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

#431

Post by C1sc0cat » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:42 AM UTC

mancerayder wrote: post #357

Consultant32452 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IQ does correlate with work performance, and SAT tests are IQ tests. Brain teasers are an attempt at seeing how well/quickly your brain works to solve problems, is a rudimentary IQ test. The problem is that requiring IQ tests for employment introduces liability that employers do not want.

SATs are IQ tests? A large portion is math, and the other written language, both taught disciplines. You obviously haven't taken a real IQ test, which is more abstract and has a large portion of spatial geometry type questions.

And isn't one large chunk of the SAT a written language test - that's gong to suck for dyslexic / neurodiverse candidates.

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

#432

Post by Vinnl » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:44 AM UTC

seppin wrote: post #388

kelukelugames wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've paid off my mortgage and am now more open to working on something more altruistic than selling ads for slightly less pay. The problem is I can't find any interesting without a large paycut.

> The problem is I can't find any interesting without a large paycut. So you're not really interested

One problem that I do have is that, although I'm prepared to take a relatively large pay cut if I'm really passionate about something, one thing I do care about is working with capable colleagues and being able to actually achieve the thing I'm passionate about. That's less likely to be the case when a job doesn't pay well, unfortunately.

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

#433

Post by d--b » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:46 AM UTC

100% agree.

I am in a good place right now, and I get head-hunted a lot. Sometimes I answer the calls thinking "why not see what's out there?".

I can't be more annoyed when the guys in front of me just assume there is nothing else I want in life than to get into their company.

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

#434

Post by lordnacho » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:52 AM UTC

kelukelugames wrote: post #307

gcampos wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you are right, is mostly money. But there is other stuff that at the end adds up, specially if you are a Senior Engineer in a FAANG company: * Very few recruiters outreach mentions any kind of compensation expectation. Why would I bother with hours of chat, screening and interview loops if I know only a handful companies offer the same kind of compensation I'm used to receive? * The bar of a Senior position is q…

I've paid off my mortgage and am now more open to working on something more altruistic than selling ads for slightly less pay. The problem is I can't find any interesting without a large paycut.

Sounds like you're in the perfect position to do your own startup?

More upside if it goes well and you're already not in need of money?

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

#435

Post by s3nnyy » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:53 AM UTC

The author is right that the firms are not selling enough and often they are too picky, have unreasonable slow and effortful hiring process with many stages of which some don't test the engineer but rather humiliate the person.

I am running a tech recruitment agency and this month I had TWO engineers who refused to take offers because the companies (two different ones) basically grilled them too much in the processes and showed off an insufficient company culture. I know both firms rather well and their environment is actually good. Seems like firms who aren't yet having a brand name like Google but who are sufficiently good tend to be arrogant enough to scare of engineers but not good enough to make them accept an offer.

The arrogance of some firms might seem irrational but it can be explained by "catastrophe avoidance". Most of the time, hiring a bad engineer is really much much worse than rejecting a good candidate - that is especially true in Europe, where it is hard to fire people. Also, every job description is a set of tasks that is supposed to be done by a person who'd better be REPLACEABLE. If you wait sufficiently long, YOU WILL FIND SOMEONE ELSE WHO FITS ALSO OR BETTER. Due to the nature of the employer-employee relationship, firms will still be "the ones on top".

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

#436

Post by cududa » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:57 AM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #424

treypitt wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is unique to sports? Do other fields exist where a BB-esque expert is totally incapable of practicing? The greatest movie critics probably can't direct or write for crap, but they're not commenting on how the movie was produced, just its output

You obviously haven't seen Mark Kermodes series on the BBC where he covers exactly this.

Why talk to someone so condescendingly? I mean, what percentage of people do you epxpect to HAVE seen this bit of obscure media you seem to hold as seminal?

