
When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling - ashitlerferad
https://hiringengineersbook.com/post/trouble-hiring/
======
tptacek
A lot of this post seems pretty reasonable. But:

 _In my experience, it’s fairly easy to judge technical skill. A friendly
conversation about technical interests and recent projects can often be
enough._

Bullshit. Sounding credible in technical interviews is a skill, not the same
skill as actually being a good programmer, and might even (statistically, in
the large) be close to orthogonal to it.

We found this out the hard way. At Matasano, we started our work-sample hiring
process[1] as a way of filtering out the smooth-talkers. Before work-sample
tests, we'd spent loads of time on carefully designed interview questions;
interview design was something close to a hobby for some of us.

Of course, it was only after we started doing work-sample challenges that we
discovered that not only were a lot of excellent-seeming candidates actually
not capable of delivering, but an even greater fraction of the candidates our
"friendly conversations" were selecting out _were_ in fact perfectly capable.
It was a bad deal all around.

Whatever you do, don't fast-path "senior" developers. Everyone should run the
same process for the same job. Not only do you risk hiring people who won't
work out, but you're also depriving yourself of the most important data you
need to iterate on your hiring process.

[1]: [https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-
post/](https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/03/06/the-hiring-post/)

~~~
austincheney
I disagree. If you can’t tell the difference between a smooth talker and
strong technical competence you are probably interested in the wrong
qualities. I have interviewed enough now to see why some companies cannot
figure it out. Ask yourself if you really actually want a senior or a strong
junior.

It comes down to interest. A good senior got that way because they like
solving challenging problems. They are not interested in trendy framework
bullshit. In other words talk about the problems and potential solutions. Are
things in place to make the job easier? Seniors don’t need easier and this is
a huge turnoff.

When I hear companies try to sell me with frameworks and process I know they
are blowing smoke. At the very least they are boring and at worst you will be
working with incompetent people who are as self-diluted as the company. I
agree that filtering candidates is a good idea though.

The reason why some companies cannot figure this out is because they don’t
value the problems at hand. They need bodies to put fingers on keyboards and
are willing to pay more for people who don’t completely suck. Experience and
competence are not the same as excellence but considering the candidate pool I
can see why companies compromise on quality.

~~~
aprdm
This is a good post. Have been in the UK startup environment it was crazy how
many companies got funding but didn't had a strong senior in their software
department.

Because of this their hiring process was aimed to hire more "strong juniors"
even tho they didn't realize it. A strong senior is a person who completely
changes how you are even approaching the problem or someone who shows you
problems you hadn't seen before. They often see tech in the context of
business as well.

As you said, usually, they can't be bothered about learning the new framework
of the month or new backend language of the month, but, they have a set of
battle proven tools to solve tech problems for businesses.

P.S: I do find it hard to distinguish between bullshit talkers and people who
actually get stuff done in the interview process.

~~~
mgkimsal
There's times when i think i'm coming across as the bullshitter. "Tell me of
an accomplishment you're proud of". I struggle with this one, but I've given
this example years ago.

Worked at a company which did nightly data imports. Things worked until
'companyx' became a cEient, and the imports were huge. They would take 18-20
hours. Then longer. eventually they were touching the 24 hour mark -
unacceptable. Client's data would be more than a day behind. Granted it was a
moderate amount of data, but shouldn't take that long.

I was 'new' there - only started a month before - and the rest of the team
who'd put this together had been there a year or more. I reviewed what was in
place, took a couple of days, and got it down to an hour. Then worked with the
existing team and we got it down to under 30 minutes with some tweaking.

I do see some eyes rolling when I tell that, as I know it can sound terribly
self-aggrandizing. However, I had a decade of experience at this point, and
the rest of the team was just out of college; they'd never faced this problem
before. I basically just took the data and imported in small chunks in to in-
memory tables (to avoid hitting the disk), and copied those to disk every X
rows, and dropped indexes until everything was done. It wasn't rocket science,
but did take someone who had a deeper understanding of DB mechanics.

As I'm telling this, I always realize they have _no way_ of verifying this,
and essentially I'm just another bullshitter. The more believable I sound,
there's an equally high chance I'm either really good, or just a really good
bullshitter, and nearly every time, the person I'm talking to has no idea how
to tell the difference. It's worse as you get older, because the younger folks
just think you're waxing nostaligic about the 'good old days'.

