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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

#281

Post by briandear »

bweitzman wrote: post #180
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",…

Those titles are gendered, unfortunately. If we want such a system, we should adopt new titles that are more inclusive.

Calm down. You are part of the problem. You piss off otherwise inclusive and reasonable people with such nonsense. JourneyMAN doesn’t mean an actual “man.” That is an archaic interpretation to suggest a journeyman means “man.”

We don’t call “fishermen” “fisherpersons” — that’s just silly. You can have female fisherman.

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

#282

Post by jdmichal »

bweitzman wrote: post #201
grzm wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAICS, the only one that's explicitly gendered is "journeyman". We've had a pretty good track record swapping out "person" in such situations when it's an issue. One might take issue with "master", and some senses of "master" are gendered, but some are not, such as senses 1c (particularly applicable here) and 1d: > "c : a worker or artisan qualified to teach apprentices (see 1apprentice 1b)" > "d (1) : an artist, pe…

The word caries with it a history of a workforce dominated by men. If there's going to be a new made up system for standardizing and measuring the proficiency of software developers, then we may as well make up new words too that don't have this baggage.

> If there's going to be a new made up system for standardizing and measuring the proficiency of software developers, then we may as well make up new words too that don't have this baggage.

This proposal is explicitly not making up a new system, but rather adopting an existing one.

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

#283

Post by briandear »

bartread wrote: post #190
amorphid wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a recruiter for 8 years, and maybe 1 in 100 applications turned into a hire. I suspect a big factor is the barrier to entry for applying has been lowered. Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant. An increase in applications makes sifting through those applications increasingly burdensome, and tools have not really made mentally parsing a resume e…

You're spot on with that ratio and, as you say, it can become utterly draining. Depending on the number of applicants I'm getting, I developed a way of dealing with the problem that works well for software engineers: FOR LOTS OF APPLICANTS Send every single applicant a nice, warm email with a link to a coding assessment[1]. Doesn't have to be anything particularly in-depth: just something that requires an hour or two…

“An hour or two coding assessment?”

You can fuck off if that’s is your first contact response.

I’m interviewing YOU just as much as you are interviewing me. There is no shortage of companies hiring. There IS a shortage of quality candidates. I don’t need your job — but you do need developers. I am not going to invest 1-2 hours of time on some bullshit variation of fizz buzz or some equally ridiculous and real-world irrelevant academic game from HackerRank.

If you can’t be bothered to have even a quick 10 minute conversation, I can’t be bothered to do your stupid coding exercise.

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

#284

Post by whostolemyhat »

briandear wrote: post #281
bweitzman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those titles are gendered, unfortunately. If we want such a system, we should adopt new titles that are more inclusive.

Calm down. You are part of the problem. You piss off otherwise inclusive and reasonable people with such nonsense. JourneyMAN doesn’t mean an actual “man.” That is an archaic interpretation to suggest a journeyman means “man.” We don’t call “fishermen” “fisherpersons” — that’s just silly. You can have female fisherman.

Cool, so you'd have no problem if the title everyone had to use was journeywoman?

You could have male journeywoman, so there'd be no problem there.

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

#285

Post by samayylmao »

ry_ry wrote: post #280

Phone post, so may be a little disjointed... Until very recently I was frontend lead for a fairly large UK site, and one of the best hires I ever made was a 32 year old former-recruiter with no commercial programming experience, and no CS background. However it was far from plain sailing. We had mutual friends and whilst chatting in a pub, and they won me over with their passion and enthusiasm for what I discovered w…

To me, this is very different than someone who has graduated with a CS degree or self-taught with a portfolio of open source contributions/personal projects.

An understanding of basic concepts obtained in the ways described above is very different from 0 experience. And on paper to a recruiter, what I've listed above counts as 0 real-world business experience.

edit: it is nice to hear this situation worked out for you though!

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

#286

Post by justherefortart »

ry_ry wrote: post #280

Phone post, so may be a little disjointed... Until very recently I was frontend lead for a fairly large UK site, and one of the best hires I ever made was a 32 year old former-recruiter with no commercial programming experience, and no CS background. However it was far from plain sailing. We had mutual friends and whilst chatting in a pub, and they won me over with their passion and enthusiasm for what I discovered w…

There's a huge difference in no work experience and no experience at all.

Hiring college grads without a lot of real world experience gives you the opportunity to mentor and train in good methodologies that I find older developers will refuse to implement without incessant fighting.

