Live data from Hacker News

How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers

blog.kuperate.com

151–160 of 332 posts

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

#151
When I was interviewing developers from a very large offshoring firm, they covertly had an account manager listening in to take down the questions for future candidates. Each interview, I'd ask a slightly different variation and it became obvious what was going on when a candidate gave a textbook answer to the question I'd asked the previous candidate, including references to tables I hadn't mentioned and that had no purpose in the problem I presented them.

Also had an incident where I interviewed one person but am pretty sure someone different showed up and was completely clueless about the most basic tasks. Within a week I think they figured out that I was onto them and made some excuse to quit about taking a contract closer to home.

Honestly, at this point many American companies have an office of their own offshore, and it's generally considered more prestigious and better condensated to work for those companies directly, so I assume there's close to zero talent left in the large outsourcers.

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

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blue collar workers are some of the hardest working people I know. Some of them make as much as 40k per year. Yes, I said "as much". You really, really need to check yourself. You have no idea how good you have it.

Oh I know I have it good. 1% in terms of income. And I come from a really unprivileged background. Uneducated parents, family on welfare. Shit man, we were so poor, I got into college for free based on needs.

Then check yourself and your privileged "everyone gets a 200k offer unless they're stupid and lazy" statements.

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

#153

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.

[deleted]

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

#154
Oh God, I got two paragraphs in and thought, "This sounds like Unbounded Solutions/BrighterBrain/Enhance IT." They called me a few times, then I looked them up and discovered their business model, and everything in me said "avoid, avoid, avoid". Knowing there's another firm doing this, and hearing the sordid details, has me feeling blackpilled at the state of the industry.

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

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I know I have it good. 1% in terms of income. And I come from a really unprivileged background. Uneducated parents, family on welfare. Shit man, we were so poor, I got into college for free based on needs.

Then check yourself and your privileged "everyone gets a 200k offer unless they're stupid and lazy" statements.

No post body was provided.

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

#156
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ding ding ding, we have a winner! I'm running a hiring competition right now for a "Senior." The pay band is less than what entry level startups pay. So we rotate through a never ending stream of kids who leave for better salaries because we don't have any higher levels. Sometimes we do get lucky and pick up a mediocre lifer (like me) so HR sees no incentive to change. Never take a job for a company where you are not…

> Sometimes we do get lucky and pick up a mediocre lifer (like me)

why?

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

#157
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand how Infosys still exists. Perhaps this is just my bubble showing, but it seems pretty well-known that they're a scam factory.

It is not just them and it is a game everyone plays, including their clients. I had several engagements with them on various projects, we had to use them because the internal headcount was limited, while for external suppliers there was no limit, so we had up to 5 external people for every of ours. Most of these kind of companies behave the same, we had small specialized suppliers that provided good quality and value for the work, but the companies on a comment below are all in the same bucket of garbage.

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

#158

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????

Exactly. Even if we take MIT which seems to graduate AT MOST 10,000 students each year -- times 10 (10x)-- it's only 100,000 graduates. The 1 million comes from where?

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

#159
post #91
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…

I think you've nailed it.

Prospects, if they can overcome the flattery of being offered a title beyond their skill and experience, should actually recognize such as a warning sign. After all, a company willing to do such a thing is likely a place full of stupid and inflexible policies where HR has too much power.

Sorry you have to play such games to get decent talent, but beware a nasty side effect: your actual senior engineers are going to need new titles to reflect the peer group they actually belong to. They may be (and perhaps rightly so) insulted by the insinuation that a new graduate is equally valuable to the company.

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

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family was so poor, I got into college for free. Talk about unprivileged.

But you had the privilege if uncommon intelligence and test taking ability. Not all privilege is money.

Too bad. Life isn’t fair. Evolution got us to where we were, and I’m glad that we have consciousness due to relentless natural selection.
Post reply on HN