Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

betterprogramming.pub

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 586 posts

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

#191

Post by steelframe »

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…

The first time I interviewed at Google I didn’t make it past the phone screen. I bombed a question about an appropriate length of a Bloom filter because I hadn’t recently been thinking about Bloom filters, and I was summarily rejected for onsites. The second time I interviewed I was asked a number of questions that I was perfectly “primed” to answer. Because those were in my brain’s cache, I was able to get through the full interview loop with a “hire” recommendation.

My focus is security, and so the second time around I got Travis Ormandy as an interviewer. I was able to impress him well enough with my IPSec foo to make it onsite. Then I got asked a question I had already been asked in another interview with another company, and I was able to knock that out of the ballpark (I mentioned I already knew that question, but the interviewer wanted me to answer it anyway). Then I got asked a question that used recursion, and because I took a graduate course on induction and recursion within the past year, that was effortless for me. Then I got asked a question that involved a kernel feature, and because I happened to recall the Linux kernel list macros and semantics (something I couldn’t repeat now over 10 years later), I really impressed that interviewer.

I ended up having a really successful part of my career at Google, even though I ended up not really writing much code when all was said and done. However what code I did write was highly impactful.

Looking back, things could have gone very differently if I had gotten a different set of interviewers and/or questions. The questions I got just happened to coincide with what was “paged in” to my “working memory,” so to speak.

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

#192

Post by jethro_tell »

gmadsen wrote: post #136
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…

one difference though is that varying levels of skill can be staggeringly different for SWE compared to a plumber. There are people that have been coding in basic since 12 and hacking their entire childhoods, and you have some people that coded for the first time in a cs program which they completed in an average fashion.

True, I started sorting parts in a plumbing shop when I was 12, you still have to get certified and to get certified you take the same classes as everyone else. That's the same for doctors, and lawyers and all that shit.

This is why we don't have a base of expected knowledge in the field and why we do strange coding tests to try to guess if someone is competent.

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

#193

Post by toomuchtodo »

colinmhayes wrote: post #145
toomuchtodo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend's son is in Aerospace Engineering, attends UIUC in Central Illinois. "SlaveX" is the nickname colloquially used.

UIC is in Chicago. UIUC is in central Illinois.

Fixed, I get them confused. Thought it was the other way around.

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

#194

Post by Rastonbury »

exdsq wrote: post #48
colordrops wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most software positions at SpaceX, even those working on critical flight code, do not require aerospace knowledge. And SpaceX is not a great example as they hire a lot of interns and junior people willing to grind.

I find this insane and terrifying.

Where are they going to find strong software engineers who also have aerospace engineering qualifications?

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

#195

Post by jethro_tell »

ghaff wrote: post #149
gmadsen wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

one difference though is that varying levels of skill can be staggeringly different for SWE compared to a plumber. There are people that have been coding in basic since 12 and hacking their entire childhoods, and you have some people that coded for the first time in a cs program which they completed in an average fashion.

Not everyone is equally good of course but I would be very cautious about making hacking since 12 a requirement for a developer job. It certainly doesn't have its equivalent in any other branch of engineering or indeed just about anywhere else other than the arts.

And yet finding someone competent for the job is like a needle in a hay stack.

Having a base of expected/certified knowledge would take a lot of that away.

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

#196

Post by herbturbo »

_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…

Never understood this way of interviewing. I get shit now and then for helping people too much in coding exercises, but if someone has reached the point where they are obviously not going to progress why not nudge them along and see how they respond?

I've found that the ability to receive and act on guidance with a certain degree of humility is a much better signal of someone's potential than how many algorithms they've memorised.

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

#197

Post by ItsMonkk »

NullInvictus wrote: post #147
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…

Worse, many firms are put off by juniors for entirely preventable reasons. In their minds, juniors are undesirable because the moment they are trained up, they tend to jump ship for senior positions elsewhere. Why train your competition, right? The reason they jump ship is because the firm refuses to re-evaluate them for what they are worth, and keeps them on work meant to free up the company's existing senior staff…

Hiring Juniors is a positive externality that the company does not see a penny of. They only see a penny of that externality if they don't give a raise, and that Junior chooses to stick around anyway. You get to exploit that he made friends or is stuck in your part of the city due to a lease or otherwise makes a poor financial decision.

It's interesting that the worse the interview process, the less the Junior will want to go through it, the more the company benefits. You make your process painful so your competitors make their process painful so both of you hold onto your Juniors for more time.

If you can fix the externality problem this goes away, but that's not easy.

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

#198

Post by hsn915 »

Software Engineering is not in demand.

What is in demand is cheap labor that can churn out low-quality web applications, label them MVP, and use them to convince investors to pour in money to hire more cheap labor.

The biggest tell that this is true is hiring for a specific library/framework/platform.

If you wanted a software engineer, you wouldn't care what particular thing they have worked with most recently. Maybe you would care about the general category of work, but mostly you would care more about practical experience and past achievements/results.

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

#199

Post by gmadsen »

OJFord wrote: post #77
tluyben2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top talent means different things to different businesses and many people forget or don't see that. Most companies don't need and are probably actively hurt by people that would be considered top talent at Facebook or something; they need people who can churn away on boring stuff (maintenance, crud, ...), reliably and in a predictable way from 9-5, 4-5 days / week. And like that kind of job and want to do it for deca…

> And like that kind of job and want to do it for decades and decades on end for you; people who don't reload LinkedIn looking for 'new challenges with the latest framework' 20x a day. Interesting, I associate 'latest framework' more with trying to keep the monotonous job interesting (or perhaps misguided attempt at keeping sharp) than with 'new challenges '...

Part of it, is it seems that once you are in web dev, its hard to leave. So you try to make it interesting as best as you can, with "latest frameworks". I personally find all of of web dev to be monotonous

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

#200

Post by adamhp »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #186
UncleOxidant wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd be curious to hear peoples thoughts if they would subject themselves to this sort of professional board and licensing for software. There's clearly a pre-determined set of information and skills that are fundamental enough to be tested, but it is also fairly creative and subjective at the end of the day.
Post reply on HN