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Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

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Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#421

Post by rtpg »

s0rce wrote: post #326
jiggawatts wrote: post #314

POST THE SALARY. Senior people are senior because of their work experience, which they gain from steady employment. Almost by definition you are looking to entice busy, employed people away from their current jobs. They don’t have the time or inclination to trawl through job ad after job ad. Where your competition will ask for 15 years of experience and then only after hours of calls and meetings reluctantly make an…

I've tried to advocate for this at my organization and been told that we don't want people primarily motivated by money...

The counter to this is that many people aren't motivated by money, but need to actually make sure the job offers enough money. "Does the salary range enter into what I need for my life" is the question, not "what job ad has the maximum possible salary". A checkbox, not a parameter that needs to be globally maximal

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#422

Post by DevToRecruiter »

You can save yourself a lot of time and possibly attract the right type of candidate By posting the salary (not just a range) including all benefits as well as the type of work they’ll be responsible for (not just what skills you expect them to have). Top tier candidates have to deal with a lot of noise, you can make your signal stronger by being upfront about as much detail as possible.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#423

Post by __turbobrew__ »

colordrops wrote: post #408
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When calculating expected value of private stock/options I multiply by a factor of ~10 at the end. There are so many unknown unknowns that significantly decrease the value of your equity. The equity agreements I have seen also give ultimate discretion to the board on how your equity is executed. You don’t have control over triggering events and also there are usually quite a few clauses with “at the discretion of the…

How would you value apple equity vs cash? I recently got a decent offer with a total comp higher than my current all cash salary, but rejected it as it seems that equity even in Apple is not a sure bet at the moment. Even with the generous offer that was greater than my current salary that they gave me a few months ago, it would still be worth less than my current job after the recent market dip. I asked for more equ…

I would personally value apple equity at 70-80% face value vs cash. Apple has solid fundamentals and their equity is liquid. The iphone and m1 macs are still really strong product offerings. Apple also has priority access to TSMC which means they will have the best silicon on the market for the foreseeable future.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#424

Post by usrn »

pjungwir wrote: post #211

Post the salary range. From what I can tell DevOps is the hardest thing to hire for right now, and it commands the highest salaries. It's tough to find someone who can code and troubleshoot code problems, but also has all the skills of a sys/net/cloud/k8s admin, and is willing to put up with the higher stress of that role. Most qualified people have already done their best to get a job they're happy with. Personally…

This. I think I'm still technically in the "junior" category (coming up on four years of experience not counting internships) but I'm pretty much financially independent at this point. I only really stay employed for luxuries, funding for side projects, and the very good health insurance (and the whole "having responsibilities orders your life" thing but I know well how easy coasting is.) I have to imagine senior SWEs have a very very low tolerance for BS and can demand quite a lot.

Speaking of BS that 4hr take home project without even having a salary range is a lot. Even for Junior engineers here we have the manager and a couple engineers sit with the candidate during the coding test.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#425

Post by trhway »

> we're junior-heavy already

even if you didn't have 4h unpaid assignment, that one would still make me think a lot. Junior heavy possibly signals what the management doesn't treat/value people well (not surprisingly that 4h assignment really dove tails with that), that work is full of unnecessary self-inflicted death marches, that the management isn't capable to recognize/utilize/value the senior technical experience/skills, etc., so that only junior ones who need experience and don't yet know better stay there.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#426

Post by mym1990 »

Having some kind of salary range in the initial post is very helpful, or even knowing early on in the process(recruiter screen) what that might be. If I think that there is even a small chance that I won't get a number range until my part is done in the interview, then 99/100 times I won't even apply.

When you say "benefits and salary are good" I literally have no idea what that means or what the frame of reference there is...

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#427

Post by [deleted] »

corrral wrote: post #21

> Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do this, I'll skip you. Many seniors ( actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#428

Post by lowbloodsugar »

s0rce wrote: post #326
jiggawatts wrote: post #314

POST THE SALARY. Senior people are senior because of their work experience, which they gain from steady employment. Almost by definition you are looking to entice busy, employed people away from their current jobs. They don’t have the time or inclination to trawl through job ad after job ad. Where your competition will ask for 15 years of experience and then only after hours of calls and meetings reluctantly make an…

I've tried to advocate for this at my organization and been told that we don't want people primarily motivated by money...

What a tremendously facile argument. Either they genuinely believe it, or they have a very low opinion of you. Why are you still there?

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#429

Post by PragmaticPulp »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #252
anon291 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to more senior people than juniors. I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry. My schedule is 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in (she takes care of her all night) 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both girls the rest of the day. I go to m…

Anecdotally, as someone with three kids I'd much rather do a take-home 4 hour assignment than the usual round of interviews since I can work the former into my schedule however I like.

Agreed. Take-homes we’re greatly preferred by our candidates with families because they could be done on a weekend or in their spare time.

I’m also a parent of small kids with a busy schedule. Despite the packed schedule and demands of raising kids, it would be a huge exaggeration to suggest that I couldn’t find 4 hours of time to do a take-home if given a week of time (as is common).

The parent commenter might have been operating under the assumption that take home challenges must be done same-day, which kind of defeats the purpose of a take-home. If you’re demanding 4 hours of same day time, might as well bring them in for a 4-hour on site interview.

Strangely, few people complain about a half-day on-site but it’s literally the same time commitment. If you really have no other options and you literally cannot find a spare hour of time in any way, take a half day of PTO and complete the interview just as you would for a normal on-site.

Re: Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to do about it

#430

Post by devoutsalsa »

thrill wrote: post #48

Having just spent 3 weeks on 4x hour long interviews and completing a day long coding problem along with a "code while I watch" to get to the point that "we're tabling this for a few months" I suspect many of us senior types are just tabling the job seeking process ourselves until we seem to be in actual demand.

“Code while I watch” is the worst.
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