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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

#281

Post by b20000 »

em-bee wrote: post #253
pseudocomposer wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions have historically solved this problem. Non-union accreditation programs don’t seem to have the same effect, though in some industries they do have a positive effect on salary.

to qualify, unions may have solved this problem in the US. in europe, which has a stronger apprentice culture, unions don't have any role here. (i am not saying this to criticize the comment but just to point out one of the many differences between unions in the US and europe) the problem with apprentice programs is that they lag behind the changes in the industry. when i was in school there were none for software de…

unions are long established in europe, at least in western europe, and are a cornerstone of the social system. even white collar jobs have unions. this is in contrast to the US where unions are almost entirely non existent for white collar jobs like software engineering.

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

#282

Post by ralphc »

pdimitar wrote: post #216
alephnerd wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The risk is that they hire someone who doesn't know GWT and six weeks later (and six months later) they still don't know it. 100% THIS. If I wanted to fire someone I just hired, it ends up taking 2-3 quarters (1 Q realize they suck, 1-2 Qs managing them out/building a case) AND looks very bad on the hiring manager because you wasted $1.75*BASE_SALARY of company money and have nothing to show for it. I understand so…

Or you know, you can just hire them as contractors and fire them tomorrow if they don't perform. Every company I worked with in the last 8 years does just that.

That's what I wound up doing at the job I did get, I got hooked up with a recruiting/contracting firm. They got me interviews and then I was a W-2 employee for the contracting firm, got my insurance through them etc. and contracted at the place I interviewed at first. When they were happy with me the company I worked at hired me as a FTE.

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

#283

Post by b20000 »

rmbyrro wrote: post #257
banannaise wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Structural unemployment happens when the perceived skills of the workforce don't match the perceived needs of employers, so there is both unemployment and difficulty hiring. A lot of engineers will tell you that companies are often expecting both too much (precise types of experience) and the wrong things (leetcode-type challenges, unnecessarily specific knowledge...), which leads them to pass over perfectly qualifie…

Leetcode type challenges are just a proxy for logical habilities, which are highly desired for SWE positions. It's not meant to evaluate every ability. Despite imperfect, I don't know of a better indicator that has similar cost. An employer won't spend a lot more to evaluate with perfection how good we are with logic.

leetcode challenges are a proxy for nothing

employers can simply hire based on past projects

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

#284

Post by shagie »

g9yuayon wrote: post #272
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…

> 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. Any study on why there would be this kind of mismatch in the tech industry? I'd imagine that tech industry is the most transparently competitive and least regulated sector so there should be a reasonable balance between the supply of skills and the demand. In add…

The easy problems are solved. Crud with the preferred language and framework is a known quantity and can be "ok here we are and go" and you can get a boot camp or new grad and have them do that.

Let's say that we need to solve a new problem. The shop language is Scala. Who can learn how to program in Scala? Can the boot camp who learned how to do NodeJS be trained in Scala? If so, how long will it take? If we spend a year to get them to being an acceptable Scala dev, will they get a new job immediately? If we are paying a "we are training you low rates" can we get any applicants? If we are paying a "we assume you to be a skilled Scala dev in a year and we expect to get 2-3 years of productive work beyond training" rate and they leave immediately after getting them sufficiently trained... what then?

As many developers see themselves as a "Java developer" or "React front end developer" rather than a software engineer, the mismatch is akin to asking "why can't we get plumbers to do electrical work?" The people who are Java developers or React front end developers are skilled in the trade rather than as a knowledge worker in software engineering.

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

#285

Post by SantalBlush »

alephnerd wrote: post #225
SantalBlush wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want universities to act as your vocational training program for free? No thanks. If you want to make demands about college curriculum, you can start paying up. Until then, universities owe employers nothing. Employers have already shifted enough of their job training costs onto universities and their unwitting students. The free ride is over.

Universities owe their graduates with 5-6 figure college debt jobs that can pay those debts off. > Employers have already shifted enough of their job training costs onto universities and their unwitting students. The free ride is over. I'm fine with this model, but will applicants be interested in earning a bit above minimum wage for 3 years as we train them from scratch? This is the model that the Indian and Chinese…

I think certification institutions--from universities to bootcamps--have found that it's more profitable to focus on quantity over quality. They are producing dollar store products because the market has shown that employers are dollar store customers, despite what they say.

The more valid the cert program is as a hiring signal, the more it will restrict the quantity of labor supply, and employers don't want this; they want to churn and burn through a pile of young people--or outsource--and then throw them away when their upkeep gets too expensive.

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

#286

Post by [deleted] »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #266
tptacek wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were that the case, several of the largest employers in the country should be getting routinely sued for hiring discrimination. They are not.

