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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

#251

Post by rowanajmarshall »

danielvaughn wrote: post #240
noodlenotes wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funny thing is that I might assume a CEO/CTO at a small startup has less experience than a "Chief Software Architect." My assumption would be that the executives are founders and that there's not a minimum experience requirement for founders.

Interesting, hadn't thought of that. But wouldn't you assume the same of an architect at a small startup?

If you take the stereotypical Silicon Valley style start of 2-4 founders in their 20s or early 30s, someone is gonna be CTO, and there's a good chance they'll have relatively little experience. But a Chief Architect, I'd assume was an experienced early hire rather than a founder.

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

#252

Post by delecti »

silicon2401 wrote: post #62
wccrawford wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My standard advice is to use a job title that fits your ability. If you don't, it's going to be a bad fit. That said, if you're looking for a new job and are still a junior, you're probably switching far too quickly. My plan was to switch at 3 years experience, at which point I'd drop the junior title for sure. I ended up staying longer (because they increased my pay very well the first 3 years, and then started scre…

> That said, if you're looking for a new job and are still a junior, you're probably switching far too quickly. couldn't disagree more. people should change jobs every week if they're able to. why stay at company A making X, if company B is willing to hire you now, for 1.5-3x? if you stay at a company for an arbitrarily long period of time, you're just throwing away tons of money

> why stay at company A

It obviously isn't a universal preference, but I get most of my job satisfaction from having deep familiarity with the ecosystem I work with. I don't get that level of familiarity before a year or two, and it only gets stronger from there. I'm about to hit 4 years at my current job and my job satisfaction has never been higher. I might be able to make more money by hopping to a FAANG, but I would surely take a hit to my happiness.

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

#253

Post by raincom »

AmericanBlarney wrote: post #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…

Indian offshoring companies like Wipro, TCS, etc pay $500 per month for fresh graduates from the engineering colleges, where lecturers are incompetent. In a team of 10, only two are capable, all others are for billable hours for these companies. Some of these newbies can learn and improve skills and jump to other companies in a couple of years.

In the end, what matters is the cheapest labor, and billable hours. Account managers are judged on how much profit they bring.

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

#255

Post by [deleted] »

belter wrote: post #202
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.

Those salaries are only possible, because most of it is stock compensation, highly inflated due to the biggest stock market bubble of the last 30 years. As of next week, as soon as the Fed starts raising rates, the stock market will crater. These compensation values will then become what companies are really willing to pay. Not much different from other parts of the world. If you factor in the risk of bankruptcy in t…

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by sangnoir »

This article sounds like uninformed speculation. Every semi-serious will do (or outsource) candidate background checks to verify identity and employment history. It may be possible to fake histories to customers at body shops/WITCH because the employer is in on it, everywhere else, the lies will be short lived.

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

#257

Post by kjgkjhfkjf »

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…

Feel free not to engage in this practice if it offends your moral sensibilities, but you will be at a disadvantage if you do. Experienced resume readers are aware of the amount of self-aggrandizement that goes on, and your modest and truthful claims would be subject to the same amount of skepticism as everyone else's.

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

#258

Post by srvmshr »

robbyking wrote: post #40
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…

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.

At my current startup, I recommended everyone to hold the title of Research Engineer. I was to be recruited as a Software architect / Principal tech lead, but I chose to keep this title too & suggested the same to my peer & immediate junior. Something good that I learned from Facebook Engineering flat organization structure.

Keeping the hierarchy flatter helped more honest communication. There were lesser inhibitions to talk & express opinion. In any disagreement, experience seniority played the subtle hand to navigate discussion.

Compensation matters, title shouldn't.

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

#259

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by quesera »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #166
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…

It really depends on what kind of developer you're looking for. In the web applications I've worked on, knowledge of application architecture and experience with linux trumps anything I learned in a college course. Based on my experience, theory problems on white boards is about as useful as dropping a CUPs automation problem on unsuspecting interviewees. Build me a CUPs driver that drops pdf into in folder in 15 min…

I'm confused by your juxtaposition of declared familiarity to nonstandard capitalization of CUPS.
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