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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?

#151

Post by shados »

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…

> Very few firms want to hire juniors

It's not that they don't want to hire juniors, it's that you need a solid ratio of mentors to mentees.

I've worked at a LOT of companies, and for the more well known one, the ratio of junior resumes to seniors was easily 1000:1.

We hired entire cohorts of juniors, often interviewing HUNDREDS of them in a couple of weeks, hiring dozens. That still meant that from all the resumes we got, only a few % made it through.

What choice did we have though? We can only train mentors so fast, and hiring them is hard and expensive. You can't ask someone with 5 years of experience to train 30 people at the same time.

People often underestimate just how many people are entering the field right now, vs how many were 10-20 years ago. Add in people who EXIT the field, as well as people who are poor fits to be mentors, and it gets really dicey.

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

#152

Post by colordrops »

OJFord wrote: post #71
exdsq wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this insane and terrifying.

What do you work on, and how much prior domain experience did you have? (And if you did have some, was it necessary?) I currently work for an agtech company, the domain-specific stuff is just context for the generic numbers and equations, or a reason to choose one over the other, to the extent that I need it it suffices to have a colleague who's a domain (but not software) expert. You might say that's the other extre…

Flight paths and what not are crafted by GNC engineers who hand them over to software engineers to implement. Really the only domain expertise needed in software is for space-grade fault tolerance, which is a couple people per vehicle.

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

#154

Post by jgwil2 »

ghaff wrote: post #111
jgwil2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even worse is hiring someone merely mediocre and not actively harmful. How is hiring a mediocre developer worse than hiring a charlatan?

I assume the logic is that, at many/most places, the charlatan may actually be let go if they really don't work out whereas the person who is just "OK" will be allowed to cruse along indefinitely. Most companies aren't pro sports teams.

I get that's the logic but I think it's completely stupid. If someone is "mediocre" enough to scrape by that implies they are competent enough to get the job done. If they are not able to get the job done, then they are by definition a charlatan and will be let go.

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

#155

Post by im_down_w_otp »

danjac wrote: post #100
commandlinefan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That all makes sense, and it bothers me, too, but they do hire somebody eventually, which implies that somebody can produce quality results in 50 minutes in a high pressure situation in an environment they're unfamiliar with and people they just met.

Or they just hire the guy they knew through their network. A lot of "how to beat the tech interview process" advice is about how to break down the door with a battering ram when you don't have the key.

This is basically the advice I give everyone I know when it comes to things like this, "If you're going through the front door, you've already lost."

My experience has been that this applies to recruiting, hiring, BD, sales, fundraising, etc. Anywhere that there's a systemic principal-agent problem.

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

#156

Post by mikepurvis »

_f1dq wrote: post #105
jelling wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did an interview with Reddit - whom I hope sees this comment - and they not only provided zero information about the context of the tech interview in advance, or whether it would be one, but also the interview itself was like playing a random version of tech Jeopardy, but without the category columns, and very few of the questions had anything to do with the job I would be doing. I have over 20 years of programming…

I had a similar interview with a different company last year. Three guys and me on a Zoom call with me sharing my screen trying to solve a coding problem that in no way resembled anything I have ever encountered in my 25 year career. When I got stuck they just stared at me. They would not give me any hints whatsoever. They just stared at me. When the interview was over I thought, "Is this how working with these guys…

I've never understood the heavy emphasis on in-interview coding or brain teasers. To the extent that I've participated in the hiring process (both as an IC and a manager), 80% of the interview is assessing culture/personality/ethic fit; that is, the basic "do I want to work with this person" question.

The technical competence check is all retrospective, hearing them talk about prior projects and what the design and implementation process was like, how decisions were made, what the challenges were and how they were handled, any regrets/learnings. And most of that is just digging in far enough to confirm that the person was actually a first-class participant in it with a deep understanding, and not a bystander. Any whiteboard stuff would be "show us how the system worked" as a last-ditch check on basic communication skills.

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

#157

Post by pavel_lishin »

tsywke44 wrote: post #129
dimitrios1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would any company spend 2 years to train a junior, only for that junior to jump ship? Oh and it's not that easy to even find a "trainable" junior. Even if you have a fairly strict hiring process, at least 1/3rds of the people coming out of the edication system will be draft busts if using sports terms

To answer your rhetorical question, because the alternative is spending five times as long trying to hire a senior engineer without the sort of budget that FAANGs have.

And because it doesn't take a full two years before that junior is a valuable contributing member of the team; because they'll likely refer other qualified and/or educable applicants; because they might not jump ship, but be happy to get promoted if you actually reward them comparatively to what another company would pay them.

But sure, if you're not willing to invest either time or money in your employees, then no, you shouldn't hire juniors.

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

#159

Post by devwastaken »

High experience on paper is in demand. You with a college degree and not having already worked for X titan of the industry, is not. Marketers and managers always run to the cash cow, and ruin it. They have no clue how the job works, they're just following what their professors told them to do when hiring accountants and laborers.

Fire corporate, that's how you get good workers.

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

#160

Post by allo37 »

Is this an American thing? Or maybe just a non-embedded systems thing? I live in Canada and was looking for a job recently...got two offers! One was just a casual chat about my experience, the other was a casual chat + take-home exam, which took about 3 hours.

Ater reading all these scary whiteboard interview stories on social media I studied up on programming puzzle-type questions...was a bit of a let-down, honestly.

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