Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired • Hacker News Board

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#91

Post by abnercoimbre » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:37 AM UTC

memset wrote: post #66

I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup. However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and inte…

I do not wish ill-fortune on my programmer colleagues, but I went indie to run conferences, making very little in comparison [0]:

- I've regained perspective on the value of hard-earned money and the plight of the working man AKA majority of America.

- I have no sympathy for complaints that you can't find FAANG salaries anymore. Zero.

[0] I live in Seattle in a studio apartment, so I'm all right.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#92

Post by clipsy » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:37 AM UTC

alphazard wrote: post #35

Not all experience is equal, but people expect to be compensated for the "experience" (time since entering the workforce) they bring to the table regardless. That's the issue here. There is plenty of software that needs engineering, but we can't make a market. This specific person has 17 years of experience. Are they a staff level engineer, critical to their group? 17 years is more than enough time to become more com…

> It seems unlikely that a company would layoff someone keeping all the juniors unblocked, unless management is totally incompetent.

I've seen exactly this happen in every large-scale layoff I've been first-hand witness to (both those I survived and the one that got me).

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#93

Post by bb88 » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:38 AM UTC

rhelz wrote: post #70

h02 wrote: post #14

And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...out of a thousand applicants--who presumably had college degrees/and or years of experience programming for other companies--there just has to be some who would have been successful at your company. I mean, if you lined up 600 random people grabbed from off the street, you'd find 6 to 10 of them with a genius level IQ. In fact, you'd have a good chance of finding somebody smar…

> Over my 40-year career, programming interviews haven't changed at all

I think they've gotten worse actually. A lot of times they're led by 20-somethings that are looking for only the skills that are limited to their own shallow experience.

"Oh so you wrote compilers in C? Too bad, we're coding node.js here. Have any experience with npm?"

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#94

Post by rhelz » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:43 AM UTC

elwebmaster wrote: post #9

Market is the worst it has ever been, at least in the last 10 years but even before because now supply significantly outnumbers demand. Most people on LinkedIn have a green badge. The economy is doomed. Keep rising interest rates to the sky.

> The economy is doomed.

chuckle the economy is not doomed. Of course there's green badges on linked in, its not tik-tok, if you are on LinkedIn, you are probably there to look for a job.

It seems like the sky is falling, but it's only tough in a few sectors of the economy. Unemployment is at historically low rates. We're not used to this kind of turbulence, because historically it has be us who have replaced employees with automation, but eventually, what goes around comes around.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#95

Post by whstl » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:43 AM UTC

rhelz wrote: post #70

h02 wrote: post #14

And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...out of a thousand applicants--who presumably had college degrees/and or years of experience programming for other companies--there just has to be some who would have been successful at your company. I mean, if you lined up 600 random people grabbed from off the street, you'd find 6 to 10 of them with a genius level IQ. In fact, you'd have a good chance of finding somebody smar…

> there just has to be some who would have been successful at your company

Interviewing 600 candidates is incredibly expensive.

And no, you can't really filter by the resume alone. The candidates you don't want have become masters at forging credentials.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#96

Post by hayst4ck » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:44 AM UTC

rhelz wrote: post #70

h02 wrote: post #14

And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...out of a thousand applicants--who presumably had college degrees/and or years of experience programming for other companies--there just has to be some who would have been successful at your company. I mean, if you lined up 600 random people grabbed from off the street, you'd find 6 to 10 of them with a genius level IQ. In fact, you'd have a good chance of finding somebody smar…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons

> Akerlof examines how the quality of goods traded in a market can degrade in the presence of information asymmetry between buyers and sellers, which ultimately leaves goods that are found to be defective after purchase in the market, noted by the term 'lemon' in the title of the paper.

> Akerlof's theory of the "Market for Lemons" paper applies to markets with information asymmetry, focusing on the used car market. Information asymmetry within the market relates to the seller having more information about the quality of the car as opposed to the buyer, creating adverse selection.[1] Adverse selection is a phenomenon where, buyers result in buying lower quality goods due to sellers not willing to sell high quality goods at the lower prices buyers are willing to pay. This can lead to a market collapse due to the lower equilibrium price and quantity of goods traded in the market than a market with perfect information.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#97

Post by whstl » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:45 AM UTC

timeon wrote: post #83

skeeter2020 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I used to really like interviewing, but the AI cheaters combined with development as just a job has destroyed the experience. I did participate in interviewing an intern a few weeks ago who showed some passion and energy, and they got the role, so a small victory.

> development as just a job Hobbists are discarded at the first pass I guess.

Those are much better than the hustlers.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#98

Post by dullcrisp » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:46 AM UTC

rhelz wrote: post #70

h02 wrote: post #14

And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...out of a thousand applicants--who presumably had college degrees/and or years of experience programming for other companies--there just has to be some who would have been successful at your company. I mean, if you lined up 600 random people grabbed from off the street, you'd find 6 to 10 of them with a genius level IQ. In fact, you'd have a good chance of finding somebody smar…

New hiring process: sample 600 people from the population at random, administer IQ tests, hire highest scorer. Voila, only geniuses!

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#99

Post by d0gsg0w00f » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:48 AM UTC

olivierduval wrote: post #42

Actually I think that one of the specific problem of IT is that experience is not really "usefull" because - from outside of IT (management, HR) - there's always new tools/technology/buzzwords that SEEM to replace old technologies... So why pay more to hire an experienced IT man that will not know the latest techno-fad when all you need is a junior that knows them a little bit and is waaaayy cheaper. Moreover - from…

With experience comes pattern recognition. You can see traps 10 steps ahead of your junior peers. Yes, they can experience personally those steps faster but you can spot 5 of them reading emails with your morning coffee.

My problem now is stopping myself from thinking 20 steps ahead and thinking of all work being pointless. It's a mental trick you play on yourself if "maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'll learn something, chop wood, carry water" and I always learn something.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#100

Post by rhelz » Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 1:48 AM UTC

melon_taeppe wrote: post #25

11 years experience. took me 4 months to get a new job, the longest its ever taken since I became a dev.

4 months is actually really good, relatively speaking. Just wait until you have 20 years experience, and you are trying to explain to your interviewer (who has 5 years experience) something which took you 15 years of hard experience to learn....

35 years experience here, been looking for 2.5 years.