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It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

fredandrandall.com

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Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#91

Post by jaredsohn »

ootachi wrote: post #86

There are simply very few positions for programmers throughout the country. That includes the Bay Area. As much as everyone wants to believe it isn't true, it's true. There's very little demand and way too much supply. Programming is a losing profession, and if you're in it you should get out while you still can. Get into sales, marketing, and/or management instead.

>That includes the Bay Area. As much as everyone wants to believe it isn't true, it's true.

Source? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence (or at least some.) There is plenty of evidence that counters your claim. (To start with, craigslist.org/sof has 90 listings on Friday while in 2004 I remember when it had like 8.)

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#92

Post by match »

hsmyers wrote: post #5

The only question that matters is "Can you do the job?" If you don't hear this question or for those doing the interviewing, if you don't ask this question, then there is something seriously wrong. All of the rest is pretty much a waste of time at least until after that key item is settled. With that out of the way, then it is time to worry about how well someone may or may not fit in etc (something that can be allow…

"All of the rest is pretty much a waste of time at least until after that key item is settled."

Yes, but unfortunately settling this item is not as simple asking "Can you do the job?". Oddly enough all the candidates say "Yes".

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#93

Post by match »

RandallBrown wrote: post #82
danielrhodes wrote: post #77

Given the harm a bad coder can do to a codebase and the morale of a team, it is better to not hire a good coder than hire a bad one.

I totally agree. The whole point of the post was to point out that there are lots of good coders out there that are being labeled as bad coders because of poor hiring processes.

I agree with you that these companies are probably turning away qualified developers. However at my current job it is the prevailing feeling, and I mostly agree, that it's better to turn away a few qualified candidates in order to prevent a mis-hire.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#94

Post by joe_the_user »

mwd_ wrote: post #35
georgemcbay wrote: post #19

A big issue in modern hiring, IMO, is the combination of diverging specialized platforms and languages combined with overemphasis on keyword-hiring. When I first got into the industry you had: --- * old fogey LISP programmers * old fogey FORTRAN programmers * old fogey COBOL programmers * Assembly programmers * C/Win programmers * C/Unix programmers * C/Mac programmers * some people on the cutting edge looking at thi…

Just the other day I saw a job requiring "3+ years iPad experience". I understand the appeal of hiring somebody who needs minimal training, but they may still not be the best pick. When it comes to a long-term position, it is better to hire the great developer who takes two weeks to get up to speed with some language or technology than it is to hire the mediocre developer who happens to have used Node.js or whatever.

But that in itself isn't new...

When Java was young, I remember many tales of Java job advertisements demanding experience extending back before the language existed.

My impression is that the current insanity isn't so much the absurdity of the bureaucratic demands but the degree to which people take them seriously...

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#95

Post by match »

ootachi wrote: post #86

There are simply very few positions for programmers throughout the country. That includes the Bay Area. As much as everyone wants to believe it isn't true, it's true. There's very little demand and way too much supply. Programming is a losing profession, and if you're in it you should get out while you still can. Get into sales, marketing, and/or management instead.

Then apparently we're the only company that has crazy number of openings and I personally talk to people every week that aren't what we're looking for.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#96

Post by archangel_one »

earl wrote: post #44

I personally hate graph algorithms and all the stupid associated questions. I have to spend two weeks reviewing all that stuff every time I change jobs to go ahead and never ever use it again. It simply never comes up in the type of work I do. At my current place of employment, one of the engineering managers was complaining that an interviewee bombed a graph algorithm question. I asked, "Where -- if anywhere -- in o…

I've been interviewing recently and my opinion is more or less the reverse. I preferred the interviews where I was asked algorithms - only got asked on graphs once, but my last job did involve a lot of those so I was pretty comfortable with them. They seemed more useful to me than asking "trivia" type questions which you could learn in fifteen seconds - for example, I got one elsewhere about access to members of nested classes in C++, which I just couldn't remember at the time. The thing is, you can solve that immediately if given a compiler.