Ok, so what several largest employers are you talking about? If this is pubic knowledge as you allege then there is no need to be obtuse. And again, that list of employers that publicly brag about continued administering of IQ tests would be rather helpful to your case and would allow me to substantively check your assertion. I don't understand why in good faith you would not want to share this information. You canno…

[deleted]

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

#287

Post by cjbgkagh »

kasey_junk wrote: post #276
cjbgkagh wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so what several largest employers are you talking about? If this is pubic knowledge as you allege then there is no need to be obtuse. And again, that list of employers that publicly brag about continued administering of IQ tests would be rather helpful to your case and would allow me to substantively check your assertion. I don't understand why in good faith you would not want to share this information. You canno…

Procter & Gamble famously uses “cognitive assessments” for hundreds of thousands of applicants per year. There are test prep firms for it much like you’d find for the mcat or gre.

As best I can tell P&G is an aptitude test that only resembles fake IQ tests and more resembles a mix of leetcoding and personality tests - probably sharing the same benefit of opacity.

Other info I found on it suggests that it’s easily gamed which is something real IQ tests are designed to be resistant to.

I’m not trying to ‘no true Scotsman’ this but it would be helpful if the company described their test at least as an intelligence test. They seem to describe it more as a personality test; “Discover the PEAK Performance Assessment from Procter & Gamble (P&G) tand get an insight into how your personal profile matches the company's needs.”

My specific focus on IQ tests is to be less opaque alternative to leetcode, the P&G assessment seems to be similarly and perhaps more opaque and thus, for now, confers the same protections from disparate impact lawsuits.

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

#288

Post by paulcole »

duxup wrote: post #275
paulcole wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can I just talk to the folks I'll potentially be working with / for right away? No? Why? No! As many applicants as possible should be rejected before we start interrupting these people's days. You might be a great candidate but what about the other 10 doofuses who aren't? Do they all get to talk to the folks they'll potentially be working with/for right away?

I'm not convinced that any filtering is doing any good. I see doofuses hired regardless.

Same – when I look in the mirror in the morning to shave lol!

Whether you agree w/ the filtering or not, you want people who you aren't willing to hire (and who won't be willing to work for you) to be removed from the process as quickly and cheaply as reasonably possible.

This is why phone screens with a single person who has a general idea of what to look for exist. The key is that this person receives feedback on future interviews and their decisions and can make adjustments to exclude/include the right people.

My belief on this is that if that person isn't being told, "You let a bad one through" occasionally, they're being too strict on filtering, for example. But you don't want to hear that too often.

Think about somebody rejecting a job offer.

In most cases, many hours of people-time will be invested and wasted when this happens. So look at why was it wasted? Was salary, a company policy, benefits, or something similar a dealbreaker? If so, start bring that thing up earlier on – either in that first phone screen or ideally in an email before the first phone screen.

Of course, you're not always going to get a clear answer so this is where instinct and experimentation come into play. This is also why it pays to have a single person specialize in the phone screens – they will get many reps and opportunities to develop that intuition.

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

#289

Post by ralphc »

pdimitar wrote: post #212
shagie wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The risk is that they hire someone who doesn't know GWT and six weeks later (and six months later) they still don't know it. The ability to do self directed learning of a new skill / technology is something that is difficult to find (a lot of developers that I know don't know how to learn a new version of Java or framework and are still writing code exactly as they did when they graduated college... and they could pu…

You're basing your entire argument on an arbitrary deadline (six weeks). I am giggling as I am monitoring several job forums and seeing several companies pop up periodically (once a quarter I'd say) looking for the same positions... 2.5 years later. So let's change the example. Is it really worth it to be as picky for 2.5 years? I'd wager they lost money because of that. Any senior dev can learn GWT or anything simil…

And let's say that they found their "dream" candidate that knew GWT. Technologies change and improve over time, can you imagine a place that is still using GWT, or jQuery, or backbone? Whoever they hire is going to have to learn new technologies while working there, otherwise they need to fire all their devs and go back out and hire React devs or whatever is the flavor of the day.

Even something as stable as Java has changed dramatically as it has absorbed functional and parallel concepts from Scala and Kotlin. Any dev should be hired on their ability to learn, not, or not just, on what specific tech they know now.

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

#290

Post by tptacek »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #287
kasey_junk wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Procter & Gamble famously uses “cognitive assessments” for hundreds of thousands of applicants per year. There are test prep firms for it much like you’d find for the mcat or gre.

As best I can tell P&G is an aptitude test that only resembles fake IQ tests and more resembles a mix of leetcoding and personality tests - probably sharing the same benefit of opacity. Other info I found on it suggests that it’s easily gamed which is something real IQ tests are designed to be resistant to. I’m not trying to ‘no true Scotsman’ this but it would be helpful if the company described their test at least…

The extent to which the test is arbitrary and gameable would make it more suspect under employment law, not less, so you're working against your own argument.
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