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Finding a new software developer job

henrikwarne.com

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Re: Finding a new software developer job

#171

Post by superhumanuser »

bojan wrote: post #166
Aurornis wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Photos really don't belong in hiring in the US. The author of the post is in Sweden, not the US. As weird as it sounds, profile photos are prominent features of resumes in many European countries. It shocked me when I first started hiring in our EU offices, but that's just the way it is. I was surprised because we've often been told so many different ways that Europe is ahead of the US in matters of discriminati…

The discrimination in Europe works slightly differently than in the US, as having a native sounding name is just as, or even more, important than having a "right" skin color. So to be certain you'll avoid discrimination, you'd need to omit both the photo and the name from the CV, and that's not common at all.

Should we also hide the names of the universities we went to and the names of former employers we worked at?

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#172

Post by bradly »

simantel wrote: post #99
giantg2 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought IQ tests were illegal?

It has to technically be an aptitude test, but they really toe the line. Vista Equity, for instance, requires all their companies to use the CCAT in hiring: https://www.criteriacorp.com/candidates/ccat-prep

This is the test I was given:

https://github.com/rubynor/bigfive-web

https://ipip.ori.org/AlphabeticalItemList.htm

Search for politics, sex, god, religion to see some of the questions.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#173

Post by angarg12 »

piecerough wrote: post #120
angarg12 wrote: post #103

I'm a ML Engineer at FAANG and I have been passively looking for the last half year. Common wisdom might make you think that I should be having companies throwing wads of cash at me, but my experience has been very different. * It's true that my profile attracts many messages from recruiters. However ghosting is the name of the game. More than half of recruiters have ghosted me at different stages of the process. Ove…

As a FAANG employee, working with ML, what do you want to get from other companies, besides more money? It's hard to have more chips, for example. You run less experiments, you have less throughput in an already computationally tight environment.

Fully remote would be a pretty nice perk, ever since our companies forced us back to the office. I believe this alone might be one of the easiest ways for smaller companies to poach talent these days.

Other than that, I enjoy working in hard and impactful problems. I'm privileged that I was able to do that in FAANG, but it's unclear how long this will last. I know that is very trite to say that your company has changed, but I truly feel it. Our company missed the LLM train and we are scrambling to play catch up now. Also we mostly pivoted from bold and inspiring initiatives to efficiency and cost cutting. Most of the initiatives in our pipeline for this year are pretty dull "let's save some dollars here and there". Nothing wrong with that, but given the choice, the chance of working on a moonshot vs helping a trillion $ company save pennies might convince one to change jobs.

There is also the very trite but very true aspect of "small cog in a huge machine". I might engineer a new system that brings in tens of millions of dollars to the company, and I'd be lucky if 3 layers of management above me knows about it. Those kind of initiatives might influence the entire company in a smaller organization.

All in I recognize I'm quite privileged and doing pretty well in my current job, and that's why I'm passively looking. TBH one of the aspects is that I got FOMO from all the talk about ML engineers being in high demand. However my experience so far has been very underwhelming.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#174

Post by neilv »

otteromkram wrote: post #169
neilv wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may even need to exaggerate your experience. [...] meaning you need to just get really good at faking it and not be afraid to back it up later after some late-night study sessions. Please don't do this, and don't normalize other people doing it. Dishonesty isn't something I want to have to be understanding about in colleagues. Like, maybe they just see it as a little while lie, and some job-hunting Web pages to…

> Please don't do this, and don't normalize other people doing it Unfortunately, that's how the competitive market works. People shouldn't be penalized for the tech stack that their company used vs. what companies are looking for. Skills from one platform to another are very fungible (eg - Java/.NET, AWS/Azure), so "beefing up" a resume is what's required if you plan on getting any calls back. > Dishonesty isn't some…

> Unfortunately, that's how the competitive market works.

That's how some people think the competitive market works. It's not universal.

Which is why I just contradicted that, and called to not encourage those beliefs.

Put loosely, half the job of an engineer is to tell the truth.

What I think you're characterizing is a corporate bullshit shoveler who just wants to go through the bullshit motions to get a paycheck.

I really don't want some impressionable junior engineers to see multiple people on HN encouraging lying.

I do not want to wade through that, to separate the merely misled junior engineers, from the hopeless anti-engineers.

> You are more than capable of withdrawing your candidacy.

And I do. But I'd prefer that the situation improve.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#175

Post by angarg12 »

Aurornis wrote: post #129
angarg12 wrote: post #103

I'm a ML Engineer at FAANG and I have been passively looking for the last half year. Common wisdom might make you think that I should be having companies throwing wads of cash at me, but my experience has been very different. * It's true that my profile attracts many messages from recruiters. However ghosting is the name of the game. More than half of recruiters have ghosted me at different stages of the process. Ove…

Some perspective from the other side of this situation: I was a hiring manager at a company that paid well but not FAANG level. We had an office near a couple FAANG offices. We had a lot of applications from people who wanted out of FAANG. Some problems we encountered when working with FAANG applicants and a few ex-FAANG hires: * Non-transferable knowledge: Many of them had a lot of experience working within the abst…

Thank your for sharing, it's great to hear different perspectives on the topic.

