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Ask HN: What makes a job posting attractive?

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Re: Ask HN: What makes a job posting attractive?

#41

Post by wccrawford »

The top-rated comments have a lot of good info, but I'm going to boil it down for what I look for:

40 hour workweek. Overtime only happens during an emergency. That means you NEVER schedule overtime.

Accurate requirements and bonus skills. Don't ask for 7 years in a language that has existed for 4 years. Make it clear if experience in other languages is acceptable, and the candidate can get up to speed on a relatively new language on the job. For a good programmer, this isn't hard.

No fancy language. No 'rockstar' or 'code ninja' talk. Anyone who is realistic about their skillset will not call themselves that.

Flexibility in interviewing. Good programmers already have a busy life. If you want them, you have to work with them. Especially if they live any distance from your office. Be willing to interview via internet/telephone first, and have them travel only if necessary. (I once had a guy 3 hours from me ask me to a lunch interview. I declined because I figured he was just milking the company for lunch and had no intention of hiring me.)

Adequate pay. Benefits are nice, but they don't put food on the table. And with enough pay, employees can buy all the benefits I want. As someone said earlier, your foosball table isn't on my list of requirements.

Unit testing. Without unit testing, life is a LOT harder.

Don't play games. If you say you'll call someone back, do it. Don't wait for the candidate to call and 'ask for the job'. That means they're desperate, not that they're good or loyal. If an interviewer tells me that they'll call me, I hold them to their word.

The above are the absolute necessities. Below are things I like to see:

Languages/environments that I enjoy. If you deploy on Linux and run Ruby, those things interest me. Showing that you are on top of the newest technologies or methodologies means you are open to improvement. This is also good.

"Challenging". I hate boredom. I never want to be bored. I would much rather go home exhausted from all the thinking than have enough energy that I feel like coding at home. And I do code at home when I'm bored at work.

Telecommuting. I find that I don't choose to do this, but companies that trust their employees enough to do this are better to work for. It also probably means they have a way to measure whether someone is working or not that doesn't involve a rat. That means things are a little more fair.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a job posting attractive?

#45

Post by lzw »

cageface wrote: post #21
lzw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things I learned nearly 20 years ago is that it sucks to work in shops where the engineers are arrogant, because the more arrogant the less likely any good engineering is tolerated. These kinds of puzzles communicate arrogance to me. They say "We're more interested in excluding you based on a trick question than in getting to know you".

I guess it depends on the question. If it requires previous knowledge of some kind of gimmick then I agree it's a turnoff. A good puzzle that challenges your thinking and tests some basic algorithmic chops is a good sign though, I think. For example, the puzzle in this ad is a good one: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/sof/1927765905.html

Yeah, I knew that was a group of arrogant douche bags who are probably incompetent before I even got to the puzzle. I didn't bother to look at the puzzle, it oddest matter how difficult it is, it's presence is just icing on the douchcake.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a job posting attractive?

#46

Post by cageface »

lzw wrote: post #45
cageface wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on the question. If it requires previous knowledge of some kind of gimmick then I agree it's a turnoff. A good puzzle that challenges your thinking and tests some basic algorithmic chops is a good sign though, I think. For example, the puzzle in this ad is a good one: http://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/sof/1927765905.html

Yeah, I knew that was a group of arrogant douche bags who are probably incompetent before I even got to the puzzle. I didn't bother to look at the puzzle, it oddest matter how difficult it is, it's presence is just icing on the douchcake.

I think you've got the sensitivity on your douche detector cranked up way too high.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a job posting attractive?

#47

Post by cageface »

bugsy wrote: post #40
cageface wrote: post #18

It's actually a huge plus for me if the company takes the time to put a novel programming puzzle in the post. It says a few things: 1. this wasn't posted by a recruiter or somebody clueless in h.r. 2. engineers at this company still care about hiring 3. a lot of buzzword bombing b.s. artists aren't going to be applying 4. the company recognizes that raw aptitude is more important than bullet list bingo In other words…

The puzzle question is an interesting one. I like solving puzzles, that's why I am an engineer. Based on this I used to think that puzzles are a good thing for posts and interviews. In practice, it almost never works out very well. Puzzles are incompletely specified, impossible to answer unless you guess at assumptions that are sure to be wrong, or they take so much time to solve it's just not worth it. Usually compa…

I'd never heard of the FizzBuzz problem before. Just looked it up. Do people claiming to programmers really struggle with it? That's disturbing if so.

