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Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

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Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#131

Post by h02 »

Waterluvian wrote: post #17
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…

What does the job pay? Fully remote?

Fully remote. Salary range is 100 - 170k.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#132

Post by h02 »

davidgerard wrote: post #30
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…

Is there room to up the pay? Bolting after two months suggests something of concern.

Not my call. I just interview people.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#133

Post by cvhashim04 »

throwaway4220 wrote: post #77
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…

Wow this is about how much the average radiologist makes after 10 years of postgraduate studies

Brb going to radiology school, given how finished tech is

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#134

Post by BadCookie »

swatcoder wrote: post #24
robofanatic wrote: post #11

well just last week I heard on NPR, may be Marketplace. They were saying there are these huge tech layoffs happening but unemployment claims haven't gone up that much because people are getting new jobs quickly. So basically I don't know what/who to believe.

Unemployment is capped very low compared to tech salaries, involves a bunch of paperwork, and requires you to attest that you're actively pursuing opportunties for work in your field. Lots of highly paid people don't bother with it, even when they might have qualified -- whether because they're lazy to lazy to do the paperwork for a small offset against their expenses, or because they intentionally took time away fro…

In some states, severance pay can delay or reduce eligibility for unemployment benefits. The generous multi-month severance packages that many tech workers receive could have an effect on the unemployment numbers as a consequence—but I’m speculating.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#135

Post by h02 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #72
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…

I've had a similar time trying to hire an ML developer with any experience. What I suspect the market has gotten tougher, but not uniformly. If it's bad for experienced people with some form of personal network, it's extra bad for those who were already terrible when the market was tight. I also love how all the responses blame you and the company; maybe we've developed some unrealistic expectations over the past few…

Yup. Too much context to give on a HN thread, don't really care to defend it. I'm sure the process isn't perfect and I'm looking for ways to improve it, but it's certainly not an easy problem to solve.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#136

Post by cvhashim04 »

davidgerard wrote: post #30
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…

Is there room to up the pay? Bolting after two months suggests something of concern.

Probably an awful messy code base and the new hire couldn’t deal with that headache.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#138

Post by rsanek »

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…

how much are you offering in equity? the issue i had the last time I went through this is that startups seem to expect you to work for 1/4 the pay but receive only single digit percentages for being the first engineer. it just doesn't make sense to take that much of a pay cut unless we're talking 10-25%, and I found nobody that was.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#139

Post by dullcrisp »

rhelz wrote: post #118
dullcrisp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is there any evidence that would be worse than the way we're doing it now??

None whatsoever!!

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#140

Post by smaudet »

preommr wrote: post #103
smogcutter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In no other professional field is someone with 7 years of experience considered “senior” anything. Edit to clarify my meaning: I’m not trying to come at you, just pointing out that this seems to be symptomatic of the problem as a whole.

The term 'senior' is completely meaningless. I've seen people get a senior role ~1.5 years after graduating bootcamp.

Many "seniors" I've seen are just handed the role. They are rarely any good...which makes me treasure the seniors who actually know their stuff so much more, and also feel a fair amount of contempt for the folk handing out paper titles.
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