We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage • Hacker News Board

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#211

Post by 52-6F-62 » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #150

pascalxus wrote: post #60

But HR isn't the only problem. In my experience having worked for a company that hired heavily for several years, it was the engineers who lacked the talent necessary to conduct proper interviews. Great candidates were being rejected by the truck load. Us engineers, we're great at engineering but many of the junior and mid-level ones don't have much experience interviewing people and usually no training whatsoever. S…

We switched from a random set of questions to a take home coding assignment (that we compensate for) and a discussion of said coding assignment. It's pretty clear what kind of work someone will do when you can look at work they've done.

One of my best interviewing experiences (as a candidate) was very much the same.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#212

Post by retiredcoder » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

bartimus wrote: post #190

retiredcoder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your calculations but some managers seem to not have done this math yet. As result, what we have are poor hiring evaluations, horrible onboarding, etc.

It's exactly those managers that are the problem. They're incompetent and not needed for self-managed agile teams. So they keep rotating developers to safeguard their positions. Meanwhile those managers are getting the salaries that better be spent on a team of great developers.

I think it is also how budget for hiring seems to be allocated. New funding round, hire a bunch, got budget approved, hire a bunch. Senior management and above seems to not like to give money with time conditions against their expectations.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#213

Post by bendbro » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

Trisell wrote: post #126

I've been looking for jobs recently. Have a background building pretty robust Node/React apps. At the 4 places that have given me an interview. I've been told that I don't meet their needs. The reason for this. I'm unable to solve their pet coder wars function challenge. Being a self taught programmer, not having a 'learned' background has proven to be a hindrance. Because I don't have the traditional algorithmic cho…

You may want to try applying for roles as a system development engineer. You still write a lot of code, but the role is less focused on algorithmic stuff. You should ensure during the interview you acquire a deep understanding of what the company expects you to do, and express to them what you'd like to do. IMO the sysdev role varies too far between permanent oncall and software developer, so you'd want to make sure you are embedded into the software side.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#214

Post by claydavisss » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

Okay lets just get this out of the way - hiring has become a hellish experience due to economics. If there was legit DEMAND, none of these SUPPLY issues would be a concern. So I no longer believe there is a techie shortage, in fact, I feel the opposite, most companies are in fact overstaffed and most hiring is just to find the goldilocks candidate...because, why not?

My new strategy is...I have two questions for prospective employers:

1. What % of candidates that you express interest in end up with offers? If the number is less than 10%, they are window shopping and it isn't worth my time...or if I bother applying, its just through some automated spray-and-pray online resume forwarder (Glassdoor, Indeed whatever).

2. Do you put newgrads and senior people through a single interview funnel? If so, count me out. Every company is now the same and has the same interview process...resumes are irrelevant, experience is irrelevant...here is a coderpad link, answer Igor's question correctly, thanks.

What gets me about (2) is that companies are telling me I can use any coderpad language...even if it is one they don't use at all...HUH? Like, you're a Java shop and you don't care if I know Java AT ALL...you care more about the fact that I can write mergesort in a language you don't use...okay...

I no longer bother trying to build a rapport with anyone. Shit, why even put my name on my resume? Just call me "candidate" and send me the coderpad link.

Congrats Coderpad, TripleByte etc...you have turned practical skills and experience into zeroes not even worth putting on my resume. These companies have basically destroyed any notion of "careers" in this industry.

Good news for the companies is...people aren't dumb, candidates will eventually optimize for the process and we'll end up with a generation of people who can quickly solve trivial CS problems within 45 minutes and nothing else. They'll be very very good at writing mergesort, rotating an array, and returning the set of all subsets...AND NOTHING ELSE. Enjoy!

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#215

Post by pathseeker » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:43 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #167

revvx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly what I did? Sorry, I didn't phrase it right. My non-negotiable requirement was 20% more than I was getting. I gave a hard number and they said "yeah we can give that" before the interview. However the recruiter just assumed I was bluffing and went ahead with that colossal waste of time.

They promise that amount up front, and then renege? That's not even deceitful, that's just intentionally wasting your time. I would send them an invoice for the time spent on the interview. What a bizarre way to run a business.

>They promise that amount up front, and then renege?

"we can give X" is not a promise to give X.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#216

Post by revvx » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

ohyes wrote: post #196

revvx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly what I did? Sorry, I didn't phrase it right. My non-negotiable requirement was 20% more than I was getting. I gave a hard number and they said "yeah we can give that" before the interview. However the recruiter just assumed I was bluffing and went ahead with that colossal waste of time.

Sounds like an incompetent recruiter. Recruiters make money as a percentage of your hiring salary, why on earth would they try to place you somewhere that you are making less? They should be shopping you to whoever will give the most money.

It was an HR recruiter that works for the company, not an independent recruiter.

I agree about the incompetence part, though. Terrible waste of time for everyone involved.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#217

Post by retiredcoder » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:44 PM UTC

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #163

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

searching is easier in terms of internet ads and reviewing candidates. But hiring dev candidates is extremely hard. Virtually everyone has a job who is experienced already, college students get offers somewhere in the early junior year, so you hire them with at most 2 internships. It's very difficult to pull people out of an existing job, it's kind of begging them to consider you. Then for random applicants to a comp…

> but many people end up failing our interview If you are having this much trouble hiring, are you 100% sure your interview process is correct? What is the KPI for your interview process?

That’s another hot topic here in HN. Not claiming is the GP case but interviewing nowadays feels like human Tetris.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#218

Post by anovikov » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #43

burtonator wrote: post #5

I had a recruiter call me a year ago with what sounded like a really amazing offer. Working for a well funded startup on a problem in which I happen to be a domain expert. They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set and they said the right things to get me to interview (compensation won't be a concern). Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview wit…

I find it strange, as software developers, that we discuss the effects on automation all the time, but no one seems to understand that automation has made searching for new employees incredibly inexpensive and efficient compared to the past. So in technical roles there are a lot of companies that are always hiring. Recruiters work for free until they find you someone and placing job listings online is so inexpensive…

There's also cost of switching itself which could be pretty steep. Pay someone to learn his role being essentially useless for the first month or so, and having several other people distract to show him/her the way around.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#219

Post by tomrod » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

hopler wrote: post #191

tomrod wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR is the cause of this issue, either the ossified silo, or the general company policy to HR, which results in too big of asks for too low of wage from folks that have to use that policy.

It's tautological to say that bad HR policies are the cause of bad HR policies.

Right.

HR professionals (and the c-suite) are the cause of bad HR policies.

Bad HR policies perpetuate bad HR policies after that.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#220

Post by nkingsy » Sat, Apr 20, 2019, 7:46 PM UTC

d4mi3n wrote: post #104

revvx wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thing happen to me a couple times. Long and tiring process. Blackboard, make a project, lots of dirty laundry about "long gone incompetent developers" that made the current system a giant mess. Lots of red flags but lots of promises including a large maximum salary, including bonuses and stock options. The final offer, however, was 60% of my current pay. Lower than the average for someone with my exper…

Rule number 1, IMO, never discuss salary. I find listing your salary requirements before starting a process weeds out a lot of silly interviews. If you know your worth and have a goal for your salary, it is the most effective way I know to avoid dumb offers.

I recently explicitly gave my salary requirements up front, went through an arduous process and got an offer of about 2/3 of what we had BOTH agreed upon in the first informational interview.

This from a very profitable mid-large sized established tech company in the US.