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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

#261

Post by BadCookie »

randrews wrote: post #181
k2052 wrote: post #133

This 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 ge…

How exactly do you do that? I work for a company also struggling to find good senior developers and since the team is 100% remote, it's not like we'd have any idea if they were disabled or not...

Some ideas ...

- Do not put requirements into the job description if they aren't true requirements. For example, "ability to lift 25 pounds" is one that I see a lot, along with various other physical abilities that I don't think devs working from home actually need regularly.

- Offer extra paid (or unpaid!) time off, a 4-day work week, or other types of schedule flexibility.

- Minimize the required travel or indicate flexibility in this area for disabled applicants. (In-person meetups and adventures sound fun and totally reasonable for most able-bodied people who can travel alone, but for a wheelchair user who needs a personal care aide, your quarterly off-site to go skiing at Tahoe is, well, not a great fit.)

I'm answering mainly from the perspective of a physically disabled person with mobility issues. I'm sure people with other sorts of disabilities would come up with a very different list.

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

#262

Post by geekbird »

conradfr wrote: post #222
lewispollard wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what exactly OP is assigning to applicants, but in my experience a "four hour" coding assignment can be completed in an hour or two - and they don't have to be consecutive hours, it just means four hours is your limit and you have a few days or a week to complete it in.

In my experience a (not timeboxed) 4 hours coding assignment will actually take at least a day. Is not necessary malicious from those companies, they just underestimate the time their test take.

IMO, most engineers massively under-estimate the time it takes to do "simple" tasks if you don't already have the infrastructure/environment set up for it.

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

#263

Post by oaiey »

pnathan wrote: post #231
capableweb wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you get from a whiteboard/take home assignment that you can't get from a conversation where you grill them about their answers?

Conversations allow smooth talkers to run a snow job on you. Having a work sample test provides a best-in-class hiring filter.

If the hiring manager cannot distinguish a smooth talker for a senior role position, maybe the hiring manager is the problem.

There is nothing a work sample can provide what a conversation cannot show for a senior role.

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

#264

Post by gleenn »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #244

I am going to add one thing that I haven't heard here. You probably need to raise the cash in your offer by a lot. Most mid-size companies think that they can get away with offering equity at a ridiculous valuation and attract people who aren't true believers. Most people aren't true believers in miscellaneous DevOps that doesn't involve a lot of code. I have spoken to a few series-C and D companies that wanted to gi…

To continue that very last sentence, you are doing yourself a disservice, or like a lot of startups I think people just legitamately don't know how to value stocks and I think there is definitely a predatory nature to that. Perhaps I'm reflecting on my own experience too much, but at my first startup I never asked the simple question "Assuming this company IPOs or gets bought and exits, what is the most this stock would reasonably be worth?". Investors and company leaders know what success looks like, and you multiple that company success by the percentage of stock you'd have when acquired and that's the actual payout you should expect if successful. Now go ahead and multiple by probability of success, and you have what you should expect. I was so proud of myself for negotiating for once, getting both a higher salary and higher amount of stock, but in the end, the company sold in a decent exit, and I pocketed a whopping extra $20K. A rounding error in salary given the risk and below-market salary. I definitely learned the hard way.

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

#265

Post by bythreads »

techdragon wrote: post #153
pcthrowaway wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We're moving to 1-stage interviews, offer on the same day. Higher risk but we have no choice Anecdotally, I've seen people actually been put off by this. Perhaps make it 2 interviews just to not seem desperate. It's not my own reaction, but I could see why people might think "They're really desperate, there must be something wrong there"

The counter to this is not extra interviews but increasing the importance of the people in the interview. A one pass, 60 minute interview with the CEO and/or CTO on the call tells me a lot more about the kind of company. One of the reasons I went independent consultant/freelancer is because I no longer face hiring bullshit like multiple interview rounds. I don’t charge to discuss the problems, sign an NDA if need be,…

I never understood why people are so dogged on hiring - just get a senior consultant - pay 2-3x and save the equity. it's faster and in the end the expenses level out (cost of hiring, 401, insurance etc.)

Make the contract with 1 months notice both ways and it's pretty much for all intent and purpose a hiree

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

#266

Post by Silhouette »

ghaff wrote: post #216
Silhouette wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. On a relative scale that might be true. In absolute terms you've already lost a high proportion of good senior people who might otherwise have been interested either way. Most good developers I know would just walk on seeing a 4-hour assignment that was actually a 4-hour assignment. Some wo…

To be honest, at some point if someone wants to work at Google and can get a job at Google--especially if the name and/or the salary is what they really care about--it's probably in the best interest of a lot of companies to just move on.

I'm sure that's true but another point I was trying to make there was that IME even top tier companies exclude a significant proportion of good developers by having excessive hiring processes. The kind of applicant who could get hired by those companies doesn't have to put up with those processes and at least here in the UK the pay at even top tier companies with annoying hiring processes isn't so much better than everyone else that it's worth the sacrifice.

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

#267

Post by anon291 »

ghaff wrote: post #178
Simon_O_Rourke wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Completely agree here - like a fool I recently went through an entire day's worth interviews for a role (hello Stripe recruiters!!) that required both me and my wife taking PTO, with her looking after the kids while I talked to one junior dev after another abo…

As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of interviews. If they give you the assignment and it's immediately obvious that it's actually a 20+ hour assignment, you can always just walk. When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd ha…

No it's not. When i do interviews in-person (even if virtual) , I get the benefit of meeting my future colleagues and learning more about the company. It's much more a two-way benefit, versus an assignment where only one party (the company) gets any information from the other (me).

> When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd have to create one. It was very reasonably a non-negotiable requirement given that's what they'd be doing day to day.

The equivalent in tech is asking for a portfolio, which I have an ample amount of on github. I'm more than happy to hand this over to potential employers for them to gauge my work. But, the idea that I could complete a 4hour assignment within a week is ridiculous. My portfolio comes through constant, marginal improvements that make up a working system in sum. I've collectively spent more than 4 hours on most projects on GitHub, but they're done at my leisure, in my miniscule amounts of spare time, just spread over many years. But again, the idea of spending a solid four hours on any of them is just laughable. I have no time to do that.

Also, when you get to full day interviews, it's typically a sign the company wants you. Having been in both the hiring manager position and the candidate position, I've only once seen a full day interview end in a "No" and it was for particular circumstance.

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

#269

Post by tfehring »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #244

I am going to add one thing that I haven't heard here. You probably need to raise the cash in your offer by a lot. Most mid-size companies think that they can get away with offering equity at a ridiculous valuation and attract people who aren't true believers. Most people aren't true believers in miscellaneous DevOps that doesn't involve a lot of code. I have spoken to a few series-C and D companies that wanted to gi…

Even without getting into the magnitude of the difference, and just talking about the direction, I think a lot of folks at private startups expect external candidates to value $1 of their stock (based on their last 409a) more than $1 of stock in a public company. I don't have a strong opinion on how big the liquidity premium for equity in a private tech startup should be, but I feel pretty strongly that it shouldn't be negative.
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