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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

#331

Post by mbrumlow »

BriggyDwiggs42 wrote: post #200
mbrumlow wrote: post #28

Employers don’t want job seekers, they want people who can do the job. What I am finding of late is most people are woefully under prepared and under skilled. In the other hand everybody has a degree and wants six figures because of it. The job market is tight, but not fucked. When tight it does not have the stomach to employee warm bodies. The fix is lowerred expectations from job seekers and the long term fix is sc…

Job seekers’ expectations are hardly sky high my man. People need to pay the debts they accrued to get through the filters that you put up, and they need to put food on the table. They don’t have any alternative.

They did. And they do. Don’t get a degree. Don’t pay for something that is clearly not worth it.

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

#332

Post by mbrumlow »

SantalBlush wrote: post #166
mbrumlow wrote: post #28

Employers don’t want job seekers, they want people who can do the job. What I am finding of late is most people are woefully under prepared and under skilled. In the other hand everybody has a degree and wants six figures because of it. The job market is tight, but not fucked. When tight it does not have the stomach to employee warm bodies. The fix is lowerred expectations from job seekers and the long term fix is sc…

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.

I want university to produce people ready for the work force. This ultimately means less people will graduate. It’s clearer that the paper that said you were ready for work no longer means that. The fix is universes not worrying about pass fail rates and admission stats and focus on creating classes that produce what they advertised they would produce.

It’s so tiring to me people with masters in CS who can’t fizzbuzz or for that matter do basic programming even more simple.

Now days if too many people fail a class or get a bad grade, the students rally and write notes about how they are so smart and the teacher sucked. The. They grade on a curve and get a degree that is suitable for toilet paper.

Most jobs don’t require a degree and we should stop acting like they do.

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

#333

Post by jrs235 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #187
tptacek wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not illegal to give candidates IQ tests. There are huge firms that do so openly. The practice isn't widespread because it doesn't work well, not because it's proscribed.

Any test that has disparate impact is in effect illegal. Leetcode at least makes this process more opaque which helps limit liability. I have edited my post to note that there is no explicit legislation making IQ tests illegal in the US.

Nope. Many police departments give IQ tests. Score to high and you can be passed over.

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

#334

Post by SantalBlush »

mbrumlow wrote: post #332
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.

I want university to produce people ready for the work force. This ultimately means less people will graduate. It’s clearer that the paper that said you were ready for work no longer means that. The fix is universes not worrying about pass fail rates and admission stats and focus on creating classes that produce what they advertised they would produce. It’s so tiring to me people with masters in CS who can’t fizzbuzz…

If you're having trouble finding CS masters grads who can't write a fizzbuzz, your salary band is too low. Full stop.

Which pretty much confirms my point. Stop complaining, stop blaming schools, and start paying more.

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

#335

Post by jacknews »

The problem is similar to that of beautiful tall rich women who "can't find husbands". Except the companies are in fact mostly quite plain. Obviously there are plenty of husbands out there, just not so many tall movie-star-handsome kind sensitive smart billionaires.

It seems to me the current problem is almost entirely due to companies being too picky, demanding exact skills and experience, and setting up ludicrous obstacle courses of DSA tests, psychology tests, multiple interview rounds, etc, etc, often for rather pedestrian positions.

And then on the freelance front you have 'opportunities' like this on upwork:

  We are seeking a skilled Ruby on Rails Stripe Integration Tester with extensive experience in testing financial software and APIs.
  Job Summary:
  Develop and execute test plans for Stripe API integrations within our Ruby on Rails applications.
  Identify, reproduce, and report bugs and glitches, and verify fixes from development teams.
  Hourly: $4-$8
I mean, $4/hr, resposible for testing their financial integration? And to add insult, upwork want 21 connects ($3) just to send a proposal (which may not even be read). Excuse me while I don't rush to apply for the role. Or send any money through the fintech marketplace they're building.

