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Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

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Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#81

Post by vba616 »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #77
vba616 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it. You expect to hire people making less right now, because most people won't take a pay cut if they aren't forced to. But if you are paying $200K, then presumably you will not hire anyone who is now making $100K, $50K, or $5K. So you're restricted to a fairly narrow band. Where is your "glass ceiling", the minimum someone has to be making for you to take them seriously?

How much someone is making now is not part of the analysis on if they would be a good hire. I wouldn't even ask this within the process.

Let's set aside whether it's explicitly screened for or discussed.

If, hypothetically, you knew what they were making, either as a dollar figure or implicitly because of their previous/current job description, what would be the minimum?

I'm asking something which necessarily has an answer, even if you won't answer it.

I'm asking about the limits to your imagination - where is the boundary between a plausible hire and and one that is not? Both in numeric terms and all the stuff associated with it.

When I wrote $5K, that was a serious possibility - think of it as 4 lakh rupees per annum.

You don't seriously go through the same analysis for everybody. Nobody does. Maybe you won't share exactly when you jettison the analysis, but the important thing is to realize this is where the problem lies, and questioning the implicit rules related to shortcutting your process.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#83

Post by duped »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #23
corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

Lol, take home technical assignment. Why would I ever? I'd much rather have a comfortable conversation with someone who has worked with me in the past. I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour assignment for you.

People say this and I have yet to find a company that doesn't do some kind of technical assessment. But I have seen multiple coworkers with 10-20 years of experience as software engineers with glowing recommendations get fired because they couldn't write software. So I'm a little happier to have some bar for myself and coworkers to clear.

> I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour assignment for you.

Boo hoo, you need to spend four hours of your life to take home multiples of the median American family's income. It blows my mind how conceited some people in this industry can be, and I'm glad I don't work with them. This is one reason why the take home is a great filter.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#84

Post by scruple »

corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

> Many seniors (actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

Just wanted to back this up a little bit. This is exactly what happened to me on my last job search. I'm currently in between jobs, starting the new gig after the 4th of July holiday. The company that I went with: I had a 30 minute call with an engineering VP and the hiring manager that was followed by an hour long panel with a few members of the team that I'm joining. I also learned after I had accepted the offer that the person who referred me internally spent about 45 minutes chatting with the same engineering VP about me specifically before they reached out. This was for a staff/lead position and I've got over 15 years in the industry.

I specifically sought out referrals from former colleagues and friends where the interview process put a lot of emphasis and weight on the internal referral and it worked out really well for me. I really hope that this is a sign of things to come, not just for myself and my future employment but for others, at least at the ("actual") senior level.

edit/ Added some more context...

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#85

Post by necovek »

PainfullyNormal wrote: post #35

I've noticed an increasing reticence from senior programmers I know to have anything to do with DevOps. They see it as an aggravation they don't want in their lives. Somebody posted a little while back about it being easy to find consulting work in DevOps with relatively little skill, especially AWS pricing, specifically because devs at companies aren't putting in the time to learn AWS properly. Has anybody else noti…

I find it funny that you said "learn AWS properly" — have you loaded AWS services page recently? I've seen even very experienced DevOps engineers struggle to remember what was the service name to get into "parameter value store" (and I already forgot, and that was two weeks ago).

AWS is a mess. You learn just enough to get by and long for the days of simplicity where you could manage a bunch of servers yourself.

Oh, sorry, we are using Azure or GPC or OpenStack, that's an entirely new set of names for you to even know what you are looking for.

K8S is just the same. Every company decides on an "easier to use tool" like k9s that you have to learn from scratch if you don't want to jump through hoops to just use kubectl directly.

If anything is a definition of boring work, it's this: work to assemble a bunch of existing pieces without creating anything really new. I like being tasked with creating things, not being an assembly line worker who's got to learn terminology de jour.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#86

Post by tuckerpo »

> - Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing

That's probably your problem. You've gotta respect people's time. It'd be ok if that were the final step in the process, but it looks like it's followed by Yet Another Interview Round (TM). Try to slim that down, or remove the "presentation" aspect, and have it be the team's burden to audit the assignment. Ask for a small writeup explaining their technical decisions from the candidate instead.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#87

Post by scruple »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #59
corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

Absolutely agree. People with 10+ years, a good network and decent resume pop their head up above the parapet and get instantly mobbed with offers. They're on the market 2 weeks, tops. No-one good is going to do a takehome just so the hiring team can rub their beards and feel superior while they pick over the code. That approach worked a few years ago, in today's recruitment bear market you don't pick the candidates,…

> They're on the market 2 weeks, tops.

My last search lasted 9 days from when I put out the signal to having interviewed (for 3 companies) and negotiated an offer and submitted my resignation and 2 weeks notice.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#88

Post by AndyNemmity »

duped wrote: post #83
AndyNemmity wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, take home technical assignment. Why would I ever? I'd much rather have a comfortable conversation with someone who has worked with me in the past. I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour assignment for you.

People say this and I have yet to find a company that doesn't do some kind of technical assessment. But I have seen multiple coworkers with 10-20 years of experience as software engineers with glowing recommendations get fired because they couldn't write software. So I'm a little happier to have some bar for myself and coworkers to clear. > I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour assignment for you. Boo hoo, you need to spend…

You're not responding in good faith with your "boo hoo" comment. No one is crying here. The point here is there are many, many companies that don't require a 4 hour take home technical assessment, and thus people can decide to do them or not.

The post is about this topic, so the responses are about the topic. You think that 4 hour take home technical assessments are a reasonable filter. Awesome, you are a person who can apply for the position op is focused on.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#89

Post by PainfullyNormal »

svillar wrote: post #80

Lots of great comments here; My thoughts on this as other Seniors have pointed out (and I am a Senior myself) 1- I have not looked for a job since 2014, every job since came through my network. Then the interviews were basically friendly meet&greets but super informal, not a single coding test or take home assignment - note than I always started as Tech lead/Architect. I put in the hours and took pride in my work, ha…

> Then the interviews were basically friendly meet&greets but super informal, not a single coding test or take home assignment

I have 20 years experience and this is completely alien to my experience. I've gotten lots of job referrals over the years, but all it did was get my foot in the door. From there, it was the standard interview process with whiteboarding and take home tests. What am I missing here?

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#90

Post by ransom1538 »

AndyNemmity wrote: post #22
potamic wrote: post #17

Good, experienced people would usually have built a decent network for themselves over their career. As seniority grows, you will find them less and less applying for new jobs, and more and more relying on their networks for new work. And if they are good, they very likely are sitting on open offers from well known ex-colleagues that they could take up at anytime. You will do much better to tap in through your own ne…

This is a great point. I cannot imagine doing a real interview at this point. I decided to do one the last time I was job hunting just to see what the world has to offer. I was interviewed for a position, and was clearly perfect, but I couldn't get that across to more than half of the people interviewing me. I had some people in my corner, but others were concerned I wasn't technical enough which is hilarious. Why wo…

Yeah at startups we called those people "pushons". Basically, the CTO would say hey, "this is eric, s/he starts tomorrow". Mercenaries. Pros. No interviews, no questions, no linked ins. Usually "pushons" turn into top performers. With a 6 month runway and cash being burned - we didn't have much time for fizzbuzz.
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