The software industry's greatest sin: hiring • Hacker News Board

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#381

Post by learc83 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #302

opportune wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer science isn't supposed to teach you how to program, and it's kind of silly to judge a whole subject by the first year. In fact I think you would be making a mistake to focus on the practical courses rather than take as many theoretical and foundational (e.g. advanced algorithms, Theory of Computation, Compilers) courses as you can. A good CS student, who understands the coursework and doesn't cheat, should e…

> Computer science isn't supposed to teach you how to program Perhaps, but it's still the closest thing the industry has to a "programming education"; I think it's the first thing employers look for, rightly or wrongly. > it's kind of silly to judge a whole subject by the first year How many of my limited days on the planet am I supposed to sink into something before I'm permitted to pass judgement? At some point Sto…

>How many of my limited days on the planet am I supposed to sink into something before I'm permitted to pass judgement?

More than the first quarter of it. I took at least a year of math classes, and I don't feel qualified to pass judgement on the math department.

There's a huge difference between intro and upper level classes. Just like there's a difference between Calc I and proof heavy upper level math class.

That being said I think the overall pedagogy is better in the math department, but then again they've been doing this for a lot longer.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#382

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:18 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #302

opportune wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer science isn't supposed to teach you how to program, and it's kind of silly to judge a whole subject by the first year. In fact I think you would be making a mistake to focus on the practical courses rather than take as many theoretical and foundational (e.g. advanced algorithms, Theory of Computation, Compilers) courses as you can. A good CS student, who understands the coursework and doesn't cheat, should e…

> Computer science isn't supposed to teach you how to program Perhaps, but it's still the closest thing the industry has to a "programming education"; I think it's the first thing employers look for, rightly or wrongly. > it's kind of silly to judge a whole subject by the first year How many of my limited days on the planet am I supposed to sink into something before I'm permitted to pass judgement? At some point Sto…

> am I supposed to sink into something before I'm permitted to pass judgement

I don't have a medical degree, but I still trust medical science. Why? Because it achieves positive results, and people I trust for other reasons trust them.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#383

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:22 PM UTC

p0nce wrote: post #238

Apocryphon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the real sin is that we're afraid to tell people they aren't very good at programming yet, and we use technical interviews as a scape goat. So does this mean that programming education is broken? That companies should invest more in training? That bootcamps should revamp what they teach? That there should be industry standards for what programmers at different levels should be expected to know? The most mad…

> So does this mean that programming education is broken? Of course it is broken, it rarely mention naming, debugging, and never emphasize reading code. The real fundamentals are not there and you learn them on the job.

I disagree. Programming education exposes you to the stuff that you would probably never discover on your own like complexity theory and circuit design: the practical stuff like debugging and SQL are things that are best learned by practice anyway.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#384

Post by alp10 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC

christophilus wrote: post #346

thu2111 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as a former Googler who did hundreds of interviews there, let me tell you you're wrong. It wasn't bias free even years ago, and Google has gone much more hard-core SJW since then. It's still much better than at most companies, and the article we're discussing is so wrong about the way executives are hired. But Google isn't some paragon of freedom from bias, far from it. Ignore yourself. The system surrounding you…

I’ve seen this, too, at a number of places I’ve worked. Pointing it out always gets you downvoted (or whatever the real life equivalent is).

Yep, or to state it in AnimalFarm terms:

If cardinality(pigs + sheep) > cardinality(work horses), the truth will be downvoted.

In software, the work horses need to be more proactive and not give up what is theirs.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#385

Post by dominotw » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

jackcosgrove wrote: post #22

Technical interviews were once seen as a breath of fresh air. You can be a nobody without connections or degrees and if you can prove you have skills during an interview process you may be hired. Contrast this with other hiring processes which are more irrational, like med residency match, investment banks favoring "target school graduates", law firms favoring "top 14 graduates", etc. I think whiteboarding is dumb an…

Oh good weekly 'hiring is broken' thread.

I was stuck in stages 2 and 4 ( anger and depression) of 'unable to land a faang(ish) job grief' for years and would make angry comments on this weekly thread.

I think I've made peace with it and I hope to be in stage 5 acceptance. I've been leetcoding every single day for last 3 months, 300 problems in I can hit my target of one easy and one medium with 1 hr goal. I hope to reach my target of 1 easy, 1 medium and 1 hard within one hr. I regret not doing this sooner.

