Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth • Hacker News Board

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#251

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:41 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #231

enraged_camel wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life. Okay, it is time for some harsh love. You won't like it, and I'll get downvotes, but whatever. It needs to be said. My parents are both doctors, and they are in their 60s now. And you know what? They still work their asses off, on many evenings and weekends, trying…

Do hospitals expect doctors to work on some patients for free over the weekend to see if they're worth hiring? I'm guessing no.

Hospitals don't expect that and the reason is obvious: the medical field is highly regulated, and you need to go through nearly a decade of grueling education and training before you earn your medical degree.

Programming could not be more different. Not only is our field as unregulated as fields can go, but the hiring pool is also full of self-taught developers. Therefore, yes, it is in fact reasonable to have people go to great lengths to prove their skills to potential employers.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#252

Post by walshemj » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:42 PM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #220

jshowa3 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't necessarily true. There's a difference between respect and benefits/culture. Some would say that Google, in all its free lunch glory, doesn't respect its employees that well consider they've had employees go on strike due to their policies.

> Some would say that Google, in all its free lunch glory, doesn't respect its employees that well consider they've had employees go on strike due to their policies. The protests were mostly against sexual abusers/harassers and the arbitration policies. Are you implying that most other tech companies haven't had any executive-level sexual harassers? That most other tech companies don't have forced-arbitration policie…

But they did retaliate against the organisers - some of whom have since left.

Most I got for mine (leading an actual strike) was a written reprimand -probably forced by the hr manger of a certain BT division (not the one I worked in)

Did mange to change company policy and get several k people a better pension later on.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#253

Post by CodeMage » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #229

enraged_camel wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life. Okay, it is time for some harsh love. You won't like it, and I'll get downvotes, but whatever. It needs to be said. My parents are both doctors, and they are in their 60s now. And you know what? They still work their asses off, on many evenings and weekends, trying…

I'm going to add my thoughts in agreement, mainly because I see the following sentiments fairly commonly: 1. "Coding quizzes" are arbitrary and unfair in a technical interview! 2. Take home projects as part of the interview process are unfair because I've got a busy life! 3. No, I don't have lots of side projects to show because I've been working for the past 15 years and all the IP I've worked on is owned by my curr…

The sentiments you presented there are extremes, just like your own position is the opposite extreme. The reality, as usual, is somewhere in the middle:

1. Even the best designed and well thought-out coding quizzes are not guaranteed to be a good predictor of the candidate's abilities. And that's when we're talking about the best. A great deal of coding quizzes currently in use are things interviewers came up with because they had to come up with something. So I guess the real sentiment is: coding quizzes need to be crafted and used better.

2. If you use take-home projects in your interview process, you'll invariably be filtering out people who value their free time, regardless of their skills. Put yourself in your candidates' shoes. A typical hiring process is already quite involved. Your candidate has to set aside the time for a recruiter chat, phone screen, a meeting with some of your team, etc. And the vast majority of devs don't get any overtime pay. The bottom line is that free time is extremely valuable. If you're asking your candidates to spend a weekend coding a project for free, be prepared for a whole bunch of them to lose interest and go looking somewhere else.

3. Yes, it's quite reasonable that a candidate with 15+ years of experience doesn't have any side projects to show. I've lost count of things I've played and fiddled with, and then abandoned, because they're simply not good enough to publish. Not to mention that your responsibility for your code doesn't end when you publish it. You're expected to maintain it, keep it documented, bug free, etc. A candidate might not have anything to show because they're "not good enough", but they also might be a mature and responsible dev.

I don't doubt that you've done a lot of hiring and that you're able to find candidates to suit your requirements, but don't fool yourself into thinking that there isn't a whole bunch of bias baked into your process. The fact that this bias isn't hurting you right now should make you question whether today's market really is as competitive as you think.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#254

Post by walshemj » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:46 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #221

davidw wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these things are perfect - I agree with you about quizzes and the like. > Let them show off recent personal projects. They'll probably have no problem spending a weekend hacking on something they're passionate about. Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life.

>> Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life. Okay, it is time for some harsh love. You won't like it, and I'll get downvotes, but whatever. It needs to be said. My parents are both doctors, and they are in their 60s now. And you know what? They still work their asses off, on many evenings and weekends, trying…

Why do they not certainly in the UK Doctors have both good leave entitlements (and fabulous DB pensions) and can legally work on the side.

And the pay for a senior Doctor is what 4 to 5 times what a senior developer would get

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#255

Post by walshemj » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #244

remote_phone wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m an old guy. That’s almost never how it worked. QA was always pigeon holed as QA and rarely considered dev material.

I'm speaking generally, about large companies in the 80s and before (though I'm thinking of a film that 'documented' it and I saw on TV when younger... "The Secret of My Success" (1987)). The outsourced / pigeonholed employee pattern you're speaking of is something that I recall learning about more in the early 2000s; so it's been around for a while but not widely known outside of the industry.

Its more a early 1960 and earlier thing

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#256

Post by CodeMage » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #221

davidw wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of these things are perfect - I agree with you about quizzes and the like. > Let them show off recent personal projects. They'll probably have no problem spending a weekend hacking on something they're passionate about. Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life.

>> Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying life. Okay, it is time for some harsh love. You won't like it, and I'll get downvotes, but whatever. It needs to be said. My parents are both doctors, and they are in their 60s now. And you know what? They still work their asses off, on many evenings and weekends, trying…

> So yeah, I detest this sense of entitlement that programmers have, where they want to a) get paid a lot and b) have lots of free time on the side.

That mentality reminds me of the 2014 commercial for Cadillac ELR Coupe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8

It's not entitlement to want work-life balance and be paid well for your skills.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#257

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

logifail wrote: post #86

chadash wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills, partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium for it." And it's one of the unfair things in life that jobs that pay more often get other benefits as well. Making $40k/year? Chances are you get 2 weeks vacation, inflexible work hours, inferior…

> when someone pays you more, they respect you more The counter-example to that could be that once you're senior enough, you are never 100% on vacation. If enough goes wrong, you will get called back to work.

[deleted]

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#258

Post by walshemj » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

ghostpepper wrote: post #241

davidw wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do hospitals expect doctors to work on some patients for free over the weekend to see if they're worth hiring? I'm guessing no.

Hospitals expect doctors to have up to date skills, whether they learned them on the job or in their "free time". Doing medicine on a person and writing some code that will never be used in production are not really comparable.

That's more the profession demands it and those seminars are mostly in working time I actually got asked to goto such a seminar as an example of a rare expression of Sarkoidosis.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#259

Post by jacques_chester » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #70

XMPPwocky wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a more effective tactic, in expectation, than working a well-paid job at an established company and then going to Vegas every year to bet a decent chunk of your salary?

Well, Sam Altman & Andressen have strong opinion on it: join rocket ships. You can also get a much higher position at a well paid job if one of the bets pays off, or if you find growth opportunities. While getting a promotion at google might take you 4 years, in a high growth startup you might jump 2 steps in 6 months.

Lottery winners are true believers too.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#260

Post by walshemj » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 10:52 PM UTC

shados wrote: post #235

git-pull wrote: post #183

Don't give coding quizzes if they can provide better evidence of their ability. It's unfair in the least, rude at the worst to pigeon-hole "senior" programmers into scenarios / pop quizzes. Let them show off recent personal projects. They'll probably have no problem spending a weekend hacking on something they're passionate about. Be a serious employer: Convince the best programmers (whatever that means) why they sho…

My own experience as well as discussing with various leads at other local businesses tell me about 50% of candidate will hard pass take home projects.

And that's not counting one the ones who didn't apply