~~~
felipeerias
It doesn't help that in our field the context for many of these past
achievements is quickly lost and forgotten.

You can't just say "I did X in Y by using Z": you need to begin by explaining
that once upon a time there used to be a thing called Y, and on that thing it
used to be very hard to achieve X, but in those ancient days there was also a
tool called Z, etc.

------
lsc
Isn't it just... mostly money? I mean, if you want to hire someone good, who
presumably has a good job, you have to pay better than what they are getting
now.

I think this is probably especially true in Europe; I mean, as far as I know,
people get like a 2x-4x raise moving to silicon valley from europe. If you pay
more than your local competitors, you will largely have your pick of the
candidates.

I mean, yes, things other than money matter a lot, too. But as an employee? I
think that's really, really hard to judge from the interview. The money is
pretty easy to judge, and as far as I can tell, total comp is a good 'honest
signal' that I'm going to be treated in other ways. How much money they offer
is a better indicator that I'll be treated well, in my experience, than
anything anyone can say at an interview.

I think as workers, we're not doing ourselves any favors by pretending that an
employer can get the best people without paying the best rates.

~~~
cloogshicer
Like I said elsewhere in this discussion, I disagree. Of course, salary is
very important, but I (and many people I know) would easily choose (and have
chosen) a lower salary for any combination of these perks:

\- Work fewer hours

\- Work from anywhere

\- Work in a specific location

\- Work in a certain environment

\- Work in a specific kind of organization

\- Work with specific technologies

\- etc.

People are very different and have very different wishes and needs. Salary
isn't always priority #1.

~~~
henrik_w
For me it is:

\- the product is SW

\- great colleagues

\- challenging problems

\- cool technology

\- having users

\- good salary

\- good tools

\- max 40 hours a week

\- minimal bureaucracy

\- working remote when needed

[https://henrikwarne.com/2013/03/26/what-do-programmers-
want/](https://henrikwarne.com/2013/03/26/what-do-programmers-want/)

~~~
cloogshicer
Interesting article, thanks for posting.

------
doctorless
Hands down, the number one problem in hiring and retaining senior engineers is
being able to match the compensation level. FAANG-type companies have a huge
difference to practically everyone else. Startups, especially, can’t match the
salary, and few make up for it in equity comparable to the risk level
engineers take on by accepting the job. Senior engineers typically know
better, and so you end up with mid or even junior applicants for senior roles,
and out of desperation, they end up being the pick.

~~~
burfog
The difference being that the FAANG-type companies don't pay well enough to
make up for the cost of living. Senior engineers seldom want to live in tiny
apartments.

See if you can prove me wrong: find a 10-acre lot within a half hour commute,
with a large single-family home, that is affordable to a senior engineer.
Alternately, make it 1 acre, but within a 5-minute commute.

~~~
burlesona
I understand what you’re saying but I think you’re underestimating how many
people like city life.

I work in SF and most of the people here are here specifically because they
DONT want to live on ten acres in some rural place, they love that the city is
walkable and dense and interesting.

For most folks the issue of living in condos or apartments it’s an issue at
all until they reach a certain family size. At that point, most of the people
in the city would be thrilled to live in a 3-4 bedroom townhome in the city —
but THAT is where SF gets really difficult, because those cost $4 million or
more these days.

Actually for many people they feel trapped because they’d like a LITTLE more
space, ie. the Victorian townhome, but they specifically DO NOT want a car or
a yard and do not want to leave the historic, walkable city. At that point
you’re really screwed because outside of SF there is basically nothing else
walkable west of the Mississippi. So there’s nowhere to go.

If somehow magically you could build a 1900s Victorian townhome city about 30’
away by train I think you’d find a couple million urban Californians wanted to
move there.

But of course the sprawl all around the job centers, and the regulatory
environment, both make that impossible.

Oh well.

~~~
masonic

      outside of SF there is basically nothing else walkable west of the Mississippi
    

What a sad perception.

~~~
crazygringo
So where is it?

Where can you live outside of SF that you don't need a car and can live a
normal adult lifestyle?

~~~
masonic
First of all, SF doesn't really qualify. How many live in a neighborhood where
their workplace, medical, grocery, and social needs are all _walkable_
to/from?

Car-ownership-hostile != "walkable". Using Lyft/Uber isn't "walking".

