Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#71

Post by goodoldneon » Mon, May 24, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

epicureanideal wrote: post #34

Jemaclus wrote: post #17

(I'm a Director-level with 30 reports in my organization, with a few managers as direct reports. These thoughts below reflect my current problems as well as problems I had when I was "just" an engineering manager. Note that the problems don't go away, just increase in scale...) Number one for first two questions: hiring. Finding solid, dependable people with the right skills and attitude is really, really hard. I pro…

> Number two problem relating to the above: diversity. It's nigh impossible to find women and other marginalized groups. They're in such high demand and the supply is so low that it's just so hard to hire people and have your team not look like a team of white dudes. Aren't "marginalized" and "in such high demand" somewhat contradictory? Rather than "marginalized", which implies active resistance to the entry of peop…

They meant "marginalized" in a far broader context than hiring. Just because someone is in high demand for a job doesn't mean they aren't marginalized in other aspects of their life.

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#72

Post by Pokepokalypse » Mon, May 24, 2021, 6:51 PM UTC

dijit wrote: post #40

jawns wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's nigh impossible to find women and other marginalized groups. They're in such high demand and the supply is so low that it's just so hard. I have interviewed a bunch of women and non-white devs lately, and I doubt they would agree with you. This morning I interviewed a very impressive woman of color who said that she's struggled to find engineering jobs. I've noticed that it can be MUCH harder to find women and…

I guess it depends "a lot", my previous job was _incredibly_ pro-diversity, so much so that it actually made me feel terribly inferior for being born white/male/straight. (yes, yes, fragile ego/masculinity, sure). We struggled very hard to find BAME candidates that weren't from India (India is a nightmare to migrate people from) and Women just.. didn't exist. We fast tracked every woman to second level interviews but…

> (read: MS SQL DBAs where we used Linux/FreeBSD)

Just my opinion; as an aside. ANY engineer worth his or her salt, should be able to pivot from one to another. This is probably THE primary skill an engineer should have. Industry hiring practices mostly disqualify candidates based on this type of thing, and it's a terrible practice, and it leads to good qualified engineers getting pigeonholed into a skills-dead-end.

Most of the basic computer skills are applicable across all platforms. If they want to specialize in some skill set that you as an employer do not utilize, then they won't apply anyway.

So I'm saying; hire engineers who could use some professional development.

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#73

Post by nharada » Mon, May 24, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

jumby wrote: post #8

The infection of middle management in companies these days. Basically, people who's job is to attend meetings and add ~0 value.

I'm curious what you would suggest as an alternative. Completely flat orgs have worked occasionally in the past(?) but in general I hear horror stories about those as well.

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#74

Post by curun1r » Mon, May 24, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

jawns wrote: post #32

Jemaclus wrote: post #17

(I'm a Director-level with 30 reports in my organization, with a few managers as direct reports. These thoughts below reflect my current problems as well as problems I had when I was "just" an engineering manager. Note that the problems don't go away, just increase in scale...) Number one for first two questions: hiring. Finding solid, dependable people with the right skills and attitude is really, really hard. I pro…

> It's nigh impossible to find women and other marginalized groups. They're in such high demand and the supply is so low that it's just so hard. I have interviewed a bunch of women and non-white devs lately, and I doubt they would agree with you. This morning I interviewed a very impressive woman of color who said that she's struggled to find engineering jobs. I've noticed that it can be MUCH harder to find women and…

These anecdote-for-anecdote hiring threads are often missing crucial elements like location. Even now with most jobs being significantly remote, hiring is very regional. Problems in one job market will often be non-problems in another and, especially where race is concerned, the demographics of different cities can be wildly different.

There’s also other ways the hiring pool becomes fragmented such as area of focus (e.g. game dev vs web dev vs embedded dev) that make employees non-fungible.

I guess the point is that both can be true. There can be a frustrating shortage of qualified under-represented minorities available to companies and it can be hard for qualified under-represented minorities to find work. The job market is not like the financial markets where money can mostly move fluidly to the area of highest opportunity. Job fits are more complex and we should naturally expect a much less efficient allocation of employees.

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#75

Post by Jemaclus » Mon, May 24, 2021, 7:28 PM UTC

matheist wrote: post #70

Jemaclus wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question! This is true of every industry, not just tech, but essentially it boils down to this: the job ad is for the ideal candidate . Sometimes you'll see ads for things like "10 years of Go experience" and then you look it up and you see that Go has only been around for 10 years! How many people can satisfy that?! Well, they can't, but wouldn't it be great if we got someone who could? It's kind of like datin…

Ahhh, got it, yes. I'm familiar with this practice[1] but for some reason it didn't jump out at me that this is what you were referring to. Unsolicited speculation: I wonder if this is related to your hiring woes? I have vague memories of seeing research along the lines that marginalized groups are less likely to apply to positions that do things like "Want 10 years of Go experience". Of course not everyone already k…

It's possible! I think our job descriptions are pretty reasonable, actually, so I don't think that's the problem. If anything, I'd say our compensation probably isn't as competitive as we'd like, and the kinds of folks we're talking about are in high enough demand that we just aren't putting enough dollars behind the push to get them... Not a whole lot I personally can do about that, but I do my best.

The Mighty listing and tptacek's thoughts are interesting ideas, but part of the process is the screening phase which, as you said, is more difficult if there are no barriers. But they seems to be fairly successful, so maybe it's working out!

