For real though, why do doctors write like they do? I see no advantage to it. Do they have classes in medical school teaching how to write like this?
I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
181–190 of 583 posts
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#182Hard to take this seriously with all the straw men and broad generalizations. Reality check: there has never been a hotter seller's market for software engineering talent. The fact that you have not landed a job does not mean that supply is not short in general. Rather than blowing your stack at some recruiter who you heard on a podcast interview, you might want to reflect on yourself and how you might be coming off…
It's basically both.
When I graduated with my CS degree, I was _thrilled_ to be offered 50k. Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC. So hard not to say that the market hasn't adjusted somewhat.
At the same time, part of the reason companies even have to pay so much is because they've made interviewing so damn hard. I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change, but they are too afraid to interview. They feel they got lucky and got through the process once and are unlikely to be able to repeat it, and they might be right. The industry has taken "false negatives are better than a false positives" to an absurd extreme and then complain there's a shortage.
It's one or the other. If you're saying "a false negative is ok" you are implicitly saying "it's totally fine if we fail to hire good developers", and you can't say that then turn around and complain it's too hard to hire good developers. Which is _exactly_ what all my recent employers have done.
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#183> I am sick and tired of Is this style of discourse really what Hacker News is about? I come here specifically because it is one of the few places where vague sentimental ranting is discouraged over directness and constructing thought out arguments for points. It's disappointing to see something make it to the top just for having an aggressive "hot take" and not because the content is well presented.
Refer us you your railing against the posting of mainstream news items here, then.
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once, 30 minutes into what was supposed to be a 1 or 2 hour phone interview, had an engineer at Google cut me off in the middle of their standard "write code in a Google Doc" with a "oh, I have a meeting I have to run to, good work we'll get back to you." I assume it was not, in fact, good work, as I did not progress to the next interview. I think a phrase like "typical" would be inaccurate; possibly "common" as we…
I had a Google research scientist telling me during an interview that they don't like their job and don't recommend it. At a different occasion, Google's VP showed up 15 minutes late, asked one question, and stopped paying attention for the rest of the interview too busy with their laptop. I understand that these are probably outliers but I will not be reapplying soon.
I interviewed for a company that was (maybe still is?) the leader in industrial cameras. I was being vetted for a EE role by a bunch of non-EEs until I got to the one poor woman who was the only EE left in the company after they had gutted their in house development and switched to using fancy enclosures around SZ commodity cameras. I was asking probing questions and had her on the verge of tears during the interview. Glad I never got a call back from them.
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#185We had engineer shortages in Germany - its basically trying to create a oversupply to drive the price down.
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will be monopoly if you have no other choices but to work for FAANG, which can't be further from reality. On the other hand, complaining about FAANG, only after failing their interviews makes it hard to take that person's intention seriously.
Out of Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google - Apple's interview process is actually quite gentle. It's definitely the most human focused out of all of them. I flipped the bird at Facebook and Google, and got frustrated with Amazon's to cancel my interview mid process.
I actually had quite the opposite experience, Apple absolutely grilled me at the spot for its interview, even though I did pass it, but I didn't take their offer.
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#187I think "developer shortage" depends on your expectations of developer skills. I currently recruit a lot for several different positions and there is no shortage of applications. But 50% can't do FizzBuzz and many do not fit into our environment of a small team where we do not need (can't use) specialists (yet). If you only want to recruit from the "best 20%" [1], you can only recruit the best 20% of the people who a…
I honestly doubt that 50% of applicants can't do FizzBuzz.
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#188> The general rudeness is ridiculous. I once had an interviewer ask me if I was a wizard with GO, C++, Rust, and C over the phone. Then when I said I had some experience with rust, he immediately cursed at me and hung up. > This experience is fairly common. Is it? I've done a fair bit of interviewing on both sides of the table, and can say with complete honesty I've never heard a curse said in anger in any of them. I…
Yeah this sounds more like a crazy anecdote to me. I once had a new CTO come in at a place I’d been working at for about a year and a half, and he refused to interview any candidates that weren’t Muslim (as existing staff were replaced 1 at a time). While this is extremely fucked up, I would be surprised if I could find another tech company in the state where this happened. Cursing at someone for having experience in…
Where was the company located?
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#189> Furthermore, if you really want a C++ developer you can just expect a developer to learn C++ on the job if they have any adjacent experience with any other language. Is this really accurate? C++ is a very different language than even Java, not to mention Python or JS. Languages have their own quirks and attributes that often matter at some point. Especially C++. I am on a team where we are constantly building stuff…
I tend to agree with him that it's pretty easy to pick up adjacent languages... But not C++. Too many footguns & dusty corners.
Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I interviewed at a small company just for an internship several years back. It was an iOS position, but again, internship/jr. level. I said I wasn't an expert but wanted to learn and had spent some time developing some basic iOS apps on my own. Guy proceeds to seriously ask me about low-level memory management, i.e. ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) vs. other methods (this was roughly 2013 or so). I attempted to giv…
I have a feeling this will get me a downvote, but I grew up in a very blue collar town and the idea of paying one's dues is not crazy to me. I see a lot of people entering the tech market as if they don't have anything to prove, like their degree says it all. In any industry, you shovel some shit early on, IMO. I was a good programmer, but I got my start racking servers in a data center. I crawled under raised floor…
Does this have anything to with what the parent comment even described? Expecting someone to apply for an internship with extensive iOS skills is a bit of a joke.
It kind of reminds me when I got asked for an internship experience if I had any experience doing large Python 2 to 3 migrations. The job description didn't even use the word Python. (I later found out through Glassdoor that this company paid interns about the same rate as the entry rate for the H&M down the block.)