When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling • Hacker News Board

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#411

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:05 AM UTC

Annatar wrote: post #375

tyre wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you're maybe creating a straw man argument here. A smooth talking engineer isn't one who sounds like a used car salesperson or is just hyped about the latest trendy framework. There are people who can talk through challenging problems at their former companies and how the problems were solved. They can tell you everything you'd want to hear because it's true. Except…they didn't…

"Principal engineer"? Do you actually have an engineering degree? Have you formal education in engineering? What is system engineering? It's not just you; the entire IT industry is suffering from systemic curriculum vitae bloat. That's why the working conditions are so bad in the professional sense.

[deleted]

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#412

Post by treypitt » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:12 AM UTC

tyre wrote: post #283

austincheney wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If you can’t tell the difference between a smooth talker and strong technical competence you are probably interested in the wrong qualities. I have interviewed enough now to see why some companies cannot figure it out. Ask yourself if you really actually want a senior or a strong junior. It comes down to interest. A good senior got that way because they like solving challenging problems. They are not inte…

I hear what you're saying, but I think you're maybe creating a straw man argument here. A smooth talking engineer isn't one who sounds like a used car salesperson or is just hyped about the latest trendy framework. There are people who can talk through challenging problems at their former companies and how the problems were solved. They can tell you everything you'd want to hear because it's true. Except…they didn't…

If they understand their friend's work deeply, doesn't that imply they've done something comparable themselves?

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#413

Post by collyw » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:13 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #177

tptacek wrote: post #3

A lot of this post seems pretty reasonable. But: In my experience, it’s fairly easy to judge technical skill. A friendly conversation about technical interests and recent projects can often be enough. Bullshit. Sounding credible in technical interviews is a skill, not the same skill as actually being a good programmer, and might even (statistically, in the large) be close to orthogonal to it. We found this out the ha…

I disagree. If you can’t tell the difference between a smooth talker and strong technical competence you are probably interested in the wrong qualities. I have interviewed enough now to see why some companies cannot figure it out. Ask yourself if you really actually want a senior or a strong junior. It comes down to interest. A good senior got that way because they like solving challenging problems. They are not inte…

The question to ask is "why" they did something a particular way. If they start rattling off something that sounds like the marketing page of shiny new tech, the they are probably doing resume driven development rather than actually solving the problem in the best way that they can. But then some people seem to value that - I don't.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#414

Post by wolfi1 » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:17 AM UTC

dmichulke wrote: post #329

josh2600 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to add some thoughts here: I’ve interviewed people who were google L7+ (IC) a couple of times who weren’t very good engineers, at least on the work sample stuff. I’ve found that the highest correlation to performance in senior engineers is raw algorithmic skill and willingness to say “I don’t know” when you don’t know. This is not true of hiring devops or sre’s. For those positions, you want the gopher archetype…

Unfortunately, often (and maybe more so because I live in Europe) it's also the other way round: > raw algorithmic skill It's been ages that I've been asked anything remotely algorithmic. My interviews are mostly about frameworks, how you fit in a team and whether you know / can be "agile". Not even a Fizzbuzz, much less so quicksort or more special algorithms. > and willingness to say “I don’t know” That never got m…

I once had a FizzBuzz question in an interview, The interviewer started, I interrupted him, "We are not talking about FizzBuzz, are we?". He apologized afterwards by saying that there was actually on applicant some time ago, writing 100 printfs.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#415

Post by treypitt » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:18 AM UTC

fipple wrote: post #340

austincheney wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If you can’t tell the difference between a smooth talker and strong technical competence you are probably interested in the wrong qualities. I have interviewed enough now to see why some companies cannot figure it out. Ask yourself if you really actually want a senior or a strong junior. It comes down to interest. A good senior got that way because they like solving challenging problems. They are not inte…

No. The difference between talking (very intelligently) and doing is huge, and a sports analogy might be illustrative. If you ask detailed questions about football to hire a NFL quarterback, your most intelligent responses will probably be from a coach. “How should you change the position of your right shoulder if you see that a fast edge rusher is approaching you from the left side and you have two open receivers?”…

Maybe this is unique to sports? Do other fields exist where a BB-esque expert is totally incapable of practicing? The greatest movie critics probably can't direct or write for crap, but they're not commenting on how the movie was produced, just its output

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#416

Post by swish_bob » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:21 AM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #301

projektir wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The part I'm battling on it is if the current coding part selects against Java developers. Yes, it does. And let me put it this way: I've used C# and Java at most of my jobs, those theoretically would be my comfort languages, yes? I do not use those languages on interviews. I often just use C++ (!), or Rust (free unit tests!) if the company tools allow for it, or worst case I'd learn some Python basics. C#/Java are…

Interesting. To clarify, you are saying that these boiler-platey languages, it is not fair to write a unit test in a 45 minute time block with access to Google? I'm not a Java guy. All the languages I've used, this would not be an issue. Again, I'm wrestling with it because it I feel it should be easy but like 80% of our candidates who chose Java struggle with it.

