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Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

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Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#301

Post by linuxftw »

milofeynman wrote: post #264
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…

This drives me crazy. I gave "you" my GitHub with a variety of open source contributions, but instead of looking at it you wait until you've flown me in to give me a timed coding puzzle on an unfamiliar laptop.

Pretty much how facebook hires. Except there's no laptop, just a whiteboard a bunch of weirdos judging you for not being a total freek-looking weirdo.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#302

Post by linuxftw »

avgDev wrote: post #170
aczerepinski wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m 80-90% remote, and it’s such a huge lifestyle perk that I’d need at least a 50% pay bump to even consider anything in the city. I hope this becomes more and more the norm for tech jobs because everyone deserves ample time with their family and friends. For me now the baseline is remote + good work life balance and vacation package. If we can throw exciting tech, more money, etc on top of that, great.

I can't imagine not having any remote days in the week. Unfortunately, many enterprise jobs in my area expect people in their seat 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I'm hoping to polish my skills and eventually find something 100% remote even if its less thank $100k. I want to buy a lake front house, and get on a jetski/boat during my lunch break.

Many people I know work full time remote and the pay is well over $100k. Just keep at it, maybe start putting your resume out there.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#303

Post by flukus »

devNC wrote: post #237
quietbritishjim wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'll probably have no problem spending a weekend hacking on something they're passionate about. I would much rather a coding quiz than be asked to do something in my own time. It is already enough of an imposition on my time to go to the actual interview, without there being homework too. Being expected to have already done side projects is even worse; it effectively punishes me for spending too much of my atten…

I rather spend 4 hours doing a project where I can demonstrate my value (architecture, clean code, design patterns, etc) than spending the same 4 hours solving questions on a whiteboard. Hell, most of the value I bring as a senior is well outside the realm of coding.

I'd maybe do one project like this for a top tier company, but most companies that do this are limiting themselves to the already unemployed who have the time, if you want to pull people from other companies you need to minimize their time investment. Remember it's not just a 4 hour project, it's 4 hours * the number of companies applied to. I'd also argue that you can't show off things like architecture and design patterns in such a short project, all you can show is that you're over engineering.

I've also been burned before, getting dinged for "not practicing TDD because the tests and fixes are in the same commit", there can be just as much arbitrary BS as a simple short code test.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#304

Post by remote_phone »

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.

If you’re talking business in general then sure. In programming it’s very hard to move from QA to dev. I’ve rarely seen it happen, and there’s usually a reason why someone goes into QA vs dev, ie they are a below average developer.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#305

Post by jm__87 »

dpeck wrote: post #50
trilila wrote: post #10

Don’t treat developers like bricklayers. Sack any product manager or manager that does it. This is the root of all evil, radical as it may sound. There needs to be a balance between engineering and product delivery, but too much emphasis on product delivery leads to tech debt, cutting too many corners and poor tech choices. Not to mention stress and little to no job satisfaction. Give devs some time to build somethin…

in my experience many developers want to be bricklayers (not to discount bricklaying, there's an art to it, but they're focused on the individual bricks, not the other aspects of the building). They get annoyed when they're asked to think about the bigger picture and just want to focus on the code, the architecture, and whatever is new and shiny. It is largely due to these sorts of developers that we've developed all…

> They get annoyed when they're asked to think about the bigger picture and just want to focus on the code, the architecture, and whatever is new and shiny.

Maybe I'm the exception here, but this does not really describe most devs I've worked with. I've seen really smart devs just not care to argue anymore in workplaces where no one listens to them, but this is not the same thing as wanting to be a "bricklayer". Most devs usually have a lot of work on their plate and not enough time or energy to argue with some product owner or manager who is determined to get their way and who does have the time and authority to force their ideas through. On multiple occasions I've seen great teams destroyed when some determined micromanager gets promoted and decides they are going to "fix everything" without actually listening to their people with the most hands on experience. This and many other forms of organizational BS can lead to developer apathy from what I've seen, but I really don't think the dev who just wants to be a bricklayer is the norm.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#306

Post by _r2gl »

RNeff wrote: post #6

Offer a quiet, private office. Two or more monitors. Free snacks and free lunches. Modern software stack (whatever that is). Or full-time remote.

I've been full time remote for four months now. To even get me to drive a mile to work would require a significant bump in salary and options to lose out on this quality of life. It's almost unrealistic at this point that I would ever consider going to work in an office again.

I save a BUNCH of money, I get to work with other remote employees across the world, I mostly work my own hours, and I even got a decent bump switching to this job.

The pay is better than a lot of positions that are local to me in SoCal.

I do miss some social interactions during the day, but slack and getting lunch with friends and previous co-workers fills that gap decent enough.

I see job postings come across all the time in my filters for stack overflow jobs, but the pay and benefits are equivalent to my current situation, except I would have to move to a higher CoL and go into an office.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#307

Post by kragen »

chrissnell wrote: post #125

It's a little peculiar how this blog post really pushes the inclusiveness angle despite the numbers showing clearly that it is not a big priority for prospective employees. They even go as far as highlighting that the sampled women want inclusiveness 171% more than the sampled men, which sounds pretty strong, but hides the real story when you look at the _actual numbers_. Only 15% of women ranked inclusion as a top p…

It's not a big priority, but it's by far the biggest difference in priorities by gender in the data that they're showing.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#308

Post by 0xEFF »

yazan94 wrote: post #149
watwut wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is more of mark of desorganized workplace then something inherent to senior role.

I disagree. For reference, I work in a big bank and all the high level people are always on call when fecal matter hits the rotating turbines. Often times, theres an issue with this or that feature in production or we are having an issue with a release and we need an emergency signoff. The process stipulates that a high level person is required to give this emergency signoff, and they often want to know what happened…

Emergency sign off is correlated with a broken process in my experience.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#309

Post by BurningFrog »

chadash wrote: post #76
nscalf wrote: post #5

I'm a software engineer with ~3 years of experience. I also want professional growth. 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. levels.fyi sort of convinced me that being a good engineer is a life changing event for more than 1 genera…

> "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…

With $200k/year also comes accountability.

No one keeps tabs on your hours, but you better get stuff done!

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#310

Post by yangez »

> We’re arbitrarily defining “great” candidates as those scoring between 95th and 98th percentile on our technical interview, and “the best” candidates as those scoring at 98th percentile or above.

This is an important qualifier. I'd argue that the most technical candidates are not necessarily the ones who offer the most value to companies. In fact, I would argue that "notably de-emphasizing ambition" will cancel out your technical superiority in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Here's a choice for your company's next hire:

1. A technically superior but comfortable candidate whose top priority is maintaining work-life balance and flexible work arrangements

2. A technically adequate but hungry candidate whose top priority is moving fast and learning tons

Who would you choose?

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