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61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

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Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#241

Post by 80386 »

RbrtM wrote: post #18
PeterisP wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it from the perspective of a "career in this organization", not "career of this person". It is an entry level job - it's the lowest tier in their ranking, it's the starting place, it's literally the level where new people enter the organization; it's the lowest paid and least respected position they have, filled with the least experienced and least tenured people in the whole company. It's just that they (wan…

These days your tech career ends at 35, so an average lifetime career lasts 10-12 years.

What do tech people do after they hit 35?

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#242

Post by michaelt »

vonmoltke wrote: post #98
michaelt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passion is a relative term. Nobody goes to work at Facebook or Google thinking "wow, I'm so passionate about adverts and tracking, I want to build a world with more ads and tracking in more places". It's normal not to be passionate about your work in that sense. However, some people find computers frustrating, stupid or boring. Such a person probably wouldn't enjoy a job working with them all the time - and it's diff…

> You need to be passionate in the sense of finding the work sufficiently non-loathsome that you can readily motivate yourself to do it. That is a major abuse of "passion". While the original definitions are even stronger, something you are "passionate" about is something you actively seeking out to do. Something that is merely "sufficiently non-loathsome" is not a passion.

  That is a major abuse of "passion".
That's just the gap between what employers hope for when they place a job advert, and what they get.

I would like someone who loves their work so much they do 150% of the expected amount of work, freely chooses to stay late to make the Foo they're working on the best Foo the world has ever seen. Someone I can promote, and trust with more responsibility and less supervision.

But I'll tolerate someone who does 75% of the expected amount of work, because I'm realistic about the hiring market.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#243

Post by AstralStorm »

Chyzwar wrote: post #227
bad_user wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with " Senior ". Lots of years of experience translate to having a proven track record of delivered value, along with management skills and experience of failure, things that can't be substituted by talent or knowledge acquired from reading about the works of others. > a person with 3-4 years of experience to be a "Very Good Engineer" Not the same thing — this is actually the same problem as wit…

Lots of years of experience prove nothing. If someone was working for 10 years in Java backend apps, using outdated tech and in an environment that delivered value is secondary to risk, he/she is not senior. 3 years is minimum for getting close to being competent. I would argue that before that you will deliver very little.

They are a senior engineer... in their specific scope.

These levels are not exactly transferable necessarily.

You should be able to trust that an experienced developer like this would be able to adapt to newer methods and API.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#244

Post by pjc50 »

arkh wrote: post #235
epicureanideal wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem is the titles themselves... "Senior" implies "Highly Experienced" meaning "lots of years of experience". Whereas it's completely possible for a person with 3-4 years of experience to be a "Very Good Engineer" within their specific domain and be as valuable, respected, listened-to, etc. as a "Senior Engineer". It doesn't happen often, but it happens. If we had titles more like "Apprentice",…

I'm starting to think that the French Compagnons should add software developers to their list of professions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnons_du_Tour_de_France if you don't know what it is.

English equivalent: https://www.wcit.org.uk/members/anon/new.html?destination=%2... "The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists".

Slightly weird mapping of the traditional Establishment to our industry. Their home page includes items such as "Capercaillie Shoot" (not clear if this involves real grouse as it's in Essex), and "Report on the Funeral of Brigadier Tim Hackworth OBE PhD"

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#245

Post by jashmatthews »

epicureanideal wrote: post #176
Aloha wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entry Level ought to be 'willing to train', Junior, some experience, Senior, 8+ years of experience. Sadly title inflation is also a thing.

I think part of the problem is the titles themselves... "Senior" implies "Highly Experienced" meaning "lots of years of experience". Whereas it's completely possible for a person with 3-4 years of experience to be a "Very Good Engineer" within their specific domain and be as valuable, respected, listened-to, etc. as a "Senior Engineer". It doesn't happen often, but it happens. If we had titles more like "Apprentice",…

> "Senior" implies "Highly Experienced" meaning "lots of years of experience".