Designing a good problem is hard. Something that's difficult enough to present a challenge but easy enough to be solvable by a good programmer in ~15 minutes or so takes some thought. But this is another reason why I appreciate a good programming problem in a posting.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a job posting attractive?

#48

Post by AmberShah »

1. Talk about what you'll actually be doing, both in terms of both technology and the projects. Most of the time this has to be guessed from vague technical "requirements" rather than offered up freely. If you can show genuine enthusiasm for your work that is fantastic, but don't fake it because that is also obvious.

2. Be up-front about the upsides and downsides. If programmers get full control of their workstations and get to pick what environments to use, then say so. If they are expected to work 50 hours every week, say that too. That's how you'll attract the right people to come interview.

3. Putting your answers to the "Joel Test", if you score well, is a good way to attract the right people.

I also have to self-promote a second and point out this: http://www.codeanthem.com/blog/2010/04/how-to-hire-crappy-pr... which is the anti to what you're asking for - but probably worth a read and make sure you're not doing any of the ones listed in the post or the comments.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a job posting attractive?

#49

Post by AmberShah »

dotBen wrote: post #13

Random thoughts from when I write job reqs: Make sure there is a clear description of the job itself and what the challenges the company and the role itself are trying to solve ("Looking for Ruby on Rails devs, call us!" doesn't explain what problems you'll be solving, etc). GOOD developers don't look for a new job using X, Y and Z languages, they look for a new job tackling problems A, B, and C. Don't include requir…

Most of this is good except for the: don't use rockstar and other terminology. I don't behave like a rockstar but I often look for that as an indicator to apply since at least I know that I would be valued there. It's not so important to use it, but if you are truly looking for a guru (and most other people have failed the technical requirements so far) then it doesn't hurt to post it.

Re: Ask HN: What makes a job posting attractive?

#50

Post by bugsy »

cageface wrote: post #47
bugsy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The puzzle question is an interesting one. I like solving puzzles, that's why I am an engineer. Based on this I used to think that puzzles are a good thing for posts and interviews. In practice, it almost never works out very well. Puzzles are incompletely specified, impossible to answer unless you guess at assumptions that are sure to be wrong, or they take so much time to solve it's just not worth it. Usually compa…

I'd never heard of the FizzBuzz problem before. Just looked it up. Do people claiming to programmers really struggle with it? That's disturbing if so. Designing a good problem is hard. Something that's difficult enough to present a challenge but easy enough to be solvable by a good programmer in ~15 minutes or so takes some thought. But this is another reason why I appreciate a good programming problem in a posting.

No, they don't struggle with it. More of a blank stare. They have absolutely no idea what to do or how to get started, unless they happened to have seen it on a "famous programming questions" board and memorized a plausible answer character by character.

If you do a decent job of publicizing an opening you'll can easily get 1000 resumes. If you narrow this down to what seem to be the top 20, 18 of those won't be able to write a simple loop in the language of their choice. Part of the reason for this phenomenon is that the best developers who applied were in the 980 resumes discarded (this is in part due to unreasonable expectations on the hiring side and outright fabrication on the applying side).

But the general idea is that the same duds apply to every job. If you post a job ad for a terrible job with unreasonable parameters, then 100% of the applicants will be the duds as everyone with any sense reasonably ignores the ad. The more reasonable and realistic the ad, the more potentially qualified candidates will apply, but this number is not going to be the majority of applicants. The majority will be the non-english speakers and DeVry Institute grads who are mass spamming every job ad they can find with bogus resumes.

There's no point to starting with a challenging programming test because the interviewer's idea of obvious common sense insights is typically some highly domain specific thing that only is known at the particular company. Or even worse, the "challenge project" which will take a week to finish and is obviously a real work project for the company that they want done for free. Furthermore, interviewers seldom have any realistic idea of what could really be solved in 10 minutes by someone who hasn't seen the problem before like the person who selected it. FizzBuzz like problems are again the answer. Ask to reverse a string without calling a library function. This is a reasonable 10 minute question. If 95% of applicants fail, then this is a very useful screen is it not.

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