Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

glenmccallum.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 384 posts

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#51

Post by cheerlessbog »

skybrian wrote: post #18
ixtli wrote: post #9

We need to admit that the interview process isn't about determining the relative qualifications of the applications in the pool, because we all know that 3 hours and whiteboard can't tell anything you need to know about whether or not that person will perform over the years. We need to acknowledge that we perform this pantomime in order to satisfy layers of management that are unable to accept that you can't hire for…

Saying they "can't tell you anything" is one-bit thinking. Yes, there is a lot that interviews don't tell you, but they are still a useful signal.

I find them useful if you use a real world problem from your product, and the whiteboard is just a tool to help you collaborate as they brainstorm and discuss possible solutions with you. That reduces the pressure and you also get a read on their collaboration skills.

The ideal would be pair programming for an afternoon.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#52

Post by alkonaut »

A senior developer should have a CV, maybe some hobby code, some references, a commercial product they can describe or point at. Giving them programming puzzles is a waste of time. I get that they can be useful to filter out some bad recently-graduated-from-a-bootcamp developers.

The antipattern here isn't that there are puzzles. The antipattern is using some external screening service using the same process for all candidates. There shouldn't even be a HR person screening before the team and hiring manager is.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#53

Post by kaesar14 »

umvi wrote: post #41
Drakim wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Hard to work with" is a pretty big minus on somebody's skillset, you don't need to hide it under "culture fit".

I mean, it's just a hunch though. I've only spent an hour or two with the person, I don't know actually know if they would be hard to work with. Candidate one gives off slightly anti-social vibes but is brilliant, candidate two jokes around with me during the interview and is smart as well, but less so than candidate one. Am I justified in going with candidate two on a hunch?

In your position, I’d take candidate 2. Displaying a reasonable level of competence and ability to work in a group is so much more crucial for a small company!

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#54

Post by ivanhoe »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #35
aserafini wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Culture fit’ (without clearly specifying what that means) is such an enormous backdoor for all manner of bias and personal prejudice I’m surprised the concept is even legal.

So? Bias isn't illegal unless your pattern of bias lines up with a protected class.

Ageism is illegal in US under Age Discrimination in Employment Act if that person is 40 or older.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#55

Post by tempsolution »

Sorry but interviews at the big tech companies have become so easy these days, due to their insatiable demand for "talent", that I can't really hear these whinings about difficult interviews anymore. The candidates we usually get are just absolutely inadequate at coding and behavioral questions. This is not something you can overlook. They just lack the very basic skills to express themselves in code even when disregarding the correctness of their solutions.

"You can't invert a binary tree". Well doh! Maybe you should go through the effort of at least looking at some of the basic algorithmic concepts again, you know just to show that you even remotely care to be hired by the company. They have a much harder job than you do. They get hundred thousands of applicants per month and need to filter them out. You are one person applying at maybe 2-3 companies a month or week.

To me, this sounds like someone who thinks too highly of himself and "he doesn't need to prove himself to a FANNG company". Well think again, writing Homebrew doesn't mean anything. Pretty much anyone at a FANNG company could do that, but not everyone wants to do it. If you want to work at FANNG instead Homebrew, you need to prove yourself to them, not vice versa...

Is it really too much to ask to spend a few days solving some programming puzzles on a whiteboard? If few days are not enough, then maybe you really aren't as smart as you think?

I think people these days really tend to always put the blame on others. What about starting to look at yourself more critically, think about if you are really a "senior" engineer? I work in tech for years now at FANNG companies and "senior engineers" are in a different league. I think I will get there in one or two years but it has been a long ride. These people are paradigms of programming that can always give you useful insights and advise. They excel at a wide range of soft skills and management too.

If you see what most companies (outside of FANNG) consider "senior" you will know why (1) senior engineer means absolutely nothing and (2) why FANNG is not interested whatsoever if you were a senior engineer somewhere else...

