Why is recruiting developers so difficult? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#41

Post by JamesBarney » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #35

gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

Take homes are one of the single biggest turnoffs for experienced talent in interview processes. People don't want to do them. Especially good devs who can land a job anywhere. > Don't make them jump through hoops The take homes are the hoops.

Maybe a better way to phrase it is, "make the hoops count".

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#42

Post by gsibble » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:05 PM UTC

yupper32 wrote: post #26

gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

> Have 1-2 interviews with a take home. > fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. This attitude is why I haven't been recruited. I have 10 years at big tech and companies expect me to jump ship with the threat of getting fired if I don't immediately live up to expectations (even if I'm confident that I will, but I'll never know how high your expectations are until it's too late). Add on wild take ho…

I've never poached someone without giving them a significant raise for one thing. I'm always clear about my expectations which are pretty simple - your time belongs to you. We pay you a high salary and expect you to get your assigned work done. As long as you get it done on time, you can fuck off and enjoy all of the excess time you have. If you do all of your two week sprint work in 20 minutes, you can enjoy the next two weeks off.

Most companies pile work upon their best performers. I'm the opposite. I reward our best performers by giving them back their time. Expectations differ some depending upon compensation, but really as long as you get your reasonable expectations done, I'm happy, you're happy, management is happy. It's never been an issue.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#43

Post by wizofaus » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

Victerius wrote: post #18

gsibble wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By my mid-30s and having started programming at 9 and professionally at 14, 200k is chump change for a salary. That's what they really haven't caught up to.

200k is not chump change for every other profession. Get off your high horse. You're not special because you know software.

> You're not special because you know software.

Of course not. But the market says otherwise. My partner literally saves people's lives on a daily basis and is lucky if she can earn a 1/4 of what I can. I console myself that at least my taxes pay for her salary.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#44

Post by jstx1 » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

Everyone else thinks that their way of hiring is the best too.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#45

Post by uhuruity » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

silisili wrote: post #7

ramesh31 wrote: post #2

Because you make it a complete nightmare. I'd rather wait in line at the DMV all day than go through a typical 6hr tech interview. Hire me based on my resume and a phone call, give me a task, and if it's good enough keep me. Problem solved.

I agree in principle, but not in experience. I've interviewed a few people lately, Senior Eng somehow, who have impressive resumes. I ask basic coding tasks just to make sure they actually know the language claimed - just something like converting numbers to strings, and you'd be amazed how many people had no idea where to start.

> just something like converting numbers to strings

Isn't that the kind of thing that someone senior would typically look up? Do you think that whether or not they have that part of the language API stored in their working memory is a good predictor of their ability to do a good job as a senior eng?

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#46

Post by aorloff » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

karamanolev wrote: post #23

kube-system wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't write off a company just because they have an unlimited PTO policy. Check out the culture first, some actually respect it. Especially in smaller companies, it's sometimes just easier to judge people based on their output rather than the number of days their butt is behind a keyboard.

> some actually respect it I'm yet to see one or hear from a friend who works in one. I admit there might exist one somewhere, but by and large, they don't. Unlimited PTO = culture of overworking, at least for me. And small companies with unlimited PTO, 3-5 engineer teams (and some other staff, obviously) seem to be the worst offenders. The bigger the company, the higher the chance unlimited PTO might actually work.…

The only place I've heard of that went to unlimited that sounded serious about it was a non-profit (non-tech) where the execs said: we going to unlimited PTO, but we are going to enforce PTO minimums if you don't take PTO (you will be taking time off each year, either you will schedule it or the company will). They combined the move with creating some company-wide long weekends that augment already long weekends (eg. add a Friday or Tuesday to the July 4th holiday to make it a 4-day closure).

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#47

Post by ArrayBoundCheck » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

Some things that happened to me when I went for interview

- Refusing to tell me salary range, I stop speaking to them - Them not contacting me after my questions (salary range, vacation days, if I'm expected to do front end, etc) - Them stop contacting me when I say I am not interested in working with technology X Y and Z (usually java and mongodb, sometimes I'll ask if they use PHP then say I rather not touch it, I don't outright say I will never work with it) - They have a non technical person interview me who gets lost and think I'm bad at communicating when I can't see their face and have no idea what part I lost them - They have a technical person interview me who can't accept when I disagree with them

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#48

Post by rlewkov » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

karamanolev wrote: post #23

kube-system wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't write off a company just because they have an unlimited PTO policy. Check out the culture first, some actually respect it. Especially in smaller companies, it's sometimes just easier to judge people based on their output rather than the number of days their butt is behind a keyboard.

> some actually respect it I'm yet to see one or hear from a friend who works in one. I admit there might exist one somewhere, but by and large, they don't. Unlimited PTO = culture of overworking, at least for me. And small companies with unlimited PTO, 3-5 engineer teams (and some other staff, obviously) seem to be the worst offenders. The bigger the company, the higher the chance unlimited PTO might actually work.…

The tech company I currently work for has unlimited PTO. I've never had an issue, even once, when I said I'm going to take XYZ days off and have gotten pushback. It probably happens but I haven't seen it.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#49

Post by gsibble » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

bpicolo wrote: post #35

gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

Take homes are one of the single biggest turnoffs for experienced talent in interview processes. People don't want to do them. Especially good devs who can land a job anywhere. > Don't make them jump through hoops The take homes are the hoops.

That's why I try to make take homes fun. I like the elevator problem in Python. Try to make elevator software that passes the unit tests. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. Very hard.

I don't really care how successful you are. I want to see how readable and maintainable your code is. Sometimes I just ask for example projects that I can read.

But I do need to know you can, you know, actually do the job. I personally find in person coding significantly more stressful than take homes. So what would you suggest? How do I test someone's ability to code?

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#50

Post by trebbble » Tue, Aug 09, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

humanwhosits wrote: post #5

Whenever I think about changing jobs, I think about the interview process and just keep putting it off.

Consider that FAANG-style interviews are pretty expensive to conduct.

Consider that the big tech companies could agree on some kind of standardized test to replace much of the worst of the interviews—but haven't.

Consider that they often make you leetcode even if you've already passed their interviews before, even if you've passed a couple other leetcode-style companies' interviews before, and so on.

Recall that several of the top-paying tech companies got busted illegally colluding to keep salaries down once already.

Conclusion: making developers more reluctant to switch jobs is one of the main purposes of FAANG-type interview processes, and is likely a core part of their current salary-suppression scheme.