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Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

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Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#401

Post by pclmulqdq »

tfehring wrote: post #269
pclmulqdq wrote: post #244

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…

Yeah, this expectation is nuts, and it's why people who work for startups tend to be true believers in the mission. The startup has literally priced in the belief of the employees.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#402

Post by earlyriser »

s0rce wrote: post #326
jiggawatts wrote: post #314

POST THE SALARY. 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…

I've tried to advocate for this at my organization and been told that we don't want people primarily motivated by money...

This is like saying we don't want companies primarily motivated by candidates' competence.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#403

Post by jen20 »

lbrito wrote: post #321
jen20 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downvotes are likely because of the false dichotomy you present.

Like I said, >In my experience that [code challenges] is pretty much the sole alternative. I would love more options but I can only speak based on my own experiences. I've gone through many interviews and only once have any of them escaped this "false" dichotomy. To me, and I suppose many others, it is not false.

Doesn’t the single example you yourself have experienced actually confirm that it is false?

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#404

Post by __d »

reikonomusha wrote: post #384
TameAntelope wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but as a counterpoint: your years of experience are not indicative of your skill, just that you can meet some arbitrarily low bar for a long time. The take-home technical assignment is to determine what, if anything, you actually learned in your 20+ years in tech. A depressingly large number of people with that level of experience have not learned anything meaningful.

As someone who has been a hiring manager for the last decade, I'm absolutely befuddled by the "tenure => competence" assumption. Tenure doesn't weed out mediocrity by any stretch. In fact, the more tenure someone has, often the more difficult it is to determine from their resume alone whether they know anything.

Time in the workforce doesn't indicate competence, but time at known employers can (since we're talking seniors here).

When you're hiring, you should know where you want to hire people from. Normally, you'll know someone there, or who used to be there, so you can do the unofficial check: "Hey, do you remember X who used to work in group Y at company Z? Should I hire them?" At worst, you can do a friend-of-a-friend check.

Of course, you should call their formal references as well, but their responses are normally going to range only from "yes" to "absolutely yes" (unless the candidate has messed up, and given a reference who will actually say "no").

Also useful: a short stint at a known-bad employer. This shows that the candidate recognized their mistake, and corrected it.

I'll normally only interview someone who I can't background if their resume looks super impressive and I've got no better options.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#405

Post by melbourne_mat »

anon291 wrote: post #139
corrral wrote: post #21

> 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…

Funny how similar our days are! There is however the weekend for stuff like this. I assume an interested employer would be willing to allow that.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#406

Post by freeone3000 »

bythreads wrote: post #265
techdragon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The counter to this is not extra interviews but increasing the importance of the people in the interview. A one pass, 60 minute interview with the CEO and/or CTO on the call tells me a lot more about the kind of company. One of the reasons I went independent consultant/freelancer is because I no longer face hiring bullshit like multiple interview rounds. I don’t charge to discuss the problems, sign an NDA if need be,…

I never understood why people are so dogged on hiring - just get a senior consultant - pay 2-3x and save the equity. it's faster and in the end the expenses level out (cost of hiring, 401, insurance etc.) Make the contract with 1 months notice both ways and it's pretty much for all intent and purpose a hiree

For startups, equity is cheaper than cash. Cash has to actually exist in a bank account and be transferred out, equity is essentially imaginary.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#407

Post by anon291 »

dominotw wrote: post #332
anon291 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

FAANG type interviews are all day affairs with 5+hr of interview and breaks in between. Senior or not. I don't see anyone getting hired in 1 hr.

In person interviews typically also involve being given lunch.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#408

Post by colordrops »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #346
gleenn wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To continue that very last sentence, you are doing yourself a disservice, or like a lot of startups I think people just legitamately don't know how to value stocks and I think there is definitely a predatory nature to that. Perhaps I'm reflecting on my own experience too much, but at my first startup I never asked the simple question "Assuming this company IPOs or gets bought and exits, what is the most this stock wo…

When calculating expected value of private stock/options I multiply by a factor of ~10 at the end. There are so many unknown unknowns that significantly decrease the value of your equity. The equity agreements I have seen also give ultimate discretion to the board on how your equity is executed. You don’t have control over triggering events and also there are usually quite a few clauses with “at the discretion of the…

How would you value apple equity vs cash? I recently got a decent offer with a total comp higher than my current all cash salary, but rejected it as it seems that equity even in Apple is not a sure bet at the moment. Even with the generous offer that was greater than my current salary that they gave me a few months ago, it would still be worth less than my current job after the recent market dip. I asked for more equity to buffer for a potential market downturn, and they insisted that Apple stock doesn't go down lol. Unfortunately I was correct. I've been in the industry for 25 years - what do they take us for?

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#409

Post by SauciestGNU »

crackinmalackin wrote: post #327

I'm in between jobs at the moment and a lot of people here are commenting with some very reasonable hiring practices that I actually haven't seen out in the wild yet. From what I'm seeing, the take home assignment process is getting out of control. The take home assignment process seems to vary wildly between different companies. One place wanted me to complete a take home assignment that was estimated to take betwee…

I just came out of the job hunt, and I disagree about preferring take-home tests to leetcode. I much prefer the timeboxed leetcode scenarios to a project with no defined end aside from the specifications. The expectations for the takehome never seem chasee to me. I might solve the exercise in 4 hours, but how do I know the other candidates aren't pouring days into the exercise? Leetcode with a time constraint allows me to prepare for a known quantity.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#410

Post by [deleted] »

mooreds wrote: post #353

Some ideas to help you stand out: * Post the salary in the ad. At least a range. * Pay folks for their take home assignment time. A few years ago, we paid senior folks $500. It is a token, not a contract, but it shows you care. * If it is the people that make it great, profile them so that potential hires can see their awesomeness. Help them grow their profile (speaking, writing, OSS) if they want. * Are you properly…

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