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While the definition of senior engineer is a bit squishy, I agree completely that as some one gets more senior they increasingly choose the company rather than the other way around. I'm soft-launching a product to help companies recruit and I've done about a dozen customer development interviews with hiring managers (5 person companies through FAANGs) in the last two weeks. One thing I heard constantly was that refer…
While the definition of senior engineer is a bit squishy, I agree completely that as some one gets more senior they increasingly choose the company rather than the other way around. I'm soft-launching a product to help companies recruit and I've done about a dozen customer development interviews with hiring managers (5 person companies through FAANGs) in the last two weeks. One thing I heard constantly was that refer…
(Bear with me, gonna anxiety dump a bit here ;) feel free to skip to the end where I have a pertinent question...=) )
Background: I've worked as a high-level contributor both at the management and engineering levels for the last decade of my career. Decently respected software dev/leader/whatever, lots of big and small projects and teams, all successfully delivered. People like working with me! I've had friends ask me to come work with them. And I like my friends. They are great people.
However, I'm also known to be really picky about the things that I want to be doing with my time and my career. I'm really protective of it overall, so when I have the opportunities to "do things" with friends or whatnot I have generally said no, for a variety of reasons. They are great people and wonderful developers (legitimately wonderful, brilliant human beings) but in many cases they work for environments or domain spaces that wouldn't really be "my thing". Sometimes I've just pursued my own stuff for a while, since I have had that ability...but what you're saying above sounds like that has been hurting me.
At the end of December, I was in a work situation where the entirety of the technical team was laid off, including myself. I figured at the time, given my general "level" and experience I'd be all right when applying for work.
While I haven't applied to lots of jobs since then, I did apply to a few that seemed like a great personal fit on paper, and that I knew based on my experience I should probably at least get an initial interview.
No dice. 0% response rate. I was shocked! I mean, it's been a while since I've been doing the interview dance, but 0? So I had my CV looked over by people ranging from C-level guys to other software devs of varying levels and no one could figure out why I wasn't at least getting into initial discussions. "It's not you, it has to be them", I got told. But really after a few of these things happening, you stop thinking that "it's them". That can't be, right?
I made a comment to one person that I felt far more desirable to companies when I had much less experience/professional success than after I had more significant accomplishments under my belt.
I hate mysteries - and I hate the not knowing. It's one thing for me to go through an interview process and not be a fit, if such a thing were to happen; it's another for me to never even get to the interview process and not understand why!
So while reading the above is kind of dejecting, thank you for writing it...I guess it provides some illumination for me on what might be going on.
Now rather than hop into my shower and softly weep - do any of your engineering manager friends spoken about above have any advice for people who may have that experience but just happen to be picky about what they want to do, don't want to move themselves to the USA, and don't always jump at referral from friend X?
* Candidate applies * Within 24 hours, the candidate has a personal reply from our in-house recruiter. That E-mail explains the entire interview process in detail and sets up a brief 15-20 min phone screen with the candidate if they're okay with said process.
1) The phone screen is mostly nothing more than a brief "psychopath test" (is this person nice to talk to or are they rude or condescending?). The recruiter talks to them about their own goals, aspirations - if we approached them, we skip the "why do you want to work here" part otherwise we ask them what appealed to them.
2) The candidate is given a take-home assignment (which has no time limit but has been vetted against internal staff to take no more than really about an hour), with a note attached that says "Hey, you're likely a great and talented candidate and I'm well aware that you may be thinking that this is a waste of your valuable time. What I can assure you is that a) I'm only doing this because our industry is a sewer ;), with no real standardized screenings b) As discussed in the first E-mail, there are no further technical "screenings" coming forward - if we go to the next phase, we'll just discuss your approach to the assignment for a bit and then it's "getting to know you" time. Internally, this technical assignment is not one where two reviewers can have different "reads"; there are things we're explicitly looking for to determine overall "level", mainly with readability, approach, things like that (as just one example, a senior level candidate will know about unit testing and show something along those lines in their solution).
3) Someone reviews the submission. We reply within 48 hours.
3a) If the candidate is a no fly we don't go forward, and tell them so. If the candidate asks why, I tell them explicitly what the assignment was looking for, provide links to get acquainted with those and encourage them to reapply at a later date (we hired someone who did exactly this - those are the kind of passionate ones you want to be working with).
3b) Candidate is a go-forward; the next step of the interview is simply a discussion about "The Alliance" (Reid Hoffman, great book, at least the first half) of what they'd like to do with their career and whether the company can harmonize that into something both parties are happy with, and a getting to know the candidate a bit deeply. I told candidates explicitly at this point not to stress, as this wasn't an interrogation but simply us understanding that - to tie this back to the original posting - they were interviewing us as much as we were interviewing them.