Anyway, as to your question: parts of Sacramento, Auburn, Carson City, Eugene,
Bend, and Boise all qualify, and that'slimiting to cities I know firsthand.
Other cities that I hear this from others include Salem, SLC, ...

Much depends on what you consider to be "normal adult lifestyle". If one's
definition of that includes walking through waste and needles to the Folsom
St. Fair, SF probably does have a monopoly there.

~~~
joshuamorton
SF has decent public transit. Disliking public transit is fine, but ignoring
it is something else entirely. Muni and Bart do make it possible to get around
most of SF without walking or using uber/lyft.

And, given where I live, my medical, grocery, and a significant chunk of my
social needs are truly within walking distance. The only one that isn't is
work, and that would be accessible via public transit if I was willing to
compromise on commute times a bit (or if I changed employers/offices).

Carson City has 4 bus routes serving 150 square miles, San Francisco has close
to 100 serving less than 50. Those aren't remotely comparable.

~~~
masonic

      Disliking public transit is fine,
    

... and is something I didn't write, nor feel.

The parent comment asserted _walkability_. If your environment is _walkable_ ,
that means you don't _need_ transit/carshare for everyday needs.

    
    
      Carson City has 4 bus routes
    

Again, _walkable_ means walkable without transit. My father lived there with
daily needs within walking distance. SF is not only not the "only" walkable
city, SF isn't generally walkable overall for all everyday destinations
(especially hilly streets).

~~~
joshuamorton
Walkability in the city-planning sense is defined by "lack of need for a car".
Improved public transit improves walkability (see the walkability scores on
pretty much any site ever), as does mixed use development.

Carson City has a walk score of 34 (although apparently there's a 4 block area
in downtown that gets up to the mid 70s). SF has an average of 86. My
apartment scores 99. Like I said, there isn't a genuine comparison to be had.

~~~
crazygringo
Exactly this. New York City is the very definition of a "walkable" city
because you walk to the subway, stand on the subway, walk to work.

Not because you live within walking distance of work, which almost nobody
does. That definition of "walkable" would be so tiny to render it almost
meaningless.

------
LaserToy
Context: 15 years of experience, multiple public talks (including AWS
reInvent), own chunk of infra serving hundreds millions users.

Got a message from yet another self driving startup. Agreed to do a phone
screen out of curiosity. Interviewer is 6 months out of school and his first
question - why do you want to work for us. My answer - I actually don’t, I
didn’t even know you exist and it is your job to convince me. Thoughts - i’m
wasting my time.

~~~
techslave
ha. i would have hung up. but then i’m pretty gruff.

~~~
LaserToy
I was very close to do it and I did a poor job hiding my annoyance. It didn’t
stop there. The coding challenge was standard bs done in a glitchy online
tool. Yet another clone of coderpad which implemented poorly. I asked the
interviewer why did he pick this specific question and how does it correlate
to what they do - answer was not encouraging. As you guessed, I didn’t pass he
interview :).

------
ChuckMcM
I think the article is reasonable but it suffers from the imprecision of
"senior" as many things do. What is a 'senior' engineer in a startup, or at a
mid-size private company, or a large public company? All of those companies
have "senior engineers" but they aren't easily swapped out for each other.

These are my definitions, at a startup a senior engineer is one that is broad
enough in their experience to have gone deeply into one area and at least
lightly into several others. They understand what technical debt it and when
to use it, and when to avoid it. What is more, they can communicate what needs
to be done to a more junior engineer.

In a mid-size private company a senior engineer knows all of the forces that
are being applied to their area of expertise, they know what the cost
constraints are on the solution, they know what the time constraints are. They
understand the area fully and can review other's work and participate
productively in design reviews and product planning sessions. They can be an
axis of excellence by leading by example and surfacing things that need to be
fixed early.

At a large publicly traded company a senior engineer is one who can relate the
business to the engineering effort to insure that they are doing the
engineering that is needed and more importantly they are not doing engineering
that is not needed. To paraphrase, "With great resources comes great re-
invention." Large well funded engineering teams tend to re-invent the wheel
because they can, not because they need to. And as a result can become mired
in self inflicted complexity. It is the role of the senior engineers to see to
it that it doesn't happen.

Very different jobs.

~~~
sethammons
Why should not all those be together and be the bar for senior starting at the
start-up layer? I think the only big difference is working/navigating in a
small or large org, no?

