Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it • Hacker News Board

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

#721

Post by kayodelycaon » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 3:01 PM UTC

BadCookie wrote: post #261

randrews wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

More ideas...

- On-call. Some people require a regular schedule with a limit of 40 hours per week.

- Allergies. Dog-friendly is not friendly to people allergic to dogs. And yes, your "hypoallergenic" dog will still give me an asthma attack.

- Dietary restrictions. Makes anything involving food the opposite of fun. (I'm allergic to milk proteins and cross-contamination can make me very sick.)

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

#722

Post by wizofaus » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 3:12 PM UTC

jann wrote: post #672

wizofaus wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids" Is 4 hours the amount of time the candidate is being given to complete it, or roughly how long the employer expects it will take? In the past I've generally come up with tests I know can be done in an hour or so (2 tops), but allowed 24 hours, exactly because not everyone is going to be in a position they can dedicate those 2 hour…

Instead of allowing 24 hours, I prefer to agree on a start time with the candidate, schedule the email to go out at that time and expect to receive the reply two hours later. That way everyone has the same amount of time.

Yes, I'd used that method too, but I'm not sure how many developers do their best work when told they have 2 hours max to complete any task. In fact we never put any recommendations on how long the task should take, just that they had a 24-hour window in which to come up with the best submission they could. In some (rare) cases submissions that didn't technically complete all the requirements exactly were considered more favorably than ones that did.

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

#723

Post by physicsguy » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

nprateem wrote: post #594

I have those skills. I joined LinkedIn 2 weeks ago and in that time have been bombarded by recruiters. I've had maybe 30-40 message me directly. I was looking but now I'm sitting tight in my current job. I'd consider moving for unlimited time off, full remote and twice the salary most offer (starting around £250k basic) because I know my current job and it's cushy. And yeah, I'd direct you to my GH instead of doing t…

Are you fully remote right now? I get messages for jobs like this in finance a lot, but they're all mostly London based it seems.

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

#724

Post by InefficientRed » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

solatic wrote: post #662

s0rce wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to advocate for this at my organization and been told that we don't want people primarily motivated by money...

There's a vein of truth here, but it's a bit navel-gazing. The first truth is that people don't leave their current jobs because someone else is offering more. They leave because they're unhappy. For knowledge workers of all stripes, unhappiness is very, very rarely about compensation. The second truth is that high compensation keeps people where they are. If a recruiter is offering $200k, you'll listen if you're mak…

> The first truth is that people don't leave their current jobs because someone else is offering more. They leave because they're unhappy.

This is only true for small sums. No one leaves a job over a 5% raise. Some will jump ship over 20%. But most people absolutely will jump ship for 50% or 200% raises. And, unfortunately for small companies, that's often the wage differential between FAANG and the Small Co.

The numbers you are using here -- 180-250 -- are illustrative; total comp for true Senior at FAANG is comfortably in the 400s.

> The third, deeper, more cynical truth is that posting salary bands probably signals to employees internally that they are being underpaid, and can provoke discontent and departures. Rather than fix the problem with a long-term solution of unilaterally issuing raises internally before posting salary bands, most companies take the shortcut and keep the salary band private.

People talk. They're going to find out eventually. If you're having trouble hiring seniors, ensuring that you retain your existing seniors is probably step zero.

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

#725

Post by InefficientRed » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 3:55 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #703

x3n0ph3n3 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want senior devs to apply post that your total comp is somewhere in the 300k-400k range. Even that's too low for senior folks with the skillset that OP is looking for, particularly if he wants the senior engineer to be mentoring and uplifting the rest of the team. Those skills can easily get $500k+ TC.

Can you point to these jobs that pay 500k+?

Any senior (10+ YOE leadership and mentorship -- the sort of thing OP is looking for; apologies if this is called something else at your co) band at FAANG will pay 500K with a single round of negotiation (or maybe even as the initial offer these days). Several second tier companies will also pay this much for key roles.

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

#726

Post by mattkrause » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 4:12 PM UTC

lewispollard wrote: post #155

anon291 wrote: post #139

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. 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 m…

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.

This must depend a lot on the place.

I did a data science take-home that asked you to scrape some documents from the web, group them by topic, extract some information the clusters, and visualize it. This could be a few hours of work, or an entire research career.

IMO, a good take-home needs to be aggressively scoped. Ideally, I think you'd explicitly ask for --and expect--a "bare minimum" solution and a list of potential improvements. That list would be great fodder for in-person interviews too.

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

#727

Post by m3047 » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

> we haven't even managed to backfill a retirement from six months ago

Ok. OP, can you please define "senior" and "junior" for the assembled audience? There seems to be some ambiguity concerning those terms. On one hand they can refer to a level of experience in a specific field, specialty or toolset; or, they can refer to levels of experience in life (and "senior" in this context doesn't mean "senescence" although they are admittedly correlated).

Given the foregoing, how junior or senior is the recruiter? What does the funnel look like (somebody else mentioned this too)? Have you considered consulting your marketing people on your pitch?

Over 20 years ago I was "fix the ship" Director of Tech for a small software company. I managed dev and support personnel and recruitment; when I was ready to throw up my hands I recruited my own replacement (actually I recruited a lead engineer who got along with the president, and promoted the dev with a minor in accounting into my role).

The conversation which needs to occur is not appropriate for HN. You should be able to find me and reach out and we can have a telephone / zoom chat; professional courtesy, no obligations. You want 4 hour technical assessments, you should be able to stalk people at least a little bit. It's a zen thing.

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

#728

Post by aledalgrande » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 4:50 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #595

aledalgrande wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One chap joined (for a few days) and left because he had started somewhere else at the same time - they won out. Wait what???

I think this will get more common with remote working. Start a new role, then dump it if one of the other searches turns up a better one. I think FAANG has something to do with this too. They're often known to be slow in coming up with the offer, often seeming like they're not going to proceed. A friend started working at a startup, then got a top Google offer, dumped the startup for the better job that came in later…

Yeah reputation is still a thing...

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

#729

Post by noasaservice » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

s0rce wrote: post #326

jiggawatts wrote: post #314

POST THE SALARY. Senior people are senior because of their work experience, which they gain from steady employment. Almost by definition you are looking to entice busy, employed people away from their current jobs. They don’t have the time or inclination to trawl through job ad after job ad. Where your competition will ask for 15 years of experience and then only after hours of calls and meetings reluctantly make an…

I've tried to advocate for this at my organization and been told that we don't want people primarily motivated by money...

> I've tried to advocate for this at my organization and been told that we don't want people primarily motivated by money...

Says people at the top who exclusively care about the money. Do these people think we're THAT stupid?

So, how much percentage of the business are they offering then?

Oh, they don't do that? Its about... the money? Yep.

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

#730

Post by s0rce » Tue, Jun 21, 2022, 5:54 PM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #421

s0rce wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've tried to advocate for this at my organization and been told that we don't want people primarily motivated by money...

The counter to this is that many people aren't motivated by money, but need to actually make sure the job offers enough money. "Does the salary range enter into what I need for my life" is the question, not "what job ad has the maximum possible salary". A checkbox, not a parameter that needs to be globally maximal

This is what I've been told but it looks like all the other responses to my comment are arguing this isn't really true and people will switch jobs to a higher paying one even if both provide sufficient income to live off.