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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

#531

Post by pclmulqdq »

mym1990 wrote: post #432
pclmulqdq wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 si…

I would say take what most 'financially savvy' people say with a grain of salt and go ahead and do your own research or find an actual professional to sort through the details. The average lifespan of a company on the S&P 500 is dropping fairly quickly, which puts the risk of a single investment going to 0(or on a long haul downward trend) higher.

Yeah, I should have said "blue chip" stock. Public companies include COIN and HOOD, which I would say are more like startups.

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

#532

Post by drunkenmagician »

vorpalhex wrote: post #358
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…

> 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 have to create one. I have a github/gitlab full of code. You want to check it? Go for it. Happy to provide a portfolio on demand. Make me write an api client..? No, get lost.

I'm with you on this. If you don't have a repo you can share, then a take home exercise seems like a reasonable alternative. Its about being respectful on peoples time, while still recognising the need to 'validate' claims of experience.

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

#533

Post by systematical »

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.

I just skipped a 30 minute take home multiple choice test. After the second question I could tell this wasn't really testing my skills and was just a hoop to jump through. Could've googled the answers but decided if this is their strategy I didn't want to work there. I emailed the recruiter and declined.

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

#535

Post by texasfarmer2032 »

__d wrote: post #397
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...

Respectfully, I think that's nonsense. It's called "work" because it's what you do to get money. It's not a hobby, nor an idealistic crusade (both of those are fine things, but they're different to "work"). The reason you work is to get money. That's the only motivation. You might choose between different work options on another basis, but the reason you're there at all is money. Anyone trying to recruit people who d…

> Anyone trying to recruit people who doesn't accept this will fail. 100% agree.

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

#536

Post by brigandish »

anon291 wrote: post #267
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…

No it's not. When i do interviews in-person (even if virtual) , I get the benefit of meeting my future colleagues and learning more about the company. It's much more a two-way benefit, versus an assignment where only one party (the company) gets any information from the other (me). > When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, i…

I fully agree.

> It's much more a two-way benefit, versus an assignment where only one party (the company) gets any information from the other (me).

> The equivalent in tech is asking for a portfolio, which I have an ample amount of on github. I'm more than happy to hand this over to potential employers for them to gauge my work. But, the idea that I could complete a 4hour assignment within a week is ridiculous.

These two statements made me think of something. Usually, (and from comments I've seen many times on HN) I'll hand in my resumé and it has my Github etc, and the hiring team don't really look at it. Perhaps if I'm given a coding test or assignment, I should pick one of my projects and ask them to complete an open issue, so that I can gauge their coding ability and how they use Git, respond in issues etc?

Fair's fair, and it would tell me a lot more than I get to know right now.

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

#538

Post by kstenerud »

This is not directed at you, but rather at the poor hiring practices that have permeated the software industry for too long. We've been gaslighted into accepting abusive hiring practices, and it has to stop.

When you're hiring an accountant, do you give them 4h take-home assignments? How about hours of interviews with your accounting team to suss out their accounting skills and critique their style? I mean, how DO you determine if they're real accountants or one of these fakers I've heard so much about that can't even do some simple books?

Or how about lawyers? Do you ask them to write up a fictional legal brief or some boilerplate that the rest of your legal team can scrutinize to see if they're an A player? How about a multi-day interview just to make sure you've asked all the tough legal questions? No? Then how can you know that they're not going to drag your fragile company down with their poor performance and gasp have to be fired! The horror!

How about civil engineers? Would you have them design a building foundation as a take-home? What about tricky interview questions weighing the pros and cons of various retaining wall designs in, say, Arizona vs Washington (even though they'd be working in New York)?

I don't know how this level of abuse became a thing in software engineering, but I simply won't put up with it anymore. Won't post compensation ranges? You're trying to cheat me. Take home assignment? I walk. Interview gauntlet? I walk. Things drag on too long? I walk. I'm a professional - I have an extensive portfolio of my work slowly built up over decades that you can ask me in-depth questions about (and other things) during our reasonably timed interviews. Does inverting a tree in any way demonstrate my ability to do the job? No, it does not. My time is precious and the compensation trends are clear. Disrespect that and I can only conclude that you are not professional, and not worth my time.

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

#539

Post by rc_hackernews »

the_only_law wrote: post #42
jhot wrote: post #36

I'm someone who is likely your target candidate and I just went through the hiring process so here are my thoughts without seeing an example ad post (which you should link to): - There are a ton of job openings right now in DevOps and similar roles. I spent about 2 days applying to as many as I could and that filled my entire next couple weeks with interviews/tasks. I went through interviews, received offers, and cho…

> no offense to those who like it, I started out my career in the .NET world and ended up feeling trapped there and I'm not going back I actually think C# is pretty decent for a big general purpose language, but I understand this sentiment. No one wants to talk to me about anything other than .NET positions. I can usually squeeze a decent raise out of it, but I'm approaching my ceiling.

I feel the same way and can understand where the original comment is coming from. To your point, I also think I’ve reached the ceiling too salary wise.

Was talking to a recruiter who specializes in recruiting for tech and product companies. The C# positions he had topped out at what other languages started at for senior developers.

I like C# it’s just it feels like it’s all enterprise jobs with bad development practices.

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

#540

Post by phibz »

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing

Can you determine I know what I'm talking about and can do the work without doing a 4h unpaid hoop? You should be able to ask probing questions and pretty quickly have a rough idea of if I've worked with this stuff or not.

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