Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

hiringengineersbook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 694 posts

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

#101

Post by joshuamorton »

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.

Most people anywhere don't live on 10 acre lots (nor do they want to, I certainly don't!).

But yes, a senior engineer can likely afford a large single family home relatively close to work (many of my co-workers do).

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

#102

Post by mbell »

tptacek wrote: post #83
mbell wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Being able to talk intelligently, in depth, and at length about code is not the same skill as being able to write or debug code.

I haven't experienced this, not if you are digging into detail on how they solved previous issues. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I've never dug into detail and had coding be the problem. If you leave the conversation at a conceptual level, then I can see it happening much more often.

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

#103

Post by [deleted] »

josh2600 wrote: post #34
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…

Just to add some thoughts here: I’ve interviewed people who were google L7+ (IC) a couple of times who weren’t very good engineers, at least on the work sample stuff. I’ve found that the highest correlation to performance in senior engineers is raw algorithmic skill and willingness to say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. This is not true of hiring devops or sre’s. For those positions, you want the gopher archetype…

[deleted]

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

#104

Post by csnewb »

That's hilarious and so true. Last year I interviewed for a senior back-end engineering position at a well known mid-sized company in the Bay Area. They put me through 2 technical phone screens and a 6 hour onsite interview, grilling me in detail about system design, domain knowledge, personal experience, and of course doing endless exercises of writing solutions to algorithmic problems on a whiteboard. I really felt like I nailed the interview but they still rejected me because they thought my technical skills weren't good enough. 7 months later I start applying to jobs again via LinkedIn, and guess what, that exact same position on the same team is still open. It seems insane that during the past 7 months they couldn't find a single person to fill that role. Makes me wonder if they know what they're really looking for.

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

#105

Post by mk89 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #9

The author is from Austria. As a dev who moved there 4 years ago I noticed it's probably some archaic Germanic cultural trait for any job postings to be very employer focused, acting like they're doing you a favor by hiring you and not caring about what the employee might want, even for senior roles. Maybe a local is reading this and can explain why this is still a thing.

You're so goddamn right!

I live in Germany and the only companies I can work for are international ones (US-based).

At least I know how they work, what they expect, and generally speaking, it's the way I like to work.

Never, ever work for companies like Deutsche Post, Telekom etc.

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

#106

Post by mbell »

warent wrote: post #84
mbell wrote: post #68

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? 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…

> If that results in the candidate being flustered it's not a good sign on numerous axes. Are you hiring sales reps or engineers? Why are you asking for an engineer to sell you on their past project(s)? Interviews by their nature are about judgment, and knowing you're being judged by a complete stranger who holds the power over this potential path of your future is enough to get anybody flustered, especially a braini…

> Are you hiring sales reps or engineers? Why are you asking for an engineer to sell you on their past project(s)?

I don't ask them to sell me, I ask them to dive into the technical issues they faced and how they solved them. It tells me a lot more about how they will handle similar issues in the future than scribbling DFS on a white-board would.

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

#107

Post by Aeolun »

xfitm3 wrote: post #99
josh2600 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add some thoughts here: I’ve interviewed people who were google L7+ (IC) a couple of times who weren’t very good engineers, at least on the work sample stuff. I’ve found that the highest correlation to performance in senior engineers is raw algorithmic skill and willingness to say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. This is not true of hiring devops or sre’s. For those positions, you want the gopher archetype…

Why doesn't the gopher archetype also apply to development roles? Persistence pays off if you measure your own results. Knowing how to divide a problem is really important, even if you're great at algorithms.

Guess what you need strongly depends on what you are hiring for.

Being good at alghorithms only is great if you work in a very isolated area.

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

#108

Post by joshuamorton »

dleslie wrote: post #97
projektir wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make me damn uncomfortable and stressed out once I started the job, and I'd likely take any other offer over this.

You've had this condition at every job thus far. The real interview is always the work you do.

This is only true in the most extreme case. Many companies have formal procedures around firing people for performance issues. Short of hr violations or literally refusing to do anything, I can't imagine someone being fired before 6 months.

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

#109

Post by haditab »

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.

Your somehow assuming cost of living is only high around FAANG. Bay area is full of non-FAANG companies that pay significantly less. Faang doesn't struggle to hire senior because they're the only places that affords to pay enough.

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

#110

Post by bradleyjg »

tptacek wrote: post #50
notjesse wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it’s not generally tolerated. You end up optimizing for sub-prime candidates because those are the only ones desperate enough to take 4-6 hours out of their free time for a company that hasn’t even bothered interviewing you, yet. If they want to turn the onsite into one big work sample, by all means, that sounds very effective (and something I’ve seen work well). But in my experience, you’re going to deter qualif…

Again: this is true of "work sample" tests in their mainstream implementation in our industry (spend 6 hours jumping through a hoop for the privilege of running a standard, nondeterministic interview gauntlet), and those hiring processes are a scourge. But there's a right way to do it: give work sample challenges and then, at least for the most part, end the technical qualification part of your process there . You sp…

You ever see or suspect fraud in a take home? I can't imagine it doesn't happen giving that cheating is so prevalent in colleges.
Post reply on HN