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I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

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Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#61

Post by opportune »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #24
_2d30 wrote: post #14

I literally can’t relate to this on any level. I’m an HM at a company that pays on the order of a FANG and at best matches one of these credentialist barriers and yet we can’t come close to hiring targets on devs. I don’t get how people can see the plethora of individuals under 10yrs experience in SWE and other tech roles in SV/NYC/SEA with incomes of $250-600k/yr and think this happens without a “shortage” of talent…

I think the author is talking about pretty large, well-known companies (e.g., FAANG -- see his first point). Many people applying to these well-known companies are auto-filtered by resume software, which artificially decreases supply. Small and mid-size companies have a different problem: people haven't heard of them and don't know to apply. My company is in this situation. We have a good culture, I think, and pay ve…

Hiring at these companies is very different from the bad examples described here, except for the indexing on degrees (if you don't have extensive experience you're not getting hired without a degree). They don't test trivia and don't typically look for "X years experience with Y framework". I remember seeing that in lots of smaller, lower paying companies' job postings on websites like Indeed but I've never seen that at a big bay area tech company unless it's something sufficiently broad like "infrastructure" or "frontend"

The difference is that big tech companies aren't meant to be applied to over the internet. Seriously, it's like throwing your resume into a black hole. Referrals are the same way, honestly. The only good way to get hired is to get a recruiter to message you on Linkedin. I have never got an interview at these companies from applying on their websites and have made it to the first round of interviews every time if I was contacted by a recruiter.

And because of that, it should be no surprise that nobody is scouring the internet to find your company and send in an application on your company's website. Everybody has been conditioned for that to essentially not work. Even though it's expensive you really should be paying third or even first party recruiters.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#62

Post by ZephyrBlu »

Clewza313 wrote: post #42
monkeybutton wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as a counter point, developers that have such a knowledge about algorithms and efficiency tend to be able to sort through different possibilities and branches investigation for new problems much quicker than a developer that has to look up everything on the way. Although that's something that can just come from experience too.

Honest question: just how often do you actually need to worry about algorithms in your day to day work? The vast majority of software dev, even/especially in hot startups and the like, is bog-standard CRUD and 99.9% of the time the correct response to "I need to do something slightly complicated" is "call an existing library function".

They specifically said "for new problems", not bog standard CRUD.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#63

Post by throwaway104076 »

This person sounded really experienced, so I looked them up on LinkedIn. 7 months at their first company. 9 months at their current company. That's it, aside from non-programming jobs before their bootcamp.

The whole thing reads like inventing scenarios that didn't happen or embellishing them.

> A bad interview is when you ask them the definition of some specific thing in some specific framework like “Tell me what a closure in javascript is.” then treat them like they’re stupid if they don’t know.

Not that believable, but okay.

> I once had an interviewer ask me if I was a wizard with GO, C++, Rust, and C over the phone. Then when I said I had some experience with rust, he immediately cursed at me and hung up.

Didn't happen.

> Nobody in their right mind is going to move to San Francisco, California to be a “Lead developer” for only 70k with zero equity.

Are any companies actually trying to recruit like this? And is it successful beyond just throwing up a hiring post and not getting anything? I put in a limit buy of $3000 for 1 BRK/A on a whim once.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#64

Post by EE84M3i »

>A bad interview is when you ask them the definition of some specific thing in some specific framework like “Tell me what a closure in javascript is.” then treat them like they’re stupid if they don’t know.

Is this a good example? Isn't "what is a closure?" more of a smell test "do you know the language" question?

Maybe asking "oh you know python? Tell me how to implement and use a metaclass" without access to the documentation would be a better example.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#65

Post by Johnny555 »

I can get cooking with a programming language I’ve never seen in my life in a matter of days because most programming languages are either very similar to each other or they’re similar to some paradigm most of us already know like functional programming.

The companies looking for 5 or 10 years of experience with a language aren't looking for someone to "get cooking" and learn as they go. It's true that most experienced developers can quickly pick up the syntax of a new language and start writing code quickly, but every language has its nuances and pitfalls and you're not going to know them all after a month or two of writing code.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#66

Post by MauroIksem »

jrsj wrote: post #40
Tossrock wrote: post #20

> The general rudeness is ridiculous. I once had an interviewer ask me if I was a wizard with GO, C++, Rust, and C over the phone. Then when I said I had some experience with rust, he immediately cursed at me and hung up. > This experience is fairly common. Is it? I've done a fair bit of interviewing on both sides of the table, and can say with complete honesty I've never heard a curse said in anger in any of them. I…

Yeah this sounds more like a crazy anecdote to me. I once had a new CTO come in at a place I’d been working at for about a year and a half, and he refused to interview any candidates that weren’t Muslim (as existing staff were replaced 1 at a time). While this is extremely fucked up, I would be surprised if I could find another tech company in the state where this happened. Cursing at someone for having experience in…

This sounds like a made up anecdote.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#67

Post by Aeolun »

anm89 wrote: post #39

> I am sick and tired of Is this style of discourse really what Hacker News is about? I come here specifically because it is one of the few places where vague sentimental ranting is discouraged over directness and constructing thought out arguments for points. It's disappointing to see something make it to the top just for having an aggressive "hot take" and not because the content is well presented.

If it happens too often people don’t like it, but this particular topic hasn’t been seen in a while, and it’s something people feel fairly strongly about, so it makes sense that it keeps coming up once in a while.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#68

Post by wanderer2323 »

Author's thoughts on what is broken are:

1. Too much reliance on automated filtering of resumes

2. Companies asking for too much years of experience with specific tech/language/stack

3. Developers dismiss other developers (for using javascript, apparently?)

4. The 'asking about language trivia' interviews are bad, it would be much better to make candidate solve a small task from scratch

5. Restatement of (2) but with individual engineers instead of companies

6. Companies don't comp the employees education enough

7. Lowballing everyone's offers by default to save on labor costs is bad

What is interesting to me is that this is NOT a FAANGMO criticism. The point that applies the most to FAANGMO is probably 7, but even there the lowballs are not that low. Also fairly amusing is the suggestion to stop asking programming language trivia in interviews. Made me double-check the year of the article.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#69

Post by speeder »

_2d30 wrote: post #52
speeder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you accept non-US people, tell me what company you work for so I can send my resume. Because all the issues the guy pointed out I am on receiving end of them right now. And although I've been in leadership roles before and started programming when I was 6 years old (my dad taught me), I started lately to see if sending my applications to junior developer roles will get me any replies (people don't even tell me the…

I'm pseudonymous for a reason but here's a list of companies, none of which I am employed at, that have similar pay and issues with staffing: Uber, Doordash, Asana, AirBnB, Pinterest, LinkedIn and literally so many more. Especially if you are willing to accept mature but not yet liquid equity and then there's Stripe, Airtable, Robinhood and so many more. Post your resume. Tried to go to your personal website but it w…

I updated recently my LinkedIn profile, seeing if changing the wording of stuff helps.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gamedesigner

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#70

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

tracer4201 wrote: post #36
ARandomerDude wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the author is talking about pretty large, well-known companies (e.g., FAANG -- see his first point). Many people applying to these well-known companies are auto-filtered by resume software, which artificially decreases supply. Small and mid-size companies have a different problem: people haven't heard of them and don't know to apply. My company is in this situation. We have a good culture, I think, and pay ve…

Out of curiosity what do you define as being paid well? What country and region or state and what’s the compensation? I had a recruiter try to lure me for a $130K “senior” role on the east coast in the US. I earn several times that.

I was recently contacted about a "principal" role at $125k. I did not proceed.
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