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Panic at the Job Market

matt.sh

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Re: Panic at the Job Market

#751

Post by DrBazza »

Aurornis wrote: post #294
evrimoztamur wrote: post #23

I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. I’ve done some mentoring of CS grads for the past few years. We some times get people with unreasonable interview demands, like companies asking them to make an entire app or website for the interview process. We advise them to decline the really excessive ones. However, it’s rare to see tha…

> adds up to around 4-5 hours total.

> a few years ago when some companies were hiring anyone willing to do a short interview. Many younger engineers entered the workforce when that was normal and now any amount of interviewing feels unreasonable.

When I interviewed in the 90s "short interviews" were the norm.

4-5 hours are excessive. Especially if people are interviewing for 10 or more jobs. That's 40-50 hours interviewing. Even if you're single and young, that's onerous. Doubly so if you're senior with a family.

I'm not sure many other industries ask people to do tasks like this in their own time as part of the recruitment process. Certainly not one of my friends that's an engineer. He's never been asked to machine something on his lathe or milling machine. Nor one of my friends that is an architect. I can't imagine surgeons get many 'take home' tests either.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#753

Post by mantas »

twelve40 wrote: post #726
voiceblue wrote: post #715

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Xoogler, I have to say Google isn’t what it once was. You pay for your high salary with the fact that the one thing you can be sure most people you work with care about is how much money they extract out of Google and how they could get more. Taking care of toddlers is ostensibly a better use of the one life you get.

> Taking care of toddlers is ostensibly a better use of the one life you get. sounds like an extremely subjective assertion. Unless you have a well-off partner/family, it's possible and maybe not even uncommon to be very miserable taking care of toddlers and maxing out around minimum wage for life.

He probably tried to say that taking care of toddlers is a bigger positive impact on society than writing some crappy code that will be discarded a year later.

Yes, some software is important to the world and makes it a much better place. Vast majority of the code does not make such impact though. And then there's plenty of code that makes the world a worse place (insert your favourite evil company here).

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#754

Post by red_admiral »

> Also with higher interest rates, organizations with millions and billions of cash sitting idle can park their money in safe government-backed interest accounts to grow their balances risk-free instead of taking on risk assets seeking outsized returns.

Are interest rates alone really the right metric here?

I remember from basic econ classes that "interest rate 1%, inflation 0%, result happiness; interest 10%, inflation 20%, result misery".

Of course, interest rates and inflation are not independent, but I think the argument still holds?

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#755

Post by generic92034 »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #23

I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…

> I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably.

The weird thing (to me) is, though, that employers in EU countries and their lobby organizations still cry about lack of skilled workers, as if nothing has changed. Politicians are thinking about making work immigration more attractive. Is that not a complete disconnect from reality?

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#756

Post by nazgulnarsil »

If you're confused by a widespread practice, consider that it doesn't have the purpose you assume it has. In the case of tech interviews, it's plausible they're selecting for willingness to be abused by managers.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#757

Post by aredox »

>Companies seem to forget they are also part of, you know, the economy and people need compensation to, you know, not die, right? If you aren’t acting as an economic engine for helping the most people thrive, what is your purpose as a company?

Maximizing shareholder value, of course.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#758

Post by red_admiral »

> A secondary goal of the “behavioral interview” is personality homogenization where companies want to enforce not hiring anybody “too different” from their current mean personality engram. Yet, the tech industry is historically full of weird divergent people doing great things for their own reasons (though, due to just basic population growth over the past 20 years, there are tens of millions more “normie computer people” now offsetting all the smaller pool of original “weird computer people”). When you start enforcing personality bubbles outside of what somebody can do, you’re just doing some sort of weird economic eugenics thing (make programming weird again!).

I think that's only half the truth. Tech in the "good old days" heavily selected for a particular personality engram, and it still does today, but that engram has shifted.

There was a time when, as I'm told, turning up in a suit to a facebook interview was a big negative, and wearing exactly the right kind of gray t-shirt was a bonus. They were very much filtering for culture, but back then they were filtering for "nerd culture". Nowadays, they're filtering for a different culture - call it "normie computer people" if you like. The amount to which personality bubbles are being enforced hasn't varied, just the bubble has shifted.

If it's true that the weird computer people are better programmers / engineers / system architects than the normies, there should be an opportunity to beat the market on average here.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#759

Post by baq »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #666
bmitc wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideration your particular profile or the contributions you can make. This is really key. I have applied for jobs before, and then get questions like: "what's your experience with C++ or advanced graph algorithms?". Only that, none of that shows up in my profile or resume. But they act surprised and completely shrug off how a decade of software and other relev…

In my experience, C++ programmers have the smallest range of programming language knowledge. Basically, their whole world is C++. They have a hammer, and everything looks like a nail. "But performance!" they declare ... when you are writing a single function to reverse a string: "Can I use Python?" In my career and domain, I have never once seen a graph algorithm used, yet 5% of posts of HN are all about them. I gues…

there are two types self-proclaimed C++ wizards:

- that who accepts that the language has infinite complexity and it takes a lifetime to master it, which makes it ill-suited for most real-world tasks, because there are domain-specific tools which have the same performance and are easier to use

- that who accepts the language has infinite complexity and thus it can serve any purpose, so there's no point in working with anything else, just keep improving the C++ subskills relevant to the task at hand

some folks of the second kind have a hard time with empathising that mastering C++ is not in fact the only way to build better software.

Re: Panic at the Job Market

#760

Post by ornornor »

generic92034 wrote: post #755
evrimoztamur wrote: post #23

I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…

> I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. The weird thing (to me) is, though, that employers in EU countr…

I think it is a disconnect from reality, but only I you’re looking at it as a clueless politician or as a worker.

As an employer, this is exactly what you want: desperate people who will jump through all your hoops because this is correlated with being docile, not wanting much money, being afraid of losing your job, working long hours without complaining about it or asking for more comp, etc.

There isn’t a skilled worker shortage. There is a shortage of skilled workers willing to endure all this BS, not getting paid enough for it, and asking for more of it.

Company owners know this. Politicians just want the donations to their parties. And screw you and me, we’re just little interchangeable cogs in their money making machines.

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