Me and many other people I know will not do take-home assignments. Top paying (FAANG) companies do not require them.
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
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure. The majority of comments from Seniors with 20 years of experience so far (including myself) are of the same type. Friendly meet and greets that are informal, no coding test or take home assignment. My best guess is your job referrals aren't from senior level people, while ours are. The CTO is the one who wants me. Or the top Senior who has control of the process. But I'm just guessing. The norm for me is in…
For me (20+ year club): 1.) Senior Dev referred me, and they had a remarkable relationship with management - informal chat and offer that afternoon 2.) Senior Dev referred me, and they had a normal relationship with management - regular interview 3.) CTO referred me - informal chat with them and the CEO, offer letter handed to me at the end of the chat with the CEO. So I've found that it really depends on who is refe…
Agreed, well said. I could make a similar list as you did, but it's essentially the same.
VPs, and CTOs most often, informal chat, offer.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#133This is a tip for everyone struggling to find someone to hire; look in a different pool of candidates and be willing to accommodate them. For example, you can find a lot of very skilled developers that are disabled.
I know a lot of people that have been coding professionally for 10+ years, have popularish open source projects, been lead devs at startups etc; yet feel stuck in their current jobs or even struggle to get hired. They would instantly job jump to something better or would love to switch from contract work to something with good health insurance/benefits. You just have to be a company willing to accommodate them. And accommodating their needs requires far less investment than paying FAANG level salaries to attract the same Sr engineers everyone else is competing for.
You can find engineers.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#1344 hours?
try reducing that to an hour.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#135Having just spent 3 weeks on 4x hour long interviews and completing a day long coding problem along with a "code while I watch" to get to the point that "we're tabling this for a few months" I suspect many of us senior types are just tabling the job seeking process ourselves until we seem to be in actual demand.
Sometimes companies pay for the time it takes to complete a take-home project. I think it’s a good idea, especially now given all the hiring freezes and especially for a remote position where the applicant has no idea how many other applicants (around the country/world) they might be competing against.
Has anyone ever expected (or received) payment for time off to attend interviews though?
Seems to me like a bad reaction to the relatively new thing, but actually the criticism applies just as well to the older thing.
(Maybe it should all be paid! Though having job search funded by prospective employers does seem a bit weird.. I think really I just think it's neither here nor there in terms of morality or whatever - but the 'take-home' isn't fundamentally different from the interview. If anything it might be better in this regard already, since I don't have to take time off for it (but also can, if I prefer that to spending my evening/weekend on it)?)
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#136> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing
This is why I wouldn't continue interviewing with you, but perhaps not for the reasons you think.
Despite my 15 years of experience as a software developer, your test will likely have some edge-case question that I won't get right. I'm terrible at timed tests, but I'm not a terrible software developer. Why should I spend 4 hours of my weekend failing to prove myself to you? I'd so much rather spend an hour or two having a detailed, technical conversation with you—and I think you would too. You can glean a lot from a conversation (it's easy to copy/paste code from Stack Overflow, but it's not easy to fake it through a lengthy, technical discussion)!
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#137Your job description is a close match to what I'm currently doing, "senior" developer who gradually transitioned into platform engineering due to the need and greater than average for a developer familiarity and comfort with the platform and infrastructure layers of the stack. I currently work for one of the CNCF software vendors doing consulting engineering for customers setting up their own platforms for multi-tenant, heterogeneous workloads.
I'll say I don't really mind the take-home assessment, contra most of what you're seeing here, but 4 hours is pushing it. 1 hour max is more in line with what I'm willing to do for a pre-interview screen.
The bigger obstacle for me is why would I be looking for jobs to apply to in the first place? I haven't applied for a job since getting out of the Army and moving into the software world at all. Not once. Every job I have taken in this industry has either been from a recruiter or professional network reaching out to me. I've never looked for a job and never plan to, so I'd never see your ad and I don't read the Hacker News who's hiring pages. Recruiters who don't give a salary range aren't going to hear back from me unless it's a FAANG-level company with a well-known salary range I already know, though. I'm often annoyed by the amount of "not writing code" I have to do, but I'm used to it at this point.
I'll just grant your claim as a person who works there that the job is sufficiently enjoyable and pays well that I'd consider it all things being equal, but the biggest obstacle is just that I don't look for jobs. People offering jobs look for me. How good your ad is means nothing if I never see it and don't want to see it.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#138I was looking for a job, had 3 offers all of them without an assignment.
I had one job opportuniy i liked, with a 4h assignment and i didn't get the job.
I fully accept doing and learning for Google or Microsoft or Apple etc. but they pay in germany like 30-50k a year more than the normal companies.
Normal company is 80k, the others are 120k up to 160k.
And others mentioned it but i want to repeat it: The offer i actually took (and it was the best choice as well) was actually because an ex collegue pointed me to it. There was already a foot in the door.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#139> 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.
The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors.
I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry.
My schedule is
6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night)
9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to my home office
12:00 PM lunch with family / kids
1:00 PM back to work
5:00 PM off work... Cook dinner / watch kids while wife cooks dinner. Set up table. Eat with family.
6:30 PM Play with kids for an hour
7:30 PM Bathtime + off to bed
9:30 - 10:30 PM Infant child actually goes to sleep
10:30 - 11:00 PM Wife and I chat about our day and spend 30 minutes of time actually being together
11:00 PM sleep until 6:30 the next day
Exactly where in that schedule am I supposed to fit a FOUR HOUR coding assignment. That's ridiculous. Unless you're providing child care, this is simply too much.
A one hour interview... I can handle.
Perhaps you'd get better leads by allowing for a choice. For my last job search. I had several different companies all in the upcoming AI accelerator space. Two of them had assignments. I said no thanks. The others did interviews. I got a good raise (base + stock options)anyway. I don't think I lost anything saying no to the ones with assignments.
Alternatively, perhaps pay people to complete the assignments.
Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it
#140Your process seems reasonable. How detailed is the job spec? Is there something you could add to it? Is the screening process by recruiter consistent?