I guess it depends how far back you're starting from. I suspect most Java developers don't spend that much time creating projects from scratch (I do, but the work environments I'm used to suggest I'm an outlier).

I tend to give candidates a simple project already to go, with junit and hamcrest, possibly mockito already available, and ask them to go from there using a provided IDE (which I attempt to get set up as near as they prefer to work as I can). This generally works out fine. I certainly don't feel the boiler-platiness of the language gets in the way, mostly because the IDE is generally capable of doing most of the lifting with that respect anyway, but also because over the timescale of an interview question, we're generally only talking about a couple of classes at most.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#417

Post by collyw » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:22 AM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #47

nicoburns wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best interview I ever had was a 2-hour onsite work sample, followed by 1/2 an hour discussing what I'd come up with. I was offered the job the next day. Surely most people would prefer this to whiteboard tasks?

The best interview I had was a few hours of friendly conversation about the details of my resume. Then I was hired under probation, as everyone there was, and the understanding was that I could be easily dismissed if it was clear that I wasn't working out.

The best I had was a guy asked me to bring in my laptop and show him some code. We talked about it, he asked me to add a simple feature. I think it worked well for both side. Not much of my time wasted. No gotchas because of some configuration issue of setting up a project for the first time.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#418

Post by jillesvangurp » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:23 AM UTC

lsc wrote: post #216

Isn't it just... mostly money? I mean, if you want to hire someone good, who presumably has a good job, you have to pay better than what they are getting now. I think this is probably especially true in Europe; I mean, as far as I know, people get like a 2x-4x raise moving to silicon valley from europe. If you pay more than your local competitors, you will largely have your pick of the candidates. I mean, yes, things…

Not really, you have to pay competitively of course. But you can safely assume that everybody else does that too. I noticed a pattern in Berlin where I'm based where the less attractive jobs indeed come with higher salaries. When the work is shit and they bleed engineers faster than they can hire them there's nothing else they can do than up their rates.

So, when I see a top rate advertised, I immediately ask myself: what is so wrong with this company that people don't want to work there? Usually it's fairly obvious when you meet people that used to work there (they'll have a grudge). Usually it's a combination of mismanagement, bad culture, and corporate stupidity. It happens. Big companies can get away with that for surprisingly long.

When hiring, what I look for is very simple. I try to sell the gig and look for positive response to the sales pitch. Does the person have the skills I need? A few simple questions can get you a good hint there. Red flags would be bullshitting when they don't know something or plain ignorance for stuff they ought to know. Beyond that, it's about fast decision making based on imperfect knowledge. I'm well aware that most interview processes are completely ineffective so I don't waste too much time on that. Either they obviously know their shit or they obviously don't.

So, I simply put myself in the frame of mind that I've already decided to hire the person and start talking about what they'll do, how they'll do it, etc. It's classic sales strategy and it works; I've hired some great people this way.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#419

Post by swish_bob » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:24 AM UTC

wool_gather wrote: post #228

bradleyjg wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like a good idea, but does somewhat detract from the notion that once a candidate does the work-sample he is done with the technical part of the process.

True, it deviates from tptacek's recommendations; about scoring and identical questions for everyone as well.

A nice approach I liked (back when I was interviewed by Thoughtworks years ago) was that one of the interview stages was to take the assignment you'd done and apply some new requirements to the story. It rapidly makes it clear if the candidate actually did the assignment or not.

Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling

#420

Post by vehementi » Mon, Jan 21, 2019, 9:25 AM UTC

Annatar wrote: post #375

tyre wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear what you're saying, but I think you're maybe creating a straw man argument here. A smooth talking engineer isn't one who sounds like a used car salesperson or is just hyped about the latest trendy framework. There are people who can talk through challenging problems at their former companies and how the problems were solved. They can tell you everything you'd want to hear because it's true. Except…they didn't…

"Principal engineer"? Do you actually have an engineering degree? Have you formal education in engineering? What is system engineering? It's not just you; the entire IT industry is suffering from systemic curriculum vitae bloat. That's why the working conditions are so bad in the professional sense.

That's why? So if we merely fixed job titles we wouldn't have this problem of fraudsters?