Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 794 posts

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

#411

Post by fourthark »

lelanthran wrote: post #241
ghaff wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. If they give you the assignment and it's immediately obvious that it's actually a 20+ hour assignment, you can always just walk. When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd ha…

> As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. As a counter counterpoint, that only makes sense if the candidate is applying to a single place. If the candidate has lined up 4 interviews, they're not going to get 16 hours in the week to complete them. The fifth place that has no 4 hour interviews will get the candidate.

To put it another way, it may be selecting for the candidate who wants exactly this job and none other.

Loyalty becomes the main criterion.

I have mixed feelings about this, but I can see why employers might want this.

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

#412

Post by pclmulqdq »

colordrops wrote: post #408
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 equ…

Most financially savvy people would say that public company equity is almost like cash. If you are saving money for retirement, you are going to put most of your cash in the stock market, and AAPL and the stock market are highly correlated. The vesting schedule essentially forces you to save that cash for a later date (in a volatile but usually highly accretive investment vehicle). You don't have the same kinds of situations as you get with a startup where your company folds but the rest of the market is unaffected.

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

#413

Post by rwaksmunski »

I usually get offers on the spot within the hour of "just talking shop" with the manager and the most senor technical person on the team. Why would I waste a day with your homework and class presentation only to be offered half of what I make now? You are filtering for desperate bottom feeders, and that is all you're gonna get.

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

#414

Post by rtpg »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #325
bspear wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, valuations have gone through the roof, but the equity grants have not kept pace. This is a huge disservice to candidates. Got especially bad in 2021. Really important for people to research startup pay before signing: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/ To the OP: if you believe your comp bands are competitive, why not share in the posting itself?

> To the OP: if you believe your comp bands are competitive, why not share in the posting itself? Leaving that out makes it clear that the post was made in good faith. If I thought the submission was just a job ad in disguise, I might have flagged it.

I think the GP is saying "Why don't you put your salary band into the job ad", rather than "why didn't you link the job ad itself here".

Which is 100% valid! Beyond being mandatory in more and more jurisdictions, having the salary range be posted has made me more likely to apply. Extremely confidence inspiring when it actually is market rate.

I know recruiters/C suite people think they can jedi mind trick people into taking super low offers that way, but really almost all really good candidates will be able to get jobs elsewhere anyways so you're just wasting a bunch of people's time cuz they're not going to take the offer.

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

#415

Post by s0rce »

jiggawatts wrote: post #333
s0rce wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can motivate juniors by things other than money: experience, gaining industry contacts, and filling a resume so that they can move on to… … more senior roles with actual money on offer instead of intangibles. You’re trying to hire senior staff the same way as junior staff. This won’t work. PS: I’m starting to suspect why you’re losing your juniors as soon as they get some experience…

I'm not the OP

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

#416

Post by devoutsalsa »

apeace wrote: post #254

If you're having this problem, your first step is to get the recruiter out of the process. Start screening all resumes yourself. I've had some bad experiences with recruiters, both in-house and otherwise, and I feel they usually get screenings wrong. But there's an even more important reason for you to take over this process now: you don't know where your dropoff is. You need to get familiar with what's going on. Are…

Maybe a good short term solution. But training the recruiter to screen effectively is what you really want. Unless you have enough time to do everything, you can’t have the attitude of doing the work of people who you view as ineffective. Learn how to delegate more effectively, part of which is getting the right people.

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

#417

Post by s0rce »

mooreds wrote: post #373
s0rce wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Colorado, USA now forces companies to post salary bands on job listings. It's quite refreshing and obviates this excuse.

Apparently the law in California is that salary ranges must be provided to candidates when they ask but I haven't found that to actually happen in practice.

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

#418

Post by joshribakoff »

peter422 wrote: post #312
rahimnathwani wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But also know that if liquidation preferences are coming into play for the company’s exit, it’s almost certainly a giant failure and any late joining employees aren’t getting anything significant. 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…

Some companies do tender offers (stock buyback) to give employees liquidity, but unfortunately the c suite and investors (those who typically have a more favorable liquidity preference) can cause the tender offer to be oversubscribed if they enter more sell orders than there are buy orders. Usually this means common stock owners do not get to participate. Preferred stock can also be converted to common, but not the other way around.

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

#419

Post by tharkun__ »

yieldcrv wrote: post #376
ubercore wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently did a 6 hour take-home, but was given an expectation of around 2 weeks to accomplish it, with flexibility for more if I needed it. I thought it was pretty fair compared to a never-ending round of tech interviews.

My experience with that is: 0) time doing the project is tracked, sometimes via the expectation that you commit to the git repository from start to finish. dinging you for "points" for going over the time allotment and that the other candidates are: 1) doing way extra things that took way more than 6 hours 2) are not doing those extra things from scratch because they've been playing this game for a while and that 3)…

Totally agree that this will be something lots of places might do/expect. I will definitely work against that and judge them by it.

E.g. say they want me to commit to a Github project they provide or I am supposed to set up and commit to. I will use whatever time I am allotted and at the end, when I'm done and expected to hand it in, I will make one git commit that shows I committed everything exactly 1 second after I was supposed to start, then push that to the provided repo. Yes, start, not finish. Meaning "time travel". Maybe even commit as "Linus Torvalds" or something like that.

If they ask about this it's a great conversation starter either way. My experience is that if the talk does come to this either they have no idea how this could even happen and I can explain or judge them based on their reactions or we both have a laugh about their companies policies around this. They see I know my git and I know they're like most companies: actually pretty OK teams and hiring managers with generally crappy HR practices.

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

#420

Post by devoutsalsa »

porcoda wrote: post #279
dancocos wrote: post #37

"Take-home technical assignment (~4h)" I've got 20 plus years of tech, I've been out of college since 1997 and you want to give a 4 hour homework assignment. If get you want to get a feel for someone's ability but this is more easily done by stating a problem during one of the interviews and asking the person "How would you approach this?" Listing for how they anticipate problems and tradeoffs.

Exactly. 25+ years in tech here too. When a company says "we're going to give you homework", that is a giant flashing sign that basically reads "we assume your resume is a lie, your references are lying for you (or we just aren't going to bother calling them), so we're going to test you". Hard pass. Having been on the hiring side of things, I get far more information out of a conversation where I can ask for details…

I got my most recent job offer by talking to the hiring manager & a couple engineers for about two hours. They grilled me on talking points I’d fed them in my CV, along with some questions I couldn’t have prepared for. No coding, no take home exams. It was pretty great.
Post reply on HN