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Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

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Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#201

Post by mistrial9 »

jongjong wrote: post #182
danaris wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My observation has been that the causality is the other way around: the pointless mindgames of employers trying to find "the best" people via interviews led to job-seekers finding ways to game a system that was rigged against them. However, regardless of "who started it" in this round, ultimately, it is unquestionably a situation we can lay at the feed of industry, which abandoned decades ago the practice of actually…

Yes, looking at big company interview processes, it can give you a huge unfair advantage if you can know what kinds of technical questions would be asked ahead of time. It's kind of ridiculous and counter-productive that employers are obsessed with selecting developers who can solve problems under time pressure. The kind of developer who writes code quickly may also be the kind of developer who jumps to conclusions t…

not arguing this but, the assumption here is a certain kind of production web developer and similar things.. not all coder problems are hired this way.. unfortunately, ranks of new company leadership actually do not know themselves about this, dealing with money and personal power relationships daily.. so they copy others in the hiring practices and so do the personnel and low-level managers, who are vulnerable to termination themselves..

an industry expanding into distant lands with telecommute for ever faster results with ever cheaper workers, appears to be embracing the AI interview and AI CoPilot assistant standard, to further reduce the bargaining power and individual contributions of employees for writing ordinary code

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#203

Post by piloto_ciego »

surajrmal wrote: post #56
tlb wrote: post #8

It's not any kind of paradox. Structural unemployment happens when the skills of the work force don't match the needs of employers, so there is both unemployment and difficulty hiring. Structural unemployment is usually high when there's a rapid change in demand for skills, as of course there is in tech. It results in crazy high salaries too. People with machine learning experience are getting 7-figure offers, while…

It's also not helpful when employers refuse to train and demand folks with the skills they want. If the supply of folks you want doesn't't exist, you need to do your part to grow them.

I’m just getting done with grad school where I spent 2 years learning AI stuff to apply to a real world problem. I have been applying to jobs for months and I literally hear nothing.

I desperately wish I could do my old career still.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#204

Post by lapcat »

maccard wrote: post #139
sarchertech wrote: post #115

What really needs to happen is that we need to hire fast and fire fast. Stop it with the 7 rounds of interviews. Assume after some discussion and basic verification that the person isn’t lying about past experience. Hire the first candidate that passes your bar instead of interviewing and ranking 20 candidates. If it turns out that you have hired every tech employers worst nightmare, a person with great experience wh…

> but can’t code their way out of a paper bag, fire them. This is a bit of an inhumane way of looking at it. Sure, it's "business", but asking someone to quit their current job to come work with you should only (IMO) be done if you have the intention of actually keeping them there and not "seeing how it works out"

The tech industry is not a charity, and it shouldn't be financially supporting people who can't do their jobs. Another way of looking at it is that if someone managed to scam their way into their previous job by sweet talking, then you've done their previous employer a favor by getting them to quit. You've also done a favor to the competent but unemployed people who are looking for a job and now have an opening.

I don't want anyone to be destitute, and I fully support social services to help the unemployed, but on the other hand, shouldn't incompetent people be driven out of tech? They can work in some other industry where their abilities and skills are more appropriate and useful. They might not make as much money, but that's the nature of capitalism and competition.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#205

Post by capitanazo77 »

It’s because the good ones have infinite work and the bad ones are looking for work.

I’m super productive and have been full for 20 years. (Freelance)

What I need is vacations and good programmers to help me, so back to the initial problem…

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#206

Post by pdimitar »

giantg2 wrote: post #167
coldpie wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to be lucky (including knowing someone, ie networking) I don't think it's right to consider networking/knowing someone to be luck , exactly. Networking is a skill and a tool, and has consistently been presented as that for my entire career. As a result, I go out of my way to try to make those connections. I go in to the office, I have lunch and drinks with coworkers, I say Hi to people I recognize from cha…

"Cold-applying is the absolute hardest route to getting hired. A big part of your career is doing what you can to make that your last resort when job hunting." Cold applying should be the most fair and introduce the least bias. My entire life has been cold applying.

It should be, I agree, but my entire career of 22 years has shown me that it's not. And I've always cold-applied as well. Only had 1-2 contracts where former colleagues recommended me.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#207

Post by jongjong »

mistrial9 wrote: post #201
jongjong wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, looking at big company interview processes, it can give you a huge unfair advantage if you can know what kinds of technical questions would be asked ahead of time. It's kind of ridiculous and counter-productive that employers are obsessed with selecting developers who can solve problems under time pressure. The kind of developer who writes code quickly may also be the kind of developer who jumps to conclusions t…

not arguing this but, the assumption here is a certain kind of production web developer and similar things.. not all coder problems are hired this way.. unfortunately, ranks of new company leadership actually do not know themselves about this, dealing with money and personal power relationships daily.. so they copy others in the hiring practices and so do the personnel and low-level managers, who are vulnerable to te…

What I find weird is that the kind of people that they're hiring are the kinds of people who are easier to replace with AI.

AI is useless at big-picture reasoning when coding. It's only good for short snippets. Yet companies seem to reject developers who are good at big-picture, architectural thinking.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#208

Post by alephnerd »

giantg2 wrote: post #197
alephnerd wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Burnout is a huge one Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release. It absolutely sucks on the applicant's end, but we can't spend a year helping a new hire work through burnout when most companies are in a fairly competitive market with extremely demanding customers AND much more competitive vendors.

"Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release." I mean, they're allowed to be shortsighted if they want. Burn through people and spend time and money hiring replacements.

This is about new hires. Not existing employers.

The answer is simple - don't burn out your existing employees.

Re: Discussion: Job seekers can't find a job and Employers can't find an employees

#209

Post by shagie »

giantg2 wrote: post #197
alephnerd wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Burnout is a huge one Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release. It absolutely sucks on the applicant's end, but we can't spend a year helping a new hire work through burnout when most companies are in a fairly competitive market with extremely demanding customers AND much more competitive vendors.

"Of course, but companies have deadlines to hit and features to release." I mean, they're allowed to be shortsighted if they want. Burn through people and spend time and money hiring replacements.

Companies are well aware of Brooks's law and will instead chose to not hire someone and work with existing known productivity levels (and look to see what can be done to improve that) than to hire a risky person that puts existing deadlines even more at risk.

That companies aren't hiring people (and complaining that there's no one to hire) is what we're seeing rather than burning through people and dealing with Net Negative Producing Programmers ( https://web.archive.org/web/20030517045551/http://www.pyxisi... ).

---

Because people are leaving for greener pa$ture$ at a faster rate, and the higher compensation demanded, companies are mitigating that risk by requiring a person to come in with the expected training rather than spending months training a person who may not be able to preform at expected levels.

The other side of that is that there are a lot of places out there that are moving slow and not updating things quickly. I worked at a retail company a number of years ago where you could make $70k / year as a programmer and be able to work at a more leisurely pace. I currently work in the public sector and things are on much longer timescales.

However, if you want to work in the fast paced and highly paid sector of Big Tech startups, you may need be able to meet the needs that they have. And there its less risky to have one of the existing employees take on another task than to hire someone (and burn runway faster) that might not be able to contribute until after the runway is gone.

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