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Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

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Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#231

Post by lgleason »

On one hand you have companies bleating about how they can't find enough developers, while pushing for more foreign work visas etc. in all of the developed countries. On the other hand you have talented engineers being turned down. I would argue that if there is indeed a shortage, you would not being seeing this volume of talented engineers being turned down and they would be in the drivers seat in the process.

The fact is that business is trying to turn us into commodities and it sounds like right now they are winning...all that we can do it either adapt or change careers sadly.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#232

Post by cr0sh »

theWheez wrote: post #156
maehwasu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. I’ve interviewed senior guys, with medium to high salaries, who couldn’t do fizzbuzz. What’s worse, a lot of them were fully confident in awful solutions, and didn’t even want to test them. Talented people frustrated at the process just don’t get how bad bad coders are. I would never have believed it myself until I experienced it.

This is incredible to me. How can one get to senior or middle software engineering positions without the ability to write such trivial code?

It does seem incredible, but it happens.

One place I worked at, the company hired a developer who claimed to have a CompSci masters.

He was completely unable to code anything. I thought it strange.

I started to ask him some basic questions that any actual CompSci degree holder should be able to answer (and I don't have a degree in CompSci at all - everything I know I've learned on my own, from other sources, for the most part); I didn't make it like a grilling session, just polite conversation about a shared interest - but he either had difficulty, or couldn't answer at all.

He only stuck around a couple of weeks.

I've often joked that an interview question should be asked akin to "What basic logic function is needed to implement a computer? Show it's truth table, then design one in 2-dimensions on a whiteboard as a virtual 'rope-and-pulley' system."

Couple that with a random-style fizzbuzz-like challenge, and maybe a more difficult open-ended programming challenge (ie "build a simple CRUD app") - that would give you a good idea on their real skills.

Note: That first question I wouldn't expect many to be able to pass the last part; even the first two parts many perfectly capable developers would have difficulty with. But I would be disappointed if they claimed to have a CS degree and weren't able to at least tell me what it was and the truth table for it.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#233

Post by C1sc0cat »

suzzer99 wrote: post #128
otabdeveloper1 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely untrue. Whiteboard problems absolutely do work. The vast majority of applicants cannot code at all. And I mean that literally: they're at a loss at how to write a function that adds two numbers or counts the number of elements in a list. Worse is that these guys can be employed as developers (even 'senior' ones!) for years and years in 'serious' enterprises. How, you ask? By using copy-paste and cleverly n…

The problem is there are a lot of people who are still good coders who suck at white-boarding for one reason or another. I became one of them due a combination of age, rustiness and an escalation of nervousness after failing a couple whiteboards out of the gate. Of course once I did land a job it took about a week to shake off the rustiness, and the company that hired me is thrilled. The point is that companies like…

Even FANGS need developers who can get stuff done to make up for all the JIRA jockeys.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#234

Post by mesaframe »

billconan wrote: post #168

whiteboard interviewers like to ask dynamic programming, I really don't understand it. I have asked around and have never seen a single programmer used dynamic programming at work once. Other skills, such as multi-thread programming, debugging skills, get less coverage. Many whiteboard coders who know how to solve dynamic programming on a whiteboard, don't know how to use mutex and semaphore. I think the whiteboard i…

People do use dynamic programming. But, yeah debugging skills should be given more coverage. A lot of people I've seen programming struggle or don't know how to debug code.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#235

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

mikelanza wrote: post #75

I take a completely different approach to hiring, and I've gotten fantastic results. Instead of throwing tricky algorithm questions at a candidates, I scour their detailed employment records for the most relevant experience for the first project. In other words, I'm looking for relevant experience rather than top-of-the-head algorithmic brilliance. In the interview, I pose our project problem, and the candidate who g…

> I hire from an international pool, often on Upwork, so I can start developers on a project basis.

