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Hiring Is Broken?

software.rajivprab.com

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Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#11

Post by esotericn »

o10449366 wrote: post #6
esotericn wrote: post #4

This article appears to be an extremely long-winded way of stating that you don't have to pick from the top-end. Which is true. Companies know this. Most of the stuff I read here is basically made up of people who aren't quite the best moaning that they couldn't get a job at Google or whatever. Life goes on. It is impractical and not a good thing for every software developer, even the very good ones, to pile into the…

Could the system be better? Yes. But there's also a ridiculous amount of entitlement in the tech industry. There are very few other industries where someone with a bachelors degree or no college degree at all can obtain a low to mid six figure job with no prior work experience + benefits. Even for the average experienced hire, who's compensation can easily exceed that of the average doctor, it isn't like things get w…

I don't think of it as entitlement so much as a refusal to see the world as it is.

There are a trillion arbitrary signals that will help or hinder your success in various ways.

Physical attractiveness, gender, race, parental background, your nationality, where you can work, your accent, language... the list is honestly almost endless.

You can wish for a world in which none of this were true, or do your best to find a place within it. Sure, don't lose sight of justice, but recognise that you can't change the world alone.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#12

Post by [deleted] »

esotericn wrote: post #4

This article appears to be an extremely long-winded way of stating that you don't have to pick from the top-end. Which is true. Companies know this. Most of the stuff I read here is basically made up of people who aren't quite the best moaning that they couldn't get a job at Google or whatever. Life goes on. It is impractical and not a good thing for every software developer, even the very good ones, to pile into the…

[deleted]

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#13

Post by esotericn »

maxaf wrote: post #8
esotericn wrote: post #4

This article appears to be an extremely long-winded way of stating that you don't have to pick from the top-end. Which is true. Companies know this. Most of the stuff I read here is basically made up of people who aren't quite the best moaning that they couldn't get a job at Google or whatever. Life goes on. It is impractical and not a good thing for every software developer, even the very good ones, to pile into the…

Your implicit assumption seems to be that Google and its ilk hire the absolute best engineers. This is simply not true, for one very simple reason. There is no proven method for sorting a pile of candidates such that the absolute best engineers will float to the top. In the case of high-profile employers, a significant percentage of hires will be those who have trained themselves specifically to beat the hiring proce…

They are the best at obtaining positions at Google.

Which is what people talk about here.

No-one ever mentions the fact that say, you're barred from cracking out `git clone` and making the next Linux.

It's always commercial employment, which always has been and I am willing to bet always will be primarily a political field.

Obviously Google doesn't have the best devs - or at least I bloody well hope they don't - because they're mostly working on ad conversion shite. That excludes a ton of people I know right off the bat.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#14

Post by drchewbacca »

Another related question is how would you evaluate the quality of hires? So you hire for a team of 5 people who complete 83% of the tasks you set for them that year.

How do you know if you hired well? Is this an excellent result or a terrible one? How do you know how well each of those 5 did and how well the team would have done with other people in the roles?

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#15

Post by Retric »

esotericn wrote: post #4

This article appears to be an extremely long-winded way of stating that you don't have to pick from the top-end. Which is true. Companies know this. Most of the stuff I read here is basically made up of people who aren't quite the best moaning that they couldn't get a job at Google or whatever. Life goes on. It is impractical and not a good thing for every software developer, even the very good ones, to pile into the…

I have generally been rather disappointed with Google/FANG software developers. These companies generally though not always avoid the bottom 1/3 of the talent pool, but that’s about it.

Effectively they simply select for people willing to hack their hiring process, which also excludes most actually talented developers. Resulting in a few very talented people, and an overall average workforce.

This is also why most internal projects at these companies are about average for the industry and these companies focus so heavily on acquisitions. Consider the differences between iOS, Android, and Windows phones was not so much about software quality as much as business models.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#16

Post by PaulHoule »

Wasn't that headline written by content marketers working for triplebyte? It is popular for medium articles and if you use it on the programming section of Reddit you will get downvoted into oblivion.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#17

Post by esotericn »

Retric wrote: post #15
esotericn wrote: post #4

This article appears to be an extremely long-winded way of stating that you don't have to pick from the top-end. Which is true. Companies know this. Most of the stuff I read here is basically made up of people who aren't quite the best moaning that they couldn't get a job at Google or whatever. Life goes on. It is impractical and not a good thing for every software developer, even the very good ones, to pile into the…

I have generally been rather disappointed with Google/FANG software developers. These companies generally though not always avoid the bottom 1/3 of the talent pool, but that’s about it. Effectively they simply select for people willing to hack their hiring process, which also excludes most actually talented developers. Resulting in a few very talented people, and an overall average workforce. This is also why most in…

Wouldn't surprise me at all.

Fundamentally, companies do not hire for raw technical ability.

Would you hire Linus for your bog standard dev role? Of course not. He'd be bored in days.

You probably wouldn't want a supermodel as a life partner.

The whole thing is about selecting model employees. People who will rock the boat in the correct ways; need money, but are neither impoverished nor independent; are reliable; and so on and so forth.

It's not "hiring is broken". It's "you misunderstand what employment is".

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#18

Post by jcims »

otras wrote: post #5

One thing I’d add is that live coding exercises can vary widely in quality. > If you solve the problem, you’re scored highly. If you don’t, you’re scored poorly. In my own opinion, this is a terrible way to look at these problems, though many people do use this metric. This is further emphasized by HackerRank-style exercises where you have to pass all test cases. This is robotic and not empathic at all. A more fluid…

I wonder if there is any value in having a few candidates do a group project. Would probably be a mess but might be informative, you could at least identify the bullies and dickheads pretty quickly.

Re: Hiring Is Broken?

#20

Post by gravypod »

nafeydev wrote: post #2

Whats the general consensus on take home projects? How helpful are they?

I haven't been able to find a better screening method than take home projects. A major issue that I find when watching hiring take place is people don't separate learnable/domain specific skills from the "inherent" skills you need as an engineer. Hiring someone who has a 10 year track record as a software engineer in systems software for a web-stack backend role should be an easy "Yes" if they are a skilled software engineer. Because of this I usually encourage people to make take home problems that are limited in scope and follow the restrictions:

  - Should not take longer than 3 hours for an inexperienced developer.
  - No learnable skills tested like tooling, language, and domain experience.
  - Simple to understand problem 
  - Problem should be obviously mappable to a solution
  - Provide sample input and sample output data (only 1 case).
I then score using the following questions

  - Did the code work on the sample I provided?
  - Were edge cases in the spec accounted for?
  - Has the engineer followed a language standard (PEP/PSR)?
  - Were docs (install, compile, comments) provided?
  - Were unit tests provided?
  - Were sample cases the engineer ran manually provided?
  - Was the code "elegant"? Could another engineer at the company look at the code and maintain it in a year.
I think the actual project should have low bearing on completion and the state and cleanliness of the code has a higher mapping to quality.
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