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

#211

Post by wool_gather » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:18 AM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #119

tptacek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The extremely obvious problem with this is that there's no way of preventing someone from completely blowing a hole in your interview process by simply paying for or hiring another developer to do the take-home problem for them. At that point they've gotten past the technical requirements and now only need the soft skills to execute on it once the rest of the interview process continues. This is why take-home problem…

> get denied because my solution wasn't flawless.

Not all companies handle it like this. I had a take-home exercise as part of an interview last year. I hit a real snag on a fairly small part, I couldn't figure it out, and I ended up leaving a bug in my submission because I simply ran out of time. Very frustrating.

It was raised at the interview; I admitted that I knew it was there, and that I hadn't been able to figure it out. We discussed possible causes: it actually turned into a pretty interesting, though minor, technical conversation. The interviewer eventually told me that he had figured it out after a little investigation (and I expressed my gratitude for the explanation!)

I ended up getting an enthusiastic offer from them.

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

#212

Post by flipactual » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:18 AM UTC

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…

I don’t know what your work-sample looks like, but unless it’s time actually working with your team on a real project, it gave you no indication of whether or not someone was “capable of delivering”

You may think you filtered out people who failed your test, but you have no indication that that’s the case – you could just as easily have filtered out people who don’t like tests or people who don’t test well

I trust you’ve found some decent hires, but I’d suspect you passed on many as well

And, I don’t know about your work environment, but I’d prefer someone who can have a friendly conversation and do good work... I’m surprised you bothered giving your work-sample test to people who didn’t pass the earlier test

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

#213

Post by jahaja » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:19 AM UTC

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…

Do you think it's always worth the effort to get that lower false positive rate? Other professions seem pretty happy to do a trial/probation period after less elaborate interviews.

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

#214

Post by LaserToy » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:19 AM UTC

notjesse wrote: post #26

ryanworl wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Well, I actually willing to spend time on a problem, because it is interesting and I can do it in a fun way and learn something new.

But I have 0 tolerance policy towards puzzle whiteboarding tests. It is total waste of time.

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

#215

Post by LaserToy » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:22 AM UTC

bradleyjg wrote: post #110

tptacek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are yo saying most of candidates commit fraud? Do you have any data on it or just following common sense nonsense?

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

#216

Post by lsc » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:23 AM UTC

Isn't it just... mostly money? I mean, if you want to hire someone good, who presumably has a good job, you have to pay better than what they are getting now.

I think this is probably especially true in Europe; I mean, as far as I know, people get like a 2x-4x raise moving to silicon valley from europe. If you pay more than your local competitors, you will largely have your pick of the candidates.

I mean, yes, things other than money matter a lot, too. But as an employee? I think that's really, really hard to judge from the interview. The money is pretty easy to judge, and as far as I can tell, total comp is a good 'honest signal' that I'm going to be treated in other ways. How much money they offer is a better indicator that I'll be treated well, in my experience, than anything anyone can say at an interview.

I think as workers, we're not doing ourselves any favors by pretending that an employer can get the best people without paying the best rates.

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

#217

Post by kronin » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:24 AM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #210

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…

Was there a specific attack vector you commonly saw from candidates in interviews? It would seem pretty difficult to fake having built a real product or made significant open source contributions. In fact would probably be as difficult or more difficult than faking having written a book, and as far as I know book publishers aren't constantly trying to weed out would-be authors who have faked their previous publicatio…

Interesting examples.

I have interviewed candidates who: * Have impressive products that they "designed and implemented. * Co-authored a book. * Founded and ran a {programming-language} user group.

In all 3 cases, the candidates came across very well when talking at the surface level. Digging deeper, they (in the first example) overqualified their contribution, and none of the 3 could write the simplest of code.

There is a reason why coding tests exist.

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

#218

Post by ravenstine » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:25 AM UTC

bschwindHN wrote: post #201

ravenstine wrote: post #190

Having spent a lot of time being interviewed recently, I've noticed a certain type of question asked in technical interviews that I think can sabotage perfectly qualified engineers. I'm not sure if my view is sound, but maybe someone can pipe in and tell me why I am wrong. Imagine being asked this question in a technical interview: > When do you decide to use frontend validation? (yes, this is based on questions I've…

> How do you know if you need frontend validation as opposed to the backend? You _always_ need backend validation. Never trust the client. You can then layer on frontend validation where it's needed to make a better UX.

I think that could have been a poor choice of words on my part. From memory, when asked nearly the same question, I don't think it was suggesting frontend validation exclusive to backend validation. Then again, maybe that was how it was phrased. Ugh. Maybe I'll edit my original post.

You are definitely correct, however.

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

#219

Post by souprock » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:26 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #133

masonic wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It makes perfect sense as is. It is almost my experience.

A coworker of mine bought 11 acres. (That's one more than 10. These lots go to 11...) He has sheep and goats and chickens, and he can shoot his AR-15 in his yard. Interestingly, he grew up in San Francisco. His current lifestyle is ridiculously incompatible with his city of origin.

I settled for a little 0.4 acre lot with a modest 3500 square foot house. (1619 square meter lot, 325 square meter house) By settling for that, I got to live within a mile of the beach and within a mile of work, and I paid off the mortgage in 8 years without trying terribly hard.

So that's close. I suspect you'd normally have to commute about 15 or 20 minutes to get a whole acre, and they go for $220,000 to $500,000. There is a house on 1.3 acre (like a football field) selling for $320,000 that is 11 minutes away, but the house was built in 1957. If you don't mind paying a couple million, you can be 5 minutes away with a modern waterfront home on an acre or two.

So this is non-urban life. It's mostly not even rural; we have an airport with about 7 passenger jet flights arriving per day. Senior developers live in nice houses, paid-off unless they really go nuts. They can have waterfront access, or room for a horse, or room to shoot and raise sheep. They can get McMansions. They can live within walking distance of work.

I just can't see giving that up. Sure, cable cars are cool and all, but that doesn't compensate for what I'd have to give up.

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

#220

Post by EpicEng » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:27 AM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #200

crazygringo wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where is it? Where can you live outside of SF that you don't need a car and can live a normal adult lifestyle?

Plenty if you can cycle and get paid over $300k. If you had to, you could buy several walkable-to-work lots and join them into one big one in some cities. Or Uber literally everywhere.

So buy a bunch of property so you can walk a straight line or... don't walk. This is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read here.