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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

#761

Post by rswail »

- Resume screened by in-house recruiter

Are they fully up to speed with what you really need, as opposed to box-ticking? (eg seniors might not have the official certifications and degrees, but they will have the years of experience)

  - 30m call with them
What can the in-house recruiter ask that the hiring manager can't? What's the point of this interview?

  - Resume passed up to engineering


  - Hour-long call with hiring manager (typically the engineering manager of the team the candidate would join)
This is the most important part. If you can't decide after talking to someone for an hour, why not? What more information do you need that you're not getting?

  - Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing
Waste of time for both sides

  - Presentation of technical assignment to the team
Again, waste of time for both sides, including waste of time for the team. If you're hiring a senior, what is the purpose of presenting to the team?

If you're hiring for an architect, where communications is more important than technical skill, have them present on something in their expertise (eg, for a security role, the structure of PKI CA/RA/VA and the relationship between chains of trust and root certs).

  - Offer

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

#762

Post by mike_hearn »

pinum wrote: post #696
mike_hearn wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works like this: Step 1. The academics are themselves not that good at coding or teaching, and/or aren't interested in them. This might sound contradictory for a CS course, but at my university (as an example) the CS dept was run by a guy whose actual background was in mathematics. He loved hiring graph theory researchers and didn't like hiring people who knew programming. Step 2. They try to teach programming to…

In that case I think we really do need the software engineering equivalent of the bar exam, as another commenter suggested.

It'd probably just create new problems. After all, degrees are supposedly regulated by governments already, but they aren't doing it properly. Why would some state-issued license be any better?

In theory, if there was demand for it the private sector could fix this by issuing certifications. In practice certifications aren't especially useful or well recognized, as the sort of people with the best skills don't see any need to take them. It's much easier and lower effort to demonstrate your skills in an interview. See this thread - people don't have the time/will to do take-home assignments that are meant to consume a few hours, tops (and I totally get that, I wouldn't want to either). They certainly wouldn't be happy if you suddenly told them they all had to cram for and take some government designed exam that checked their knowledge of e.g. Java 1.4 otherwise they'd all lose their jobs!

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

#763

Post by mike_hearn »

HappyDreamer wrote: post #718
mike_hearn wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works like this: Step 1. The academics are themselves not that good at coding or teaching, and/or aren't interested in them. This might sound contradictory for a CS course, but at my university (as an example) the CS dept was run by a guy whose actual background was in mathematics. He loved hiring graph theory researchers and didn't like hiring people who knew programming. Step 2. They try to teach programming to…

> They find ways to cover up the fact that nobody is learning to code properly Aha, so the secret summary is that: Both students and teachers want the students to succeed, so they cheat together, to make that (seem to) happen > A few of the tricks they used Thanks for writing about that, really interesting to read (!) > cheating was rampant (You don't happen to know about some websites being used for that? I recently…

Yep, that's exactly it.

By cheating I didn't mean getting solutions from websites although there's obviously a lot of that going on if you browse through e.g. Upwork. A staggering number of 'jobs' are obviously student coding assignments being farmed out.

The sort of cheating I meant was more stuff like students copy/pasting stuff off Wikipedia (it's all on the written reports remember) or copying answers off each other. Or they'd deliberately submit work they knew didn't function properly, aware of the fact that it wouldn't matter.

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

#764

Post by tiborsaas »

anon291 wrote: post #752
tiborsaas wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you just quit and enjoy some time not working? Then suddenly have 8 hours a day which fits the 4 hours of coding assignment.

Quitting a job before you have another one is stupid. Sorry, but if I had started my job search even a few weeks later, I would not have gotten my current thing. The economy has been in a free fall lately and I caught the last hiring wave before both my previous company and my new one announced hiring freezes. So if I had quit and delayed a bit, I could have ended up unemployed, instead of with a raise. Quitting puts…

So why have huge salaries and savings if you don't get to enjoy it? That's stupid as well.

Being unemployed as a SWE is not an issue at all.

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

#765

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#766

Post by ary »

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.

We solved this problem by paying a healthy hourly rate so that candidates don’t feel taken advantage of if we don’t move forward with them.

I should note that this seemed to help offset the concerns of people with families. They definitely don’t see it as a waste of time. It also incentivizes us to be sure we’re serious about the candidate.

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

#767

Post by solatic »

InefficientRed wrote: post #724
solatic wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 num…

> that's often the wage differential between FAANG and the Small Co

I'm intentionally not including FAANG salaries here. Two things need to happen for that to be relevant - you a) need to be at that level, professionally and b) you need to have the disposition to work at a FAANG. I learned a long time ago that I don't have the patience for big-company politics, so it doesn't really matter to me what those salaries are; you might as well tell me I could make $400k if I went to medical school and became a doctor. It might as well be a different career path. Startups know that they can't compete with FAANG salaries; the only way forward is not to try.

> If you're having trouble hiring seniors, ensuring that you retain your existing seniors is probably step zero.

That's great long-term thinking - the issue is that people who refuse to post salary bands because "they don't want to hire people who are motivated by money" have a fundamentally short-term perspective.

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

#768

Post by grepfru_it »

ghaff wrote: post #739
grepfru_it wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except now the IRS will be watching bank accounts for any transaction totaling over $600 to combat this loophole. Good luck!

They don't need to watch bank accounts. Companies are supposed to issue 1099s for payments over $600.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/irs-bank-account-update-cha...

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

#769

Post by the_watcher »

throwaway81523 wrote: post #508
skeeter2020 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I share your interpretation, plus it is possible to scope something small that's (gasp!) interesting. The last one I did was use the company's product to create something and then demo it to the team. In addition to a gift card is was (almost) fun. IMO a (very small) take-home assignment is the least-worst of a lot of generally bad options. A pairing exercise focused on teamwork and communication (vs hardcore…

I'm happy with the idea of a pairing exercise. I've felt regretful about every time I've gotten involved with a take-home even when my submission was successful, so maybe that's why I'm reacting badly to it here. You mention scoping, but there really has to be a way to enforce that other candidates don't spend more time on it than you do. Otherwise it is a resource consumption contest.

I agree - I have regretted every time that I agreed to a take home assignment, including when it’s been successful. The reason this worked was the HM simply sent me the assignment and asked me to take a look (and clarified that there’d be no hard feelings if I decided not to move forward). I took a look, and it turned out they weren’t lying about it being well scoped!

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

#770

Post by amsnl »

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…

I hear the “pay folks for their time” thing a lot, and have even done it. But for a senior engineer / architect level role, how is $100/hr meaningful in your mind? Just as a show of good faith? If you’re senior (and hence have been in this market the last 10 years) $100/hr wouldn’t seem to move the needle.
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