Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 355 posts

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#191

Post by selimthegrim »

greenie_beans wrote: post #190
Ancapistani wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I don’t understand this. Yes, for some engineers, in some roles, in some locations it makes sense - but that’s a tiny part of the overall market. I’m 40, live in a rural area in a Southern US state, and have right at twenty years’ experience. I’ve worked a big companies, have been the first tech hire at a startup, and have specialized somewhat in healthtech. I feel…

sounds like you're in bham or atl? and you're right. i know numerous talented engineers in the south who you can pay less and get as good or better of a job done than a FAANG engineer. tbh i might be biased towards a non-FAANG engineer. them southern devs be scrappy.

Why should I (in NOLA) take a salary that I got as a team lead 10 years ago on the West Coast?

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#192

Post by h02 »

rhelz wrote: post #70
h02 wrote: post #14

And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...out of a thousand applicants--who presumably had college degrees/and or years of experience programming for other companies--there just has to be some who would have been successful at your company. I mean, if you lined up 600 random people grabbed from off the street, you'd find 6 to 10 of them with a genius level IQ. In fact, you'd have a good chance of finding somebody smar…

Yes, but we can't possibly interview 1000+ people, so we have to filter it somewhat based on what they give us: their resume. If you can build me a tool that can find in a stack of 1000 resumes a genius then I'd like to start a company with you and we can make a lot of money together.

Basic requirement is at least 5 years of professional experience. Most of the people who apply don't have that. Then after that, a large number of people who make it to the coding test can't pass the first basic test, or struggle through it: generate a random string using only the standard libraries. If you can't do that then you are not a senior developer. Or they appear to be using ChatGPT and cheat through the test. etc. etc.

And memorizing algorithms wouldn't help you pass our assessment, it's actually easier than that in my opinion.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#193

Post by dlivingston »

infamouscow wrote: post #179
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There is no kind way to put this: a lot of stupid stuff got done with a lot of smart programmers in the last ten years." Any reasonable person would agree, but would the people in Silicon Valley agree.

It doesn't really matter what the folks in Silicon Valley think. The innovators left Silicon Valley during the pandemic and spread out throughout the country. Those remaining are desperately clinging to a world that doesn't exist anymore, and probably won't ever again.

What innovators are you referring to? SV still seems like the Tech Mecca from where I'm sitting (on the east coast).

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#194

Post by k99x55 »

elwebmaster wrote: post #9

Market is the worst it has ever been, at least in the last 10 years but even before because now supply significantly outnumbers demand. Most people on LinkedIn have a green badge. The economy is doomed. Keep rising interest rates to the sky.

Everything is collapsing except bitcoin.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#195

Post by piyuv »

hayst4ck wrote: post #62

I remember being a naive college student and hearing about a "software engineer shortage." I was too young and dumb to understand that meant that the owners of companies that needed software engineers wanted cheaper labor and that I was to play a part in the devaluation of engineering labor by helping supply exceed demand, thereby allowing company owners to commodify software labor to ultimately pay wages proportiona…

Since when “migrants are stealing our jobs“ is a liberal take?

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#196

Post by egman_ekki »

patresh wrote: post #21
cageface wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trend here is unmistakeable: https://hnhiring.com/trends Only one source of course, but I think it's indicative of the state of the overall market.

How can one explain the graph you linked given the recent bull market in stocks? Wouldn't this mean that capital is flowing in which should lead to more hiring? Is the job market response delayed or are there other factors?

Not necessarily. Layoffs mean higher profit margins and that often leads to an increase in stock price as it means higher potential payout for shareholders.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#197

Post by mamidon »

memset wrote: post #66

I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup. However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and inte…

Hey memset,

If you're still looking for someone, I'd be happy to chat with you. I'm an ex-Facebook engineer, but I'd be willing to consider a part time thing if it covers my living expenses.

I've got my own startup idea I'd like to execute on, but I'm not willing/crazy enough to eat through my savings for X years.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#198

Post by Ancapistani »

greenie_beans wrote: post #190
Ancapistani wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I don’t understand this. Yes, for some engineers, in some roles, in some locations it makes sense - but that’s a tiny part of the overall market. I’m 40, live in a rural area in a Southern US state, and have right at twenty years’ experience. I’ve worked a big companies, have been the first tech hire at a startup, and have specialized somewhat in healthtech. I feel…

sounds like you're in bham or atl? and you're right. i know numerous talented engineers in the south who you can pay less and get as good or better of a job done than a FAANG engineer. tbh i might be biased towards a non-FAANG engineer. them southern devs be scrappy.

Nope - I'm in a town of <15k people. The nearest city of the size of Birmingham or Atlanta is 2.5 hours away from me.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#199

Post by Kim_Bruning »

thworp wrote: post #185
rossdavidh wrote: post #52

So, as a 56yo who's been programming professionally since 2004, currently having trouble finding enough contract work, a bit of perspective: When there are more openings than qualified people, even when you reduce qualifications to what is actually necessary, it seems like there's "nobody" available. Now, when the shoe is on the other foot, it seems like "nobody" is hiring. It's harsh, but it also doesn't take that m…

Couldn't agree more. To add to your last point: Industry is an area with a huge deficit of properly engineered software and often lacking basics things like version control and testing. Most manufacturing processes use code that an Automation Engineer with a bare minimum of CS training clicked together in Rockwell/Siemens software. There is no deployment pipeline or staging, data is often "copied" from ERP by typing…

Are you freelance? (if so, poke me by mail)

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#200

Post by yunwal »

rossdavidh wrote: post #52

So, as a 56yo who's been programming professionally since 2004, currently having trouble finding enough contract work, a bit of perspective: When there are more openings than qualified people, even when you reduce qualifications to what is actually necessary, it seems like there's "nobody" available. Now, when the shoe is on the other foot, it seems like "nobody" is hiring. It's harsh, but it also doesn't take that m…

I really hope so. I’ve been looking for non-stupid jobs for 5 years, even willing to a pay cut to work on them, but I keep getting no traction, while yet-another-saas-that-does-x openings have been everywhere.
Post reply on HN