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How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

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Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#81

Post by robbyking »

selestify wrote: post #64
gambiting wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how HN sometimes behaves as if the entire world is one or two small corners of the US.

If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do — it is indeed a pretty typical offer Love how I’m downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year. It’s really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.

What percentage of US workers work in FAANG and FAANG-adjacent companies?

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#82

Post by gambiting »

selestify wrote: post #64
gambiting wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how HN sometimes behaves as if the entire world is one or two small corners of the US.

If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do — it is indeed a pretty typical offer Love how I’m downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year. It’s really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.

>>If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do

Yes, and globally that's still nothing. You are talking about the elite of the elite, chosen ones among the chosen ones. In other 1st world countries, and even in majority of USA no, recent graduates are not paid quarter of a million dollars. There's a select, very exclusive, very limited group of people who do. But like others have pointed out already - that's not "typical" by any definition of the word.

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#83

Post by sailingparrot »

uncomputation wrote: post #42

This is another reason that, while I understand people’s complaints, I still believe CS interviews should include algorithmic and whiteboard tests. I know they may seem “outdated” or “irrelevant” to some, and yes, it is very unlikely that you will need to implement Dijkstra’s algorithm by hand without any reference, but it is more that it shows a general competence in computing which will transfer to other, more rele…

>since the entire field is about solving problems efficiently.

The entire theoretical CS field yes. In the practical field of CS engineering, this is only a subset of the useful competences and a small one at that. Communication, working as part of team, reliability, ability to look up and learn things you don't currently know, caring about the state of the code you write, mentoring others, being able/willing to push for things you believe can be done better (not just in terms of algorithm, but processes affecting the entire business) etc. are all as important.

I would much rather hire someone that sucks in algos/data structure, but is fairly good on all those other points than the opposite.

So yes, whiteboarding can be useful to assess how a candidate is doing on one of the specific skills that are useful for a CS engineer, but if 50% to 90% of your hiring decision is based on that, just like it is in FANGs today, you have an inadequate hiring process IMHO.

For the average SDE job. If your job is to implement and optimize a compiler, then sure it's extremely important.

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#84

Post by tom-thistime »

a4isms wrote: post #7

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…

'Senior Engineer' is just a pay grade. I'm sorry, maybe the world should be a saner place, but that's how it is.

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#85

Post by selestify »

gambiting wrote: post #82
selestify wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do — it is indeed a pretty typical offer Love how I’m downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year. It’s really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.

>>If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do Yes, and globally that's still nothing. You are talking about the elite of the elite, chosen ones among the chosen ones. In other 1st world countries, and even in majority of USA no, recent graduates are not paid quarter of a million dollars. There's a select, very exclusive, very limited group of people who do. But like others have pointe…

It’s definitely not atypical when you’re talking about over a million people combined. That’s a pretty big population.

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#86

Post by marcellus23 »

selestify wrote: post #64
gambiting wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how HN sometimes behaves as if the entire world is one or two small corners of the US.

If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do — it is indeed a pretty typical offer Love how I’m downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year. It’s really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.

> If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do

Since when does "typical" mean "graduated from a top 10 school"? That's why you're being downvoted.

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#87

Post by selestify »

tragictrash wrote: post #78
selestify wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do — it is indeed a pretty typical offer Love how I’m downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year. It’s really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.

It might not be rare to you but you have to realize that there are 6+ billion people on this planet. It's fucking rare.

No duh, but a city of a million people is a pretty fucking big city. It’s not that rare.

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#88

Post by ipaddr »

A developer doesn't become a senior developer until they realize they know nothing and can truly start to learn.

As a junior you want to master the syntax and framework.

As an senior immediate developer you have mastered the framework/language and you can do anything. You are sure you have found the way and will share and fight for this way over all others.

As a senior developer you see more and realize you actually know very little. The stack you mastered is one of many and the one way can be replaced by a number of different ways.

As a true master developer you realize the framework/language has been programming you.

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#89

Post by iancmceachern »

selestify wrote: post #64
gambiting wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how HN sometimes behaves as if the entire world is one or two small corners of the US.

If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do — it is indeed a pretty typical offer Love how I’m downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean, for fuck’s sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year. It’s really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.

Yeah but this is less than 1/10 of 1% of the number of people that graduate every year. By the same logic you could say that everyone has trust funds, because most of the people in this small slice have them. Just because something applies to the top 0.1% of the US doesn't mean it applies to the rest of the 99.9%. This is the problem with wealth and opportunity disparity in this country. The haves think that the have nots are in that position due to choice. It's not a choice to be born into poverty.

Re: How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

#90

Post by gambiting »

selestify wrote: post #85
gambiting wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US — which plenty of people do Yes, and globally that's still nothing. You are talking about the elite of the elite, chosen ones among the chosen ones. In other 1st world countries, and even in majority of USA no, recent graduates are not paid quarter of a million dollars. There's a select, very exclusive, very limited group of people who do. But like others have pointe…

It’s definitely not atypical when you’re talking about over a million people combined. That’s a pretty big population.

Milion people graduate from those top 10 universities every year? How big are those universities????
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