Our hire quality sharply increased after that. I left the company a year and a half ago but that process is still in place, relatively unaltered. In fact, one person left the company, went to another company and basically "stole" that interviewing approach because he thought it was so good for finding people but also treating them with respect (which is critically important and all too rare).
TL-DR; our industry, particularly around hiring, really sucks and it's an absolute crapshoot on both sides of the equation. It's sad and really depressing; I try not to spend too much time thinking about it and more time trying to mitigate it in my small corners of the world. =) I wish it were different.
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They cost money for both parties though so in that sense it's fair.
I agree with the statement "they cost money for both parties" but I disagree with "in that sense it's fair." Individual consultant: loses 5 hours of interview time (and commute time) or take-home exam. Let's call it $800 for the sake of argument. Company: loses 5 hours of interview time, plus the time it takes to "quiz" the exam. Individual loses money that he / she uses to pay their mortgage. Company loses profit be…
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Could you give a short explanation of what this L3/L5/L7 thing is? I'm assuming you're not talking about spinal cord problems, which is the main search result.
I think [1] gives an explanation of it. [1] https://levelsfyi.com/google-levels-salary/amp/ EDIT: found a better source
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Aren't you two hiring for completely different position? One is looking for web system developer and the other is looking for the kind of coder that will write exploits and smaller tools. In one position you expect the senior to have general idea about wide range of relevant technologies, because you expect senior to choose between them occasionally (plus hiring manager knows that stuff too). Second position does not…
Does one require actually writing code and the other just require talking intelligently about code? If so: I concede.
I don't mind interview having also part where code is written at all. Be it dummy feature or breadth/depth first search or fizzbuzz or any other simple reasonably sized assignment. But in case of senior as in partly decision maker with not much direct supervision in the long term, you need those other capabilities too.
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No. The difference between talking (very intelligently) and doing is huge, and a sports analogy might be illustrative. If you ask detailed questions about football to hire a NFL quarterback, your most intelligent responses will probably be from a coach. “How should you change the position of your right shoulder if you see that a fast edge rusher is approaching you from the left side and you have two open receivers?”…
Maybe this is unique to sports? Do other fields exist where a BB-esque expert is totally incapable of practicing? The greatest movie critics probably can't direct or write for crap, but they're not commenting on how the movie was produced, just its output
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No. None of this is true. Neither IQ nor SAT scores correlate with job performance. SAT scores were requested at Google for years. Explicit aptitude tests have been used in the past, and continue to be used. They are quite legal, as long as they are used for their intend use. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theemploymentbeat/2014/03/07/em... https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/too...
IQ is the best predictor of worker performance: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-your-iq-strongly-influen... SAT is an IQ test: https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/04/why-should-...
The TL;DNR: Nuh-uh!
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/12/04/why-should-...
In the future, you really shouldn't link to dueling articles in an opinion section. It makes this all too easy.
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And that’s only true at four or five companiess at the most.... Especially if you’re married, I know a lot of developers whose spouses income goes straight into savings, investments, etc. but it’s another example of HN Silicon valley thinking that software engineering starts and stops at four companies. Married dual income couples especially can make out like bandits in any of those cities. I live in one of those cit…
I get your point, but I think you’re overgeneralizing. (1) the salary / equity combination I’m talking about is not just FAANG, it’s basically every large SF tech company. I don’t work for a FAANG but the deal is almost as good. (2) I specifically moved with my wife and kids to SF to make it easier for my wife to stop working — she wanted to focus on the kids for a few years. One income here was worth more than doubl…
I am always telling people that you reach a point where you have enough money to live the life you want. That point is different for everyone and it also depends on where you are in your life.
If I made twice as much money where I live now. It wouldn’t have an immediate effect on our life. Even now when I get a raise it just goes to “increasing my net worth”. It doesn’t really change too much of anything.
We could retire earlier. But my hobbies are computers and working out and traveling. I dont see myself fully retiring, maybe just doing consulting/contracting part of the year. As far as health insurance, my wife specifically took a job with the school board so we could get benefits whether I am consulting, contracting, or working salaried and we are guaranteed coverage for the rest of our life after she has been working ten years. I work with someone whose wife gave up her demanding job that she didn’t like to work in the school cafeteria for the same reasons.
Recruiters and consulting companies are baffled why I don’t accept an opportunity to be a high price consultant and I am sticking with this small company I work for when I could easily be making 25%-50% more. But living in a low cost of living area gives you that optionality.
Heck, there is a 50/50 chance I could get a job with Amazon working as an in house AWS consultant without moving (but with traveling). I’m just not interested in large companies. I worked at one at the time Fortune 10 (non tech) company for two years and I said never again.