It is more work initially but the long run payoff has been fantastic in my experience. When you manage based on yearly expectations that are attainable life is so much more enjoyable.

The biggest key is management and upper management buy-in. Sadly that's exponentially more difficult to get when most places see IT as a sunk-cost instead of an opportunity to deliver more efficient workflows internally and externally.

I'm on the fence about working with developers that don't have college degrees. The gaps in their skill-set frequently causes issues no matter how much experience they've had.

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

#287

Post by SolaceQuantum »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #220
bweitzman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those titles are gendered, unfortunately. If we want such a system, we should adopt new titles that are more inclusive.

Journeyperson? Next we’re gonna call mom and dad “parent and parent”

I mean, why not call my parent my parent instead of my mom or dad if my mom or dad don’t identify as cis? “This is my parent, Alex” is reasonable.

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

#288

Post by briandear »

bartread wrote: post #197
meesterdude wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW when i apply to a job and get sent back a coding exercise, without first even talking to me, that's usually a red flag for me and i do not proceed with them - although I do communicate that I prefer to have some kind of chat so i know there is a culture fit, before i potentially throw hours of my life away.

Fair. But one of the things you end up realising is you can't come up with the perfect process that will please all applicants. One thing I should have mentioned as well is how I handle referrals, because it's quite different. I always skip the assessment or telescreen in favour of some sort of face to face: - Invite them in to the office, have coffee, find out more about them, let them meet some of the team, show th…

How about reading their resume and cover letter? Looking at a github link, checking out their LinkedIn. You know, actually do YOUR job rather than wasting every single applicants time. Maybe good engineers are self unselecting because your assembly line screening process turned them off.

Look at the hiring process at Apple or Google for examples of how to do it well. Apply; respond to applications with a request for a phone screen or a rejection letter. Do the phone screen. Those that pass, do a technical interview via FaceTime, then those that pass that, send them to the final round. If you reject anyone during the process, notify them immediately.

Be respectful to the candidates and you will end up with better hires. Don’t treat them like you are doing them a favor: you aren’t.

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

#289

Post by throwaway2016a »

Apologies for a post that s pretty much 100% anecdotal...

This article rings true to me.

My wife ran into this after college only for her industry (biomedical engineering) it is 5 years for "entry level" and they didn't even count her paid college jobs even though they were relevant experience.

Robotics is even worse. Unless you've been building robots as a hobby for the last 5-10 years (which is a VERY expensive hobby btw) it doesn't matter how much other engineering or programming experience you have, they won't take you.

I got lucky with the opposite. I started paid programming in high school and employers counted my high school and college jobs as experience and I had three competing mid-level offers at graduation. So I skipped entry level entirely. And this was in 2007 right before the recession really kicked in so companies were already starting to hold back on hiring.

On the flip side, an actual entry level coder we just hired expects to be working on fun new R&D stuff even though he has 0 experience and I thought we set expectations during the interview. We have him working on bug fixing and client change orders (he will eventually get to R&D but someone needs to fix the bugs, we can't all work on just the "fun" stuff).

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

#290

Post by RHSeeger »

usernam wrote: post #204
amorphid wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a recruiter for 8 years, and maybe 1 in 100 applications turned into a hire. I suspect a big factor is the barrier to entry for applying has been lowered. Just fill out a quick form and click submit, so people will apply to any job that looks remotely relevant. An increase in applications makes sifting through those applications increasingly burdensome, and tools have not really made mentally parsing a resume e…

The barrier is lower for applying, but as many other posters saying, there is simply just interest in quick ROI and zero willingness to think long term. I recruited for several years for my companies too. First thing I noticed, there is huge variability in CV for each country. When I receive a CV from an indian person (from India), I don't know if I should expect 100% lies or what, even from qualified seniors. On the…

> As a senior dev, I keep asking: would I apply to my current application? I have to answer that no, I wouldn't.

Looking at it from the other point of view, are you getting enough candidates that you are comfortable with via your current application? If so, the question becomes whether it would be enough of a benefit getting "you" (people like you) to apply to your current job... vs the cost of having that many more people to filter through.

Just like the code you deliver, the application process doesn't need to be perfect (because being perfect has a large cost associated). Instead, you have to weight the tradeoffs and pick the solutions that best match the resources you have available to the outcome you want. You need "good enough" (I hate that term, it sounds like "bad" to my ears, but it's literal meaning is correct here).

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