Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#161

Post by wyclif » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 1:57 AM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #113

Too wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is happening with real estate, people have started to post apartments "soon for sale" without any starting price or fixed bidding time, years before they are ready to move, just in case some crazy guy happens to drop by and put a bid that is higher than the actual market value. The cost of advertising to a wide audience has simply dropped so much that you can constantly keep fishing even though you don't hav…

The attention is not endless, though. Consumers will eventually respond with scepticism, I think.

This is a good point. There's an actual bottom in the race to the bottom. Past that point, nothing will get attention.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#162

Post by wyclif » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 2:30 AM UTC

ionforce wrote: post #115

ryandrake wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extreme pickiness. Every hiring manager is convinced that they must only hire A+++ players or their business is doomed. They'd rather a position go un-filled for 6 months than take a risk on someone simply hungry and enthusiastic. Companies are holding out for that unicorn employee (but, strangely enough, not offering unicorn salaries).

A lot of companies want productivity NOW and aren't willing to tank the cost/risk of training someone junior. Also, some skills you can't/don't want to train into.

some skills you can't/don't want to train into.

The problem then becomes that there isn't enough skilled talent. If companies aren't going to train developers, then who is? Computer science isn't software development. Someone or something other than a company has to fill the training vacuum, and that's why coding bootcamps are getting popular—even though a lot of people don't trust them yet since they are in their infancy and are a new paradigm.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#163

Post by deciplex » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 2:30 AM UTC

GreenPlastic wrote: post #31

smil wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So compensation is not relevant to your point at all since you didn't list it. Or were you looking for mind readers? The low response rate makes sense in that case.

Fair enough, but the information is publicly available on glassdoor. A couple reasons why I didn't list comp: 1. I didn't want to get candidates purely motivated by the high cash comp in the area. 2. Cash comp isn't core to how the company markets itself to employees and its culture. The company prefers to sell itself on being an employee friendly place to work. Like the article hypothesizes, I thought we'd get 50-10…

Everyone tries to market themselves as being an employee-friendly place to work, even if (or maybe especially if) they aren't. It is very difficult for a candidate to separate signal and noise here. On the other hand, a salary is a salary. Anyone's primary motivation in working for your company is going to be the compensation - why are you pretending otherwise, and selecting for candidates who will play along with this pretense?

Where 'employee-friendliness' comes into the picture more is in retention and it can have a big impact there, since once a person is working for you they will know very quickly whether the employee-friendliness rhetoric is steeped in bullshit, or not. But it is not a very effective recruitment tool except perhaps with the very naive i.e. people just joining the job market.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#164

Post by deciplex » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 2:35 AM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #137

GreenPlastic wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but the information is publicly available on glassdoor. A couple reasons why I didn't list comp: 1. I didn't want to get candidates purely motivated by the high cash comp in the area. 2. Cash comp isn't core to how the company markets itself to employees and its culture. The company prefers to sell itself on being an employee friendly place to work. Like the article hypothesizes, I thought we'd get 50-10…

This is how I see the problem. Here are some assumptions. 1. You're ideal ios dev is working. The unemeployment rate among good ios devs is 0%. 2. He is probably getting paid above market wage. 3. He doesn't have a lot of time to research positions. 4. Most job openings are shitty because shitty job openings take longer to fill than good ones(or never get filled). 5. Your ideal ios dev doesn't have time to look up gl…

Exactly. The clearest signal that a company can send that it is truly a good place to work, is to pay a good salary. A strong commitment there implies strong commitments elsewhere. It's not always the case, of course, but you can trust numbers a lot more than you can trust rhetoric and promises. (Not to mention, it's easier to measure, as well.)

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#165

Post by nostrademons » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 2:43 AM UTC

memracom wrote: post #47

GreenPlastic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't post the exact description but the jist of it was: Strong understanding of objective C and iOS SDK Swift experience a plus Passion for design / UX Proven track record of quality apps in app store That's literally all I had under qualifications.

