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Finding a new software developer job

henrikwarne.com

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Re: Finding a new software developer job

#211

Post by singron »

hansvm wrote: post #73
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.

It's a long day for sure, but honestly I don't really mind it as a candidate, and that boils down to a few reasons (1) The time cost isn't as high as it seems. If I get as far as a phone screen I'm getting an offer, nearly guaranteed. The flow chart then looks like (a) if I don't get a phone screen, that awful process is no worse than the status quo, (b) if I do, I just find out in the phone screen if the battery of…

Fwiw our hiring pipeline has 30%-70% of candidates make it to the next stage once past the phone screen (it has varied somewhat as we re-ordered or changed process). Assuming 3 stages until offer (e.g. HM interview, tech screen, full-day interviews), and offer-acceptance, with 50% success rate at each stage, 1/8 get an offer and 1/16 accept it. At 60% it's 1/4.6 and 1/7.8, so the exact rate makes a huge difference.

The corollary to this sensitivity is that if you are just slightly better or worse at interviewing, you can see a huge difference in the number of companies you need to pass screening at to get a job. In practice, companies get more people into the pipeline than necessary to reduce the chance that it dries up without making the hires, so as a candidate, you will also have to take that into account.

You can play around with the variables on this graph to see number of phone-screen-passes: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=y%3D1%2F%28x%5E4%29+whe...

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#213

Post by squigglydonut »

pyb wrote: post #55
qwertygnu wrote: post #25

I don't question that is takes hard work, even for more senior devs like the author, but 30 apps leading to 3 offers is a dream. Most early-career people are probably at >100 app with maybe a few interviews and hopefully one offer.

The author has 30+ years of experience and was applying to jobs paying less than 6 figures a year (USD). His expectation were modest, compared to the average US developer.

exactly my thoughts

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#214

Post by BadCookie »

fs0c13ty00 wrote: post #207
BadCookie wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My employer disproportionately lays off US citizens and preferentially hires in Latin America. I spent part of today looking at my employer’s main competitors. One has a bunch of programming jobs available in Mexico. Another is hiring primarily in India. It isn’t ChatGPT that will take US engineering jobs. It is cheaper devs in other countries. And plenty of them have reasonable English and programming skill…

As a Vietnamese developer currently interested in remote opportunities, I am a little concerned. I hope people like us won't face any discrimination at work due to being thought of as "stealing an American's job".

For what it’s worth, I hold no ill will toward the new hires. I quite like some of them. But it’s obvious what is going, and I know I’m not alone in considering a career change.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#215

Post by squigglydonut »

layer8 wrote: post #150
dt3ft wrote: post #8

Did I misread or did you end up taking a remote job (specializing in crypto, company based in Zug, CH) and you’re based in Stockholm?

The fact that the job they finally took is at a crypto company suddenly had me reevaluate everything they wrote. :)

yep. He sounds so positive about it. Delusional even. But good for him for finding someone to give him money. Hope they don't pay in DOGE...

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#216

Post by Silhouette »

CaptainOfCoit wrote: post #195
PheonixPharts wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG reputations are no longer evenly distributed. Even though most people's opinions of the company have changed, Google engineers are still widely considered to be high quality. Apple engineers also have a great reputation but it's very rare to see them on the market. Facebook/meta engineers tend to be above average but have a reputation for being aggressive corporate ladder climbers. But if I hazard a guess, if y…

As someone who has sometimes hired people from FAANG into startups I've worked in, I'd say it's 50/50 if the person will actually be a net positive to the organization. A lot of times the people coming from FAANG seem to be under the impression that what their previous company was doing is 100% the best, in all cases, and they try to cargo-cult their previous culture into the new company. Sometimes they're able to ad…

The culture around FAANGs has always been a bit strange. People associate making a lot of money with being good at building tech at both a personal and a company level and unfortunately that isn't necessarily valid in either case.

New hires who have been living inside the Big Tech bubble for a while can come with issues that others here have already described. Consequently startups should probably downlevel many people coming from FAANG roles for exactly the same reason that FAANGs downlevel many people who haven't been worshipping at the altar of scalability in their previous roles. The skills and methods are different and some of them aren't very transferrable.

