When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling • Hacker News Board

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#181

Post by hellllllllooo » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:53 AM UTC

Apocryphon wrote: post #140

All of these recurring interview threads makes me wonder: why are there only two interview preparation-focused boot camps right now? (Outco and Interview Kickstart) It’s one thing to take an algorithms course, and it’s another to excel at competitive programming, and still another to use those skills on the spot in an interview. Surely like any other admissions process, one can train for technical interviews in a gro…

The point that is being made by the original post is that the process is bad in many companies especially when hiring senior engineers who have a proven track record and have other options. These engineers don't want to spend time and money learning how to crack the coding interview in some bootcamp. They can find work and are put off by the process some companies use and such companies are missing out on good people. Suggesting bootcamps for leetcode and whiteboarding as a solution misses the point as these are not great interview practices.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#182

Post by philsnow » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:55 AM UTC

fzeroracer wrote: post #119

tptacek wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again: this is true of "work sample" tests in their mainstream implementation in our industry (spend 6 hours jumping through a hoop for the privilege of running a standard, nondeterministic interview gauntlet), and those hiring processes are a scourge. But there's a right way to do it: give work sample challenges and then, at least for the most part, end the technical qualification part of your process there . You sp…

The extremely obvious problem with this is that there's no way of preventing someone from completely blowing a hole in your interview process by simply paying for or hiring another developer to do the take-home problem for them. At that point they've gotten past the technical requirements and now only need the soft skills to execute on it once the rest of the interview process continues. This is why take-home problem…

> I would put in an honest effort and get 90% of the problem solved, but get denied because my solution wasn't flawless

It's possible that the company stated the take-home work in terms of non-negotiable deliverables, and their baseline for allowing a candidate to move forward is 100% of those, and they prioritize candidates who take initiative and do more work beyond the base requirements.

... not that I would agree with such a process (it biases towards people with more free time, like people with fewer dependents and people who are currently out of a job / underemployed), but it's very possible that this is what you faced.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#183

Post by mrath » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:55 AM UTC

snarfy wrote: post #6

The words 'pay' and 'salary' do not appear in the article. They want senior engineers at intern prices.

I have just skimmed through the article. But my personal experience is lot is ads (at least in Australia) don't mention the salary range in offer. what I would be interested in is the maximum they can afford for a right candidate. since then I stopped applying if there is no pay in the ad and I don't know the company. Lot of companies assume that their pay is higher than Market.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#184

Post by humanrebar » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #121

cloogshicer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree a bit here. Of course, salary is very important, but I (and many people I know) would easily choose (and have chosen) a lower salary for any combination of these perks: - Work fewer hours - Work from anywhere - Work in a specific location - Work in a certain environment - Work in a specific kind of organization - Work with specific technologies - etc. People are very different and have very different wishe…

But you don’t get any of those with a startup. They want you there onsite working long hours doing one specific thing

And even if they did make those promises and honored them, you're taking a risk that they won't. And it's not like you get the FAANG salary back if they can't follow through on working hours, the tech stack, or whatever other consideration is important.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#185

Post by invalidOrTaken » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

peanutz454 wrote: post #176

taf2 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall an interview I was brought into early in my career to talk with someone being brought into be a senior architect... in my mind this meant this dude must be crazy smart right. Everyone in room had all basically made up thier minds and loved the guy. I gave a variable like a = [1,2,4,8,9]; And asked if he could write a loop and print out the values of each element. He embarrassingly could not. I always ask thi…

But are architects supposed to write code? The example you give is embarrassingly simple and anyone should be (expected to be) able to write code for it. But aren't architects designing architecture. I don't think the architect or anyone in his team at my previous organization's IT dept could write code, but he could design system architecture.

If he can architect worth a damn, he should be able to code his way out of a paper bag.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#186

Post by LaserToy » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 1:58 AM UTC

Context: 15 years of experience, multiple public talks (including AWS reInvent), own chunk of infra serving hundreds millions users.