Personally I'd rather have a coder who understands the concepts behind these things, even if they don't necessarily know the answer right then, than one who is simply able to rattle off definitions by heart. In the example you gave, I agree that it's valuable to know that an Integer is significantly bigger than an int, and that a Double is bigger, and that your TreeMap might be bigger than you expect, even if they didn't know the exact sizes of any of those things - but I guess I'd want them to be able to take a stab at working them out.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#97

Post by pyre »

smsm42 wrote: post #88
georgemcbay wrote: post #19

A big issue in modern hiring, IMO, is the combination of diverging specialized platforms and languages combined with overemphasis on keyword-hiring. When I first got into the industry you had: --- * old fogey LISP programmers * old fogey FORTRAN programmers * old fogey COBOL programmers * Assembly programmers * C/Win programmers * C/Unix programmers * C/Mac programmers * some people on the cutting edge looking at thi…

I suspect this has a lot to do with recruiters/HR being the intermediate. If I hire a programmer, I'd prefer him of course to know the platform he's working on and hit the ground running, but I'd much rather have a good programmer that can learn a new platform and become productive in a month than a mediocre one which knows the platform but will be mediocre forever. The problem, however, is that if I am a software en…

It's not just an HR issue. I've come across a number of situations where developers are making hiring decisions and using arbitrary criteria to base them on. E.g.:

* The fire storm over Deviant Art's 'we only hired 0.0000001% of people' blogpost/HN discussion.

* I went through the application process at a start-up where they were "really excited" about me after the first interview, but dropped me after the second because of a couple of stupid trivia questions. Trivia questions related to callable classes in Python, a feature that while interesting is (from what I can tell) little-used and extremely easy to pick up (took me 5 minutes of looking at the docs).

* I've seen groups within my own company pass up people with potential because they are 'too old to be junior developers.' (In this case, it was someone with development experience, though not too much, that was changing careers and who showed promise in his interview questions.)

* I know of particular people within my own company that are really smart, but also really harsh on interviewees. The tune seems to be along the lines of, "I'm a rockstar programmer, and if you're not too, then you're an idiot and I don't want to work with you."

* I know of places where it's generally admitted that current employees would not pass the interview process for the job that they do, even though no one thinks that they are inadequate for the position.

These are all examples of developers also doing a horrible job at hiring by finding arbitrary criteria to base their decisions on that have little to do with whether or not someone is a qualified candidate.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#98

Post by pyre »

archangel_one wrote: post #96
earl wrote: post #44

I personally hate graph algorithms and all the stupid associated questions. I have to spend two weeks reviewing all that stuff every time I change jobs to go ahead and never ever use it again. It simply never comes up in the type of work I do. At my current place of employment, one of the engineering managers was complaining that an interviewee bombed a graph algorithm question. I asked, "Where -- if anywhere -- in o…

I've been interviewing recently and my opinion is more or less the reverse. I preferred the interviews where I was asked algorithms - only got asked on graphs once, but my last job did involve a lot of those so I was pretty comfortable with them. They seemed more useful to me than asking "trivia" type questions which you could learn in fifteen seconds - for example, I got one elsewhere about access to members of nest…

I think the point is not that someone who doesn't know about Java memory issues is useless. The point is just that someone who knows those things, but doesn't know graph theory well may be a better fit for the job, but the interview process doesn't account for this.

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#99

Post by smsm42 »

ootachi wrote: post #86

There are simply very few positions for programmers throughout the country. That includes the Bay Area. As much as everyone wants to believe it isn't true, it's true. There's very little demand and way too much supply. Programming is a losing profession, and if you're in it you should get out while you still can. Get into sales, marketing, and/or management instead.

For the last 10+ years of my working in the programming area, the only problem that I constantly observed everywhere was hiring good people. There probably was a time around dotcom crash when supply actually exceeded demand and nobody was hiring, but that passed quickly. Normally what I see and hear - internally, externally, in conferences, etc. is "do you know anybody good that does X? We're hiring". Maybe of course I'm living in a bubble but that has to be big enough bubble to accomodate significant number of people. You can also see it in other way. Just look at the salaries - if supply exceeds demand so much, the salaries should be pretty darn low, right? It's better have low paid work than no work at all, after all. So, are they?

Re: It's not a talent shortage, it's a hiring problem

#100

Post by pavanky »

georgieporgie wrote: post #74
pavanky wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boy, are you wrong! http://research.fhda.edu/Planning/2010-20%20EMP%20Demographi...

Er. Unless I missed something, you seem to have posted a link about population demographics. I lived in Oakland for five years, among a considerable number of black people. San Francisco, just a few miles away, has a sizable (but shrinking) black population. How many blacks do you suppose I worked with in tech? (It's two, if you're wondering, and one came to the company from D.C.) Local demographic isn't very well co…

If you are going to go anecdotal, here is one from me too. All Indians that I know who reside in / near Silicon valley are programmers, software engineers, computer scientists. There are dozens, if not hundreds of startups that have been founded / co-founded by non white people in the valley. There may be sweatshops exploting H1-Bs, but that is corporate greed rather than a race issue.

So if you are going to say the valley has a race problem, then one of the following things is probably true 1) You only see black and white 2) You work / have worked in some nasty institutions 3) You want to point out that there is a bias against African Americans.

I hope you were referring to #3

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