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Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

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Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#101

Post by gsibble »

andrewstuart wrote: post #21

I'm a developer and a recruiter. Here are some thing I know: many companies - maybe most companies - are very slow. I cannot tell you how many times I have sent a great candidate to an employer, to hear in 2 weeks that they would like to interview them, despite my pestering them the whole time for feedback. You know what they say then? "Oh well, who else have you got?". They don't care. the companies I work with who…

We move extremely fast on good applicants. We've gone from resume to interview to take home to offer in 24 hours. More companies need to be able to do that.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#102

Post by PenguinCoder »

gsibble wrote: post #88
PenguinCoder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you do all of your two week sprint work in 20 minutes, you can enjoy the next two weeks off. Citation/sources wanted. That was my expectation with a 'salary' job; being paid to get the work done. Work is done under 40hr, congrats go home! Work takes longer than 40hr, oh well. In my experience though, in _every single_ company punishes efficiency and hard work, with more work. You're done in 20h? CONGRATS, you ge…

Yes, I/we do things significantly different than any other company I've worked for. Working fully remote makes it easier since you don't see people getting up from their desks or not coming into work. Our developers have no set hours, can work any hours they want, and are only expected to get the work assigned to them during a sprint done, no more, no less. I brought this style of work to our workplace and it's been…

Great to hear, glad that's working for you and the employees. Sounds great. Thanks for the book Req; I'm not in a position at a company to implement such teachings, I'm just an IC. Autonomy is certainly a big driver of job happiness for me though, I get it.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#103

Post by gsibble »

JJMcJ wrote: post #71
gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

> fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly What's the compensation for that risk? "We'll fire you in six weeks if you don't work out, so please leave your current job where you're well established and have about a 0.5% chance of getting fired this year." Something like guaranteed six months severance, or a $100K reporting to work bonus with no clawbacks. At the C-level, these kinds of guarantees happe…

Honestly, we've never encountered this problem. I've never poached someone that didn't work out. Usually, if I poach, I have to pay a premium so I'm fairly sure they can do the job.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#104

Post by pjmlp »

gsibble wrote: post #56
sys_64738 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me at "with a take home". I'm not interested in your silly games.

Ok. What would you suggest instead? I need to know you can, you know, actually code.

Ask about project work, and real technical questions.

Many of us have a real life, and enough offers to chose from.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#105

Post by gsibble »

analyst74 wrote: post #69
gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

Great advice. We can see the opposite in Amazon where they successfully built a reputation as a terrible place to work with low pay relative to its peers, and now struggle to attract talents.

I've heard horror stories. No amount of pay could get me to work there.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#106

Post by Double_a_92 »

silisili wrote: post #80
uhuruity wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just something like converting numbers to strings Isn't that the kind of thing that someone senior would typically look up? Do you think that whether or not they have that part of the language API stored in their working memory is a good predictor of their ability to do a good job as a senior eng?

We allow them to use Godoc, of course. That said > Isn't that the kind of thing that someone senior would typically look up? Not at all. There's at least two ways to do this very easily in Go(one line, no errors to worry about even), and I'd expect someone who claims to use it daily to know one of them offhand. While I think languages are just tools, in our instance we're very clear we need people versed and ready to…

That skill has nothing specifically to do with Go. Most languages have some "ParseInt" function or so. And of all the languages I use for daily work I could not 100% tell you what that function is exactly called.

By doing that you are wasting a potentially good developper because they didn't happen to remember some languages exact syntax.

It's also just straight up insulting. If someone worked for x years in a related role... do you just assume that they were a fraud at that job, and they just leeched of that companies money?!

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#107

Post by trebbble »

uhuruity wrote: post #45
silisili wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree in principle, but not in experience. I've interviewed a few people lately, Senior Eng somehow, who have impressive resumes. I ask basic coding tasks just to make sure they actually know the language claimed - just something like converting numbers to strings, and you'd be amazed how many people had no idea where to start.

> just something like converting numbers to strings Isn't that the kind of thing that someone senior would typically look up? Do you think that whether or not they have that part of the language API stored in their working memory is a good predictor of their ability to do a good job as a senior eng?

Over 15 years in the industry, shitloads of code shipped in a dozen plus languages, repeatedly taken an idea all the way to being a functioning product, usually get great feedback from peers and managers, often taken point on architectural matters, et c., et c.

Yeah, I'd probably google that in any language I've written, including ones I've worked in in the last couple weeks. Even if I thought I knew what to do, and even if I tried it and it seemed to do the right thing, I'd google it (or use in-IDE docs, or similar) because I wouldn't trust that I was entirely correct.

... however, narrow the question and give me some resources ("the input will be a positive, unsigned 32-bit integer; the string should be ascii and use digits, not words, to represent the number; do insert commas every third digit [and we're working exclusively in English, so commas are all we need and you can ignore system locale preferences—one of many subtle ways one might screw this up]; here's a printout of an ascii table for reference") and I can probably do something like what's requested, without the aid of Google. As long as you don't expect the syntax to be completely perfect.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#108

Post by gsibble »

pjmlp wrote: post #104
gsibble wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. What would you suggest instead? I need to know you can, you know, actually code.

Ask about project work, and real technical questions. Many of us have a real life, and enough offers to chose from.

Sorry, but neither of those things show me that you know how to code. I don't know how long it took you to write your projects so you may be very slow and a terrible coder. Technical questions you may have prepped from a book. I need to see active coding, either live, in person, over zoom, or time boxed in a take home. We'll even compensate you for your time. But I need to see you actually working and review your work. Sorry.

Quite frankly, relying upon such things is a sure-fire way to make sure some bad developers get through the cracks.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#109

Post by gsibble »

intelVISA wrote: post #95
gsibble wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the person requests it, we pay for interview time as long as the hourly is reasonable. Not a problem. The real question I have for you is, how would you prefer to prove to me you can actually do the job? In person coding exercise? Isn't that more stressful?

No issue with take home approach, I think it's incredibly valuable if done in a manner that respects everybody's time. Personally I'd probably do some sort of FizzBuzz/LC easy type low filter and then a fast (i.e. no compiled langs) take home in an area adjacent to the job description paid at said job's rate with a time expectation so you don't end up getting billed 20hrs for a Node RESTful API.

We very infrequently get asked to reimburse for time but we do limit how much when we do.

We usually give various challenges as take homes which people find fun and engaging, projects that I myself have spent hours or even days trying to solve in my spare time. We want them to be fun. We rarely get complaints.

We're happy to accomodate if you'd rather do it in person or over zoom. It's really up to the applicant.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#110

Post by WkndTriathlete »

gsibble wrote: post #56
sys_64738 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You lost me at "with a take home". I'm not interested in your silly games.

Ok. What would you suggest instead? I need to know you can, you know, actually code.

Talk to the candidate. If you (and the candidate) cannot communicate well enough in 30 minutes to discover that then either (a) you don't know enough to work well with a really good developer or (b) the developer doesn't know enough to work with you or (c) both are true.

I have never been let down by this rule, either as a candidate or an interviewer. In my experience coding exercises as part of an interview process are a big red flag to me indicating the company is trying to compensate for lack of in-house talent with process or they are trying to replace someone with a certain hard-to-find skillset because they have an immediate fire they are trying to put out. Neither situation is a good one to get into.

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