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#56

Post by mimixco »

matthewbauer wrote: post #32
dtagames wrote: post #3

This is seriously f'd up. When I was hired by IBM years ago, they also had a test called the IPAT (Initial Programming Aptitude Test) but, guess what?, there was no programming in it! Instead, the test was designed to see if one had the basic reasoning and logic skills which would be necessary to solve a wide variety of programming-related problems -- not one stupid, specific problem in a particular language. That's…

That seems much worse than programming tests IMO. If I have a bachelor's degree, and you're asking me to retake the SAT, you're just insulting my qualifications. At least programming tests have some legitimate rationale. Let's not pretend IBM has any fucking idea what they are doing.

It wasn't an IQ test, and IBM definitely knew what it was doing in ways today's "move fast and break things" culture cannot fathom. Their software was and still is used in many mission-critical applications because the company was rigorously focused on quality. When was the last time you heard of a bug in mainframe software affecting anyone?

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#57

Post by kaesar14 »

ixtli wrote: post #21
kaesar14 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s wrong with evaluating whether you’d get along with someone as a coworker? In my experience, being friendly and getting along has aided cooperation far more than hiring the most qualified candidate at the detriment of group dynamic. Yes, there are potential biases, but at a smaller company I’d say that’s a huge factor.

I edited my top level comment for just this reason. Interpersonal communication skills are extremely important to evaluate for any position. But the person you're replying to is saying, correctly, that this isn't what people mean in practice when they bandy about the term "culture fit."

I see, yes, stereotyping based on some perceived “flaw” like accent is absolutely wrong and needs anti-bias training to remedy. It is tough though. I want people I interview for my company and team to get along with everyone, and trying to make that evaluation in a short amount of time can often result in immense bias. In the end, interviewing is fucking hard.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#58

Post by thomascgalvin »

aserafini wrote: post #13
ixtli wrote: post #9

We need to admit that the interview process isn't about determining the relative qualifications of the applications in the pool, because we all know that 3 hours and whiteboard can't tell anything you need to know about whether or not that person will perform over the years. We need to acknowledge that we perform this pantomime in order to satisfy layers of management that are unable to accept that you can't hire for…

‘Culture fit’ (without clearly specifying what that means) is such an enormous backdoor for all manner of bias and personal prejudice I’m surprised the concept is even legal.

I've seen "culture fit" used in an attempt to reject female candidates because the interviewer didn't want to stop telling dick jokes around the office.

Fortunately, the management chain caught this and ... corrected the issue.

Re: Senior Developers Are Getting Rejected for Jobs

#60

Post by skrebbel »

Drakim wrote: post #31
umvi wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I make a startup, I should be forced to hire some brilliant programmer whose personality I clash with over over a slightly less brilliant programmer who I can tell will become a fast friend just because the former has demonstrated more technological prowess?

"Hard to work with" is a pretty big minus on somebody's skillset, you don't need to hide it under "culture fit".

Rejecting someone is really hard. Of course you want to give them actionable feedback, but at the same time you don't want to give them a bad feeling about you or your company. These two things are almost diametrically opposed to each other, because most people take feedback from strangers pretty badly.

Sure, it'll be more productive for everyone if I tell someone that we think they're just not smart enough to learn shit as fast as we need them to. But that hurts. So we say "You're great, but we're looking for someone with just a few more years of C++ experience". Similarly, when we think you've been acting like an arrogant dick, we say "lack of culture fit".

I once rejected someone whose English was so bad that I couldn't understand them on the phone. That's a hard thing to tell a foreigner who has the courage to call you up, by phone, in a language they probably know they're not great at, for an internship position! So I lied and I told them they had insufficient React experience. Am I proud of that? No. I'm still not sure what I should've done.

I see this trope a lot on HN that "lack of culture fit" means "wrong brand of sneakers" and it's usually nonsense. "No culture fit" means "there's something specific that we dislike about the way you behave or communicate but we don't want to hurt your feelings more than necessary".

Post reply on HN