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

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

#451

Post by tootie »

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…

It's because there isn't one. So much professional advice seems to be based around a SV/FAANG mode of operations, but that just doesn't apply to a good 90% of the industry. Most tech work is done on line of business software, not megascale internet companies. Building high-design marketing websites is completely different from enterprise SaaS is completely different from infrastructure is completely different from video games is completely different from desktop software. Not just requiring different tech skills, but different personalities and working styles.

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

#452

Post by ipnon »

yashap wrote: post #73

There’s a tonne of variance between software engineers. Even at the same level (junior, intermediate, senior, etc.), it’s not uncommon for a strong hire to be ~5x better than a weak hire. By this I mean more productive, better at helping others, writes fewer bugs, creates more maintainable abstractions, makes better architecture decisions, can tackle more difficult problems, etc. And at the same level, the strong and…

The 5x engineer at my last job created 5x the features and 5x the bugs, and consequently caused 5x the number of job postings because we needed so many people to put out fires all day. I have to thank him because he is the reason I was hired.

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

#453

Post by anonswe »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #57
readams wrote: post #3

It's hard to get a job because there are a lot of charlatans out there and it's often very hard to get rid of them once hired. Even worse is hiring someone merely mediocre and not actively harmful. That said of course the modern coding interview is I think only very loosely correlated with quality.

On top of this, it’s hard to select for qualified people because the vast majority of interviewees are terrible candidates. Truly qualified job applicants get callbacks for (almost) every job they apply for, choose to interview at a few select companies, and get offers from most of the places they interview at. Thus, they’re only briefly in the interview pool. On the other hand, unqualified people are constantly gett…

Ding ding ding

Earlier this year I read all these doom and gloom interviewing anecdotes on HN

Spammed resumes to local places for one week. My resume is swiss cheese and I'd been unemployed by choice for quite a while

Totally casual at interviews. Not sober at all

Offers offers offers... places thought nothing of going way over the supposed pay ceiling

Apparently I was the best person they saw in ages? And not fly-by-night firms either

High quality engineering is in demand. There is a talent and knowledge deficit

Hard to not shake your head at top comments crying about nothing but rejections. Go study and stop expecting free money

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

#454

Post by nitrogen »

disintegore wrote: post #356
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…

It doesn't help that so many concepts on CompSci show up in different places under different names and labels. I haven't participated in technical interviews in a long time, but when I was asked to do it, I made it a point to throw as many lifelines as I could until I got a satisfying answer. For instance, if want to know if the person understands generics and they can't answer the question outright then I'll ask the…

Even if someone's never heard of idempotence, it's enlightening if you can get them to discover it for themselves by asking questions like, "What happens if this request gets sent twice due to a network issue?"

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

#455

Post by debarshri »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #412
debarshri wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but here in Netherland, you can give out 3, 1 year offers before you forced to give a permanent contract.

Three years sounds reasonable, one not so much. For the lack of security at one year, an actual contracting role might be more lucrative. Is it the case you can earn (quite a bit) more as a contractor, compared to full-time employment in NL? At least when I was doing contracting in the UK contracting roles could earn me almost twice as much as permanent roles (without the benefits of course).

Quite a bit more as contractor. Yes.

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

#456

Post by the_only_law »

jmuguy wrote: post #417
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…

I'd almost rather physically writing on a whiteboard than using something like Google Docs to pseudo code in. I don't know how someone even remotely technical would think that was OK.

I’d be very tempted to end things right there… or use the most obnoxious font I could find.

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

#457

Post by Frost1x »

musingsole wrote: post #409
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 a lot of this is because our profession does not have an accepted universal bar everyone can jump over to be considered ‘qualified’ Someday soon we may accept that what gets classified as software engineering is actually an amalgamation of skills from an entirely different set of titles/careers, most of which treat software creation and management as a tool and means to an end. I don't generally consider a…

If they were applying in the tech industry you would. Might as well lump in metallurgist, chemist, materials scientist, and sheet metal workers because we do this in the tech industry. Everyones a generalized set of specialists rolled into one.

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

#458

Post by tootie »

jelling wrote: post #67
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 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…

My favorite interview surprise was when I was asked to craft a presentation on an interesting project and be prepared to discuss it. When I got on site, it turns out they wanted me to present it cold to the entire dev team of 50+ people.

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

#459

Post by pc86 »

lowercased wrote: post #378
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if yes then offer a year contract with 1-3 months of evaluation period Contract work is a great way to find good talent, but it's a different candidate pool. Lots of good candidates can't or won't give up their full time jobs to take a time-limited contract job. Those who can take contract work are often more talented and more in demand, meaning they're less worried about finding another job if the contract isn't r…

> Contract work (without benefits) is not an option for a large number of developers. Probably should be...? You're typically getting paid more because of "no benefits". (I HATE the word 'benefits', FWIW). Buy your own health insurance - it's more accessible in the US via ACA. Yeah, you might miss out on some 401k matching. Save it yourself?

"Contract" in this use does not mean the same thing as contract work in the US.

It is a full-time position with all the benefits therein, except at the end of a year the employer can choose not to renew it. It is not equivalent to US 1099/freelance work.

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

#460

Post by siva7 »

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.

Yet i can't count how often i've seen business owners giving juniors large codebases without mentorship because they don't want to pay a senior.
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