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

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:10 AM UTC

AznHisoka wrote: post #139

xfitm3 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by WrtCdEvrydy » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:11 AM UTC

ilikehurdles wrote: post #94

dleslie wrote: post #41

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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…

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…

Post by ryanworl » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:13 AM UTC

jonathankoren wrote: post #135

ryanworl wrote: post #13

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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 v…

Post by sethammons » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:19 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #50

notjesse wrote: post #26

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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…

Post by mherdeg » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:25 AM UTC

mk89 wrote: post #105

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.