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

Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

ballardgames.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 114 posts

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#71

Post by [deleted] »

mettamage wrote: post #47
endymion-light wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is - would he have prospered within a small indie studio? My experience is that a lot of the traits highlighted above make for brilliant innovators and creators, but actually end up being stifled/stopped by leads within a company. Having this kind of vision and passion is brilliant until it collides within what the founders vision is.

This is what I experience too. I'm a lot like that person and I clash with this side of me towards upper management when they feel that things ought to be done a certain way. I'm happy that I'm working for a marketing department nowadays and when they need someone technical or someone on business insights, they come to me.

[deleted]

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#72

Post by gedy »

roenxi wrote: post #35

The perspective here is subtly baised - look at the diagram down the bottom and realise that they were always only going to hire 1 person, so all the reasons that they give for not hiring the person are, in fact, not reasons that the person filtered out wasn't hired. They are processes to rank the applicants. If there were more candidates they'd add more reasons not to hire most of them, if there were less candidates…

Yeah I'm reminded of the military on this Veteran's Day. You join and you aren't qualified for anything at that point. But they take a chance, they train you, and most rise to the challenge.

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#74

Post by keeganpoppen »

roenxi wrote: post #35

The perspective here is subtly baised - look at the diagram down the bottom and realise that they were always only going to hire 1 person, so all the reasons that they give for not hiring the person are, in fact, not reasons that the person filtered out wasn't hired. They are processes to rank the applicants. If there were more candidates they'd add more reasons not to hire most of them, if there were less candidates…

this is a very keen observation about most hiring processes. even places that make noises about “hiring good people and figuring fit out later” seem to mostly, anecdotally, reduce the process to “hire the person least likely to fail at following the exact job description”.

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#75

Post by c0balt »

k__ wrote: post #39
roenxi wrote: post #35

The perspective here is subtly baised - look at the diagram down the bottom and realise that they were always only going to hire 1 person, so all the reasons that they give for not hiring the person are, in fact, not reasons that the person filtered out wasn't hired. They are processes to rank the applicants. If there were more candidates they'd add more reasons not to hire most of them, if there were less candidates…

To be fair, "outside of budget" and "didn't qualify" are pretty much catch all.

There's also team culture fit, which depending on (mis)application can be very broad too.

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#76

Post by bigstrat2003 »

bitwize wrote: post #65
testing22321 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend at a nearly-FAANG said not using AI tooling in the interview is now an automatic fail. “Not that you’d be able to complete the task on time without it anyway”

For general software engineering, the accepted thought is you're not really an engineer without the use of AI. Because engineering consists of using the right tool for the job, applying best practice, making tradeoffs, and justifying every decision from a technical standpoint. And it's anti-engineering to write the code yourself rather than putting your ego aside and taking advantage of AI's huge productivity gains.…

> For general software engineering, the accepted thought is you're not really an engineer without the use of AI.

That is not remotely true. It's not clear to me that there is a consensus, but if anything people are more skeptical than favorable of AI in my experience. And even those who favor AI don't make stark declarations such as "you're not really an engineer if you don't use it", instead accepting that their colleagues have a difference of opinion.

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#77

Post by Maxatar »

patja wrote: post #53
edent wrote: post #34

Why not list the salary up front? That reduces the number of people with wildly different remuneration expectations?

They are legally required to include the salary range in the job posting in Washington State.

No they're not.

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#78

Post by preciousoo »

lone-cloud wrote: post #40

This sounds like an incredibly toxic hiring process and not a company I'd ever want to work for. So you apply for a job and in response they (maybe) email you back asking for your expected salary (great way to filter out anyone worth hiring btw) and if you're cheap enough they then ask you to do work on a take home assignment. Everyone here thinks that this is okay and they want to be interviewed this way? "Since we…

> Hi, I’d like to work for your company > Great, state your price and availability If match: > create a simple project(This is toxic to you???

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#79

Post by preciousoo »

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #46
lone-cloud wrote: post #40

This sounds like an incredibly toxic hiring process and not a company I'd ever want to work for. So you apply for a job and in response they (maybe) email you back asking for your expected salary (great way to filter out anyone worth hiring btw) and if you're cheap enough they then ask you to do work on a take home assignment. Everyone here thinks that this is okay and they want to be interviewed this way? "Since we…

A few paragraphs below, the article answers that the company can't afford to pay as much as some others; I assume if you are being already being paid way over the market rate you should keep working at the place you're at. As for the take home, I'd take it or any other kind of non-conventional question that allows me to show me my skills, rather than the usual interview where your interviewer gives you an algorithm o…

I wonder if the people replying bothered to look at the take home question. I wish I had an interview like that, it would be the second easiest interview I’ve ever done in my life, and then task is interesting and easy to me, as someone who just started learning unity a week ago

Re: Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025

#80

Post by preciousoo »

ro_bit wrote: post #7

One note that might be good to highlight in the article is that the take-home is expected to be 2 hours long. From my experience, they are much longer so I was initially surprised to see take-home's being given before an initial call until I looked at the assignment itself.

Click the link of the take home and tell me if you expect it to take you more than 20 minutes. I don’t understand the resections here
Post reply on HN