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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

#311

Post by FearOfTheDuck »

danaris wrote: post #196
teeray wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s better than the risk of trying to carry on long term short-staffed Companies don’t feel that way. They feel they can just ramp up the workload on existing employees “until we can hire more.” What are they going to do, leave? Where do they think they’re going to go? They’ll be met with the same situation at another company, except they’ll be on the other side of the table this time. If there are companies with…

This is the (well, yet another) result of going for decades with such weak labor protections. If the answer to "What are they going to do?" is "strike", or "leave and take a massive severance payout because that's what their union negotiated in the contract that specifies you can't overwork them by more than X amount", then the company no longer has that abusive option on the table. They have to hire someone to fill…

I'm recently interested in the question of unions, and I'm wondering, if there any ICT unions somewhere? Or, at least, attempts of creating such? I was also thinking that it can be difficult to officially unite many developers worldwide. But can it be possible to get data ownership back? E.g. collectively crawl job openings from LinkedIn, and leave some personal reviews on them, at some independent platform?

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

#312

Post by PaulRobinson »

cmilton wrote: post #248
PaulRobinson wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it has been observed [1] that a lot of people turning up to coding interviews don't know much about coding. I'm sure in the ML sector right now, it's hell. Seven figure salaries are going to get some optimistic over-reachers desperate to try and get in the door and BS their way through the first few months. My own experience: I had a CEO and board member of the startup I was CTO'ing push a dev my way. "Brilli…

Who hired the engineer? It seems like they failed to make a successful hire, but that happens sometimes. >but I kind of want to have a conversation about how they code, what they do, what their method and see if it rings true. I think these are great ideas. What kinds of things were you asking in your interviews?

I can't remember where I got this from, but I like to ask them to talk to me about their favourite project. It can be school, hobby or work, just something they are excited about. Then we talk about what made them excited, what design tradeoffs they considered, the problems they ran into, how they overcame problems, what they would do differently knowing what they know now, and so on.

My favourite answer was a guy who replied "I've been working recently on some OpenGPL stuff in Common Lisp for the X window protocol". That was an interesting chat, and I was happy when he accepted the offer I made at the end of it.

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

#313

Post by drewcoo »

giantg2 wrote: post #72
toomuchtodo wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have all the skills and education you want, if employers are unreasonable about their hiring and requirements, you have no control or recourse. You have to be lucky (including knowing someone, ie networking), not necessarily good.

"You have to be lucky (including knowing someone, ie networking), not necessarily good." Yes, and the network effects are largely detrimental to minority groups since networks tend to be biased toward similar people.

Elite is a minority. I don't think minority means a group faces biases.

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

#314

Post by PaulRobinson »

sage76 wrote: post #170
PaulRobinson wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it has been observed [1] that a lot of people turning up to coding interviews don't know much about coding. I'm sure in the ML sector right now, it's hell. Seven figure salaries are going to get some optimistic over-reachers desperate to try and get in the door and BS their way through the first few months. My own experience: I had a CEO and board member of the startup I was CTO'ing push a dev my way. "Brilli…

> We're going to have to be smart and solve this ourselves by reading papers and experimenting and trying things out. How would you do that? By reading papers and experimenting and trying things out? Throw in a few books for good measure? Why are you answering the question you are asking yourself?

Because when I dig further into how to do that, I often get blanks. Saying you will do that and being able to do it are two different things.

You might not understand how low the bar is here. If I ask 100 applicants to write a working function to calculate E=mc^2 for different values of m, 30+ just won't know where to start.

So when I ask how we might solve a problem I am not asking for the abstract 10000 foot view. I'm checking they can write simple code. Filters out a huge number of people, unfortunately.

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

#315

Post by bradlys »

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.

It really isn’t. Asking people stuff like N Queens, Trapping Rain Water, and other such questions is really about if you’ve seen the problem before and studied enough to solve them optimally in under 20 minutes while explaining out loud.

It really is about testing how much you prepared for the interview and not the job.

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

#316

Post by thisisfatih »

smsm42 wrote: post #267

I was just thinking the other day about writing exactly this post. I've been many times on the hiring side as the interviewer, and now also am on the employee side. On both sides, the process looks extremely broken and extremely frustrating. People in the system sometimes help to get it from "screaming eldritch horror" level to "root canal every day for a month" level but I'd still easily nominate this as the worst p…

+1 to everything you've mentioned, well said. These are I believe facts and it makes the solution nearly impossible but I really believe that there must be a solution to this setup.

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

#317

Post by bradlys »

baby_souffle wrote: post #71
the_real_cher wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im curious if this is true.

Yes and no. My sources are telling me they get a few hundred applications per day for just one role. Beating those odds will be a lot easier if you know the hiring manager.

Only works if your issue is getting through to the hiring manager and getting approved.

Ultimately, what I’m seeing is that companies are just more picky when it comes to interviewing too. Everyone is asking harder or less common leetcode questions than before and are evaluating more strongly than before.

It’s significantly harder to get an offer these days even if you get an interview.

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

#318

Post by thisisfatih »

candiddevmike wrote: post #6

Turns out recruiters were actually useful to both job seekers and employers.

It actually works on both ends however recruiter way is prob the most expensive way for especially employers but also in some cases for job seekers. + I am not sure how scalable recruiter setup is.

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

#319

Post by sarchertech »

hiq wrote: post #304
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…

> we need to hire fast and fire fast You'll end up having more trouble hiring when candidates don't want to relocate or leave their current job because it's too risky to join your company which has a reputation to easily fire its employees even though they passed their tests. If I were unemployed and I wouldn't need to relocate, sure, I'd be willing to give it a try for a few weeks and see if it's a mutual match, tha…

That’s an easy fix. Don’t require relocation.

As for easily firing employees, I’m only talking about during a probationary period. And then only for employees who misrepresented their ability to do the job.

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

#320

Post by sarchertech »

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"

I’m not talking about hiring anyone and seeing how it works out. I’m talking about hiring people based on experience and stated ability the way every other industry does.

The people I’m talking about firing are the people who represent the stories that people talk about when they insist that tech interviews can’t work the way interviews in other industries work.

Someone who materially misrepresents their ability to do the job.

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