~~~
seren
If you look at the both extreme, large public company and a start up, in the
former case, you already have customers, a viable business model, and a legacy
product. As an engineer, your first requirements would be to "not break
things" going forward. Sure you want to gain some market share from competitor
but you already have some momentum, otherwise your job would not exist. So you
need to upgrade or add features to your product in a controlled way. Your 20
years customer might not want to have to learn a new interface just because
you can deliver it.

At a start up, even if you have your first customers, you want to deliver a
product or more features as quickly as possible starting from scratch.
Possibly, you also want to be able to pivot totally if the first idea does not
stick.

It is great if you can do well in both environment, but usually, this is
different skill set, and I would even say personal inclination. You'll likely
have a hard time to convince a start up engineer to work on COBOL code base on
a mainframe.

------
ChuckNorris89
The author is from Austria. As a dev who moved there 4 years ago I noticed
it's probably some archaic Germanic cultural trait for any job postings to be
very employer focused, acting like they're doing you a favor by hiring you and
not caring about what the employee might want, even for senior roles.

Maybe a local is reading this and can explain why this is still a thing.

~~~
cloogshicer
Author here, true, software jobs are a bit extra weird around here. I think
it's because companies are run more "traditionally" here. Meaning that the
people running the company are usually managers. They have a business
background and don't understand what most engineers want and how they think.
Even many self-proclaimed "startups" (which are often just consulting shops)
are run this way.

The cause for this might be that it's culturally pretty unusual to start a
company around here. I'd say people are extremely risk-averse and starting a
company is almost frowned upon.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
If the people running the companies have business backgrounds surely they
understand the principles of supply and demand, no?

They want FAANG like employees but only if they work for peanuts. Then they
cry to the press they _can 't find skilled engineers_.

The same way I also _can 't find Ferraris_, with a budget for a Hyundai.

------
dceddia
I agree with a lot of the points here. One specific pet peeve of mine is job
listings that refuse to nail down which _specific_ technologies they're using.

Some will say things like "Front-end web development using a framework such as
ExtJS, React, Vue, or Angular". Neat - which one? I'm happy to work with 1 or
maybe 2 of those. Do you mean that you actually use React but you're fine with
people who come from some other framework? Or do you mean that you are
converting a legacy app from Ext.JS to React so you're hoping the candidate
has used both?

Sometimes they'll bury the actual framework in the "Nice to Have" section but
it's pretty common for it to be left vague. I _think_ what they're trying to
do is widen the pool of applicants, but that strategy seems suboptimal for
attracting folks who want to work with a specific tech stack.

~~~
acjacobson
While this is only my experience, when I write job requirements that cover
multiple languages or frameworks it really is 'any of these are fine'. The
theory is that you don't want to filter out people that would otherwise be a
good fit - because for the most part smart people can learn new frameworks and
languages pretty quickly. You are correct that it is suboptimal for people
wanting to work on a specific tech stack, but if you're not getting any
applicants because your requirements are unnecessarily strict it's not in
anyone's interest.

~~~
dceddia
It makes sense that you wouldn't want to prematurely filter people out, but in
that case I'd think it might be better to explicitly state that. Something
like "We use React, but experience with another framework (Angular, Vue, etc.)
is fine. We assume you can learn React."

I think the unintended consequence of leaving it broad is that you might lose
people who are specialized in the very framework you use.

In my own case, I'm pretty biased toward React, having written a book & been
blogging about it for a few years. I definitely pass over job listings that
leave the framework open to interpretation. The cost of finding out what they
_actually_ use is too high, unless the job looks exceptional in some way.

------
csnewb
That's hilarious and so true. Last year I interviewed for a senior back-end
engineering position at a well known mid-sized company in the Bay Area. They
put me through 2 technical phone screens and a 6 hour onsite interview,
grilling me in detail about system design, domain knowledge, personal
experience, and of course doing endless exercises of writing solutions to
algorithmic problems on a whiteboard. I really felt like I nailed the
interview but they still rejected me because they thought my technical skills
weren't good enough. 7 months later I start applying to jobs again via
LinkedIn, and guess what, that exact same position on the same team is still
open. It seems insane that during the past 7 months they couldn't find a
single person to fill that role. Makes me wonder if they know what they're
really looking for.

