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

291–300 of 694 posts

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

#291

Post by webdood90 »

austincheney wrote: post #177
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 disagree. If you can’t tell the difference between a smooth talker and strong technical competence you are probably interested in the wrong qualities. I have interviewed enough now to see why some companies cannot figure it out. Ask yourself if you really actually want a senior or a strong junior. It comes down to interest. A good senior got that way because they like solving challenging problems. They are not inte…

Are things in place to make the job easier? Seniors don’t need easier and this is a huge turnoff.

What? I feel like you have a very narrow-minded idea of what sr engineers want.

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

#292

Post by drb91 »

webdood90 wrote: post #291
austincheney wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If you can’t tell the difference between a smooth talker and strong technical competence you are probably interested in the wrong qualities. I have interviewed enough now to see why some companies cannot figure it out. Ask yourself if you really actually want a senior or a strong junior. It comes down to interest. A good senior got that way because they like solving challenging problems. They are not inte…

Are things in place to make the job easier? Seniors don’t need easier and this is a huge turnoff. What? I feel like you have a very narrow-minded idea of what sr engineers want.

Well, unambitious seniors are a good bet on who not to hire. They’ll only work what you pay them for, those lazy bastards!

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

#293

Post by [deleted] »

projektir wrote: post #252
sethammons wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We subscribe to the work sample test as your best option for technical validation, but we also limit ourselves to a small window of time, on site. We pick something we recently worked on, distill it down to something we can knock out in 15 minutes, and give the candidate about 45 minutes to work through the distilled problem and then we explore for about 15 minutes their solution and how they would make it production…

> The part I'm battling on it is if the current coding part selects against Java developers. Yes, it does. And let me put it this way: I've used C# and Java at most of my jobs, those theoretically would be my comfort languages, yes? I do not use those languages on interviews. I often just use C++ (!), or Rust (free unit tests!) if the company tools allow for it, or worst case I'd learn some Python basics. C#/Java are…

[deleted]

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

#294

Post by drb91 »

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.

How can I sign up to take these tests for people? Sounds INCREDIBLY lucrative.

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

#295

Post by i2shar »

techslave wrote: post #197
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…

i dunno. the machine has beaten me more more times than i care to admit. some problems are hard. i’m L7.

Bound to happen when you call yourself techslave ;)

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

#296

Post by nicoburns »

nubbins wrote: post #205
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?

As a junior I’d much prefer a whiteboard where I just need strong CS fundamentals and reasoning to a work sample where there are 10+ different dimensions I could be judged on like style, maintainability, whether I used the latest language features, how I solved the problem ( use libraries or from stratch?) there are just way too may variables and potential bias in the judges VS did you correctly turn the problem in a…

When I was a junior, I didn't have strong CS fundementals! But I had about 5 years more practical coding experience than most juniors.

Ideally you would be given guidance on what they will judging you on.

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

#297

Post by projektir »

james_s_tayler wrote: post #276
projektir wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you may also be from a country with a decent social net along with it?

I guess you could say that. I suppose you do sort of feel a little stressed during the trial period but I've never seen anyone fail it and it applies at every company, so there's no escaping it anyway. When it was introduced some people got quite upset but I can't really say I think it's had a bad effect. I guess from the companies perspective if they realize they made a grave mistake they can back out of the hire, b…

> I suppose you do sort of feel a little stressed during the trial period but I've never seen anyone fail it and it applies at every company, so there's no escaping it anyway.

I'm not sure what you mean by "it applies at every company". Getting hired and then fired a week later is virtually unheard of. This is not a fear I have, at all.

But if you told me it's probationary, that is totally a fear I'd have, I'd get paranoid, so I'd rather work somewhere else. You're basically telling me it's not a real offer in my eyes, and I should not expect stability.

> Again, in practice it seems mostly harmless.

It's extremely harmful in a place with poor labor protections that is the US, for reasons that I don't feel like expanding on and that you can educate yourself on if you wish.

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

#298

Post by jjeaff »

drb91 wrote: post #292
webdood90 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are things in place to make the job easier? Seniors don’t need easier and this is a huge turnoff. What? I feel like you have a very narrow-minded idea of what sr engineers want.

Well, unambitious seniors are a good bet on who not to hire. They’ll only work what you pay them for, those lazy bastards!

I think I've read in quite a few places that most great programmers are essentially lazy.

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

#299

Post by sethammons »

paulcole wrote: post #279
sethammons wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I'm on 10 acres. I like it for the isolation. Just got it, so maintaining and improvements are going to be interesting and a big learning opportunity.

Some people hate maintenance and isolation as much as you like it.

Sure. I guess I should have been more explicit in my reply: I felt the above comment was lacking in content; why would they not want 10 acres.

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

#300

Post by schreiaj »

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

I work at a startup - I work from home, very reasonable hours, doing a range of things. So uh. What?
Post reply on HN