Got a message from yet another self driving startup. Agreed to do a phone screen out of curiosity. Interviewer is 6 months out of school and his first question - why do you want to work for us. My answer - I actually don’t, I didn’t even know you exist and it is your job to convince me. Thoughts - i’m wasting my time.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#187

Post by humanrebar » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:00 AM UTC

vonmoltke wrote: post #180

Game_Ender wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if Google or Facebook offer you $300k no risk, with a relatively standard work life balance. Then you have to really carefully weigh the startup equity package and how much you enjoy the respective work environments.

> What if Google or Facebook offer you $300k no risk, with a relatively standard work life balance. If. People here sometimes make it seem like a senior engineer can just walk into a FAANG, chat with the receptionist, and walk out with a $300k offer. While it is certainly not the hardest thing in the world, these companies are still pretty selective and only employ about 10% of the total seniors in the market. More l…

Downleveling? I can guess what that means but some clarity would be appreciated. With sources if possible.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#188

Post by Adamantcheese » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:00 AM UTC

On the subject of recruiter emails, I just recently got one for a job at my former employer, a clear indication that the recruiter didn't read my resume at all. Also I've gotten an offer for a 3 week contract senior developer position on the other side of the continent. I swear that recruiter must have been mental or desperate.

From my perspective as a job seeker, it's pretty obvious that recruiters really just don't care. And the weird mental games being played on applicants with increasingly stupid and inflated requirements only means you're going to have fewer applicants.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#189

Post by EpicEng » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:02 AM UTC

peanutz454 wrote: post #176

taf2 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall an interview I was brought into early in my career to talk with someone being brought into be a senior architect... in my mind this meant this dude must be crazy smart right. Everyone in room had all basically made up thier minds and loved the guy. I gave a variable like a = [1,2,4,8,9]; And asked if he could write a loop and print out the values of each element. He embarrassingly could not. I always ask thi…

But are architects supposed to write code? The example you give is embarrassingly simple and anyone should be (expected to be) able to write code for it. But aren't architects designing architecture. I don't think the architect or anyone in his team at my previous organization's IT dept could write code, but he could design system architecture.

I don't understand how one could possibly design a system that they couldn't even begin to implement. Not framework/tool specific stuff, but can't right code? At all?

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#190

Post by ravenstine » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 2:02 AM UTC

Having spent a lot of time being interviewed recently, I've noticed a certain type of question asked in technical interviews that I think can sabotage perfectly qualified engineers. I'm not sure if my view is sound, but maybe someone can pipe in and tell me why I am wrong.

Imagine being asked this question in a technical interview:

> When do you decide to use frontend validation?

(yes, this is based on questions I've been asked IRL)

The problem that I have with this type of question, even though it can be answered and seems reasonable, is that it's not even how engineers tend to think most of the time. It's about a solution looking for a problem.

When I'm faced with this kind of question, I often stumble to come up with a hypothetical need for the solution being proposed. It's not that I can't come up with an answer, but I end up lacking eloquence and saying "ummm, well, okay, so..." a lot while using my imagination. It would be like handing a hammer to someone and asking them to find things to nail with it.

In essence, it's backwards from how I would tackle most problems.

Here's the sort of question I would rather be asked:

> Let's say that we've built out a web form that the user can submit, and there are a lot of inputs they have to fill in. They can only know if they made a mistake once they've hit "submit", due to backend validation. How could you improve this experience for the user?

I find this preferable because it's a lot more realistic and natural. Instead of looking for problems to fit the solution, I have a problem and need to come up with a solution. To extend my hammer analogy, this is like providing the pieces of a wood table and allowing the candidate to show how they would assemble that table. Anyone can memorize terms like "frontend validation" and what sort of problems they are associated with, but it demonstrates more skill to be given a problem and know where to go from there.

My guess is that there's a lot of good engineers out there, even senior ones, who get weeded out in the hiring process because they're being asked not to approach problems like engineers but like they're contestants on Jeopardy.