If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience • Hacker News Board

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#51

Post by DrScump » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #46

my_usernam3 wrote: post #42

I find it hypocritical that developers preach "languages don't matter, a good engineer is a good engineer", while also being very specific to work environments. Personally, I want the environment thats most similar to my coworkers to create the least amount of friction during on-boarding and documentation based learning. Don't get me wrong, there are bad dev experiences that can be had. However, from my experience it…

It never even occured to me to lie on my resume. Surely I can't be the only one.

Same here.

One problem with building upon a framework of falsehoods is that to be a consistently effective liar, you have to have a fantastic memory to keep your falsehoods referentially consistent.

When I was on the proverbial other side of the table helping to evaluate candidates, I became flabbergasted with the frequent false skills claims of candidates, especially those sent by job shops.

To me, it would be exhausting to be phony. I'd rather save that mental bandwidth for stuff I can feel good about doing.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#52

Post by battery_cowboy » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:16 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #15

rsify wrote: post #11

Do you think that companies like G are going to be able to hire literally anyone if they start advertising all the mess that they are working around? Why would you write this article from an engineer's standpoint with arguments that will only benefit other engineer's but for some reason is directed at companies? Why not just call it "I'm upset with the dev experience" and be honest about your intentions?

Because presumably Rachel would like companies to look at their policies and change them if the match the poor qualities mentioned here.

I think there's someone who would accept working at each of those places just fine. Even the worst ones. Her point is probably more that if a company admitted their experience up front, people who thought that way was fine would accept jobs and those that hated the idea of that experience wouldn't. Sure, companies could lie, but then people would just quit as soon as possible if they really hated the experience. I'd work at any of those companies myself if the situation was right otherwise.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#53

Post by maheart » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:18 AM UTC

Adisuki wrote: post #13

Jugurtha wrote: post #8

The moment after I signed the contract to join a startup, the CTO said "OK, then... Here's your laptop, install Windows and we'll talk later..". My heart sank and felt I took a bad turn in life. I really wanted to work there but I had stopped using Windows for health reasons a long time ago. I wondered if it were rude to resign the same day because there was no way I would use Windows. I thought it was more honest, b…

> I had stopped using Windows for health reasons a long time ago. How does Windows cause health issues?

You're exposed to more viruses.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#54

Post by bryanrasmussen » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:19 AM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #45

dbetteridge wrote: post #22

Have to say that the company I work for has improved this leaps and bounds in the last 5 years but still has a ways to go. Macs can be requested for devs but Windows is still the default for users. lots of services being migrated into azure/office365 means no longer needing the VPN for everything but sharing large files is still primarily done via mapped network drives, which requires the VPN. Security team unfortuna…

I realy don't get this fetishization (and I am using this in its medical sense) of macs as laptops/workstations for developers. You PC (Mac or Wintel) is just something to run your editors xwindows what have you like company C

Mac fetish started when Mac went BSD based, and hardware was higher quality than common company hardware running windows. So developers wanted Mac.

Windows has seen the light and plenty of Unix possibilities on Windows, but they have lost nearly a generation of Developers who don't want to move back.

I personally don't care, I have two macs, one windows, one Ubuntu, and several tablets to work on. OS's are pretty commodified.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#55

Post by _Donny » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:21 AM UTC

Not being able to select your own hardware for a job is perhaps one of my worst experiences to date.

At one company, I was handed laptop with an older version of Windows, preinstalled bloatware, 3rd party encryption software, anti-virus, VPNs, etc. Even worse, the laptop was about more than 16 inches and weighted over 3 kg because the company crammed in as much expensive hardware in it as possible -- so that the computer would fit everyones needs.

I understand the need for company IT policies, but global companies have such complicated policies it basically hindered all my work.

You won't believe the sigh of relief when I started at a small start-up company, and I was able to choose all of my hardware. The CTO ensured my SSH keys would grant me access to all the servers I would need.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#56

Post by rsify » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:23 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #15

rsify wrote: post #11

Do you think that companies like G are going to be able to hire literally anyone if they start advertising all the mess that they are working around? Why would you write this article from an engineer's standpoint with arguments that will only benefit other engineer's but for some reason is directed at companies? Why not just call it "I'm upset with the dev experience" and be honest about your intentions?

