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If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
311–320 of 586 posts
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 interv…
Not sure about English, but in my language we have a saying "The fish stinks from the head" I can tell you, with quite substantial sample size from me directly and from people I deeply trust that every time we encountered an interview like this, we later found out that the company culture was really bad. Those are not the kind of people you want to work with.
For clarity, is the "like this" in your comment referring to brain teaser technical one-upmanship interviews, or the less structured style that is focused on getting to know the person and having them describe in their own words the projects in their past?
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 inter…
I've done these sorts of questions before and the point (more me at least) was two-fold:
1. Do they understand the basic machinery of a web application (assuming the job is about building web applications)?
2. Can they take a vague problem ("the page is loading slow") they might get from an actual non-technical user and drill down to identify what precisely the issue is? Is it DNS? Is it a proxy server/load balancer? Is their latency at the DB layer? How would you tell the difference between all of these?
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#314Earlier 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…
> Most folks outside of engineering think our interview processes are crazy.
They do, but not for the reason you think.
A hospital administrator would be mad to hire some rando from the street who calls himself a doctor, who has no formal schooling in medicine, a dropped two-year degree in chemistry, but who reads a few medical blogs, on nothing more than 'They have four years experience working at a startup and a good reference and they can answer some second-year whiteboard questions about the lymphatic system.' [1]
Other professionals front-load the interviewing effort into a rigorous schooling, testing, and accreditation process, that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of your life. Meanwhile, software engineers grouse about whiteboard interviews.
[1] Despite the highly dramatized performance by Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, that's not generally how doctors get hired.
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#315Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one advantage to working on open source. Your work is all just a click away.
Have you ever gotten a job from just showing off your open source work, though?
I was a committer to Elasticsearch. My name is thanked in the (very old) official book. I will still get asked questions.
No one looks at open source work, just as no one cares about your resume.
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#316It'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,…
I have had good luck hiring developers by asking them to do a code review of something WE wrote (but framed as if a junior developer wrote it) This helps us look for good signal around their communication skills, mentoring skills, empathy, reasoning skills and software development skills. We used this review as a diagnostic - there are no wrong answers since we know they’re not aware of our style guide and convention…
I'm using the same technique. Taking MRs from Junior Devs together with the Ticket description, reducing the scope a bit and sprinkling different errors or incomplete implementations here and there.
In the interview, I'm checking of problems that the applicant notices and see how he approaches the problem.
So far I've been satisfied with all hired who passed that test. And they liked not having to solve stupid whiteboard problems.
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#317I've done two technical interviews this summer. The first one was shakey, the second went really well, but ultimately both places moved on with another candidate. It's definitely a skill and learning to not get so nervous about them helps a ton. I went from grad school physics to my first data science job and I'm trying to further transition into ML engineer type roles. My biggest insecurity is not knowing the comp s…
I got into software from a similar background. You can get pretty solid CS basics very quickly if you go through a book like Cracking the Coding Interview and do a few leetcode problems. It will also probably dramatically improve your experience writing code.
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#318I 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…
>our profession does not have an accepted universal bar everyone can jump over to be considered ‘qualified’. They even do this crap to people with CS degrees. If a 4 year CS degree isn't enough, then people who do this have no idea what they are doing. I started in this field in 1997. The interviews were more old fashioned, a few tech questions, see if you were an oddball, then they'd get back to you. If you didn't w…
> If a 4 year CS degree isn't enough
If it's not enough for an employer, it's because that employer devalues what's taught in most CS programs. Granted, there's a significant mismatch between CS degree work and real world work, but that's true in lots of engineering. Ask any engineer in whatever subfield how much time they spend solving differential equations. I mean, great that I learned how to balance a binary tree and write a heapsort in my DS&A class, but have I ever needed to do that at work? Other than to pass some stupid coding interview?
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#319Very 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…
> "Senior Full Stack"
Also why companies will hire someone with 3 years of experience into a senior position.
Re: If software engineering is in demand, why is it so hard to get a job?
#320Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
We only have your telling of your friend's telling of the story. This is rhetorically similar to saving a 50% quality jpeg as a 20% quality jpeg.