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Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

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Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#81

Post by psyc »

crdoconnor wrote: post #55
lostcolony wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. I've sat on the hiring side. I've seen impressive resumes. I've had reasonable discussions with people. And then I give them a very, very trivial coding exercise (a take home, they're free to Google, do it on their own computer, in their own IDE, in their professed preferred language), in a time frame that while constrained is still plenty...and the result is -terrible-. I can try and come up with reasons…

It's weird, I've heard plenty of stories about this kind of thing but when I sat on the hiring side and interviewed for intermediate roles (couldn't even afford senior) I didn't come across anybody who was stumped and simply couldn't code. There were people who were bad at (possibly some because they were under pressure), it but nobody who couldn't do it at all. I wasn't giving out a trivial question either.

I've given coding interviews for 20 years, and I'd estimate 9/10 candidates have been competent whiteboard coders. I don't have any explanation for the extreme discrepancy between my experience, and the "hardly anyone can fizzbuzz" folks. Of course this colors how I treat people. I'm much more inclined to interview seniors conversationally and judge competence by the way they talk about work they have done. I have a hard time imagining people investing the time to become conversationally fluent in a domain, as some kind of long con.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#82

Post by ryandrake »

crdoconnor wrote: post #55
lostcolony wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. I've sat on the hiring side. I've seen impressive resumes. I've had reasonable discussions with people. And then I give them a very, very trivial coding exercise (a take home, they're free to Google, do it on their own computer, in their own IDE, in their professed preferred language), in a time frame that while constrained is still plenty...and the result is -terrible-. I can try and come up with reasons…

It's weird, I've heard plenty of stories about this kind of thing but when I sat on the hiring side and interviewed for intermediate roles (couldn't even afford senior) I didn't come across anybody who was stumped and simply couldn't code. There were people who were bad at (possibly some because they were under pressure), it but nobody who couldn't do it at all. I wasn't giving out a trivial question either.

It's such a weird hiring market. 1. There are a lot of imposters out there applying for programming jobs who can't program, and 2. There are a lot of very talented programmers out there who are being rejected by overly picky companies. Both can be true, and I'd argue that both are true. I don't know what the solution is. Current interviewing methods don't seem to be solving the problem.

I'd suggest a widely-accepted professional certification could help a lot, like doctors and lawyers have with the medical board exam or the bar exam. Easier said than done, but what we have today, where the candidate pool is overflowing with impostors with great resumes is not working.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#83

Post by twodave »

vorpalhex wrote: post #71
pg_bot wrote: post #6

Number 2: No One Believes Anyone Can Actually Code It's surprising to see the number of people who interview for lead technical roles that cannot code, or whose work is exceptionally sloppy. Incompetence is more commonplace than the author believes, even at the highest level.

I understand that's a problem, but if I have an entire github of highly starred and heavily developed projects with reasonable commit histories... don't make me do your do damned homework or implement a toy BST. I have better things to do with my personal time than toy problems because you can't be bothered to open my github. The worst part is that usually these toy problems are justified with "but you can post this…

I'm not going to speak to the homework type of problem (because honestly I think you should be paid for that sort of thing), but I always ask people programming questions in on-site interviews, not strictly because I want them to prove they can program (although that's one useful side-effect), but because I want to observe the candidate's problem-solving process. I can't deduce anything like that from your Github or a homework problem.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#84

Post by bcg1 »

Recently referred a friend for an opening at the company where I work. He didn't even get an interview because someone from HR has decided that all developers should have a four year degree (he only has an associates degree despite 15+ years experience). Maybe this would be fine for entry level positions, but it is straight up age discrimination for senior level ones (since there are still talented people in the workforce who went to school when CS programs were much less common).

One theory I have is that HR depts are pushing back against the upward trend of developer salaries; if they create an onerous process that tries to make candidates feel inadequate, it might make it more likely that they can land a low ball offer with whoever is desperate enough to stick it out. Also, if the HR department itself is incompetent and not capable of attracting talent, they can always point to their tests etc to "prove" that there are just no qualified candidates in the workforce.

Also, what is with all the coding tests etc? That stuff is obviously useless. Why don't hiring managers just ask candidates to read some code that is similar to what they will be working on, and observe how they approach stepping through it and how quick they can understand it? That is far more similar to what real work looks like most of the time.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#85

Post by southphillyman »

Interesting perspective, not sure what to make out of it. Maybe the author is having trouble due to location, or skillset, or maybe.... it's really just his age. Recruiters are constantly contacting me and ex coworkers regularly ask me for references so I just assume(d) the market is still red hot.