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#76

Post by epicureanideal » Mon, May 24, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

Jemaclus wrote: post #55

epicureanideal wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Number two problem relating to the above: diversity. It's nigh impossible to find women and other marginalized groups. They're in such high demand and the supply is so low that it's just so hard to hire people and have your team not look like a team of white dudes. Aren't "marginalized" and "in such high demand" somewhat contradictory? Rather than "marginalized", which implies active resistance to the entry of peop…

You might be incorrectly conflating "underrepresented" with "marginalized." While it's true that the marginalized groups that we're talking about (women, people of color, people with disabilities) are also underrepresented, those are not the same things at all, and I chose the word "marginalized" intentionally. Here's a link to what seems like a decent definition of "marginalization" to me: https://www.inhersight.com…

I would argue that people with disabilities are the only people in that list who are actually discriminated against and marginalized in the tech industry (or in most other areas of life), and yet far fewer resources are dedicated to reaching out to them and encouraging them to join companies than the other groups mentioned.

I suspect we would disagree about the facts of who is marginalized or discriminated against, and that's probably not something we can resolve in a comment thread. My position is based on data I've read, and I'm sure yours is as well, but it would probably take a lot of time to merge those data sets and come to a consensus opinion.

At this point, I actually think some of the people in the "majority group" are being marginalized, due to the focus on basically anyone else being preferentially hired. When a person from the majority group is being considered for a role, the attitude I've seen expressed during hiring discussions is, "But is there nobody else available? Ugh. Oh well, I guess we need to hire this white guy." And that's not limited to attitude... I've heard very similar words expressed.

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#77

Post by fuzzythinker » Mon, May 24, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

Jemaclus wrote: post #39

abatilo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having any turn over in 6 years in our field is kind of amazing. Do you think you're doing something different than the standard set of practices? How have you retained people for so long?

I would love to take credit for this, but I'm not sure I'm doing anything particularly mind-blowing. I would honestly attribute it to sheer luck. That said, my company has had increased turnover in the last 6 months, but my organization has not. Just to be clear that I'm not claiming nobody is leaving the company. But if the company overall has attrition and my team doesn't, I must be doing something right, right? No…

No turn overs in 6 years is really impressive. Not currently looking, but would love to know the company you're working for and possibly/hopefully grab a coffee when I'm in the area. Please shoot me an email (under my profile).

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#78

Post by andyxor » Mon, May 24, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

handrous wrote: post #54

Jemaclus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't do this, actually. Our take-home code challenge is fairly straightforward (I suspect anyone with 2-3 years of real-world experience could complete it in a few hours). I do spend about 45-60 minutes per candidate in a phone screen to talk with them and get a sense of their experience. Our on-sites convert to hires at a pretty high ratio, because I try not to bring people on-site unless I'm pretty sure I'm goi…

This is not a dig at you, but describing even relatively humane processes like this to folks who aren't in tech will get you some real WTF reactions. Hours of homework to even get an actual interview, for example. "Whiteboarding" sessions in which one often has very little idea what will be asked about in advance (yours may not have this problem, but, for all that's shitty about FAANG-style interviews, at least it's…

well i guess one benefit of this system is that it can be gamed if you put in x number of hours preparing for the semi-standardized test, regardless of your background, education, connections and even experience, while in non-tech roles hiring decisions could be more subjective and prone to bias.

not sure which one sucks less.

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#79

Post by Balgair » Mon, May 24, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

jumby wrote: post #8

The infection of middle management in companies these days. Basically, people who's job is to attend meetings and add ~0 value.

If you've not read The Gervais Principle yet, I'd suggest spending the time to do so.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

To be clear, the principle is one of many lenses that you can view the world through. I suggest it to be used as but one tool in your mental tool box. However, it is a good tool.

If you have read it, then I am also at a loss as to what to do with 'the clueless'.

I'd suggest trying to engage in more 'powertalk' with 'the sociopaths' and trying to mirror the path of Ryan the Intern. But that deep cynicism just rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps I am more of a Toby in the end.

Re: Ask HN: Engineering managers; what are the problems you face?

#80

Post by handrous » Mon, May 24, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

andyxor wrote: post #78

handrous wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a dig at you, but describing even relatively humane processes like this to folks who aren't in tech will get you some real WTF reactions. Hours of homework to even get an actual interview, for example. "Whiteboarding" sessions in which one often has very little idea what will be asked about in advance (yours may not have this problem, but, for all that's shitty about FAANG-style interviews, at least it's…

well i guess one benefit of this system is that it can be gamed if you put in x number of hours preparing for the semi-standardized test, regardless of your background, education, connections and even experience, while in non-tech roles hiring decisions could be more subjective and prone to bias. not sure which one sucks less.

And yet, we're the ones wringing our hands over diversity while the problem's gotten much better over the same timespan, in such historically inclusive (haha) professions as Doctor and Lawyer.

Shit, I don't love it either, but it's entirely possible the answer to "how do we fix tech diversity?" is "more credentialism". "Do these things and you'll absolutely be able to get jobs at the level you've already proven you're qualified for, with a normal interview process" might be more appealing to a broader set of candidates than "after putting in all the work to get good, also survive a full day of hazing-whiteboarding and if you get really lucky we'll hire you, if not better luck next time, sometimes it takes several tries to pass even for good candidates. Oh and you'll have to do it again every time you switch jobs, which by the way you'll have to do constantly if you like meaningful raises."