Non-transferable skills is actually one of my biggest concerns about working at the same company long term. These tools are often so far from the industry standard that it can hurt your employability long term as you mention.

It's no secret that devs often interview with companies they don't intend to join just as a warm up exercise. I confess I've been guilty of this.

The boomerang is quite interesting. Up until very recently this was a very well known career move. People would leave the company for one year just to come back at a higher level and higher salary. As a "loyal" employee I find this furious, but alas I guess it's my fault for working for such a lousy company and not pulling the same move. If it is any consolation, at least our company change the rules so that it's harder to pull this off, so you should see this much less often these days.

Regarding your last comment I'm not particular about leaving FAANG, as I aren't about working for FAANG. Considering my priorities it's very likely I'd only take a competing offer from another top tech company. For now I'm comfortable enough staying in my current company and passively looking for a better opportunity. At the same time I want to avoid becoming too complacent, and I'm aware the rug might get pulled from under my feet at any moment (hello layoffs?).

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#176

Post by notso411 »

angarg12 wrote: post #103

I'm a ML Engineer at FAANG and I have been passively looking for the last half year. Common wisdom might make you think that I should be having companies throwing wads of cash at me, but my experience has been very different. * It's true that my profile attracts many messages from recruiters. However ghosting is the name of the game. More than half of recruiters have ghosted me at different stages of the process. Ove…

[dead]

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#177

Post by gedy »

smileson2 wrote: post #88
Waterluvian wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went through interview training and one of the reasons why they’re so adamant that résumés go into an automated parser was to strip photos and other info like that.

Yeah, on my end reviewing resume or when we did take-homes things like names and photos were always erased to prevent 'bias' We did interview and hire a lot more women and PoC than other firms I've worked with so I guess it works to some degree

This starts to sound a little kooky - if there's that much bias going around that we need to play games with hiding info from the interviewers, then how can they work effectively with this person if they can't be trusted?

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#178

Post by fbdab103 »

mgaunard wrote: post #5
arter4 wrote: post #2

>For a typical job there were four or five interviews: an initial interview with a recruiter, an interview with a hiring manager, one or two technical interviews (either live coding, or going through a take-home assignment). There could also be an interview with a product manager, and/or one with a CTO or founder. All in all, quite a time commitment. This is not news at this point, but it is pretty crazy.

Now think about being the people doing the recruiting, offering to 1% of the candidates they interview and still failing 30% of them during their trial period. Hiring is a huge time sink for all people involved. The best people are hard to find and the best jobs are hard to get.

All I can think of is the recruiters who cannot have the courtesy to tell the other 99% they are no longer under consideration.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#179

Post by pwb25 »

bojan wrote: post #166
Aurornis wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Photos really don't belong in hiring in the US. The author of the post is in Sweden, not the US. As weird as it sounds, profile photos are prominent features of resumes in many European countries. It shocked me when I first started hiring in our EU offices, but that's just the way it is. I was surprised because we've often been told so many different ways that Europe is ahead of the US in matters of discriminati…

The discrimination in Europe works slightly differently than in the US, as having a native sounding name is just as, or even more, important than having a "right" skin color. So to be certain you'll avoid discrimination, you'd need to omit both the photo and the name from the CV, and that's not common at all.

how is that discrimination other than signaling you know the language, have a job permit and so on.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#180

Post by bdw5204 »

coldtea wrote: post #85
bradly wrote: post #41

> One company used an IQ test This is interesting. I haven't had that one yet, but last week I had an application with a "personality" test that asked whether I tend to vote for left-leaning candidates or right-leaning candidates. This company was in the healthcare space. GitHub asking for approval for AI to review my resume was a bit of a beat too. I did not give permission, and it definitely left me feeling at a di…

> last week I had an application with a "personality" test that asked whether I tend to vote for left-leaning candidates or right-leaning candidates. That should be all kinds of illegal already. And "personality tests" in general should be made illegal too.

Asking which kind of politicians you vote for is pretty obviously about discriminating. But I'm not surprised that this is happening in health care because that space is highly politicized in the US and strong right wingers are likely to have moral objections to several medical procedures. Strong left wingers are likely to have moral objections to the American medical system's notoriously ruthless business practices. In other words, they probably want people who don't have particularly strong political views.

Sadly, political affiliation and political belief are not protected classes under US civil rights law so employers can legally discriminate on this basis. This is actually a big part of why the American political system is so dominated by corporate interests because many people are terrified of hurting their career prospects if they participate in the political process.

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