~~~
matthewowen
"senior engineer for team y" is a position that's constantly been hired for at
most growth companies. The fact that they're still hiring for it probably
doesn't mean much.

~~~
digianarchist
Exactly. We are hiring constantly for several positions: junior, senior, lead.
We don’t want to saturate job boards so we artificially limit listings.

------
burtonator
What I find hilarious is how every VC podcast about bootstrapping your startup
has both of these statements 30 seconds apart:

1\. ALWAYS hire the best you can. Hire people smarter than you. Hire the
smartest people in the world!

2\. It's always impossible to hire! We can never hire anyone!

Yeah. Ya think?

What I try to do is actually the opposite of their advice.

I don't look for the perfect hire. I look for people who are often overlooked
but COULD become the perfect hire.

Just get them in at an affordable salary and build them into your best
engineers.

They will be amazingly loyal (since you gave them chance when they needed it)
and you can train them to become PART of the team.

You DO need senior people for this strategy though. They need mentors.

~~~
Killes
Don't forget to offer them the kind of raises they would get for jumping ship
down this journey (20/50/100%?), or they will, well, jump ship.

------
snarfy
The words 'pay' and 'salary' do not appear in the article. They want senior
engineers at intern prices.

~~~
Vadoff
Pay as much as FAANG and trust me, you'll get your senior engineers.

~~~
mk89
I have to disagree. Money is not always all.

Sometimes it's also about expectations, role, office location, other bonuses,
etc. When in 2019 you don't let people do home office... Byebye...

~~~
bradlys
Money is not all but FAANG have benefits and work that are comparable or
better than most startups/companies. The overall package is just better...
It's obvious to the market at large. Only niche audiences are willingly going
to choose startups/companies with certain perks. (fully remote work, for
instance - it is a niche thing regardless of what people here say)

------
Matthias247
Great post! I can relate to that a lot.

One of my experiences was a recruiter for a startup (which plans to be leader
in XYZ) reaching out for me on LinkedIn. Since I found the general domain
quite interesting, I responded. From there on we have a short chat, but
instead of getting really insightful information on the job I get forwarded to
a bunch of URLs which aim to describe things. I get that it's convenient for
the company to save time - but I don't want to spend hours reading through
things.

Then there is an interview loop. 2 of the interviewers are apparently fairly
junior, and spend the whole interview asking the typical graduate coding
problems. One of them even wasn't sophisticated with having things 80% solved
- it needed to be 100% - even though that meant the whole timeslot was used
up. In the end of those in-person interviews I learned nothing about the job
because there was no time left.

The main thing I learned was that there are people there who can be pedantic
on interviews and can solve basic coding problems. If anything that gives me a
negative impression. I want to work together with people who know interesting
technologies, know how to write well-structured code, etc. The interview might
give the impression that they don't know these things, because all they ask
for is how to solve a leetcode problem.

After that the company asks for another interview loop at a different place -
which obviously would mean spending even more time on this. At that point I'm
giving up.

------
ravenstine
Having spent a lot of time being interviewed recently, I've noticed a certain
type of question asked in technical interviews that I think can sabotage
perfectly qualified engineers. I'm not sure if my view is sound, but maybe
someone can pipe in and tell me why I am wrong.

Imagine being asked this question in a technical interview:

> When do you decide to use frontend validation?

(yes, this is based on questions I've been asked IRL)

The problem that I have with this type of question, even though it _can_ be
answered and _seems_ reasonable, is that it's not even how engineers tend to
think most of the time. It's about a solution looking for a problem.

When I'm faced with this kind of question, I often stumble to come up with a
hypothetical need for the solution being proposed. It's not that I can't come
up with an answer, but I end up lacking eloquence and saying "ummm, well,
okay, so..." a lot while using my imagination. It would be like handing a
hammer to someone and asking them to find things to nail with it.

In essence, it's _backwards_ from how I would tackle most problems.

Here's the sort of question I would rather be asked:

> Let's say that we've built out a web form that the user can submit, and
> there are a lot of inputs they have to fill in. They can only know if they
> made a mistake once they've hit "submit", due to backend validation. How
> could you improve this experience for the user?

I find this preferable because it's a lot more realistic and natural. Instead
of looking for problems to fit the solution, I have a problem and need to come
up with a solution. To extend my hammer analogy, this is like providing the
pieces of a wood table and allowing the candidate to show how they would
assemble that table. Anyone can memorize terms like "frontend validation" and
what sort of problems they are associated with, but it demonstrates more skill
to be given a problem and know where to go from there.

My guess is that there's a lot of good engineers out there, even senior ones,
who get weeded out in the hiring process because they're being asked not to
approach problems like engineers but like they're contestants on Jeopardy.