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

#437

Post by C1sc0cat » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:57 AM UTC

joshuamorton wrote: post #317

jack_h wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reply applies to several here. I know a few architects (as in for buildings and civil structures) who wouldn't be able to pour a foundation, frame a wall, or run plumbing properly. They're working at a different level of abstraction and are concerned with different problems. Or to put it another way, if you can code does that mean you should be able to design a CPU, even a very basic one? After all, how can you…

I think this is a linguistic strawman. Civil Architect is to Builder as Software Engineer is to Datacenter Technician. Software architect is to software engineer as partner at an architecture firm is to architect, or something. You don't expect a plumber[0] or a building constructor[1] or a civil engineer[2] to become an architect[3], they're different degrees or certifications. A software architect is normally consi…

Exactly (from experience working in a top 5 consulting engineer) an Architect is nothing like a Chartered civil engineer.

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

#438

Post by lugg » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:59 AM UTC

bartread wrote: post #394

aprdm wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good post. Have been in the UK startup environment it was crazy how many companies got funding but didn't had a strong senior in their software department. Because of this their hiring process was aimed to hire more "strong juniors" even tho they didn't realize it. A strong senior is a person who completely changes how you are even approaching the problem or someone who shows you problems you hadn't seen be…

> A strong senior is a person who completely changes how you are even approaching the problem or someone who shows you problems you hadn't seen before. I think this is overstated. Disruption for the sake of it is often not that helpful in the context of the business (although, in fairness, you do go on to state they often see tech in that context). I much prefer people who are delivery focused to those who are overly…

The higher you go the more compromises you have to make.

That said, nobody is talking about disruption, just wisdom.

It just so happens, sometimes that wisdom will tell you that shipping shit out the door in the name of delivery focus is going to cost you more than its worth in the long run. Calling them overly idealistic to justify your laziness just makes you look bad.

I'd say a truly good senior can tell the difference between a startup and a mature company and adapt accordingly. It takes one set of skills to ship shit out the door as quick as possible and an entirely different set of skills to come in and clean up the mess the kids left behind.

This is why you are selling. Not buying. Because nobody wants to clean up your delivery focused mess.

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

#439

Post by pjmlp » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 10:08 AM UTC

Annatar wrote: post #375

tyre wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you're maybe creating a straw man argument here. A smooth talking engineer isn't one who sounds like a used car salesperson or is just hyped about the latest trendy framework. There are people who can talk through challenging problems at their former companies and how the problems were solved. They can tell you everything you'd want to hear because it's true. Except…they didn't…

"Principal engineer"? Do you actually have an engineering degree? Have you formal education in engineering? What is system engineering? It's not just you; the entire IT industry is suffering from systemic curriculum vitae bloat. That's why the working conditions are so bad in the professional sense.

I do, in my home country it is not legal to sign off projects as engineer if not certified by the Engineering Order as such.

A certain level of quality is expected, not labeling one selfs as engineers after 1 month bootcamp.

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

#440

Post by akra » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

dhjsnana83 wrote: post #374

tracer4201 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think both algorithmic questions and work samples have an important role. I'm a senior engineer at one of the top tech companies. I hold the opinion the interview processed is heavily biased towards college grads or kids who are fresh on algorithms. I think this helps us hire mostly kids who are book smart but aren't necessarily great (or even "good") employees... I'll do some hand waving here and define good as s…

I think it varies by company, but at mine the questions are very much domain based for senior people. The focus is greater on algorithms for new grads. The questions being asked aren't extremely challenging, they can be trained for. Willingness to learn new things (even if useless) and put in the effort to pass interviews is a positive signal imo. On that note, it seems like HN has assumed the only work that exists i…

What aspect of performance though? Even that means a variety of different things to different people and it isn't just algorithms. I've met people who are bad at typical CS algorithms yet know their language of choice very well and write low-allocation high performance tight code that "does less". Or people that are used to handling concurrent code which sadly is still somewhat of a rare skill. Only the algorithms are touched on in typical CS courses; most aspects of performance tuning come from experience and persistence spending hours trying to get more performance and less resource usage out of an application.