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?

#251

Post by rhacker » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:09 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…

Can you imagine?

Hi I'm Ed Barns I'm here for the interview of ER Physician.

QUICK Put on your scrubs we've got a patient here with a bone dangling out of his arm.

No you don't understand I'm just here to interview.

THIS IS THE INTERVIEW HURRY UP.

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

#252

Post by vlovich123 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

JohnBooty wrote: post #220

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,…

Instead we have to simulate work samples through whiteboard coding, pair programming sessions, take home coding projects, coding knowledge tests, etc. Very small sample size but we've had good results skipping coding exams entirely, and simply talking through some scenarios with candidates. - give them a hypothetical problem ("the page is loading slowly") and role play how they'd troubleshoot it - do they understand…

> - give them a hypothetical problem ("the page is loading slowly") and role play how they'd troubleshoot it - do they understand how different bits of the stack fit together? have they ruled out network issues before digging into the code? etc.

I don't know. I think I'm pretty good at troubleshooting on the job (since I can be the one to troubleshoot & solve the trickier bugs) but thinking about doing it in an interview setting makes me nervous. It feels too fickle & up to the biases of the interviewer that day, not to mention that any serious production bug relies on knowing how the software stack operates & which things are relevant, all things that are ambiguous in an interview the interviewee would just be stuck grasping in the dark to try to figure out which scenario you might be describing.

The rest seems fine, but I'm curious about your experience with the live debugging & if you've considered cutting it.

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

#253

Post by longhairedhippy » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

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…

Honestly, I think having engineers come and go is a net win for companies. I've worked at places where the "old guard" has been around forever and they are inevitably stubborn, obstinate, and convinced there is no other way to solve the problem. By changing jobs and environments, you get to see in practice that there are many different ways to implement a solution. Only seeing one set of systems (unless they are a FAANG, which is large enough to have the breadth to counteract it), would ultimately cause those architectures to stagnate, injecting new blood is also injecting new ideas.

I do however, agree with your sentiment, those junior folks that are getting all the work done only get rewarded with more work to do.

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

#254

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

ravroid wrote: post #114

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 think it's because software varies vastly in complexity and spans many domains. Every software engineering role may use a generalized skillset to a degree, but I feel like there can never be one all-encompassing bar that can effectively cover the requirements of every role.

You mean like Law?

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

#255

Post by Zelphyr » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:10 PM UTC

nine_zeros wrote: post #128

_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…

"Is this how working with these guys is going to be?" Unfortunately, yes. Young engineers are terrible at communication and working with others. Partly due to workplace incentives and partly because you must realize that entire generations have grown up with computers and not people.

I don't think this deserves the downvotes it is getting simply because there is some truth to the comment.

A good friend of mine worked with a young developer recently who was excited about what he was able to generate with a single npm command. When my friend, who has been writing software longer than this guy has been alive, calmly pointed out that the npm command had just generated 400 files and thousands of lines of code that didn't actually solve their problem, this guy got mad and went to complain to their manager.

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

#256

Post by black_13 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

H1b/ageism/purple squirrels

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

#257

Post by obviouslynotme » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #37

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…

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.

I have known of many positions that stayed open for years until the position or company disappeared.

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

#258

Post by mywittyname » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

Everything about interviewing sucks. Being the interviewer sucks. Being the interviewee sucks. The politics of hiring sucks. I hate it on both sides.

The more I interview people the more empathy I have for good candidates who can't get hired. I've seen so many potentially good candidates passed over because someone in the hiring chain didn't find them good. Usually this has to do with "lacking experience with X technology."

This is incredibly frustrating because usually the person doing the rejecting didn't know X when they were hired, but they were paid to learn it by the company.

On the flip side, I've been forced to re-interview obviously poor candidates because a hiring manager liked that they had "experience with X technology." Even though I was pretty confident that they were lying. Usually this ends up being merely a waste time, as I've never changed my mind and usually bring along another interviewer who concurs.

I think the hiring process is 50% luck, and 50% having experience with the right tools. My new strategy, after working in the sausage factory, is to look at prospective jobs, find the tools they are looking for, and find a reason to use them in my current role. Read all of the documentation so you really sound like you know what you're talking about, then interview. I'm not sure if this works in the SV startup culture, but it does seem effective in my situation.

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

#259

Post by timr » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

mateo411 wrote: post #190

serf wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 candi…

> > "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.

That's funny...I've implemented more than my share of such things in a long career, and my first intuition for an answer to the question, as phrased, was to implement stream sampling. It never even occurred to me that the answer might be a syntactical feature of the language (and yes, I know what generators are).

According to you, I'd be so wrong that I'm a waste of time.

Do you see the problem yet? It isn't theoretical. I've hit this kind of situation with so many interviewers that I'm actually more nervous when I'm sitting across from someone who is clearly on their first or second job out of school. They're asking (unclear) questions in the "python syntax" category, and I'm thinking about the engineering consequences of consuming an endless stream of data...

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

#260

Post by joelbluminator » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

ransom1538 wrote: post #250

joelbluminator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a hard fit for seniors even. Legacy is hard, big codebases are hard. You'd have to be crazy to let juniors take over such a thing. I think a junior might actually do better on a greenfield project if deadlines aren't too strict.