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If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

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Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#21

Post by wil421 »

Any advice for someone trying to get back into web based software engineering? I’ve spent the past 5 years implementing off the shelf solutions that enterprises use. Lots of API work, light web dev with some AngularJS but mostly scripting using JavaScript. I wouldn’t be able to pass a whiteboard interview.

My salary is above $100k and I could probably find a job doing what I’m doing for $150k or higher. My next choice is do IT consulting or try to find a management position but I don’t want to be tied to a vendors platform. Plenty of people have made entire careers on the backs of vendors like Oracle and others but I don’t want to be a crusty old dev keeping things alive until I retire.

Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#22

Post by WJW »

throwaway1492 wrote: post #5

A recent comment from reddit: This year I became a co-owner of the company that worked at for the past three years. It's a small development and consulting company and we're currently struggling to find new developers. At the same time, my girlfriend is trying to get her foot into this field. Since she's interested in a completely different tech stack than what we use, hiring her through good ol' nepotism is not goin…

There's (at least) a third category:

Small, not tech heavy companies like simple webshops, small crowdfunding platforms, etc will need someone, ANYONE, to keep working on their giant stack of legacy PHP/Rails/whatever code. The business does not support hiring very senior people and the founders are not technical at all so they don't recognize the troubles inherent in hiring a full team of juniors.After a few years the business may fold, but at that point the junior devs have gained some experience and move onwards and upwards. The attitude of "We refuse to train the future employees of our competitors.", while not un-true, fails when you can't even hire seniors.

Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#23

Post by dntrkv »

larrymyers wrote: post #6

I think this article gets close, but glosses over one of the major issues in software dev hiring: the filtering process is all wrong. Front line recruiters tend to be non-technical, and can't pattern match for good candidates outside of very narrow criteria. (ex: They won't know that a person with strong C# skills will likely be just fine with Java.) Just getting your resume in front of actual people doing the hiring…

> Front line recruiters tend to be non-technical, and can't pattern match for good candidates outside of very narrow criteria. (ex: They won't know that a person with strong C# skills will likely be just fine with Java.)

Sounds like a problem with the job description, rather than the recruiters.

Sometimes you really do want an expert in a narrow domain, using a specific framework/language. Other times you don't. This needs to be communicated to the recruiters.

Engineers love to lay the blame on the recruiters. In my experience, the recruiters are usually just a mirror for what the hiring managers are asking for. If the hiring managers do a poor job of defining the role, then how do you expect a recruiter to find good candidates for that role?

If Java and/or C# experience works, communicate that to the recruiter. Don't just assume they will know. Even as an engineer, if someone asked me to find a Java candidate, I would find a Java candidate. I would not make assumptions about what other experience would fulfill the requirements.

As far as filtering being the problem, I highly doubt it. Most of the complaints I hear from people are about the interview process. I know a few engineers that can't get hired, and it's not because of a lack of interviews. They just can't pass the interviews.

Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#24

Post by faizshah »

When I was trying to get my first internship it took me 160 applications to get 1 interview, before that I applied every year for ~20 internships at the big names and never got 1 interview. Similarly for my senior year I applied to full time and internship positions it took me ~145 applications to get 2 interviews for internships (I would be interning after I graduate). I did the resume prep, went to the career fairs to talk to recruiters and get feedback, went to hackathons to add to my resume, I don't feel that it really did anything. I even tried cover letters as some people on HN suggested to me.

The process seems completely random and based more on pedigree than on anything else. If you have a signal like an Ivy League school, an older friend in the industry who can refer you, or a FANG on your resume those seem to be the only ways to be picked from the sea of resumes.

Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#25

Post by dimitrios1 »

DeBraid wrote: post #14

Very few firms want to hire juniors, while nearly all firms desire senior-level talent. This manifests inflated job vacancies because so many firms have an evergreen job posting for "Senior Full Stack". Because talent is scarce these roles rarely get filled (hiring managers expect million-dollar candidates to accept $100-200k compensation). Also, because lots of software requires specific expertise, there are vacanci…

To go in line with firms not wanting to hire juniors, I think generally firms do not want to invest heavily in employee training or education. I would, for example, happily make a shift from CRUD webdev and distributed networking to hardware and embedded and more lower level type work, but I doubt a firm would hire me near my current level and train me up.

Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#27

Post by Pelic4n »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #9
readams wrote: post #3

It's hard to get a job because there are a lot of charlatans out there and it's often very hard to get rid of them once hired. Even worse is hiring someone merely mediocre and not actively harmful. That said of course the modern coding interview is I think only very loosely correlated with quality.

> Even worse is hiring someone merely mediocre and not actively harmful. What's so bad about... mediocrity? For obvious statistical reasons, most companies, most jobs, and most people are mediocre (or worse).

Because a person's worth is directly tied to how much value they can produce for their company's shareholders.

And if someone mediocre ends up being able to do the job, the company's management may face the fact that they're just a bunch of lame yuppies spending their life in the office to make someone else richer, not changing the world/making the world a better place/any other bullshit eaten from the trashcan of ideology (sniffff).

Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#28

Post by jstrH »

larrymyers wrote: post #6

I think this article gets close, but glosses over one of the major issues in software dev hiring: the filtering process is all wrong. Front line recruiters tend to be non-technical, and can't pattern match for good candidates outside of very narrow criteria. (ex: They won't know that a person with strong C# skills will likely be just fine with Java.) Just getting your resume in front of actual people doing the hiring…

I’ve just interviewed at 4 places. None had technical recruiters; I was contacted and went through the process with the hiring manager.

Same nonsense though; here’s some random leetcode problem; sure our company hasn’t made anything novel or proven itself in the market but we Googled how to do a tech interview and this is what we found.

Getting a job is hard because people are lazy. They’re just regurgitating what popular companies are doing, whether it’s good for them or not.

Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#29

Post by runawaybottle »

foxfluff wrote: post #8
readams wrote: post #3

It's hard to get a job because there are a lot of charlatans out there and it's often very hard to get rid of them once hired. Even worse is hiring someone merely mediocre and not actively harmful. That said of course the modern coding interview is I think only very loosely correlated with quality.

I get the feeling that mediocre business should be able to run just fine on mediocre people. So it can't be that bad. Of course, every business likes to pretend they're the top and can only hire top talent.

It’s a similar thing to incels. Many companies and bosses are kind of like incels. You’re a regular guy that’s probably not that interesting, rich, smart, or attractive, but you believe you deserve a chance with any girl.

Get over yourselves.

Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?

#30

Post by ghaff »

nthj wrote: post #15
cj wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of FAANG, who is paying $300k+ for a standard / non-management dev job?

A lot of companies. https://www.levels.fyi/charts.html#

So a handful of well-known Silicon Valley-ish companies and then you have Comcast, which is probably as good an example as any of a well-known technology-oriented but fairly mainstream company outside of Silicon Valley, and they're paying a senior engineer about $150K.
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