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?

#321

Post by xpe » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #212

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is basically the advice I give everyone I know when it comes to things like this, "If you're going through the front door, you've already lost." My experience has been that this applies to recruiting, hiring, BD, sales, fundraising, etc. Anywhere that there's a systemic principal-agent problem.

> If you're going through the front door, you've already lost. I've heard that advice in various forms but I must say (anecdote incoming) - in my own 30 year career, the best jobs I've ever had were the random ones that I just applied for and the worst ones were the ones that somebody I knew from before recruited me in from outside.

How many jobs have you had? You talked about the best and the worst. Can you comment on the relationship between (y-axis) quality of job and (x-axis) strength of personal connection before you joined. If you plotted a scatterplot, what relationship would you find?

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

#322

Post by nickjj » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:55 PM UTC

> One drawback to this is that the engineer interviewing you, if he/she is human, will not be familiar with all of them

I see this as a potential plus not a downside. If the person doesn't understand the language you're using but you can explain how your code works in such a way that you can get them to understand it that's a really good demonstration of being able to communicate and how you would describe your code to a co-worker.

I've only sat in on a few interviews (as a person doing an interview on the sidelines) but all of the questions I tend to ask are more casual and around thought processes, or at least the pseudo code implementation. Personally I don't really care if you can't remember the exact syntax of something off the top of your head but I do care that you know how it would work and what you would Google to look it up.

Personally I don't know what it's like being interviewed tho. I've been doing contract work for my whole career and every job came from either talking casually or someone finding me with intent to hire me as long as I didn't come off like a maniac. I know for absolute certain I would fail any algorithm based whiteboard test (I never went to University) but if you're struggling to find employment, just know there's a whole world out there where people don't care about traditional software engineer interview strategies. They only care that you're dependable and can solve their problems in a reasonable and maintainable way.

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

#323

Post by Jenk » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

avidiax wrote: post #273

Humdeee wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Mismanaged rockstars going off in different directions is chaos. I have no clue how the term 'mediocre' has come to mean essentially bottom of the barrel proficiency that is still the minimum hiring level quality. The top dog companies can be elitist, but when the company is "MegaCrudSoftware Inc.", it's just plain narcissism. Many Reddit/HN posters exude this in the individual sense and believe they're…

Top tier engineers are essentially lubricant. They ideally bring experience and talent to bear on the current site of friction in a business. Even better if they circulate like lubricant.

Exactly. They are the lead singers of the rock band. The maestro of the orchestra. The foreman of the construction team. Yada yada.

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

#324

Post by pavel_lishin » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:56 PM UTC

shagie wrote: post #247

pavel_lishin wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"…

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

yes - assuming the senior also doesn't leave.

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

#325

Post by allo37 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #202

allo37 wrote: post #160

Is this an American thing? Or maybe just a non-embedded systems thing? I live in Canada and was looking for a job recently...got two offers! One was just a casual chat about my experience, the other was a casual chat + take-home exam, which took about 3 hours. Ater reading all these scary whiteboard interview stories on social media I studied up on programming puzzle-type questions...was a bit of a let-down, honestly…

My experience with the embedded world is that the engineers and managers working in that field tend to be older. They're from the era when it was common to get a job after a casual chat. About how old was the manager who hired you? I got a contract gig with an embedded development house a few years back after a couple hour interview - more of a chat. The guys hiring me were in their early 60s.

Yeah, you're definitely on to something: The average age was much older- maybe not early 60's, but definitely older.

I wonder if we'll see the same sort of thing creep into the embedded systems world as these managers/engineers retire.

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

#326

Post by c4m » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

debarshri wrote: post #308

We made the interview process very simple and traditional in our current organisation. 30 minute chat, judge whether the person can do the job or is a good fit, if yes then offer a year contract with 1-3 months of evaluation period. Changing a job is risky also from the candidate's perspective so if the person is pretending, the lies will catch up. Most of the scenario it has worked pretty well. Sometimes, people who…

This is super interesting!

With a traditional interview and job offer process, a new employee can ramp up without worrying their job is on the line. And I think this is important, because it can take awhile to ramp up to full productivity, which can be stressful if the new employee feels like they're being evaluated already.

Where I've worked, my new manager told me "Hey, welcome to the company. Please feel relaxed and take your time ramping up, you've already passed the interview and we're happy to have you here."

With your process, how do you deal with people getting stressed out during ramp up or feeling imposter syndrome?

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

#327

Post by isitdopamine » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

Roughly: if there’s one job per person in the field, and for each opening there are 100 applicants, it will take 100 applications for the average person, on average to get hired.

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

#328

Post by bern4444 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

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…

I take a different take here.

Juniors write a lot of code. Often significant amounts for a company's products and services. They're the ones who are implementing all the decisions that seniors spend their time making in all their meetings.

Most senior engineers I've seen have most of their days filled with meetings with very little actual coding time.

The seniors are valuable, making decisions, coming up with solutions, building frameworks etc, but it's the juniors who then take that and run with it and build everything on top of it.

So while some will still code, it's far less than what the junior engineers are creating.

Yes they require some more training, and clear direction, but they are the ones actually creating and executing the vision of the company informed by the seniors.

What companies really want, like others have said, are senior engineers who are willing to accept a junior salary.

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

#329

Post by gwittel » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

roberthahn wrote: post #281

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,…

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 do something very similar and it works quite well for anyone except fresh grads (I've a different variant for them).

I pose a situation and introduce the v1 code. They look for bugs and propose fixes. Then I add on a new feature, and they look for more bugs. I've maybe 4-5 levels overall each having different classes of bugs, some of more or less subtlety. Fits on one whiteboard / single piece of paper in the end.

There are no syntax errors, just logic. Errors are in categories like: robustness, failure handling (internal or external), data/thread races, unforseen side effects, etc. The more experienced you are, the more problems I expect to be found. A "I don't know" is just fine (and often the following discussion is MORE informative).

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

#330

Post by digitalmouse » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

taftster wrote: post #244

digitalmouse wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suppose I could have, I'm not 100% sure he was paying attention to me

either way I ended up getting a cooler job somewhere else so maybe it was a good thing in the end