Recruiting would probably be cheaper and give better results just by picking the top 10 CVs (or even 10 at random), give out 1-week contracts, and hire whoever worked best. I mean, just like having multiple dates, having longer-term relations, even cohabiting, before settling on a marriage partner.

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

#336

Post by jongjong »

joquarky wrote: post #325
jongjong wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of those interview questions have ridiculously short time constraints. You need to be perfectly rested and well practiced in order to finish the exercises in time. Some of these tests seem to select for cheaters because only cheaters who either knew the questions ahead of time or who used AI to solve the problem could finish them in time.

My last take-home wanted a sudoku solving app coded from scratch in 30 minutes in an unusually restricted online sandbox IDE that would disqualify you if you defocused the window. I have 28 years of verifiable professional software development experience on my resume.

I would just close the window 1 minute in because that's just ridiculous. Unless you've already done this before and play Sudoku regularly for fun, it would take you 10 minutes just to absorb the problem. Doesn't leave much time for coding. If you can't even minimize the window to read up on Sudoku, how the heck can you complete the task. The company will end up full of Sudoku enthusiasts who can barely code.

For my last online test, I wanted to close it within 5 minutes of reading the first question even though the problem was not particularly difficult, I just knew I couldn't solve it within 40 minutes because it was a problem that I had never seen before and was very disconnected from practical scenarios. I needed 20 minutes just to absorb the question fully. Also it was very late at night and I wasn't in an optimal state of mind.

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

#337

Post by ryandrake »

sarchertech wrote: post #319
hiq wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There's still the "leave their stable job" problem to solve. I've been in this situation more than once. Do I stay with the company I know: where I'm not getting promotions or raises, but it's a known quantity with a 9-5 work environment, I'm not in perpetual crunch mode, I'm not getting yelled at by a boss as he snorts coke in the conference room. Do I leave this nice stable, boring, no-growth company for yours where they're known to fire fast if they happen to think I misrepresented something? Do I do it for a +10% pay bump? How about for a +50% pay bump?

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

#338

Post by ryandrake »

nerder92 wrote: post #310
dsattt wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the problem is paying them. You want a founder for an engineer's salary.

You mean what we shouldn't offer a salary and only equity?

The best candidates are probably the ones already employed, maybe even employed in a cushy 9-5 company making $400K. As an employer, you need to think about what are you offering that's so much better than what they already have in their hand, that would make them willing to walk away from a sure thing and take a risk by joining your company. You gotta give them what they're already making plus a risk premium.

You don't have to pay that risk premium to someone currently unemployed, but what are the odds that you find your senior Founding Engineer from that pool?

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

#339

Post by cjbgkagh »

jrs235 wrote: post #333
cjbgkagh wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any test that has disparate impact is in effect illegal. Leetcode at least makes this process more opaque which helps limit liability. I have edited my post to note that there is no explicit legislation making IQ tests illegal in the US.

Nope. Many police departments give IQ tests. Score to high and you can be passed over.

lol, I guess that’s one way to avoid a disparate impact lawsuit. Perhaps we could fix leetcode tests by only hiring people who fail them.

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

#340

Post by bugglebeetle »

alephnerd wrote: post #302
b20000 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Union Law in a lot of "Europe" (a broad term so very dependent country to country) is much less adversarial with businesses than in the US. At least in Western Europe, the big Unions won't fight tooth and nail over mass layoffs (eg. Volvo in 2009-12 Sweden versus GM in 2009-12 US) and make it a major political issue, as the Union Leadership has larger ambitions beyond their Union. A lot of this seems to stem from the…

>Union Law in a lot of “Europe” […] is much less adversarial with businesses than in the US.

US labor law was designed to be adversarial at the firm level because that gives individual firms greater power to crush unions and prevents sectoral bargaining and sympathy strikes. One can see the vestiges of “European” labor organizing in the film industry, which has an exemption to this that was grandfathered in.

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