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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

#91

Post by curun1r »

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…

As someone who has hired a new grad into a “Senior Engineer” role, it meant the title of the salary band that met the candidate’s salary requirements to make our offer competitive with the other offers he received.

We wanted to hire a junior role since our team was already relatively senior. But the company’s salary bands were not at all competitive for entry-level developers. So we classed the new hire as senior to make it work.

Some companies’ policies are stupid and inflexible and engineers would rather just work around the problem than having to fight against HR.

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

#92

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gambiting wrote: post #53
yunyu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quarter million dollars is what a typical new grad offer looks like nowadays

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

It is highly likely that the former vice president of a startup is actually from one of those two small corners of the US (given that these also seem to be hot startup scenes), so it isn't a weird assumption for senior roles (not new grad ones). It isn't mentioned if she is a SWE or not, however, which would make a huge difference.

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

#93

Post by notyourday »

yunyu wrote: post #43
robbyking wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note, I dated a woman who was promoted to vice president of a small start up when she was in her 20's. She had to hide her title on her resume when she left because no established firm wanted to hire someone whom they assumed they'd need to pay a quarter million dollars to be competitive. Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you.

A quarter million dollars is what a typical new grad offer looks like nowadays

Incorrect. The tax code makes this kind of an offer an exception rather than a rule. There's a reason why Amazon just now upped the top $ into 300k range. That's also a reason why most of astronomical cash salaries are done as B2B via pass through entities.

The vast majority of people talking about those salaries just heard of a few people that make that money and extrapolated to the rest.

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

#94

Post by selestify »

gambiting wrote: post #90
selestify wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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????

No post body was provided.

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

#95

Post by gambiting »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #92
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.

It is highly likely that the former vice president of a startup is actually from one of those two small corners of the US (given that these also seem to be hot startup scenes), so it isn't a weird assumption for senior roles (not new grad ones). It isn't mentioned if she is a SWE or not, however, which would make a huge difference.

I don't know, I think saying that it's "typical" to be paid 250k as a graduate is pretty damn weird.

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

#96

Post by corpdronejuly »

dvtrn wrote: post #37
nicholasjarnold wrote: post #2

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…

some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice after they overbook themselves for projects for which they do not have staff on the bench to fill 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…

My response is. You lied not me, and I know how many recruiters emailed me this week and you don't. Please don't play those games, I am here because I want to be. Lies make me not want to be.

Yeah I'm replaceable, but the pain of that replacement is usually more than the pain of making a sales guy eat some crow.

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

#97

Post by walleeee »

munificent wrote: post #55
nicholasjarnold wrote: post #2

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…

> is literally part of the game unfortunately I strongly disagree with this framing. There is no "game". There are just the actions of the individual players. Yes, in some sense, lying is part of the "game" in that some players will do it. But extending that to saying "it's part of the game" implies that all players must use those moves, which is absolutely false. It also implies that you are morally excused from doi…

> A core concept behind something being a "game" is that it exists in a morally isolated sandbox

This is interesting; if true, what of game theory's seat at the core of many notions of strategy as deployed for explicitly moral purposes?

Also, anecdotally, I've seen pretty good results putting some campy, tongue in cheek acknowledgement that I'm not playing games in the resume/cover letter space where these alleged "rules of the game" might otherwise dictate meaningless boilerplate should go

Some employers seem to appreciate honesty and a reluctance to bullshit

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

#98

Post by pmontra »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9
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…

If you look around Indeed, Senior Engineer is basically equal to 5 years experience.

I think I started going to interview customers with my boss very early on my first job in the 90s. I've been given a team to manage after two years and I started doing interviews, analysis, requirements, etc on my own. Basically I was a senior engineer by then. The company was always very supportive so if I had to ask for advice I had somebody to ask to. After all 1/n-th of my boss' career depended by the outcome of my job.

Of course I'm much better at that kind of job now. I wonder how I could really understand my customers but obviously it was good enough.

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

#99

Post by babyshake »

ThalesX wrote: post #48
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…

Funnily enough in my career, whenever I took a job after an algorithm and whiteboard test, I would find myself doing the most basic CRUD applications whereas when I interviewed in a more humane way, by talking and exploring the knowledge set I bring to the table, I ended up working with cool algorithms in some highly technical areas.

You mean you're not constantly balancing binary trees and implementing your own bubble sort algorithms? I figured from interviews that this is 95% of what engineers at SaaS companies are doing.

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

#100

Post by renewiltord »

gambiting wrote: post #53
yunyu wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A quarter million dollars is what a typical new grad offer looks like nowadays

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

Read the domain name. The entire world is these corners in the US.
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