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

#331

Post by BurritoAlPastor » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 5:48 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…

Saying “I don’t know” is also very important for devops people, but for slightly different reasons; we’re likely to have a little bit of knowledge about everything, and it’s import for us to be explicit about where our expertise dries up.

I say a lot of things in the form “I’m a little out of my depth in this subject, but my best understanding is that the behavior should be such-and-such; does that sound right to you?”

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

#332

Post by pmiller2 » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 5:51 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…

I would love to buy something... anything better than a fixer upper, within a few minutes of a BART station that would allow me no more than a 60 minute commute into SF, but that doesn’t look realistic on less than a $400K household income. Owning pretty much anything would beat apartment living, even if it is in a rent-controlled $2200, 800 sq ft 2BR (my current situation).

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

#333

Post by camgunz » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 5:52 AM UTC

mbell wrote: post #102

tptacek wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not OP, but when I've experienced this, it's very similar to something like "I've seen a million heist movies, but absolutely could not steal shampoo from a CVS". There's a very big difference between talking about doing something and actually doing it; there's a level of executive function that's required.

More specifically, you make so many small executive decisions when coding. Naming, how functions and classes are designed, which file/module this goes in, is this already tested, oh I found an unrelated bug, do I make a ticket, a new PR, or include it in this one, etc etc etc. The only thing I've seen that can answer those questions is homework--maybe previous work, but homework is better.

But I think you're remiss if you're not asking your senior engineering candidates how they make those decisions, not because the answers to relatively trivial questions are important, but because you should know--and they should be able to articulate--how they make those decisions, and they should know the pros and cons of their approach and other approaches.

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

#334

Post by droithomme » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 5:54 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #114

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…

Hah, I had a sample test that I had to do after first being met on-site, which I thought was great. Then they said my work sample was amazing, and they’d like to do an on-site Q&A about it, but when I arrived the engineer hadn’t even seen my work, and proceeded to just quiz me on obscure JS trivia. Which I promptly failed. They then rejected me even though they were happy about my work :/

In addition to covering all interview expenses such as travel food and lodging, candidates need to be paid for their time interviewing by the companies interviewing them.

Six hour take home tests is fine, but I want $1350 for that in advance as a consultation fee, and if I hit 6 hrs and it's not done yet they can keep paying until I am done or we can just end it, no refunds.

The idea that I should spend six hours doing free programming for random companies that say they are desperate to find anyone qualified is absolutely absurd and insulting. No one should put up with that, particularly anyone with an established and verifiable career.

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

#335

Post by pmiller2 » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 5:59 AM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #231

EpicEng wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Huh? I was saying a FAANG salary in Columbus Ohio (for exame) probably buys you a car free lifestyle with the style of home you want, especially if you have a working spouse.

Sure, but I bet even FAANG don’t pay $300k in Columbus. Google has an office in Ann Arbor, IIRC (which is a reasonable proxy for Columbus in this scenario). What does a senior engineer make there?

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

#336

Post by blotter_paper » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 6:01 AM UTC

ryanworl wrote: post #56

zzzcpan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> highly incentivized to get studied by academics (and they do) Why do you think they are incentivized to get studied? If anything, power dynamics in large hierarchical organizations keep away any studying done that can threaten the power. Sometimes studies do happen though, but large organization can never apply the results to anything on their scale. They are more worried where to even get such massive stream of pr…

You’re getting too philosophical here for something that isn’t that complicated. This isn’t related to power dynamics. Asking someone if they can flip burgers is obviously not as effective as asking them to flip a burger and seeing if they can do it correctly. Getting employees who are unquestioning robots with no ambitions for power is a different interviewing issue.

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power." -Oscar Wilde

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

#337

Post by camgunz » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 6:02 AM UTC

confidantlake wrote: post #250

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…

I have an anxiety disorder, so in depth conversation with a stranger is going to cause me to be flustered. If you asked me to give the answer in writing I could. If you asked me to code on a whiteboard I could. If you asked me to do a takehome I could. But a verbal conversation with a stranger judging me in an interview setting is the worst out of all possible options for me.

100x this. Whiteboarding is so outside the typical engineering process that it just feels cruel, especially to people with any kind of anxiety. It's like if you were hiring construction workers and you asked them to perform an interpretive dance about concrete in the interview. It's just not at all the job and very difficult for many of the people who go into programming in the first place. It's hard for me to think of it as anything other than hazing.

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

#338

Post by zachrose » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 6:03 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #150

masonic wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

outside of SF there is basically nothing else walkable west of the Mississippi What a sad perception.

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?

Most of the Pacific Northwest (save for some suburbs) is walkable if you’re willing to gear up for 9 months of rain every year.

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

#339

Post by productpinata » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 6:07 AM UTC

I definitely agree with some of the points (job descriptions and onboarding are generally dumpster fires, to highlight just two), but it has a little too much of a stereotypical young developer feel for my tastes. There are fine engineers out there who aren't overly concerned about the dress code, for example, but care deeply about diversity, social good, and/or benefits other than basic salary.

There is so much more to technical hiring that a leader has to know about and consider. If anyone would like to read a different perspective, I recently finished a long blog series (~60 pages if it were a book) that tries to consider a more complete human approach:

https://medium.com/@productivitypinata/i-got-99-problems-and...

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

#340

Post by fipple » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 6:09 AM UTC

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…

No. The difference between talking (very intelligently) and doing is huge, and a sports analogy might be illustrative. If you ask detailed questions about football to hire a NFL quarterback, your most intelligent responses will probably be from a coach. “How should you change the position of your right shoulder if you see that a fast edge rusher is approaching you from the left side and you have two open receivers?” A coach like Bill Belichick might have a fantastic, detailed answer demonstrating a thorough understanding of every aspect of football past and present, but he could never make the throw himself.