271–280 of 291 posts
1. For juniors, any sort of proof you have passion is enough. 2. Treat mid-levels as seniors. 3. Seniors have to show proof of passion (with longevity and intensity, AI and consultants exist for expertise and menial work) and competence (Take home problems with a long time scale with whatever tools they need. Use AI. I don't care, but be expected to be scrutinized for your design decisions, depth of exploration, and architectural write-ups.)
Of course, the real issue is that a prospective employer doesn’t know what they want. Our “engineering” industry runs on vibes, heroic effort, fashion and hype-cycles. Someone very smart, enthusiastic, quick learning, flexible and affable is the only real job description.
Combine this with the “supply” side entirely overwhelming demand, having to compete with AI, and experience having no value, and for most software developers the future is bleak until a new more equitable equilibrium is found.
Nevertheless in the meantime, at least one can have solace in collecting the authors “failure stamps”.
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It's not repeatable; that's the whole point of describing how the same person gets wildly different results when they interview on multiple occasions.
Candidates are getting different outcomes on separate paths through the process because different people are interviewing them.
Internship etc. proposals miss that status quo job seeking is a parallel process for applicants. An internship model means each candidate can only “consider” one employer at a time. I think this is what Steve’s campfire proposal is trying to counter by making samples/internship outputs public? I think the real solution is something like the Bar Exam. Apply the hard filter once, publicly, administered by a trusted neu…
The real solution is stop proposing solutions like a bar exam. Software engineering evolves too quickly for anything but a work sample to work.
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Trying not to hire them is dealing with it. What are you suggesting?
What if a bad apple is hired despite all the checks? The system should be able to detect and eliminate bad apples before they give “so much damage” regardless of when they are hired. Of course the organization should do its best to avoid bad hires. It should do so because of the opportunity cost of not hiring the right person, not because of the damage that they might give to the organization.
In light of this kind of threat, strongly favoring no hire, and even policies like mandatory on-prem work, start making a whole lot of sense.
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in most states, as long as it's not discriminatory, you CAN fire anyone for any reason the article is wrong here
> … for any reason. If they give a reason, it had better be a legal reason. “Because you’re Mexican” - not legal. “Because we don’t like you/you don’t fit in” - are you in any way different than management? Differently gendered? Differently skin toned? Different faith? Pregnant? Likely not legal. They are not required to give a reason. You can be fired without reason. There’s also mitigating circumstances. If the emp…
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>at any larger corporation Like walmart, mcdonalds, amazon, target, home depot? It’s incredible how insulated the HN audience is to the real life day-to-day concerns of workers in the United States.
These companies do PIPs for software engineers, which is what Steve is talking about. He isn’t talking about a warehouse or fast food job interview. I am not insulated, I am merely staying on topic.
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Dead wrong. Because I see so many people who believe otherwise, here's a direct quote from a prior contract: > I UNDERSTAND AND ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY EMPLOYMENT WITH THE COMPANY IS FOR NO SPECIFIED TERM AND CONSTITUTES "AT-WILL" EMPLOYMENT. I ALSO UNDERSTAND THAT ANY REPRESENTATION TO THE CONTRARY IS UNAUTHORIZED AND NOT VALID UNLESS SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT OR CEO OF THE COMPANY. ACCORDINGLY, I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MY EMPL…
Have you known folks at those jobs to be notified of being let go and sent home on the same day? Have you been involved with letting people go and seen it happen as quickly as the above legal disclaimer implies? I agree that the legal justification is 100% there, but in my experience it is often buffered and takes more time.
Yeah and you know why? Because like everyone in the industry you make the mistake of trying to hire engineers at the level of expertise and with the knowledge and skills you think they need to do the job. Except, any engineer worth their salary (i.e. their salt, I guess) is going to grow into any job and learn new skills and new technologies that they need to do the job, so the person you really want to hire is someone who is not yet ready to do the job you want them to do but has the potential to learn it really, really well. And the engineers you really hire, if they already have the knowledge and skills that you want them to learn, won't learn them because they already know them, will be bored to hell with the role, and as a result do a sloppy job and move on quickly to another role that is more challenging. That is, if they like to be challenged. If they don't like to be challenged- congratulations: you hired yourself a boring engineer.
That's what's wrong with your hiring practice. And you have no way to fix it because you keep telling yourself you want to hire "talent" but what you really try to hire is "experience". If you hired for talent, you'd get both talent and experience, but if you hire for experience, you often end up getting neither.
Incidentally, my pet theory is that this explains why 90% of modern software is crud.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if a bad apple is hired despite all the checks? The system should be able to detect and eliminate bad apples before they give “so much damage” regardless of when they are hired. Of course the organization should do its best to avoid bad hires. It should do so because of the opportunity cost of not hiring the right person, not because of the damage that they might give to the organization.
I was actually hired at my current job to replace a worker who was let go because pretty much from day one, she was acting suspiciously, consistently with someone who was outsourcing their work to contractors and splitting their paycheck with them. Posing a significant risk to the confidentiality of corporate IP and data, from day one, despite putting on a convincing game face throughout the interview and selection p…