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I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

cushychicken.github.io

841–850 of 927 posts

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are proposing substituting a nepotistic process as a substitute for a discriminatory process? Personally, I do not think that would yield any improvement.

No, I’m just saying at some point your reputation should precede you, otherwise what have you been doing for 20 years?

Being an introvert? Becoming a better engineer? Learning new skills? Doing things that actually matter for my job?

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, my job requires using a lot of tools and technology and processes created by other people, but none of those tools are easy to use or well documented. When I first moved into management roles I didn’t fully understand how much of my job would be simply saying “no” to a constant stream of engineers wanting to write or rewrite custom tools, libraries, frameworks and platforms when otherwise sufficiently go…

It also helps to find the one extra weird engineer that loves to write documentation, then have them do that for a while for everything.

What are the acceptance criteria for that story and how many points would it be?

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#843

Pay me 150k to remotely work with Rust and I'll drop everything and start on Monday. Getting senior resources is not hard, just need the right mix of comp and stack.

https://oxide.computer

They pay $180K full remote for Rust. (I may try to go there myself, so if you want to avoid me, keep that in mind...)

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#844
post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this emotion. We have spent years and countless hours investing in documentation and automation as we re-engineered a very large legacy application into cloud based technology (AWS). The application and supporting CI/CD pipeline is far better documented and supported than most and all of the underlying technology is within 5 years current. There are video based tutorials on nearly every aspect of the platfor…

> video based tutorials there's your problem.

Videos can be as good or bad as documentation, it just depends on how thorough the content is.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#845
post #559

I think there's something else that's necessary that doesn't align well with the things in the article, and which is currently lacking in my current work environment, but which is kind of hard to describe succinctly. Basically, my job requires using a lot of tools and technology and processes created by other people, but none of those tools are easy to use or well documented. In order to get stuff done you have to ha…

I'm getting the same impression at my client and my client only employs ~150 devs, not a 100k. All in all, this strongly reminds me of the "Collapse of Civilization" described by Jonathan Blow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

Alan Kay has similar talks where he has some subtle condemnations of what the industry as a whole has devolved into. He uses terms like Cargo Cult and he calls out the wide spread hubris for not knowing and/or actively ignoring the history of the field.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#846

  I once had a recruiter tell me: “Elon Musk is one of the easiest people on earth to poach senior leadership out from under.” After eighteen months in the gulag of rocketry/EVs, many managers are ready to cry “Uncle”.
As a non-native speaker, I have the hardest time parsing this sentence, could anyone help me out?

What does it mean when someone poaches “leadership out from under” — does it mean that leadership grows internally, rather than sourced externally? Or that they’re fleeing away (assuming “poaching out” mean the reverse of “poaching”)

And I assume that the “uncle” in this case is Elon?

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#847

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The companies that pay 80% of FAANG salaries without the LeetCode whiteboard bullshit are out there.

Can confirm, we do a low-pressure, non-timed, non-puzzle, somewhat realistic, short take-home exercise. But we don't (and can't) add 20+% to your salary in RSUs.

Can you tell which company this is? I would like to know.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#848
post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Depends on how you define works. It does effectively filter the people that can't code, but it also filters a lot of people that can code and just can't or don't care to do it under time or environment pressure. It is much more important for a company to filter out likely low performers than it is to avoid filtering out likely high performers, because the costs of hiring an incompetent person are enormous. Not only…

This is only true for companies that have a large talent pool e.g. FAANG companies. For some small 30 person business in the back of nowhere that wants you in the office 5 days a week they cannot be anywhere near as picky.

I tend to think it's even more true for smaller companies that do not have the margin for too many mistakes. FAANG do not have an all-A cast. They have enough buffer to weather the odd mishire; and they also have enough projects going on that they can find better projects for people based on their strengths. At a small company on the other hand, the wrong hire can be existentially problematic for the business.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hang on, don't blame the agile manifesto here. I totally can, and will. It's on them if they popularized slogans that can be too-easily misunderstood. That's meant that agile, in several respects, has been an exercise of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. > Blame the management that adopted the agile manifesto as "do all the exact same things we used to do that didn't work, but call it 'agile'". That's clear…

So very much this. We’re now at a point where the widespread and rampant destruction that’s been wrought in the name of agile is so bad that it’s not reasonable to say “oh you’re not doing it properly”. That excuse could be used to avoid responsibility for literally anything . Hype bros use that to defend token scams (“you just don’t get it”). There’s an increasing mountain of evidence that shows agile just doesn’t w…

> There’s an increasing mountain of evidence that shows agile just doesn’t work

Do you have any keywords I can search for to find this evidence?

I haven’t looked at in in ~4 years, but the Project Management Institute (PMI) used to publish some reports based on surveys that said ~70% of corporate projects fail. I am interested in comparing the evidence you’ve seen with the evidence the PMI has put together.

Edit: I think the language is “70% of projects fail to realize the planned benefits”

I haven’t looked at it in years, so I could be way off. I believe that projects that are completed 2 weeks late are classified as failures the same way a project that is abandoned half way through is.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#850

all the sudden all companies are doing 8 rounds of interviews

this is the problem im seeing as well

then after 8 rounds they say you experience isn't enough for this sr/tech/lead role why not come for this role below that. But experience part was actually most clear from the start, it said right in the resume how much exp I had.
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