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

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

#241

Post by Manuel_D » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

ItsMonkk wrote: post #197

NullInvictus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Isn't this what vesting cliffs are for? To incentivize employee to stay for at least a year or two?

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

#242

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:02 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #156

_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 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 i…

You know, I was nodding my head in agreement as I read this when something occurred to me.

This all requires that the interviewer be willing to interact deeply with the candidate. Our profession has a (well deserved, I think) reputation for having a high percentage of people who really don't like interacting with others on a peer level.

Is it likely that a large part of the problem is that we have people doing interviews who really shouldn't be? I mean, if your typical response to talking to another technical person is immediately to try to one-up them, then you're going to be a really shitty interviewer. And that's exactly the personality type I see being described over and over in these anecdotes.

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

#243

Post by Apocryphon » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #218

One aspect not mentioned: Tech really want to be a meritocracy. We don’t generally succeed, but we try. Engineers at least want to be unbiased, and the Bay Area cares about it culturally, generally speaking. So we fight against increased barriers to entry like credentials (but that Stanford/MIT degree is still a golden ticket into the interview). We try to give as objective an interview as possible, meaning it’s expl…

But just as with companies that attempt holocracy and having no hierarchy, de facto hierarchies just creep in. And so the data structures/algorithms interview is a de facto credential, except worse, because it needs to be re-taken at every single company, rather than however many times it takes to pass the credential exam.

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

#244

Post by taftster » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

digitalmouse wrote: post #226

move-on-by wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In an environment I am unfamiliar with I had an technical interview with a company early last week, we did a shared session using VS Code. The interviewer wrote the function signature, and I filled out the implementation. I did great, according to the interviewer, and moved to the next set of interviews. The next interviewer, which turned out was also technical, ended up opening up a shared Google Docs to write cod…

reminds of of the systems design interview I had with Google, the interviewer had his webcam off, barely spoke English and had me trying to make diagrams of system architecture in google docs with no reference of what he was actually looking for it was like sitting in a confusing nightmare for an hour

This is when you open a can of BS and just spray it everywhere. Go for the most esoteric and ridiculous design that you can. Elaborate on the minutia of your design at the finest level. Puff your feathers and flaunt your genius. Both bore and impress your interviewer at the same time.

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

#245

Post by bonesinger » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:04 PM UTC

jaaron wrote: post #229

UncleOxidant wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No. As a software engineer for 20+ years, I've talked with my sister, who is an ER doctor about this often. Most folks outside of engineering think our interview processes are crazy. Keep in mind, there's significantly more training that goes into the medical field, so there's more emphasis on the institutions. Where did you go to school? What hospitals or facilities did you work with? Your resume and references spea…

One key difference is licensing. As a physician you have to take the USMLE Step 1,2,3 and then potentially other board certifications. We engineers don't have any of that.

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

#246

Post by bluedevil2k » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

hsn915 wrote: post #198

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…

This isn’t true at all. Maybe in some locations (Silicon Valley? I don’t know), but every job I’ve been on has needed top level programmers for critical applications that have real world value.

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

#247

Post by shagie » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:05 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #157

tsywke44 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

Spending five times as long to hire a senior who doesn't leave in a year or two is then a much better situation.

A junior dev hire involves sifting through many resumes, and then interviews, onboarding, and then three to six months of lower productivity for the mentor.

All of that represents losses against the current status quo. The current status quo is predictable.

This completely discounts the "accept and renege" that also is common with juniors looking for a job which can reset the job search back to square one even when you do find a good candidate.

Taking six months or a year to hire a senior has fewer resumes to sort and fewer interviews to conduct. When the person is hired, they've got a much shorter onboarding and has the necessary skills to be able to become familiar with the codebase without causing a hit to the productivity of the rest of the team (or other seniors).

In this situation, hiring a senior is likely a much better outcome with fewer seen and unforeseen negatives and an eventual positive.

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

#248

Post by dopylitty » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #232

UncleOxidant wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that doesn't mean they're a good doctor. Most of us have had experiences with bad doctors. The exams they took could have been decades ago, but what does that tell us about how they've performed recently?

Bad doctor is relative. I expect that most doctors who have pass through that gauntlet can pass the doctor equivalent of fizzbuzz, which already is a lot different than our industry.

A doctor equivalent of fizzbuzz could be “what do you prescribe for a viral infection with no indication of a secondary infection” and from what I’ve heard there are a lot of doctors failing that one during the COVID pandemic by prescribing antibiotics.

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

#249

Post by jonex » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #156

_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 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 i…

That seems like a reasonable approach if you have the right skills for it. My problem with such an approach would be that I'd not feel comfortable to make an overall evaluation of a person based on a short interaction. Having a clear cut process with well defined metrics provides me with more confidence that I'm evaluating candidates fairly. Without it I'd be worried that my rating would be too biased by superficial stuff like how they dress etc. Something that at least in psychology research seem to mbe a lot more common than many people think. In general, looking too much at cultural fit would feel I'd risk "hiring my friends" rather than based on what value they could contribute.

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

#250

Post by ransom1538 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

joelbluminator wrote: post #76

WJW wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

You are underestimating the effort it takes to inherit a big codebase and maintain it, this is not a task for a junior.

Yes. A huge million line php application running a profitable company is a hard fit for a junior off a boot camp.