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The publish date on this post is today (Feb 11th) but I think I've seen this exact article posted to HN before (perhaps with a different title).
Author here. I wrote this post after my comment on the post you're mentioning was rather well received. People asked me to write about that experience in more detail, so I did and shared it here. It's a related story, not an identical one.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I'm not at all surprised that foreign students could easily get sucked into this kind of scheme what really surprises me is that an American CS grad would not have much better options, especially with all the hype about "lack of workers".
I know at least a handful of people who graduated out of my CS program at a very reputed university but probably couldn't do fizzbuzz. And even otherwise, in recent years companies have massively cut down on new grad hiring because they don't want to spend time and money training them. Much easier to poach an experienced engineer from a competitor instead.
I've been involved in hiring decisions on teams I've been part of for a long time now. Blatant plagiarism, obvious embellishments and more subtle BS is literally part of the game unfortunately. This is particularly prevalent when dealing with (almost) any consultancy, large and small. I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice…
Akvelon consultants have been consistently better than some FTEs in my experience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes it means “someone who can bill $300 an hour” with no relation to actual ability. I was a “senior” three years out of college and I had no clue what in the world I was doing. Come to think of it after 20 years I kinda still feel that way.
So imposter syndrome is justified sometimes is what you're saying?
There is no standard whatsoever for the adjective "Senior" when applied to engineers: Sometimes it means, "Able to work without someone looking over their shoulder at all times." Sometimes it means, "Able to lead and mentor others." And sometimes it means, "Has organizational skills above and beyond engineering skills, able to lead cross-team initiatives and deal with all the human/organization issues around the engi…
If you look around Indeed, Senior Engineer is basically equal to 5 years experience.
I've been involved in hiring decisions on teams I've been part of for a long time now. Blatant plagiarism, obvious embellishments and more subtle BS is literally part of the game unfortunately. This is particularly prevalent when dealing with (almost) any consultancy, large and small. I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice…
Been my experience your regular software org does something very similar. Who among us hasn’t had to drop an entire epic’s worth of work to go spin up some MVP (that eventually becomes a bug-riddled production shitstorm) of a component because a claim got made on a sales call that “we’ve been working on it for weeks” and a promise got made that “we could have a demo ready to go just for you by the end of the quarter”? Because you’re “the senior”.
Not saying it’s the norm.
Just that it happens probably more than it should.
I've been involved in hiring decisions on teams I've been part of for a long time now. Blatant plagiarism, obvious embellishments and more subtle BS is literally part of the game unfortunately. This is particularly prevalent when dealing with (almost) any consultancy, large and small. I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice…
>It's sad, but honestly the prevalence of these practices (and perhaps growth of them?) only makes the genuine among us more valuable. I wish this were the case, but I don't think it's true. On the one hand, real, proven experts do get called in to fix these phonies' messes. On the other, often these people succeed often enough that it devalues our labor as a whole. Finally, if employers cannot determine real experts…
I've been involved in hiring decisions on teams I've been part of for a long time now. Blatant plagiarism, obvious embellishments and more subtle BS is literally part of the game unfortunately. This is particularly prevalent when dealing with (almost) any consultancy, large and small. I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice…
I’ll call Infosys out. I’ve worked with people from there who literally did not know how to program. They were moved off quickly. There are some solid people there but hard to find in my experience. Akvelon consultants have been consistently better than some FTEs in my experience.
There is no standard whatsoever for the adjective "Senior" when applied to engineers: Sometimes it means, "Able to work without someone looking over their shoulder at all times." Sometimes it means, "Able to lead and mentor others." And sometimes it means, "Has organizational skills above and beyond engineering skills, able to lead cross-team initiatives and deal with all the human/organization issues around the engi…
Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you.