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When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

hiringengineersbook.com

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Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#71

Post by x0x0 »

mchannon wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #3

A lot of this post seems pretty reasonable. But: In my experience, it’s fairly easy to judge technical skill. A friendly conversation about technical interests and recent projects can often be enough. Bullshit. Sounding credible in technical interviews is a skill, not the same skill as actually being a good programmer, and might even (statistically, in the large) be close to orthogonal to it. We found this out the ha…

When a guy tells you his experience, and you call bullshit, it's hard to tell whether you doubt his sincerity about having the experience at all or whether the experience itself was not representative of your reality. Either way, you're telling us not how it is, but how you are, and that's simply not useful. In "The Last Starfighter", the recruiter/hiring manager Centauri is constantly accused of using "the Excalibur…

This is a sendup, right? Down to quoting the last starfighter?

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#72

Post by tptacek »

mbell wrote: post #68
akerl_ wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens to every candidate who gets flustered by the questioning and seems to bow out earlier than their technical depth? How do you hire people who are more technical in a subject area than your current staff, if your test bottoms out at the depth of the current interviewer in the room?

> What happens to every candidate who gets flustered by the questioning and seems to bow out earlier than their technical depth? I'm not sure I get this question - I'm not talking about a white-boarding exercise. I'm just talking to the candidate about a technical project they have worked on in the past, the pain points, how they resolved them, etc. If that results in the candidate being flustered it's not a good sig…

One of the very best people we ever hired was so flustered in his final interview with us (a formality, after work-sample challenges) that he was visibly shaking during it. If we had taken the "numerous axes" on which the was "not a good sign" seriously, we'd have missed that hire --- and, I think, an entire business unit in our firm wouldn't have been started.

I generally think software developers (I count myself among them) know far, far less about psychological assessment than they think they do.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#73

Post by jay_kyburz »

dleslie wrote: post #47
nicoburns wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best interview I ever had was a 2-hour onsite work sample, followed by 1/2 an hour discussing what I'd come up with. I was offered the job the next day. Surely most people would prefer this to whiteboard tasks?

The best interview I had was a few hours of friendly conversation about the details of my resume. Then I was hired under probation, as everyone there was, and the understanding was that I could be easily dismissed if it was clear that I wasn't working out.

Yeah, I think 1-3 month probation is really the only way to do it.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#74

Post by tptacek »

x0x0 wrote: post #71
mchannon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a guy tells you his experience, and you call bullshit, it's hard to tell whether you doubt his sincerity about having the experience at all or whether the experience itself was not representative of your reality. Either way, you're telling us not how it is, but how you are, and that's simply not useful. In "The Last Starfighter", the recruiter/hiring manager Centauri is constantly accused of using "the Excalibur…

This is a sendup, right? Down to quoting the last starfighter?

Ironically, Patrick, Erin, and I did a company after Matasano that was based (sort of) on work-sample hiring (really, more based on CTFs) that was called Starfighter.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#75

Post by sys_64738 »

dleslie wrote: post #41
mchannon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a guy tells you his experience, and you call bullshit, it's hard to tell whether you doubt his sincerity about having the experience at all or whether the experience itself was not representative of your reality. Either way, you're telling us not how it is, but how you are, and that's simply not useful. In "The Last Starfighter", the recruiter/hiring manager Centauri is constantly accused of using "the Excalibur…

I won't apply at, or respond to recruiters representing, those companies that have a reputation for a long and/or torturous hiring process. While I have no interest in being interrogated with high-stress puzzle solving, it is not the interview process itself that causes my disinterest; it is the understanding, from experience, that how a company treats its potential candidates is often reflective of its general cultu…

This also applies to when you're actually interviewing. I once went through three rounds and they wanted a fourth. No is such a powerful and unexpected word. That they're still talking to you means they're interested but that they haven't offered you the job means they're not 100% sure. This one scenario I said No they came back with an offer. But it was rejected.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#76

Post by gregw134 »

burfog wrote: post #64
doctorless wrote: post #39

Hands down, the number one problem in hiring and retaining senior engineers is being able to match the compensation level. FAANG-type companies have a huge difference to practically everyone else. Startups, especially, can’t match the salary, and few make up for it in equity comparable to the risk level engineers take on by accepting the job. Senior engineers typically know better, and so you end up with mid or even…

The difference being that the FAANG-type companies don't pay well enough to make up for the cost of living. Senior engineers seldom want to live in tiny apartments. See if you can prove me wrong: find a 10-acre lot within a half hour commute, with a large single-family home, that is affordable to a senior engineer. Alternately, make it 1 acre, but within a 5-minute commute.

A football field is 1.3 acres, so a 1 acre lot is going to be expensive anywhere.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#77

Post by cloogshicer »

whiskyant wrote: post #15
snarfy wrote: post #6

The words 'pay' and 'salary' do not appear in the article. They want senior engineers at intern prices.

Pay as much as FAANG and trust me, you'll get your senior engineers.

This is probably true, but it's not the only way to attract seniors. As in the other discussion above, I'm convinced there are many very good people that will gladly trade a significant portion of their salary for other perks.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#78

Post by yeukhon »

tptacek wrote: post #3

A lot of this post seems pretty reasonable. But: In my experience, it’s fairly easy to judge technical skill. A friendly conversation about technical interests and recent projects can often be enough. Bullshit. Sounding credible in technical interviews is a skill, not the same skill as actually being a good programmer, and might even (statistically, in the large) be close to orthogonal to it. We found this out the ha…

The tone here is extremely disrespectful. Calling out someone’s opinion bullshit is not the way to go - no matter how popular you are on HN. It isn’t like he’s offering a troll comment/opinion here. You have just lost my respect for you.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#79

Post by mbell »

tptacek wrote: post #62
mbell wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bullshit. Sounding credible in technical interviews is a skill, not the same skill as actually being a good programmer, and might even (statistically, in the large) be close to orthogonal to it. I don't agree with this. I think the issue here is that your interviewers aren't going deep enough in the conversation. If you ask someone to tell you about some interesting technical project they worked on and they give a…

Strongest possible disagree. There are people who can talk all the way down to the point where they're basically dictating code to you, who nevertheless cannot deliver on a real project. There's a difference between knowing, intellectually, how to solve a problem with code, and actually being able to deliver working code . In practice, though, what really seems to happen is that technical interviews are split between…

> Strongest possible disagree. There are people who can talk all the way down to the point where they're basically dictating code to you, who nevertheless cannot deliver on a real project. There's a difference between knowing, intellectually, how to solve a problem with code, and actually being able to deliver working code.

I'm a little confused by this statement. Is your issue that they aren't _capable_ of writing the code or that their job performance isn't there once hired? i.e. Are the technical chops not there or is the work ethic not there? It seems like you are describing the later to me, or we are talking about different levels of conversation.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#80

Post by x0x0 »

tptacek wrote: post #74
x0x0 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a sendup, right? Down to quoting the last starfighter?

Ironically, Patrick, Erin, and I did a company after Matasano that was based (sort of) on work-sample hiring (really, more based on CTFs) that was called Starfighter.

(that was my point...)
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