When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by masonic » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 12:54 AM UTC

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 10-acre lot is a ludicrous metric, and even 1 acre (for a residence) metric is unrealistic. I doubt most technical types even want the burden of upkeep for an acre+. At that point, the main thing you're buying is isolation.

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

#132

Post by Aeolun » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #121

cloogshicer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree a bit here. Of course, salary is very important, but I (and many people I know) would easily choose (and have chosen) a lower salary for any combination of these perks: - Work fewer hours - Work from anywhere - Work in a specific location - Work in a certain environment - Work in a specific kind of organization - Work with specific technologies - etc. People are very different and have very different wishe…

But you don’t get any of those with a startup. They want you there onsite working long hours doing one specific thing

The only thing I would disagree with is that they want you to do all the things.

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

#133

Post by Aeolun » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 12:57 AM UTC

masonic wrote: post #131

burfog wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 10-acre lot is a ludicrous metric, and even 1 acre (for a residence) metric is unrealistic. I doubt most technical types even want the burden of upkeep for an acre+. At that point, the main thing you're buying is isolation.

I think OP might have a wrong idea of what an acre is. That’s really the only way I can imagine the comment making sense.

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

#134

Post by paulie_a » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 12:57 AM UTC

codezero wrote: post #115

ilikehurdles wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referred to a company that eventually handed me “6 hour” (likely much more to complete sufficiently enough to advance) take home project a few weeks ago and I still can’t bring myself to start it. I read their Glassdoor reviews and the number of folks are reporting either being ghosted or getting a negative response minutes after submitting, after putting days of effort into this exercise, is disturbing. It see…

Heads up, tomorrow is a holiday many places in the US, just do you expect at least a day of delay.

More people are getting the day off but it's still less than half at 45 percent.

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

#135

Post by jonathankoren » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 12:58 AM UTC

ryanworl wrote: post #13

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…

It does always amaze me that literally what you learn in HR 101 in an undergraduate management curriculum is controversial. The r^2 of a ton of different methods for predicting job performance is something large companies are highly incentivized to get studied by academics (and they do). Spoiler alert: work-sample tests are the only practical and generally tolerated one to use (for software engineers) that is actuall…

>It does always amaze me that literally what you learn in HR 101 in an undergraduate management curriculum is controversial. The r^2 of a ton of different methods for predicting job performance is something large companies are highly incentivized to get studied by academics (and they do).

Large companies are not "highly incentivized" to optimize they're hiring process. Once a certain throughput is achieved, there's very little reason to revisit it, because if they revisit it, "they're lowering the bar", or not "optimizing for recall" or whatever.

Mindlessly copying large companies isn't all that useful. Microsoft famously loved brain teasers. Can't get the fox, chicken, and grain to the other side of of the river? You must not be able to code either. Google, loved asking your SAT scores because, "obviously" someone that got some arbitrary score on a standardized test, a minimum of 6 years ago, certainly means something today.

Large companies aren't immune from bullshit. In fact, they have the habit of metastasizing bullshit, because of "Well, X does it, so it must be good." X only does it, because they had a stupid idea, became successful because of completely unrelated means, and then fooled themselves into thinking their process was good, "Well, I've been hitting candidates with ball-pein hammer for years, and I'm successful, so screw you."

Interestingly enough, eventually both Microsoft and Google abandoned these interview questions, because eventually, they realized that one had nothing to do with the other, but only after years doing it, and others copying them.

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

#136

Post by masonic » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:00 AM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #95

burfog wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I understand what you’re saying but I think you’re underestimating how many people like city life. I work in SF and most of the people here are here specifically because they DONT want to live on ten acres in some rural place, they love that the city is walkable and dense and interesting. For most folks the issue of living in condos or apartments it’s an issue at all until they reach a certain family size. At that po…

  outside of SF there is basically nothing else walkable west of the Mississippi

What a sad perception.

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

#137

Post by withhighprod » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:01 AM UTC

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…

Wow Google L7 can not finish your toy project?!

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

#138

Post by masonic » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:03 AM UTC

patientplatypus wrote: post #10

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…

This is the only correct answer. White boarding is to coding what Foosball is to soccer. In my last in-person interview they asked me a bunch of trivia that was a simple google search away - so of course, why would I bother memorizing those things? I got a dear john letter back saying I wasn't smart enough or some such, and it's like "oh great, being called an idiot by an idiot". And that's most of my interviews if I…

  White boarding is to coding what Foosball is to soccer

My preferred analogy is that whiteboarding is to coding as rotisserie baseball (playing GM) is to playing baseball.

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

#139

Post by AznHisoka » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:05 AM UTC

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.

I can’t overemphatize how much persistence really paid off in past jobs I had. Coworkers that had persistence were such a delight to work with because they didnt give up the first time they got stuck. They did the nitty gritty work of tailing/grepping logs, using a debugger, endless Googling, print statements, and anything to find out the root cause of a bug... or even to understand a legacy codebase.

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

#140

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:07 AM UTC

All of these recurring interview threads makes me wonder: why are there only two interview preparation-focused boot camps right now? (Outco and Interview Kickstart)

It’s one thing to take an algorithms course, and it’s another to excel at competitive programming, and still another to use those skills on the spot in an interview. Surely like any other admissions process, one can train for technical interviews in a group setting.