Even if don't land a faag job, this process has led to me accept the process and make peace with it. I really don't care if hiring is 'broken', it is what it is, its an obstacle i need to overcome. Bring on 'trapping rain water' , 'describe one time you had conflict with your team' garbage. I am ready!!

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#386

Post by arkh » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:24 PM UTC

austhrow743 wrote: post #284

watwut wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is the part where you give junior pay raise after he or she learns enough to get raise elsewhere.

If you're going to end up paying what it would cost you to hire the trained person anyway to avoid having your staff leave for higher wages, that heavily reduces your incentive to put a lot of resources in to training. Training + market rate compensation is more expensive than just market rate compensation.

Even if your junior-turned-okish developer goes away, if you did a good job and part on good terms you now have a working advertisement in another company. And maybe a couple years down the line they'll come back.

Investing in your workforce for the long term: when you're big enough I think you should do it. Having a "reserve" is also useful. You don't have devs doing nothing: you have devs learning, teaching and ready in case a business opportunity appears.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#387

Post by grumple » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #359

grumple wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked with guys in their 50s and 60s who learned new languages and picked them up and wielded them with far more skill than some 20-something kid.

So what? Nobody claimed that they can't. If you can't learn a programming language, you're not a programmer. I'm 47 myself and learned Go in a week or so (7 years ago). What I wrote is that they won't, in my experience as CEO/CTO I've had enough people who used "the one true language" for 20+ years and outright refused to touch anything else. This emotional attachment to languages (or, more recently, frameworks) and…

Sorry, your statement came across a little differently than it seems you intended. But I also disagree with your idea here - I've found stubbornness in young people and openness in older people as often as the reverse. If someone is interviewing for a job in your stack though, you should assume they aren't going to come in and say "guess what, I'm only writing C".

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#388

Post by commandlinefan » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:30 PM UTC

asn0 wrote: post #154

We (Ambra Health) a few years ago decided our "typical" multi-hour multi-week interview process was a lot of effort for pretty mixed outcomes. We realized an interview can't really answer the most important questions: how a candidate works, and what's it like to work together. So we added an option to interview by way of a paid trial period (work part-time nights/weekends for a few weeks with the hiring team). Figure…

> paid trial period

Wow, if you say so, but that seems weird to me: every job I've ever had (and everybody else I've ever seen hired at any job I've ever had) it's taken quite a while before I was really able to contribute much productively. Just getting acquainted with the codebase, figuring out the deploy process, and learning all the unwritten rules about the company culture takes a non-negligible amount of time.

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#389

Post by JohnL4 » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

netjiro wrote: post #342

Tossing my 2c in the ring, this is how I usually hire new dudes[1]: - Ask the existing team for a set of dude recommendations, and the reasons. - Track down a set of dudes myself. Usually from publications, open source, or previous products. - Discuss with the dudes regarding the greater project target, team, goals, initial tasks, scheduling. Ask the dudes for other dudes they can recommend, and why. - From here on I…

> 1) a "dude" is gender and ageless, of no persuasion, has neither skin nor eye colour, and so on.

In that case, s/dude/person/g

Language affects thought, right?

Re: The software industry's greatest sin: hiring

#390

Post by clarry » Fri, Apr 10, 2020, 1:34 PM UTC

josephg wrote: post #222

sanderjd wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And a few angry senior engineers out there saying "Why do I have to keep writing fizzbuzz? Its like I have to prove over and over again that I can program at all!". You didn't address this part of the problem. This friction is one of the reasons the job market is so distorted.

Oh sorry I wasn't clear. The reason is that successfully completing a simple programming exercise puts you in the top 15% or so of resumes that get sent in for most programming roles. When you apply for a company, they have to assume you aren't very good, because most people who apply aren't very good. (Because people with strong skills get snapped up, and people with weak skills spam their resume everywhere they can…

> A recruiter I talked to a few years ago said she thinks its crazy we don't use an agency model for programmers like actors do. The idea there is that good programmers pay a small percentage of their salary to a manager, who's job is to find you the best roles that suit your skills and negotiate pay on your behalf and so on.

Such things do exist (at least in some form) but I haven't had a good experience. Same old story: like everyone else, they're looking for seniors, turning down juniors, and complaining about shortage of talent.