~~~
bschwindHN
> How do you know if you need frontend validation as opposed to the backend?

You _always_ need backend validation. Never trust the client. You can then
layer on frontend validation where it's needed to make a better UX.

~~~
ravenstine
I think that could have been a poor choice of words on my part. From memory,
when asked nearly the same question, I don't think it was suggesting frontend
validation exclusive to backend validation. Then again, maybe that _was_ how
it was phrased. Ugh. Maybe I'll edit my original post.

You are definitely correct, however.

------
taurath
The sheer amount of recruiters and interview requests that act they’re doing
you a huge favor for the opportunity is rediculous. My conclusion is they
truly do only want to hire people who don’t know what their skills are worth.

~~~
cloogshicer
I think it's really just a question of mindset. A lot of recruiters don't have
a background in tech. They don't understand that the market is completely
upside-down. It's a huge change in mentality and it takes a bit of humility to
see.

~~~
dilyevsky
Also experience. Many recruiters I see are either part time contractors or
recent grads that are just trying to get some (any) work experience before
they move onto something else (like sales).

------
davidfischer
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
referrals are their best source of candidates and that for roles with 7+ years
of relevant experience they actually don't believe good candidates will come
in by just randomly applying on their website/LinkedIn/etc. I had an
engineering manager tell me "a senior engineer actively searching for a job is
a negative signal of candidate quality" as opposed to going through somebody
in their network or connecting with somebody at the company first. I had
another manager tell me for the senior roles he's hiring for he only considers
candidates explicitly sourced by his internal recruiter who searches LinkedIn
for the specific skillset or people who are referrals for the specific job.
This isn't some CTO level position; this is just a role for a ~10 years of
experience individual contributor. Applications from the website go straight
to the trash can. The implication was people with those skills aren't looking
for jobs.

~~~
ycom_j
Whew, that is a hard thing for me to read, it actually really bummed me out
(apologies if this comment winked in and out of existence...wanted this to not
be one giant blob).

(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?

~~~
davidfischer
Sorry to bum you out. That's not my goal.

As one becomes more senior the hiring manager _expects_ a candidate to do
their due diligence and ask some questions beforehand rather than hopping
right into the application process. For a referral, that has already happened
somewhat as the candidate already presumably talked to the the referrer about
working at that company. You don't have to be a referral but a hiring manager
expects you to do this due diligence. You don't necessarily need to go through
a friend and you don't have to work with your friends. However, having an
acquaintance at the company even in a different team is a massive help.

Think of it from the company's perspective for a second. They don't want
somebody who just "wants a job". Money is always a factor but if somebody
takes a job solely for money then they'll jump ship the moment somebody offers
more. Companies want somebody interested in their space who wants to work
there. You mentioned that you purposefully pursued some roles that looked like
they'd be good fit for you. That's smart! Make sure the hiring manager knows
it. By just clicking apply on the website, that may not be communicated
clearly.

Here's two concrete pieces of advice:

\- Before going in the front door and applying for roles, reach out to the
hiring manager and ask them some more details about the role and what working
for the company/team is like. If you know somebody at the company who can put
you in touch (even if it isn't the same team), that's better, but even if you
don't that's ok. They will talk to you and if they don't you probably don't
want to work there anyway. LinkedIn is useful for this.

\- If you're applying for a local job, try to meet the hiring manager or
somebody else at the company in person if possible. Don't stalk them but to
give you an example, I know that a CEO for a local security startup runs the
local OWASP meetup and I told a person interested in working in security to go
to the meetup and talk to him if she was serious about working there. I've
been a hiring manager before and I looked way more closely at any candidate I
talked to in person. Don't sound desperate but show them that you're
interested and serious enough to go out of your way to talk to them. I had a
couple candidates who I didn't know reach out to me via Meetup.com for roles
posted to the company website and I had no problem meeting them for coffee.

On a related tangent, I help organize a local meetup and I get asked the
question "how do I land my first dev job" a lot. I've helped half a dozen
people land their 1st or 2nd tech job. Assuming they already have tech talent,
I essentially offer them the above advice. It works at that level but it works
for senior roles too! As a hiring manager, you want to talk to qualified
people about your open role.

Good luck!

Edit: formatting only

~~~
davidfischer
A couple things to add:

\- The #2 source of candidates was almost universally meetups in my customer
development interviews. Meeting people in person works! You don't have to be a
referral although it does help.

