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Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

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Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#51

Post by Ensorceled »

bpicolo wrote: post #35
gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

Take homes are one of the single biggest turnoffs for experienced talent in interview processes. People don't want to do them. Especially good devs who can land a job anywhere. > Don't make them jump through hoops The take homes are the hoops.

For people with side/brochure projects, my "take home" tests are always "add these simple features to your git hub project xxx". Often it gets done the same day.

Otherwise, I'll do something simple, on a shared screen in the language of their choice.

It shouldn't be hours and hours and, ideally, it's a win/win.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#52

Post by ketzo »

karamanolev wrote: post #23
kube-system wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't write off a company just because they have an unlimited PTO policy. Check out the culture first, some actually respect it. Especially in smaller companies, it's sometimes just easier to judge people based on their output rather than the number of days their butt is behind a keyboard.

> some actually respect it I'm yet to see one or hear from a friend who works in one. I admit there might exist one somewhere, but by and large, they don't. Unlimited PTO = culture of overworking, at least for me. And small companies with unlimited PTO, 3-5 engineer teams (and some other staff, obviously) seem to be the worst offenders. The bigger the company, the higher the chance unlimited PTO might actually work.…

I used to work at Workday, who has an “unlimited PTO” policy, and they were fantastic about it.

A few months into the pandemic, my manager sent me a message saying that he was worried I wasn’t taking enough PTO, and suggested I do a 3- or 4-day weekend in the next couple of weeks, even if I wasn’t going anywhere. This happened to a few other coworkers, too.

It can be a trap, but it isn’t always. And this isn’t some little startup - 15k employees.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#53

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #38
voidfunc wrote: post #9

Number one reason: You're not offering me enough good reasons to leave my current job. I don't think HR and software recruiting has really caught up to the reality that many developers by their mid-30's are sitting on a million+ in assets and good ones can rake in 200K+ easy. Further we usually find equilibrium with our roles wherever we are even if we have gripes with how things are because most devs are pragmatic p…

>>> many developers by their mid-30's are sitting on a million+ in assets and good ones can rake in 200K+ easy. What !!! Edit: I did return to tone down my reaction but I would be interested in any (evidence based) research on the pay scales in and out of SV. I understand it is only the very top tech (FAANG) that pay so highly and mostly though share options. It's not like that in Europe I am afraid. But even so, if…

GP definitely lives in a SV/US bubble. Here in Europe I know devs in high CoL areas having less than a thousand Euros left at the end of the month. Having millions in assets is fantasy for us unless you won some crypto/stock gambles.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#54

Post by gsibble »

intelVISA wrote: post #31
gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

Good approach but can't imagine doing a take home unless it was paid.

If the person requests it, we pay for interview time as long as the hourly is reasonable. Not a problem.

The real question I have for you is, how would you prefer to prove to me you can actually do the job? In person coding exercise? Isn't that more stressful?

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#55

Post by vbezhenar »

gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

It's not hard to recruit good developers. It's hard to recruit good developers without paying premium. Pay $1 billion/month and you'll recruit anyone. This is ad absurdum, but you've got idea. If you can pay high, of course it's easy to hire talented developers.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#56

Post by gsibble »

sys_64738 wrote: post #34
gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

You lost me at "with a take home". I'm not interested in your silly games.

Ok. What would you suggest instead? I need to know you can, you know, actually code.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#57

Post by PenguinCoder »

gsibble wrote: post #42
yupper32 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Have 1-2 interviews with a take home. > fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. This attitude is why I haven't been recruited. I have 10 years at big tech and companies expect me to jump ship with the threat of getting fired if I don't immediately live up to expectations (even if I'm confident that I will, but I'll never know how high your expectations are until it's too late). Add on wild take ho…

I've never poached someone without giving them a significant raise for one thing. I'm always clear about my expectations which are pretty simple - your time belongs to you. We pay you a high salary and expect you to get your assigned work done. As long as you get it done on time, you can fuck off and enjoy all of the excess time you have. If you do all of your two week sprint work in 20 minutes, you can enjoy the nex…

> If you do all of your two week sprint work in 20 minutes, you can enjoy the next two weeks off.

Citation/sources wanted. That was my expectation with a 'salary' job; being paid to get the work done. Work is done under 40hr, congrats go home! Work takes longer than 40hr, oh well. In my experience though, in _every single_ company punishes efficiency and hard work, with more work. You're done in 20h? CONGRATS, you get Bob's work now too! Make sure to get his and your work done! Leaving early is absolutely not heard of.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#58

Post by gsibble »

jstx1 wrote: post #44
gsibble wrote: post #8

Personally, I've never found it difficult. Have 1-2 interviews with a take home or in person coding exercise or however they want to prove to me they can actually code. Pay high, have great benefits, high equity, treat your employees well, and fire those that don't perform up to expectations quickly. It's really not hard to spot talent. Don't make them jump through hoops. If they are talented and get along with your…

Everyone else thinks that their way of hiring is the best too.

Ok, tell me yours.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#59

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #21

I'm a developer and a recruiter. Here are some thing I know: many companies - maybe most companies - are very slow. I cannot tell you how many times I have sent a great candidate to an employer, to hear in 2 weeks that they would like to interview them, despite my pestering them the whole time for feedback. You know what they say then? "Oh well, who else have you got?". They don't care. the companies I work with who…

>but ALL companies think that none of the above apply to them. all companies think they are awesome at recruiting and that they run the very best recruiting process possible.

This. I wish your comment would go to the top.

Re: Why is recruiting developers so difficult?

#60

Post by andrewingram »

endtime wrote: post #39
intelVISA wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good approach but can't imagine doing a take home unless it was paid.

I've never been asked to do a take home interview assignment, but I actually have the opposite attitude. I would much rather spend a few hours putting together that I feel good about than spend 10x the time cramming interview prep.

I did one that was time limited (2 hours, automatically timed and enforced). The exercise wasn't hard, but it did have some tedious quirks which meant I wasted quite a bit of time. But I thought "fine, I can jump through this 2 hour hoop". After I submitted it, it turned out there were some previously undisclosed extra steps where I had to record videos doing the kind of things i'd expect to do in an actual interview (talk through my solution, and talk about a project I'm proud of). I immediately lost interest.
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