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

hiringengineersbook.com

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

#471

Post by Killes »

burtonator wrote: post #258

What I find hilarious is how every VC podcast about bootstrapping your startup has both of these statements 30 seconds apart: 1. ALWAYS hire the best you can. Hire people smarter than you. Hire the smartest people in the world! 2. It's always impossible to hire! We can never hire anyone! Yeah. Ya think? What I try to do is actually the opposite of their advice. I don't look for the perfect hire. I look for people who…

Don't forget to offer them the kind of raises they would get for jumping ship down this journey (20/50/100%?), or they will, well, jump ship.

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

#472

Post by C1sc0cat »

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.

Hate to break it to you I worked for a well known civil engineering consultancy and some of our pitch's where economical with the actuality about our engineers experience :-)

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

#473

Post by cloogshicer »

jeffrallen wrote: post #442
cloogshicer wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, author here, sorry about that. Can I quote you on that for the book? :P

Quote away. The great workplace in question is EPFL's DEDIS lab.

Awesome, thanks!

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

#474

Post by nailer »

I had an interview for an engineering manager role with a London fintech startup, from 11AM to 4PM, with each hour designed as a 'gauntlet' of some kind.

There were no breaks. When I went to urinate, it took time out from their quiz. Someone stood outside the door.

Interviewing is mentally exhausting: a couple of hours in I started to flag from lack of food. By the end of the 5 hours, after eating and regaining my abilities, I thought that an environment that didn't give me a moment to eat during the courting phase, wouldn't care that much for my welfare once I'd actually signed on.

After a couple of days they got back, assuming I was still interested, and told me feedback which consisted of "really knows his stuff, but is often a poor communicator". Yes, so is everyone when they're presenting for 5 hours.

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

#475

Post by richardknop »

fogetti wrote: post #371

[Sarcasm on]I think the most shocking of this is that an engineer with 7 years is already a senior these days. I even heard more shocking things like people with 3-5 years are already seniors. So what about people with 15 years? How shall we call them? Super senior? How about 30? Call them mega-giga-super-senior? And 40? Principal-giga-senior?[Sarcasm off] Having said that, I actually agree with everything the articl…

I think 7 years is definitely enough to be a senior but it depends on your experience. If you have worked for Google last 7 years it’s very likely you have been promoted 3-4 times and have a lot of experience with large scale production systems. So I’d definitely say such person is senior.

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

#476

Post by function_seven »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #446
cududa wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why talk to someone so condescendingly? I mean, what percentage of people do you epxpect to HAVE seen this bit of obscure media you seem to hold as seminal?

If the parent makes the unjustified statement that all cinema reviewers no know nothing about how film is made why not. And I was not being condescending BTW.

Parent made no such statement. Read it again:

> The greatest movie critics probably can't direct or write for crap

They may know a lot about how a film is made. It does not follow that they could sit in the director's chair, or write a decent screenplay. (And yet, they could still be great at critiquing films!)

This is a valid point. Just knowing how something is made doesn't necessarily mean you know how to make it. It's the difference between a designer and an implementer. Or architect and builder.

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

#477

Post by carlmr »

jjeaff wrote: post #298
drb91 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, unambitious seniors are a good bet on who not to hire. They’ll only work what you pay them for, those lazy bastards!

I think I've read in quite a few places that most great programmers are essentially lazy.

A special kind of lazy where they will spend inordinate amounts of effort not to do the same routine task again.

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

#478

Post by C1sc0cat »

trh88 wrote: post #455
subwindow wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're asking questions related to "raw algorithmic skill" you're filtering for people who either: 1) Have had a computer science education and happen to remember the algorithm at hand. This is also a function of recency so senior engineers are less likely to remember any given algorithm. 2) Study algorithms so they can do well at job interviews. Neither one is something you want to be selecting for. Some of the b…

The only people that say that a CS education doesn't make you a better programmer are people without a CS education.

CS is not programming just like 99% of musicians don't have music theory degree.

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

#479

Post by cloogshicer »

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…

Like I said elsewhere in this discussion, I disagree. Of course, salary is very important, but I (and many people I know) would easily choose (and have chosen) a lower salary for any combination of these perks:

- Work fewer hours

- Work from anywhere

- Work in a specific location

- Work in a certain environment

- Work in a specific kind of organization

- Work with specific technologies

- etc.

People are very different and have very different wishes and needs. Salary isn't always priority #1.

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

#480

Post by dkersten »

Annatar wrote: post #464
Pyxl101 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On what basis are you claiming software engineers are not engineers? What constitutes being an "engineer"? For the record, the National Counsel of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, which is the US body that regulates engineering licensure and "Professional Engineering", recognizes Software Engineering as a branch of the engineering disciplines: https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/ "Professional (Licensed…

An engineer gathers requirements through a formally defined process and writes a formal engineering specification which translates those requirements into actionable norms. For example: "server operating temperature shall be between -40 and +70 Celsius at 400 m above sea level and the power supply shall operate at Voltage between 110 to 240 Volts at either 50 or 60 Hz with peak load of 35 Amperes". Or: "the program s…

Most programmers I know aren’t simple code mnkeys, they solve actual problems based on the constraints of the problem domain. They model the data and devise algorithms to best process it. Sure, sometimes you haphazardly hack on a program to get it to do what you want, but a lot of the time you have to think critically about it, what you are trying to accomplish and how to do it within the constraints you are given. That sounds like engineering to me and sinse “engineer” isn’t a regulated concept where I am, I have no problem calling myself an engineer. I don’t see how its lying.

You have a very narrow definition of the term.

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