Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We will never have enough software developers (2020)

whoisnnamdi.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 553 posts

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#301

Post by throwaway2037 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #124
Patrol8394 wrote: post #110

There is no shortage of swe. What I see and what I have experienced first hand is that companies, especially the more hyped/small ones, pretend to be FAANG and gets very picky when interviewing. They often employ FAANG style interview. Now, if I really have to spend that much time prepping to interview at your unprofitable company (that most likely will go under) don’t you think that I would try my best to work at fa…

I definitely think "we do not do leetcode interviews" and maybe "we only have three interviews total" would be selling points on a job posting. People who are experienced in the field don't want to go through the same hoops that newbies do just to prove they know how to write basic algorithms.

You wrote: >

I am constantly interviewing candidates for roles at my company. It seems like CVs are a complete gamble. Either some are lies, or wildy understated, and everything in between -- at all levels of experience! "[J]ust to prove..." and yet so many can not do the 2022 version of FizzBuzz. I am stunned how many senior (well, so they say!) hands-on technical applicants cannot do basic things like write a very simple linked list class, or explain to me how a hash map works. For get about explaining the finer points of sorting algorithms (honestly, very low value in my line of work).

There is no reasonable alternative to testing of some kind for hands-on techincal roles -- I am flexible about method: (1) white board coding (ugh in 2022), (2) IDE/text editor on shared PC / video chat (meh / eh in 2022), or (3) take home (the best in 2022, even if there are drawbacks for people with families).

Joel Spolsky said it best about hiring: The goal is to avoid bad hires. Average and above are fine.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#302

Post by alephxyz »

goldenshale wrote: post #240

I think this article hits on some truths and gets a handful of things wrong. First, they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding. No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners where this is a benefit of the profession rather than a drawback. That said, one thing I noticed from teaching computer scien…

It's hard to blame students when they look at job postings and all that they see advertised is positions for programmers using languages X, Y and Z, or when they see tweets and blog posts by hotshot programmers about frameworks A and B.

The entire industry focuses way too much on 'experience with tool X' as a proxy for 'technical skill Y'. It's a bit like asking a carpenter how many years of experience they have with DeWalt cordless nail guns rather than ask about their house framing skills.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#304

Post by phuff »

cleandreams wrote: post #225

I retired a bit early and I have found it immensely rewarding to take classes in various hard technical subjects. Some of these are directly applicable to jobs I could do, or have done. I think tech employers should be more supportive of life long learning. I get dinged by recruiters constantly because my resume is great but I'd rather do this, TBH. I have worked in FAANG btw. Retired at principal level.

Hey! I'm trying to plan out my career a bit and I was wondering if I could pick your brain a bit. There's an email that can get to me in my profile, if you're willing to give me some advice :)

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#305

Post by throwaway2037 »

Patrol8394 wrote: post #235
whimsicalism wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I do because I enjoy working with very smart people. The backlash against leetcode is the same as backlash against other types of tests: most people are going to fail and most people don't like failing, so they blame the test.

leetcode == smart ? oO that's new I interview many candidates at FAANG, I can easily tell the ones that have prep by just doing leetcode and the ones that knows the shit. I couldn't care less if you can solve all kinds of complex dynamic programming challenges. I ask coding questions that you won't find in leetcode and requires problem solving skill and good craft. And this is because I do like working with smart peo…

I like this kind of answer. You are trying to be the leetcode alternative, which I fully support. I have previously written on HN about my most common interview programming question: "Please implement the classic C function atoi() in any language of your choice. Do not use built-in string-to-number functions." This question has a lot of edge cases, but it is simple enough to program on whiteboard, paper, text editor, weird-IDE-that-I-never-used-before-this-interview(!). The questions that people ask and how they explain their solution says a lot about them as engineers.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#306

Post by whimsicalism »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #305
Patrol8394 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

leetcode == smart ? oO that's new I interview many candidates at FAANG, I can easily tell the ones that have prep by just doing leetcode and the ones that knows the shit. I couldn't care less if you can solve all kinds of complex dynamic programming challenges. I ask coding questions that you won't find in leetcode and requires problem solving skill and good craft. And this is because I do like working with smart peo…

I like this kind of answer. You are trying to be the leetcode alternative, which I fully support. I have previously written on HN about my most common interview programming question: "Please implement the classic C function atoi() in any language of your choice. Do not use built-in string-to-number functions." This question has a lot of edge cases, but it is simple enough to program on whiteboard, paper, text editor,…

i would call that leetcode style i guess i have a broader interpretation than what most people have in mind. it's more easily memorized IMO than traditional leetcode - atoi and std::string class are very common questions nowadays.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#307

Post by mattgreenrocks »

> The highest ability, fastest learners disproportionately leave the field over time. They have a multitude of other ways to profitably leverage their intellect and skills. Software development carries serious opportunity cost.

Curious where some HN users have gone when they left software dev, especially if it is something other than management of some type.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#308

Post by onion2k »

plutonorm wrote: post #282
onion2k wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess how much would get done if you learned to explain why that work is important to a non-technical colleague? Lots. People don't always understand code, but they do understand problems, and why those problems are important to keep on top of. If your PO is sensible then a couple of paragraphs explaining why refactoring is important with a closing line that says spending a week catching up on refactoring now will sa…

This is like needing to ask to go to the toilet. It's degrading. Utterly disrespectful. You expect people to stick around?

Updating a dependency, refactoring some code, or just making a 'simple' change sets off a chain of events that affect other people. The other devs need to review the code, the QA team need to test it, and then regression test the rest of the app, the devops team need to deploy it, the legal team need to update the legal documentation that lists the licenses for the dependencies the code has, the technical writers need to change the docs if the update has a visible impact for users, and so on, all across your org.

What looks like a small change to a developer is never actually a small change.

I really hope there aren't that many people impacted when you go for a piss.

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#309

Post by [deleted] »

goldenshale wrote: post #240

I think this article hits on some truths and gets a handful of things wrong. First, they are correct that we are in a dynamic profession that requires constant learning and expanding. No doubt the people who choose to stay in software are likely to be people who are curious, life-long learners where this is a benefit of the profession rather than a drawback. That said, one thing I noticed from teaching computer scien…

[deleted]

Re: We will never have enough software developers (2020)

#310

Post by 62951413 »

t_mann wrote: post #73

Some really good points on the ultra-fast depreciation of SE tech skills. A relative of mine is a mechanical engineer, well past retirement age and still going strong in his 2-man consulting shop because that's what he loves doing. He works with precision manufacturers, automotive suppliers,... all very cutting-edge stuff, helping them develop new product lines, manufacturing processes,... He says the core skills tha…

In the last 20 years I have seen mostly ultra-fast depreciation of SE _interviewing_ skills.

After the first ten years software development becomes quite intuitive and you internalize all those best practices. You can be trusted to start a new service from an empty git repository. Later it gets incremental, there's a lot of path dependency in languages and frameworks and few things come out of the blue. Those that do are frequently intellectually stimulating to learn.

But interviews have been steadily getting strange and difficult (in a way not related to real life software development), at least in the last 10 years.

Post reply on HN