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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?

#181

Post by jethro_tell »

bertjk wrote: post #148
jethro_tell wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In part because you have to jave enough sr people able to mentor. There's not a great industry framework. As a plumber, you pay your apprentice usually 60% sr/journyman salary with a 5% increase every 6 months to match the value of the skill up. There are also industry standard, industry funded classroom settings, that teach things like building codes and industry standards and some adjacent trade craft. Instead you…

When you say "industry funded", who specifically are you referring to? Tool / parts / consumables manufacturers? The individual plumbing firms?

All of them, you pay some for the classes, If I remember I paid 300/semester for classes which is nothing really. usually your firm will pay your share.

But industry standard groups, unions, people who have a vested interest in having a supply of quality labor so they can do business. Some of the classes are sponsored (especially in smaller places where there's not enough support) and in return, they get to train you on a specific product or just hang a banner and give you a 10% tools coupon.

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

#182

Post by UncleOxidant »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #169

It's because in software engineering your work product is confidential/proprietary and work samples take a very long time to produce. If you could review someone's code from their previous jobs, I think it would be quite easy to vet applicants. And it would be much easier to move from job to job. Instead we have to simulate work samples through whiteboard coding, pair programming sessions, take home coding projects,…

Do medical doctors face this? Their work is confidential as well - patient data is highly confidential.

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

#183

Post by newbamboo »

When big tech says engineers are “in demand” they mean “we can make money off them.”

There could be 10 jobs worldwide, as long as companies can make money from those 10 people, they will say they are in demand. Rather than think demand equates to quantity of jobs, it’s better to think of it in terms of cost. The more engineers competing for the 10 jobs, the lower their cost to the company and the higher the demand. Lower salaries mean more money can be made by employing them. “In demand” means the exact opposite of what most people think. And by telling people the demand is high, it increases the supply further lowering costs for the companies and thereby increasing the demand. Engineers could organize and form guilds or unions, like lawyers and doctors have. But that would decrease the demand because it would increase costs. Tl;dr software engineers don’t grok labor economics. VC do.

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

#184

Post by notapenny »

thevinter wrote: post #18

I'm European so I'm unsure as to how the situation is in the states but here the situation is as follows: it's plenty of "developers" that taught themselves coding trough udemy or similar courses and can effectively code basic stuff in one or two languages. While I'm not trying in any way to devalue their knowledge or expertise in my experience a self taught developer will, on average, produce worse code and will ask…

"Young" companies generally don't care about quality, testing, processes. They just want to build a product. I put that in quotes because being a consultant I'm sometimes amazed at companies that make millions/billions and have never bothered to think about these things, until the reach the inevitable point where every change becomes a pain in the ass.

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

#185

Post by dragonwriter »

Nbox9 wrote: post #85
slumdev wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think a lot of this is because our profession does not have an accepted universal bar everyone can jump over to be considered ‘qualified’. Credentialing organizations already exist[1], but none have lobbied the US government to prevent the uncredentialed from practicing. Perhaps it's time. If none of the existing orgs are good enough, start a new one. 1. https://www.computer.org/product/education/professional-sof…

I’d be happy if some organizations started accepting a credential in lue of a coding interview, and just did a design/architecture and cultural interview.

> I’d be happy if some organizations started accepting a credential in lue of a coding interview

Sure, but what credential exists that both is reliable enough to support that use and would remain reliable enough once it became used that way, even in a specific narrow subfield of development?

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

#186

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #182
rsweeney21 wrote: post #169

It's because in software engineering your work product is confidential/proprietary and work samples take a very long time to produce. If you could review someone's code from their previous jobs, I think it would be quite easy to vet applicants. And it would be much easier to move from job to job. Instead we have to simulate work samples through whiteboard coding, pair programming sessions, take home coding projects,…

Do medical doctors face this? Their work is confidential as well - patient data is highly confidential.

Medical doctors have licenses which include exams and all sort of other barriers before they’re a ‘real’ independent doctor.

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

#187

Post by hangonhn »

jelling wrote: post #67
Nbox9 wrote: post #13

I think a lot of this is because our profession does not have an accepted universal bar everyone can jump over to be considered ‘qualified’. Every technical interview feels like rolling the dice in proving I am a competent developer. Giving me 50 minutes in a high pressure situation in an environment i am unfamiliar with and people I just meet will never product my best results, and then add to the fact that I could…

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…

One of my buddies gave me this useful insight once: the impression you give your candidates, even the ones you don't end up hiring, will likely be the last impression you'll get to make on that candidate and the tech world is very small. Negative experiences will impact how candidates perceive your company and word of that experience will spread. Always be respectful to the candidates. If nothing else, they took the time out of the day to meet with you and go through various obstacles, etc.

It's too bad your experience was so negative. That's going to be a datapoint in my mental dataset of companies to consider when the time comes.

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

#189

Post by lowercased »

_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…

> trying to solve a coding problem that in no way resembled anything I have ever encountered in my 25 year career.

that describes 2/3rds of the 'codility' tests I've been given in a few scenarios (toptal used it to weed me out). The couple of jobs I've been in where I was explicitly barred from ever asking any clarifying questions, or talking to business/SME folks about the problem at hand... I left those pretty quickly. I guess it serves to weed out people who have some hard-wired dependency on talking to people to clarify requirements.

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

#190

Post by mateo411 »

serf wrote: post #164
_f1dq wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 had similar experiences over the phone. "How would you pull in data from an arbitrarily long -- maybe never-ending -- source of data in Python?" me : "What kind of data? What is it used for? How should it be represented afterwards?" Silence on the other end , followed by "Well that's up to you." I then fumble out a few ways to do it (verbally), to a recruiter that doesn't seem to understand anything that i'm say…

> "How would you pull in data from an arbitrarily long -- maybe never-ending -- source of data in Python?"

The answer to this question is to use a generator. If you don't know this, then both people are going to wish that they had that half hour of their life back.

Is this a good question? If you want somebody with a lot of Python expertise, then knowing about generators is a good thing.

If I was interviewing a candidate, and they didn't know this, then I would just find a pleasant way to move on after a minute or two. If this is the only interviewing question, then that makes me happy, because this company has a flawed process, and is leaving some great talent for me to hire.

It's not a big deal if you didn't know this at the time. You might not have known what a generator was, and the person interviewing probably wasn't very good at interviewing people.

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