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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?

#511

Post by mmarq »

loftyal wrote: post #505
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…

Isn't contract work looked down upon in the US? Here in the UK, its the opposite, contractors make atleast 2x the money, and most wouldn't dream of going back to salary position because no company wants to pay that for a permanent employee (apart from american companies and qaunt finance with nice bonuses)

Contractors in the UK earn more or less the same as other employees (once you account for benefits and paid holidays and sick leave), but do not pay taxes because of a loophole that hopefully will be fixed by IR35.

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

#512

Post by lmilcin »

loftyal wrote: post #510
lmilcin wrote: post #504

I interview candidates regularly. Most engineers need no more than half a dozen interviews to get couple of options to choose from. Unfortunately, there is population that grossly overestimate their ability, don't prepare effectively at all and take as many interviews as they can thinking it is numbers game. Then blame "broken system". It reminds me when I went for exam for driver's licence. There was a group of peop…

While I agree with you that theres a few like that, you have forgotten about the candidates that genuinely don't want to spend their spare time grinding leetcode. I worked at facebook, when I started looking for a new job, I had to start grinding leetcode again to prepare for a new job. Take a step back and realise how ridiculous this is. Big companies that have prestiege and pay alot of money use it to eliminate fal…

If you can't readily demonstrate ability to write a simple function but insist on getting hired as a developer you are, by definition, overestimating your ability as software developer, because you can't code.

If you need to grind to be able to write code you are doing something wrong. Like spending too much time at work copying code from stack exchange or relying on running your code to tell you if it is correct.

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

#513

Post by loftyal »

mmarq wrote: post #511
loftyal wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't contract work looked down upon in the US? Here in the UK, its the opposite, contractors make atleast 2x the money, and most wouldn't dream of going back to salary position because no company wants to pay that for a permanent employee (apart from american companies and qaunt finance with nice bonuses)

Contractors in the UK earn more or less the same as other employees (once you account for benefits and paid holidays and sick leave), but do not pay taxes because of a loophole that hopefully will be fixed by IR35.

This is definitely not true. I've been contracting for 6 years in London, and am currently in an inside IR35 role, and have quite a few friends in the same space but in frontend/devops and its all the same. The differnce is atleast 2x for senior/lead engineers in golang or python.

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

#514

Post by PoignardAzur »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #480
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.

>True, but here in Netherland, you can give out 3, 1 year offers before you forced to give a permanent contract. I guess this just sounds weird to me. I would have to be pretty desperate to take a 1 year contract from a company that only paid me full-time wage as opposed to a contractors wage. I have to assume the Netherlands has a lot of developers seeking employment for this to work.

There's the same system in France.

As GP says, it's because taking an employee on an indefinite contract is a huge responsibility, and you basically can't fire them unless they set your office on fire.

In France, there's a huge temp ecosystem that was built because of that. Companies don't hire developers, they subcontract to temp agencies for limited time. The advantage for them is if they need to downsize their team, they can simply terminate the contract without risking liability.

The temp agency obviously takes a big cut on the developer's salary, until (at least in my individual experience) the developer decides to fuck off and do contracting directly instead and starts thinking, you know what, the French job market for developers sucks, I should probably send resumes to american companies instead.

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

#515

Post by edoceo »

vmception wrote: post #209
edoceo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interview is signal from the actual company - it's definitely got some information about what's inside.

You are simply determining that you are okay with false negatives Which is exactly why they do irrelevant interview brainteasers as well This problem is a two way street in the tech sector, in case anyone wanted to fix it. The candidates alone are making the same mistake and bringing it to the company

Is a "false negative" a positive?

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

#516

Post by dang »

runawaybottle wrote: post #29
foxfluff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling that mediocre business should be able to run just fine on mediocre people. So it can't be that bad. Of course, every business likes to pretend they're the top and can only hire top talent.

It’s a similar thing to incels. Many companies and bosses are kind of like incels. You’re a regular guy that’s probably not that interesting, rich, smart, or attractive, but you believe you deserve a chance with any girl. Get over yourselves.

We've had to ask you more than once before to stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. If you keep doing it, we're going to have to ban you. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when commenting here. That means thoughtful, substantive comments and curious conversation.

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

#517

Post by wheelinsupial »

adamhp wrote: post #200
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical doctors have licenses which include exams and all sort of other barriers before they’re a ‘real’ independent doctor.

I'd be curious to hear peoples thoughts if they would subject themselves to this sort of professional board and licensing for software. There's clearly a pre-determined set of information and skills that are fundamental enough to be tested, but it is also fairly creative and subjective at the end of the day.

Disclaimer: I’m educated as a technologist not an engineer in Canada.

This exists in Canada for some areas of software development that falls under the requirements of being a licensed software engineer.

Many people, including CS graduates in Canada, think it’s ridiculous. The requirement for certification is pretty strict in that you need a computer engineering undergrad degree or a degree in software engineering from an accredited program. This is probably how most people would be accredited, but there are some other ways too. All of them, as far as I can gather, require formal educational credentials.

You then need to go through a formal apprenticeship while working under someone who is licensed. It’s probably an 8 year process in total.

Further to that, there is a limitation on what you can practice. There are different disciplines (e.g., mechanical, civil, electrical) and there are fields and scopes of practice within each of those disciplines. What this results in is someone who is licensed in, for example, embedded systems wouldn’t then be able to go and work on websites or back end databases.

The field is further divided into technologists and technicians that require less education than engineers and have much less autonomy and scope of authority.

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

#518

Post by robocat »

shagie wrote: post #506
loftyal wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't contract work looked down upon in the US? Here in the UK, its the opposite, contractors make atleast 2x the money, and most wouldn't dream of going back to salary position because no company wants to pay that for a permanent employee (apart from american companies and qaunt finance with nice bonuses)

Contracts often fall into one of two categories. There's the consultants who make the big bucks. They come in to solve a particularly thorny problem that an org has and then the contract is done and they move on. There's also the staff argumentation contracts. We need six devs, but because of how accounting works, we can only hire two FTEs. However, contractors are part of an operations budget rather than a engineeri…

> argumentation

augmentation?

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

#519

Post by mmarq »

loftyal wrote: post #513
mmarq wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contractors in the UK earn more or less the same as other employees (once you account for benefits and paid holidays and sick leave), but do not pay taxes because of a loophole that hopefully will be fixed by IR35.

This is definitely not true. I've been contracting for 6 years in London, and am currently in an inside IR35 role, and have quite a few friends in the same space but in frontend/devops and its all the same. The differnce is atleast 2x for senior/lead engineers in golang or python.

In my experience, a company that pays 400-500£ per day for a contractor, will pay 80-90K£ per annum for a permanent employee. Once you account for VAT and corporation tax, the only difference comes from not paying NI and income tax. Inside IR35, if my calculations are correct (and they may not be), 500£ per day are equivalent to 90K£ per annum.

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

#520

Post by ggktk »

move-on-by wrote: post #213
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…

> 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…

> next set of interviews

I really dislike when companies do this. It's very time consuming and psychologically/emotionally draining.

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