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?

#461

Post by anonswepolice » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:48 PM UTC

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…

Sibling is a throwaway I tell you! Bake em away ~dang~ toys.

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

#462

Post by deeblering4 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:49 PM UTC

Why is it hard? Because Google ruined technical interviews with irrelevant trivia and excessively long interview loops.

For some reason a lot of the industry said "hey, if Google does that it must be right!" and they also started asking pointless trivia questions in very long loops.

But why stop there? Let's build out pointless trivia as a service, and assign a numerical score to represent your ability to perform pointless trivia outside the context of an interview.

I really think it's that simple. Tech interviews are broken and need to be drastically simplified. Candidates should be evaluated conversationally as humans and given the opportunity to learn on the job. It's a risky proposition in both directions, there's really no need for trivia, it doesn't prove anything (except act as a red flag for candidates).

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

#463

Post by CydeWeys » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

kodisha wrote: post #292

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #242

Earlier 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.

> Not sure about English, but in my language we have a saying "The fish stinks from the head"

English has this expression too, except it's "The fish rots from the head". (Which, when you think about it, makes more sense.) What's your first language?

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

#464

Post by siva7 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

shagie wrote: post #92

supergeek133 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trades have apprenticeship programs... might be an interesting model to try to replicate.

Apprenticeships in a trade tend to be such that with sufficient hard work and determination, anyone can fill the trade requirements. The problem solving skills of software development don't seem to fit that model - there are some people, no matter how much you train them, don't seem to be able to move beyond "follow instructions" to "give tasks" when it comes to developing software. The second part is that the trade…

Which is more a symptom of bad apprenticeship and i believe we don't acknowledge enough that there are too many shops doing a bad job on training the apprentice.

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

#465

Post by debarshri » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

InvOfSmallC wrote: post #433

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…

Are you using this contract with juniors? Maybe this is a cultural difference but I would never accept a one year contract. Especially because In EU a permanent contract has a trial period in it.

One year contract is pretty normal in netherlands.

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

#466

Post by Banana699 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #406

mateo411 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 does "use a generator" answer this question? A generator can yield an endless amount of data, but if they ask "our customers buy things 24/7 on our website, how would you pull the endless orders into Python?" and you said "a generator", I'd think you were trying to guess the teacher's password ( https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NMoLJuDJEms7Ku9XS/guessing-t... ) It surely matters if the data source is push or poll…

The question is garbage as phrased to be sure, but I think the auxiliary context matters a lot in this type of questions. Mentioning "python", when databases are language agnostic, heavily implies the answer is a language feature. Furthermore the way the question is asked (reading from a script) also implies there is a specific non-open-ended answer.

I still answered the question in my head on a whim, half-expecting it to be false, it's a really vague formulation. Sounds like the interviewer was randomly browsing language features and cutting and pasting random descriptions from whatever tutorial. Or maybe the company was using python generators in a really specific "data pulling" niche that the answer seemed extremely obvious to the technical team writing the questions and they forgot that outsiders are not wired to think of the same patterns.

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

#467

Post by nickff » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

deeblering4 wrote: post #462

Why is it hard? Because Google ruined technical interviews with irrelevant trivia and excessively long interview loops. For some reason a lot of the industry said "hey, if Google does that it must be right!" and they also started asking pointless trivia questions in very long loops. But why stop there? Let's build out pointless trivia as a service, and assign a numerical score to represent your ability to perform poi…

I agree with most of what you say, especially about simplifying and shortening the process, but I'm not sure about:

>"It's a risky proposition in both directions"

It seems like the worst case for the developer is that they get paid for doing nothing useful for a while, then have to find another job. The worst case for the company is that they pay out a bunch of money, and dedicate a variety of resources, to someone who delays a (hopefully non-vital) project. This is not a symmetrical proposition.

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

#468

Post by nickff » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #25

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…

To go in line with firms not wanting to hire juniors, I think generally firms do not want to invest heavily in employee training or education. I would, for example, happily make a shift from CRUD webdev and distributed networking to hardware and embedded and more lower level type work, but I doubt a firm would hire me near my current level and train me up.

The problem is that nobody wants to pay you intermediate/senior salary for junior ability until you learn their field. More than that, even if you volunteer to take the pay cut, they may be afraid you'll jump ship quickly, or that it's just not worth the risk of doing something unconventional.

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

#469

Post by siva7 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:56 PM UTC

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…

Same in Europe, i also believe most of these rants on hn about hiring are describing a unique trend in the united states.

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

#470

Post by Areading314 » Mon, Aug 30, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

I think one imbalance in the industry is that software engineers require years of on the job training to be able to independently get things done. In medicine this is also the case which is why doctors have to go through a residency. Junior engineers are kind of like hiring a resident and asking them for medical advice -- it'll work in a pinch but you really want to have at least one doctor in the room when making important decisions. This is also reflected in the salary. If companies understood this and gave juniors much bigger raises (really an annual market adjustment) there would be far less turnover and interview time wasting in the industry.