I wish I could always hire developers to start on a project basis, but that's just not possible for many (most?) of the best local candidates. Someone who is great who has a full time job at company A is very, very rarely interested in leaving for company B on a project basis.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#236

Post by danwakefield »

lalos wrote: post #15

Can someone describe what is a 'senior'? This might be controversial but I see senior title promotions being thrown around just for retention reasons, could it be possible that once you start looking for another 'senior' role at another company they have different expectations of that title? Not to mention you can obtain a 'senior' title by mastering your team's code base and who knows if that knowledge is transferab…

https://twitter.com/gankro/status/1046438955439271936

Mozilla engineer leveling chart is a good example. There are probably other companies that expose the criteria they use as well.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#237

Post by tkahnoski »

thorwasdfasdf wrote: post #182
otabdeveloper1 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely untrue. Whiteboard problems absolutely do work. The vast majority of applicants cannot code at all. And I mean that literally: they're at a loss at how to write a function that adds two numbers or counts the number of elements in a list. Worse is that these guys can be employed as developers (even 'senior' ones!) for years and years in 'serious' enterprises. How, you ask? By using copy-paste and cleverly n…

> And I mean that literally: they're at a loss at how to write a function that adds two numbers or counts the number of elements in a list. Seriously, Where are you finding these candidates? seriously. I've worked at a number of mid-sized companies, and interviewed dozens of candidates, and I have never, ever, ever come across a candidate that couldn't write code on this level: "write a function that adds two numbers…

I've used simple problems 'write a function to give me a maximum from a list' and 'provide a list of test scenarios to validate this function'.

This has a surprisingly high failure rate even in cases where we just email it to the candidate and discuss in a phone interview the next day. I don't think it has anything to do with a persons ability to program but likely derives from a person's ability to understand a work request.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#238

Post by chrisseaton »

theWheez wrote: post #156
maehwasu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. I’ve interviewed senior guys, with medium to high salaries, who couldn’t do fizzbuzz. What’s worse, a lot of them were fully confident in awful solutions, and didn’t even want to test them. Talented people frustrated at the process just don’t get how bad bad coders are. I would never have believed it myself until I experienced it.

This is incredible to me. How can one get to senior or middle software engineering positions without the ability to write such trivial code?

I think some people's typical coding is call one API, and then send the result to another API, or just print it out. They never need to write anything like a loop or logic.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#239

Post by joshuamorton »

beat wrote: post #174
dantheman wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can offer a coding test - give them a computer, a piece of paper, etc. Let them sit a room by themselves, give them up to an hour to do a 15 minute problem. There are lots of ways to destress the coding interview, but the ability to code has to be tested.

What if the job doesn't really involve coding? That's true of rather a lot of senior/lead level software engineering jobs. Security analysts, devops engineers, architects, and others may never write code at all as part of their jobs. As a senior devops engineer, I write a lot of trivial Groovy code for Jenkins pipelines. But the interesting part isn't the code, which for the most part a monkey could do. It's redesign…

FWIW, I'd refuse to work for a lead or architect who wasn't tested on their ability to write code (and in my current position, my manager, their manager, their manager, and their manager all have significant work as SWEs that I can see, or passed coding interviews).

The thing that I find when conducting interviews is that people who have trouble writing a concrete solution to a problem often have trouble formalizing any solution. They can handwave stuff that maybe makes sense, and given enough good faith is "correct", or at least not obviously incorrect, but at the same time it depends on a whole suite of libraries that don't exist, or a domain specific language that someone would need to come up with, or something.

And if you need to invent a DSL to parse a string, I'm worried about how complicated your actual solution would be when redesigning the release process. Because sure, any monkey can write some groovy code that does something. But I'm more worried about if that code will be well designed. Note, not the system, but the code itself. Because in reality the code defines the system, and a beautiful architecture implemented terribly is still terrible to work with.

To see the second thing, I need to see concrete code.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#240

Post by akhilcacharya »

mimixco wrote: post #61
cyclonetiger wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I know, the IPAT still exists. Had to take it in 2015 for a co-op with IBM.

Googling around shows the consensus that the IPAT is considered one of the most difficult hiring tests out there, yet it contains no programming.

I mean, when I did it it was considered a formality.

I don’t think anyone considers it a difficult barrier compared to getting into FNG etc.

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