Because presumably Rachel would like companies to look at their policies and change them if the match the poor qualities mentioned here.

If you don't present valid arguments to benefit the company don't title it like advice. I clicked the article expecting some more hopeful arguments than "hurr durr I got baited into doing things I don't like", but I see none.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#57

Post by rsify » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:27 AM UTC

battery_cowboy wrote: post #52

saagarjha wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because presumably Rachel would like companies to look at their policies and change them if the match the poor qualities mentioned here.

I think there's someone who would accept working at each of those places just fine. Even the worst ones. Her point is probably more that if a company admitted their experience up front, people who thought that way was fine would accept jobs and those that hated the idea of that experience wouldn't. Sure, companies could lie, but then people would just quit as soon as possible if they really hated the experience. I'd…

> I think there's someone who would accept working at each of those places just fine. Even the worst ones.

Yes, people desparate enough to subject themselves to poorer working conditions. What's the single benefit for companies to cut themselves off from potentially good employees?

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#58

Post by chaosite » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:28 AM UTC

GordonS wrote: post #48

jan_g wrote: post #44

I once joined a company of couple of thousand employees (as software engineer). The interviewer assured me that employees can pick whichever laptop or PC they want. Ok, great, I thought, then asked for a Thinkpad. A funny thing happened after I started to work - IT department was unable to procure me that laptop. After ~3 weeks they said that the company they order hardware from can't provide Thinkpads for the forese…

Most enterprise-scale companies are like that, only using a single source for procurement of laptops, desktops and monitors, and making it impossible to buy IT yourself and expense it.

Sure, that's common.

But they also don't lie about it.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#59

Post by hrktb » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:28 AM UTC

DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #46

my_usernam3 wrote: post #42

I find it hypocritical that developers preach "languages don't matter, a good engineer is a good engineer", while also being very specific to work environments. Personally, I want the environment thats most similar to my coworkers to create the least amount of friction during on-boarding and documentation based learning. Don't get me wrong, there are bad dev experiences that can be had. However, from my experience it…

It never even occured to me to lie on my resume. Surely I can't be the only one.

It’s seldom straight lying and more often omission of critical facts or misrepresentation of their roles on projects. Which sadly is the common advice given to people writing resumes, and it becomes a prisonner’s dilemma.

I assisted at whole interviews where “tech leads’ craftily avoid recognizing they code at most half an hour a day.

Or a dev listing super hard stuff on their resume but never mentioning until thoroughly asked that they pair programmed all of these.

Re: If you're hiring, be forthcoming about the dev experience

#60

Post by mattmanser » Fri, May 01, 2020, 8:31 AM UTC

C1sc0cat wrote: post #45

dbetteridge wrote: post #22

Have to say that the company I work for has improved this leaps and bounds in the last 5 years but still has a ways to go. Macs can be requested for devs but Windows is still the default for users. lots of services being migrated into azure/office365 means no longer needing the VPN for everything but sharing large files is still primarily done via mapped network drives, which requires the VPN. Security team unfortuna…

I realy don't get this fetishization (and I am using this in its medical sense) of macs as laptops/workstations for developers. You PC (Mac or Wintel) is just something to run your editors xwindows what have you like company C

WSL2 is extremely recent, so in context of the question, the fetishization of Macs is because using Linux on windows used to be pretty laborious.

Setup a VM, getting networking going on the VM, blah, blah, blah.

Mac actually supported Linux commands, windows didn't.

That or you had a Linux laptop which had a massive overhead in breaking a lot. Never did it myself, but the complaints tended to be that drivers broke constantly and it was hard to use a lot of commercial software, including games.

As far as I remember, it was common even 10 years ago to see Linux users on HN openly say they'd given up on trying to get their soundcard to work as it wasn't worth the hassle as it would just break in 6 months again.