Did you try to get all the Apple details out of your posting and replace them with Android ones? What difference does it make whether they built an iOS app if they are a mobile app developer? Also, why not look for a web app developer specializing in front end. Same skills, just a few minor technical details are different. I think a lot of employers do not understand what the word "skill" actually means. Generally sk…

It takes about 6-9 months for a Noogler to become productive on the Google internal platform.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#166

Post by deciplex » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 3:00 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #76

memracom wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try to get all the Apple details out of your posting and replace them with Android ones? What difference does it make whether they built an iOS app if they are a mobile app developer? Also, why not look for a web app developer specializing in front end. Same skills, just a few minor technical details are different. I think a lot of employers do not understand what the word "skill" actually means. Generally sk…

There are big, big differences between the native iOS programming model, the native Android programming model, and the web programming model. They're not just "a few minor technical details." The toolchains are different, the UI design details are different, the event model is different, the model/backend details are different, and there are significant conceptual differences. I would be astonished if someone could m…

Perhaps the reason everyone thinks there is a shortage of developers, is that 'to iOS dev in a week' is somehow an acceptable metric to determine if someone is a good hire or not.

I can not fathom the mindset that goes into the line of thought "yeah he's clearly a great developer - sadly he is currently working from framework X and we would need him to work from framework Y". I can only hope that such an attitude leaves a company more likely to go out of business (and I suspect it does).

A strong engineer with a proven track record building enterprise-level applications is not going to become a shit-hot iOS developer in a week. However he will be just as likely to bring in 10x his salary in value to your company in his first year, as nearly anyone else you hire. But most hiring managers will probably not bother to promote such an applicant to even a phone screen, since it would take too much time out of everyone's daily 'where are all the iOS devs' bitch session on HN or proggit or whatever.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#167

Post by PhantomGremlin » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 5:26 AM UTC

PythonicAlpha wrote: post #84

One of the problems IMHO is, that employers get more and more demanding. There is this joke, that fits very good: "If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers" [1] In former days, the readiness to take people and train them on the job was much higher. In Germany this is a really ugly trend. The licence for truck drivers is very, very costly but the earnings of the drivers are very low. In former days the transportation…

I've read that joke before. It's great. It should be re-posted every time one of these "jobs" discussions comes up on HN. It very clearly summarizes what's wrong with the hiring process.

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#168

Post by raverbashing » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 9:13 AM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #93

raverbashing wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 99% of cover letters will just be, self-importance exaggeration, prospective employer excessive praise, etc.

And resumes are not? I am a decent programmer but not exceptional, but when you read my resume you will see that I am a child prodigy - and that is done without any lying at all just selective highlighting facts.

I'd say there's a bit of Dunning-Kruger effect

Some people will describe their work as "Built an application from scratch that filters numbers based on mathematical properties while also generating said list of numbers based on stakeholders specification"

(This is FizzBuzz btw)

They put on paper everything the recruiter wants to hear, they recognize no weakness on themselves, they "accept all challenges", etc

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#169

Post by walshemj » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 9:22 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #150

walshemj wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No a director of a market leader said that indeed was shit. and who the F looks for jobs on glassdoor or posts jobs on a site where all your negative points are on display

Because they're scared shitless that Indeed is taking away their business. Monster used to be the leader and they squandered it all away with a crappy, candidate hostile site. Nobody else could come up with something better before Indeed because they were too focused on trying to wedge themselves into the position of profiteering middlemen to bother with improving the actual search process.

Indeed are a scraper site ie "profiteering middlemen" that you seem to dislike so much

Re: Why is it taking longer and longer to fill open jobs?

#170

Post by aerique » Mon, Jun 22, 2015, 9:44 AM UTC

reagency wrote: post #139

aerique wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, I wouldn't consider a job posting that doesn't mention salary seriously either. It reeks too much of a job that wants to take advantage of you while paying peanuts.

Almost no job postings mention salary, and most jobs are filled. Certainly the hundreds of thousands of bigco job ads don't post salaries, and startups don't either. Government does.

Perhaps it's different in the US. Most job postings here in the Netherlands at least mention a salary range.