Of course that's not to say good people who have been working at large scales can't or won't adapt. But on day one nobody cares that you've been a Staff/Principal leading projects with 25 developers and a mature development environment if you're joining a startup that needs to raise a Series A before the end of its runway this summer. The abilities you need in that environment are things like identifying the most essential supporting work that can't wait while still spending most of your time on getting the main job done and hitting the deadline. If you can't roll up your sleeves and get the job done then you don't need to worry about a PIP. There are only 10 of you anyway and you're all out of a job in six months if any of you doesn't pull their weight.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#217

Post by jodacola »

kypro wrote: post #197
thehias wrote: post #79

I am a bit surprised, after reading the article I thought the author would be a junior with 5 years or less experience. With 30+ years of experience the job hunting should be easier, just call some people you know...

This is what I thought early last year when people were saying they couldn't find jobs, but after having some experience with the job market earlier this year it was absolutely brutal. I have 15 years professional experience, which for this field is quite a lot. I don't think people here with jobs even understand how bad it is. My whole career I've always been in high demand. I've always got multiple offers when look…

Similar experience.

Really bad timing for some other life events that took me out of and brought me back to the market now.

I’ve stretched my network. All the companies in it are laying off or have frozen hiring. Connections themselves are unmotivated and/or trying to find more secure jobs, too (are they out there?).

All my close recruiting buddies that have landed me lots of interviews and roles in the past have nothing.

I have significant experience. Doesn’t seem to be helping. I’ve never experienced anything like this. Even in 2008, when I only had a handful of years under my belt, I found a new gig pretty easily.

I’m trying to figure out how to adapt to… whatever this is, so I can figure out the meta game and escape it. So far, no dice.

I wish you the best, along with everyone else in this boat.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#218

Post by hnrodey »

fs0c13ty00 wrote: post #207
BadCookie wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. My employer disproportionately lays off US citizens and preferentially hires in Latin America. I spent part of today looking at my employer’s main competitors. One has a bunch of programming jobs available in Mexico. Another is hiring primarily in India. It isn’t ChatGPT that will take US engineering jobs. It is cheaper devs in other countries. And plenty of them have reasonable English and programming skill…

As a Vietnamese developer currently interested in remote opportunities, I am a little concerned. I hope people like us won't face any discrimination at work due to being thought of as "stealing an American's job".

We are all just trying to make a buck.

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#219

Post by esafak »

mlhpdx wrote: post #133
arter4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but do you actually need the absolute best people around? An average company probably doesn't need exceptional developers. If you're not a tech company and you don't have an extremely challenging setup, your survival as a company doesn't rely on exceptional IT skills. You can do a lot with less than 10 virtual machines, any decent web app framework (Spring? Laravel?), and a version control system. Even apparentl…

> Sure but do you actually need the absolute best people around? No. You need a great _combination_ of people. Over my career I have seen teams assembled with “the best” folks to great fanfare an expense. Then, over and over they are schooled by a team that works great together. If there is one lesson for companies to learn in hiring/staffing/team building it’s this - focus on the team and the team’s results. Yes, th…

How do you hire for team fit when people leave, or change teams voluntarily or through reorgs?

Re: Finding a new software developer job

#220

Post by Clubber »

lazide wrote: post #156
Clubber wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you knew that within 1 hour. It (hopefully) didn't take you 6 hours to realize this person was a dud.

Of course. I apologized for wasting their time and walked them out within 30 minutes. They had clearly flat out lied about their qualifications. I also got lectured by senior management for exposing them to liability since I didn’t ’go through the whole process’. And this was a middle aged white dude candidate, a small company, and about 20 years ago. The risk tolerance has only decreased since then.

>I also got lectured by senior management for exposing them to liability since I didn’t ’go through the whole process’.

I work in an "at will" state. Our 3 people are usually on teams chatting about the interview going on and will decide to end it early and not waste everyone's time if it's not going well. We've never had anyone tell us they were concerned about that. What liability was senior management at your company concerned about?

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