311–320 of 794 posts
I don't get the hate on take homes. Also what's with the downvotes? At least you could help me see your point of view by explaining. If anything they are much more time efficient than the alternative - grinding dozens of hours of leetcode in preparation of live coding challenges. In my experience that is pretty much the sole alternative. There usually is a generous time frame for take homes of at least a couple of we…
I am going to add one thing that I haven't heard here. You probably need to raise the cash in your offer by a lot. Most mid-size companies think that they can get away with offering equity at a ridiculous valuation and attract people who aren't true believers. Most people aren't true believers in miscellaneous DevOps that doesn't involve a lot of code. I have spoken to a few series-C and D companies that wanted to gi…
PSA: For those who don't fully understand the second paragraph above, be sure to google 'liquidation preference' before you're next evaluating an offer that includes equity or options in a private company.
If the startup is not growing extremely fast, the stock will likely not be worth very much regardless of how “clean” the terms are on the preferred stock.
If you expect stock to be a big part of your compensation then leave after 2 years of the company’s growth is not sustained and rapid.
I wonder, how often people would check candidate public repo and hire based on that? I have not seen this to happen to my network, people are asked to do homework assignment or algo coding in front of somebody but had never been hired based on their github. I'd imagine public github repo to the programmer is like portfolio to the artist, should be good indication?
Senior people are senior because of their work experience, which they gain from steady employment.
Almost by definition you are looking to entice busy, employed people away from their current jobs.
They don’t have the time or inclination to trawl through job ad after job ad. Where your competition will ask for 15 years of experience and then only after hours of calls and meetings reluctantly make an offer half of what the candidate is currently making.
You have to stand out from this, or you’re perceived as the same “waste of time” category.
You’re not hiring starving students. You’re hiring people with options and responsibilities.
Respect their time and value and they’ll consider your offer.
I am going to add one thing that I haven't heard here. You probably need to raise the cash in your offer by a lot. Most mid-size companies think that they can get away with offering equity at a ridiculous valuation and attract people who aren't true believers. Most people aren't true believers in miscellaneous DevOps that doesn't involve a lot of code. I have spoken to a few series-C and D companies that wanted to gi…
Even without getting into the magnitude of the difference, and just talking about the direction, I think a lot of folks at private startups expect external candidates to value $1 of their stock (based on their last 409a) more than $1 of stock in a public company. I don't have a strong opinion on how big the liquidity premium for equity in a private tech startup should be, but I feel pretty strongly that it shouldn't…
I’d argue that an effective 20-30% discount on 409A for employees in series C+ is about right. On a successful, but expected, exit - this gives the employee some premium compared to working at a public tech company in exchange for deferred compensation and liquidity risk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the real answer is "something is less good than you are describing." Ask a senior engineer you've worked with in the past to take a look at your job posting and give you some honest feedback about what the problem is. There are yellow flags in your post, but it's unclear whether they are problems without details. For example: > the work requires a reasonably deep understanding of the underlying platforms which…
> the work requires a reasonably deep understanding of the underlying platforms which a lot of people seem to dislike. Why? Willing to bet the 'dislike' is "we have lots of mismashed, disorganized stacks, and expect seniors to have 20 years experience with all of them." coupled with "Even though some tools/stacks/etc have only been around 3 years." And... even though a senior can pick up a stack in a few days, the ex…
Do I remember all the details of every language and stack that I've touched? Hell no! But there are only so many ways to do a for loop or if-then set up. There are only a few flavors of regex out there. Anything more I just look it up. Part of being a senior is knowing what to look up.
What makes me a senior is my ability to learn on the fly, then become an SME, on whatever obscure stack you have. I will never know all of it coming in - there's just too much stuff out there. But there's very little that is so bad that I can't work with it in a few weeks.
But I've been rejected from jobs as "not technical enough" because I didn't have recent, full time, on the tip of my brain, coding to the algorithm and obscure function level in their preferred language "X". It just meant I hadn't coded in "X" in the last month. They though the fact that I didn't do obscure fanciness without looking things up meant I didn't know anything. I wanted to scream and say "No, damnit, I just haven't coded in that for two years, I don't have an eidetic memory."
This is part of why I hate whiteboards and take home crap. I do poorly at them, then get lowballed by smug jerks who think that defines what I know and have done.
> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.
The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…
Not sure if 1 hour 30 minutes before technical assignment makes sense - maybe 15 min with hr, then assignment - then more face time?
I agree with general sentiment that 4 hour assignment doesn't square well with "senior". Maybe take home assignment (look over for 1 hour give or take) then 1-2 hour technical/architectural discussion with technical team lead? Preferably with a real problem recently encountered and solved by the team?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you get from a whiteboard/take home assignment that you can't get from a conversation where you grill them about their answers?
Conversations allow smooth talkers to run a snow job on you. Having a work sample test provides a best-in-class hiring filter.