Not necessarily. Medicine has "Senior Resident" or similar in some countries as the last step before becoming an independent physician. Law and finance have senior associate before junior partner.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#246

Post by zimpenfish »

RbrtM wrote: post #18
PeterisP wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it from the perspective of a "career in this organization", not "career of this person". It is an entry level job - it's the lowest tier in their ranking, it's the starting place, it's literally the level where new people enter the organization; it's the lowest paid and least respected position they have, filled with the least experienced and least tenured people in the whole company. It's just that they (wan…

These days your tech career ends at 35, so an average lifetime career lasts 10-12 years.

Well, I'm considerably past 35 and still being hired as a tech developer. Mostly at high $$ to come and fix the problems that young 'uns have created in their wide-eyed naive blithering and fawning over fancy new doodads.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#247

Post by AstralStorm »

eitally wrote: post #153
jamestimmins wrote: post #27

The buried lede here seems to be "In real life, folks need to apply to 150-250 jobs to get a job". I'd be so, so interested to see the breakdown here, and what causes these types of numbers. Are there just enormous numbers of applicants for every job? Are people applying for jobs they aren't qualified for? How does this compare in tech vs the rest of the job market? The signal/noise ratio must be absurdly low if this…

I'm currently trying to hire cloud solution architects, including in Bangalore. I have had >2000 applicants for the role. About 15 made it through resume & phone screens. I have found 1 so far that could make it through onsite interviews. This is just one data point from the opposite POV: especially in tech, it's extremely hard to find qualified people at the time and place you need them, especially if you need speci…

This is because recruiters are lazy. In my bunch of years I found exactly 2 non-lazy third party recruiters. Thus actually manually finding the company you want to work with and then sending the resume and cover letter directly has a decent chance of success if you're not a hack or fake.

The trouble is, they so not like to give out salary brackets.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#248

Post by AstralStorm »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #110
StaticRedux wrote: post #72

3+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For some reason people can never get over that. It means 3+ years with a technology. It means don't walk in the door out of a Java college having used nothing else and apply to work on a Triple A game written in C++. It means don't show up after a weekend html course and…

> That's all it means (to any reasonable employer). There's the rub. Early in my career when I had little working experience this CONSTANTLY bit me. It didn't matter that I did consulting on the side or that I worked with the technology or even that I went to school and used the technology there. In my experience almost all of non-tech companies and maybe half-ish of the tech companies would require the experience be…

Funny. Were they looking for a dev that worked at Microsoft Research?

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#249

Post by icebraining »

michaelt wrote: post #239
icebraining wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that she falls in the same error as the companies she's criticizing - she conflates passion with external signals like "spending a lot of time on personal projects". At first she uses quotes around "passionate", which seems to distinguish the two, but then she fully conflates them. Inevitably, she will rile up those of us who were passioned about tech despite not having the means to dedicate ou…

she conflates passion with external signals like "spending a lot of time on personal projects" Job interviewers fear being mislead by people telling them what they want to hear, so they will often look for provable actions and demonstrable knowledge, rather than claims. If someone tells me they're passionate about embedded electronics, I'll ask what they've worked with - arduino? raspberry pi? esp8266? atmel? pic? mb…

Sure, but that's where her criticism is valid - there are many reasons why a person might not be able to fulfill their passion, and some groups are disproportionately affected by that filter.

Re: 61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

#250

Post by AstralStorm »

paulie_a wrote: post #33
RbrtM wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days your tech career ends at 35, so an average lifetime career lasts 10-12 years.

That is laughable. While age doesn't really matter, true senior talent doesn't even begin until someone has worked for at least a decade, which puts most people in their early to mid 30s

Depends on when one has started but yes, the expected age in my experience is around 7 years. Shorter if this is on different teams and technologies.

This means a college grad will be in 30s. Someone who worked off jobs while in college might get there faster a bit.

A passionate experimenter who does a lot of open source dev would be there before you blink but will be hard pressed to prove it.

Pity companies do not wish to hire people in high school with actual will to do the thing and learn. Vocational education so to speak.

They probably (and rightly) expect a pause for college or other higher education.

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