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

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

#451

Post by honestoHeminway »

aprdm wrote: post #288
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…

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…

Actually you can distguish- by giving near unsolvable problems or new problems. The talkers become walkers, and those who really solved a problem - start asking intersting questions themselves, and going through solving approaches for unknown problems.

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

#452

Post by Annatar »

wyclif wrote: post #426
Annatar wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

The subject of what constitutes an engineer or what entitles a professional to the "engineer" title has been discussed ad nauseum here on HN. Spoiler: "engineer" as a title for someone who does computer programming and software development without a license is perfectly fine and acceptable in the USA. In Canada, however, it's probably not.

Lying on one's resume isn't acceptable anywhere, as programmers are not engineers. It's lying and resume inflation for the explicit purpose of making oneself sound more competent than one really is. If one comes to me for a job interview stating on one's curriculum vitae that she or he is a software engineer, the first thing I will demand to see is a portfolio of specifications, manuals, process flows and architecture design documents before going on to look at how they codified those, and one can bet that for 99.99% of the candidates the interview will have finished at that point 99% of the time.

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

#453

Post by kaybe »

pdxww wrote: post #341
techslave wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Honestly speaking, since it's an anonymous forum, what's the difference between L5 and L7? Like if I was asked the same question - the difference between L3 and L5 - I'd say that it's just experience with a few interesting known projects that's paid so much better, while the cognitive ability is the same.

Could you give a short explanation of what this L3/L5/L7 thing is?

I'm assuming you're not talking about spinal cord problems, which is the main search result.

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

#454

Post by purple_ducks »

bgirard wrote: post #421
fogetti wrote: post #371

[Sarcasm on]I think the most shocking of this is that an engineer with 7 years is already a senior these days. I even heard more shocking things like people with 3-5 years are already seniors. So what about people with 15 years? How shall we call them? Super senior? How about 30? Call them mega-giga-super-senior? And 40? Principal-giga-senior?[Sarcasm off] Having said that, I actually agree with everything the articl…

Senior is typically one or two promotions above the entry level. After that the titles resemble something like this: Staff Senior Staff Principal Senior Principal Distinguished Fellow

_Typically_, all those titles don't exist unless you're in IBM-size company.

At best, somebody might have a "tech lead" title but it's not what people hire for.

_Typically_, companies hire for grad, junior, software engineer and senior software engineer.

Maybe principal once in a blue moon.

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

#455

Post by trh88 »

subwindow wrote: post #363
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…

If you're asking questions related to "raw algorithmic skill" you're filtering for people who either: 1) Have had a computer science education and happen to remember the algorithm at hand. This is also a function of recency so senior engineers are less likely to remember any given algorithm. 2) Study algorithms so they can do well at job interviews. Neither one is something you want to be selecting for. Some of the b…

The only people that say that a CS education doesn't make you a better programmer are people without a CS education.

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

#456

Post by detaro »

trh88 wrote: post #455
subwindow wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're asking questions related to "raw algorithmic skill" you're filtering for people who either: 1) Have had a computer science education and happen to remember the algorithm at hand. This is also a function of recency so senior engineers are less likely to remember any given algorithm. 2) Study algorithms so they can do well at job interviews. Neither one is something you want to be selecting for. Some of the b…

The only people that say that a CS education doesn't make you a better programmer are people without a CS education.

Good thing parent didn't say that then.

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

#457

Post by jcadam »

lordnacho wrote: post #406
subwindow wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're asking questions related to "raw algorithmic skill" you're filtering for people who either: 1) Have had a computer science education and happen to remember the algorithm at hand. This is also a function of recency so senior engineers are less likely to remember any given algorithm. 2) Study algorithms so they can do well at job interviews. Neither one is something you want to be selecting for. Some of the b…

Agree. A lot of coding is simply banging your head against the wall, search SO over and over, changing things around, until it does what you want. Raw algo quizzing skill isn't necessarily the same thing, though you'd think it was somewhat related because when you're learning to code up "find longest continuous run" you also need to change things around for a bit. Difference is in real life there's never an end. The…

> A lot of coding is simply banging your head against the wall, search SO over and over, changing things around, until it does what you want.

I don't find myself in these situations nearly as often as I did back when I was a junior engineer. But damn, I'm sure I looked busier (and more stressed out) back then.

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

#458

Post by Annatar »

vehementi wrote: post #420
Annatar wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

That's why? So if we merely fixed job titles we wouldn't have this problem of fraudsters?

It would be a good first step measure. There is lots to clean up in the IT industry.

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

#459

Post by Pyxl101 »

Annatar wrote: post #452
wyclif wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subject of what constitutes an engineer or what entitles a professional to the "engineer" title has been discussed ad nauseum here on HN. Spoiler: "engineer" as a title for someone who does computer programming and software development without a license is perfectly fine and acceptable in the USA. In Canada, however, it's probably not.

Lying on one's resume isn't acceptable anywhere, as programmers are not engineers. It's lying and resume inflation for the explicit purpose of making oneself sound more competent than one really is. If one comes to me for a job interview stating on one's curriculum vitae that she or he is a software engineer, the first thing I will demand to see is a portfolio of specifications, manuals, process flows and architectur…

On what basis are you claiming software engineers are not engineers? What constitutes being an "engineer"?

For the record, the National Counsel of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, which is the US body that regulates engineering licensure and "Professional Engineering", recognizes Software Engineering as a branch of the engineering disciplines:

https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/

"Professional (Licensed) Engineer" is not typically used in software development, but if you care about having this credential, you can become a credentialed Professional Engineer in Software Engineering.

Google defines engineering as "the branch of science and technology concerned with the design, building, and use of engines, machines, and structures". An engineer is "a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or public works". Software engineers certainly fit that definition from my perspective, because software is a type of virtual or abstract machine.

Software engineering certainly qualitatively feels like other branches of engineering to practice, such as electrical engineering or computer (hardware) engineering. I've never designed a structure, but I imagine the principles are the same: understand the requirements of the customer or sponsor; devise a design that accomplishes those goals within the constraints of the medium you're working with, using principles of scientific reasoning to evaluate what is possible and whether a design will meet your needs.

Last but not least, software can be just as critical to human life and safety as the artifacts designed in other kinds of engineering. (But being critical to health or safety is not a prerequisite for something to be engineering. It's still engineering if you're building a rocket that only robots will fly on, after all)

There may be people whose work on computers does not constitute software engineering. Running some calculations in Excel is probably not engineering. But I think there are plenty of us who build large scale systems that need to operate with high availability under demanding requirements, the properties of which need to be painstakingly planned and analyzed and sometimes mathematically proven -- we who are trained as scientists and engineers, and who apply these principles in our work -- many of us consider our work to be engineering, and consider ourselves engineers. I certainly do.

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

#460

Post by lordnacho »

purple_ducks wrote: post #445
lordnacho wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

~= "A startup for startups sake" The new art? Shouldn't people usually have some kind of business idea before diving head first?

Well I'm sure as a senior dev he has some sort of idea. Certainly joining someone else's startup as a cofounder would be legit.
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