backend, microservices, distributed systems, Raft, Paxos, and Windows Server 2023.

I'm currently quite underpaid (comparatively) but honestly the biggest thing stopping me is the barrier to entry anywhere else. I don't want to grind leetcode to answer questions that have zero bearing on my work, that I have _never_ had to implement IRL, that will never be used in my line of work, deal with unlocking credit to pass a credit check and re-locking it, waste 3 days interviewing just to get ghosted, put together a portfolio or code samples only to clearly see in access.log they have never been looked at once

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#39

Post by shivenigma » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

I sometimes get bored and see some interesting postings on linkedIn.

I try to apply where I'll be redirected either to their homegrown site or some random recruitment site in which I need to create account and fill myriads of forms before applying.

I might do it if I'm in dire need of a job, otherwise no thanks. Companies needs to make it easier to apply for jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Has it suddenly become exceedingly hard to attract full-time employees?

#40

Post by azemetre » Tue, Jun 08, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

ev1 wrote: post #38

azemetre wrote: post #37

I recently accepted a job two months ago but when I was interviewing it was a complete disaster from my perspective. The worst were companies that were hiring frontend developers (what I specialize in) but during the interview process they ask questions about the backend or creating microservices (Qs more advanced than basic crud/pagination stuff). Like the only person available to interview was some BE dev writing m…

You see, what they want to pay for is a frontend only person and what they want to hire is someone that has 30 years of experience in frontend, backend, microservices, distributed systems, Raft, Paxos, and Windows Server 2023. I'm currently quite underpaid (comparatively) but honestly the biggest thing stopping me is the barrier to entry anywhere else. I don't want to grind leetcode to answer questions that have zero…

I agree with that, I will say tho that every job I've accepted thus far never asked me to code during the interview process. Just having conversations with my would-be boss about past experiences.