Last time out (3 yrs ago) I took about a month to land several offers and I didn't really do the whole CTCI preparation or anything. I even received an offer from a company whose take home code challenge I completely ignored because I didn't feel like being bothered. This time around I think I will do the full CTCI and leetcode regimen a I do agree it gets harder the more senior you are as the compensation and expectation raise.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#86

Post by ataturk »

lostcolony wrote: post #28
pg_bot wrote: post #6

Number 2: No One Believes Anyone Can Actually Code It's surprising to see the number of people who interview for lead technical roles that cannot code, or whose work is exceptionally sloppy. Incompetence is more commonplace than the author believes, even at the highest level.

Seriously. I've sat on the hiring side. I've seen impressive resumes. I've had reasonable discussions with people. And then I give them a very, very trivial coding exercise (a take home, they're free to Google, do it on their own computer, in their own IDE, in their professed preferred language), in a time frame that while constrained is still plenty...and the result is -terrible-. I can try and come up with reasons…

It's because a lot of those senior people only sit in meetings all day and now they're looking for a new role and they're used to delegating tasks to others and have forgotten (or never knew) a great deal of information. I feel for them in some ways because these jobs are mostly political, not technical in nature. It's not what they wanted, either.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#88

Post by s2g »

geebee wrote: post #31

Thank you for writing this post. It was informative. A few comments from a fellow software developer who is approaching 50... I don't think the coding test isn't there because people think you're lying, it's there because we have no industry wide, respected entrance exam. Actuarial interviews don't (to my knowledge) contain a whiteboard vector calculus exam, but this isn't because people just sort of believe actuarie…

> it's there because we have no industry wide, respected entrance exam

So you think the person with 30 years experience might be, whats the word... oh right. Lying. You think they are lying.

Quit trying to dress it up. Coding tests are exactly you saying you don't believe the experience written on the resume.

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#89

Post by cema »

zeroxfe wrote: post #57
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #52

> No one believes that anyone can actually code. Is it just our industry where you have to prove you aren't a complete impostor every time? Basically we treat every applicant like they are Frank Abagnale [0]. A senior role should be focused on more overall system and performance aspects of the software, using good practices. What does writing out a solution for fizzbuzz (or equivalent) prove during an interview? If t…

> Is it just our industry where you have to prove you aren't a complete impostor every time? Basically we treat every applicant like they are Frank Abagnale [0]. The problem is that a large majority of candidates lie on their resumes. This means that hiring managers have to work harder to qualify a good candidate -- which often ends up turning into a process that hurts and annoys those that are actually qualified.

Quote:

  a large majority of candidates lie on their resumes
Is it really true? I do not think it has been my experience (some, but not the majority).

Re: Things I Learned from a Job Hunt for a Senior Engineering Role

#90

Post by cableshaft »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

I find the coding thing interesting as well, in part because there is coding and there is coding. I suspect it is the difference between "coding ability" and "coding fluency." In the former a candidate can apply known patterns of a give language to a problem and with just a few searches on StackOverflow get it working. A person who has code fluency can create the algorithm in the language of your choice, pretty much…

> A person who has code fluency can create the algorithm in the language of your choice, pretty much on the spot.

I've professionally used each for a year or more C#, Python, Javascript, Objective-C, Java, PHP, Visual Basic, and ActionScript over the years. But if you asked me to write a function in anything but the first three languages, I will almost undoubtedly stumble a bit in producing them (hell, I still have to look up syntax for Python periodically).

That doesn't mean I couldn't pick them back up in a future job very quickly again (each job I worked for I was usually contributing to their code base in a few days, never longer than a week), it just means I don't have them fresh in my head and I can't store absolutely everything in my head forever.

But you'd still probably think I was incompetent. I've certainly given that impression before when I had an onsite scheduled by a recruiter and given less than 24 hours notice for an Objective-C job, a language I hadn't touched or thought about in over a year, and was handed a laptop by a Junior Programmer and was told "Code up an app for me." while another interviewer sat quietly across the table from me and stared at me the whole time while I refreshed on a years worth of XCode changes and forgotten syntax in real time.

After that wonderful performance they didn't give much weight to the two employees in their department that worked under me at a previous startup I was Lead Programmer for and vouched for my skills.

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