\- It's pretty easy at a small company to figure out who the hiring manager is
and contact them via LinkedIn/Meetup/etc. At a big company, this can be hard
or impossible but you are much more likely to know somebody at a big company
who can put you in touch. Absolute worst case, reach out to the big company
recruiter on LinkedIn asking for some details on a specific role and they
might put you in touch directly or they'll get your questions answered some
way. The recruiter 100% will talk to you. They are paid good money to find
qualified people like you.

\- While I said earlier it isn't a numbers game and you should only apply to
roles/companies where you're a fit, to some degree it is a numbers game.
Sometimes jobs are posted to a company website and the role isn't really
available. Maybe they already have a candidate in mind. If you apply to ~3-4
jobs and don't hear anything, that isn't super uncommon. However, most people
feel obligated to actually give you a direct answer if you contacted them
directly.

------
introing111
"When hiring senior engineers, the company doesn’t choose the candidate, the
candidate chooses the company."

That's totally true. I also choose the environment where I will be working and
what conditions will be.

I prefer working remotely and have flexible working hours. It keeps me
motivated.

"Your job posting probably sucks". I agree with it too. Because some
recruiters write me that their company offers free alcohol in their office for
stressful situations. I told them it looks unprofessional and seems that they
just drink at their office. She said to me that people hate boring
descriptions and I'm wrong.

But you know that more people like a healthy lifestyle. Especially in Silicon
Valley. Do you agree?

So, if you sell your company, find more information about a candidate (their
interests, lifestyle, values). Instagram, Facebook, Twitter show you who a
person is. It helps you to write the best offer to a candidate.

Currently, I'm using three ways to find a job: FB groups, Networking, and
Freelance Marketplaces. I used to get projects on Upwork but right now I check
job boards. BTW, if you want to save your time searching for projects, I found
a service on Reddit comments that aggregates freelance projects from job
boards ([https://periodix.net/](https://periodix.net/)). I like it because it
doesn't sell me bad projects.

------
ajcodez
If you pay low to mid six figures remote then you’re back to buying talent
instead of selling opportunities.

~~~
antibland
Can you elaborate?

~~~
ajcodez
In the article the author says there is more demand than supply for senior
developers. I’m saying if you hire remote and pay a decent wage there is more
supply than demand.

------
Apocryphon
All of these recurring interview threads makes me wonder: why are there only
two interview preparation-focused boot camps right now? (Outco and Interview
Kickstart)

It’s one thing to take an algorithms course, and it’s another to excel at
competitive programming, and still another to use those skills on the spot in
an interview. Surely like any other admissions process, one can train for
technical interviews in a group setting.

~~~
hellllllllooo
The point that is being made by the original post is that the process is bad
in many companies especially when hiring senior engineers who have a proven
track record and have other options. These engineers don't want to spend time
and money learning how to crack the coding interview in some bootcamp. They
can find work and are put off by the process some companies use and such
companies are missing out on good people. Suggesting bootcamps for leetcode
and whiteboarding as a solution misses the point as these are not great
interview practices.

~~~
Apocryphon
They definitely aren’t, but I wonder if their existence will force big tech
employers to realize their interviewing process is being gamed and is even
more of a sham.

~~~
hellllllllooo
I think it's ok for big tech companies to do this (from their point of view)
because they have an endless list of candidates and don't care too much if
many good people are put off or fail. They will get good people through the
sheer volume of people applying and these processes do get good people if you
can afford false negatives.

I think the middle and smaller companies need to change their processes more.
If they just copy what the large companies do without understanding they don't
have the same ability to attract candidates and pay high salaries they will
just lose good people that they actually really need.

------
dhjsnana83
There is a lot of complaining about hiring processes these days.

I think both algorithmic questions and work samples have an important role.

Algorithmic questions are presented with a time lot, you get an idea of how
the candidate thinks through problems. These questions I think reflect general
intelligence.

Work samples reflect effort and experience, which is also important.

People like to complain about one or the other like they're entitled to a job.
It's hard to hire senior engineers because there aren't very many good ones, a
mediocre engineer who hangs on for 5-10 years is now a "senior engineer."

You're not special. If you want a high paying job of your choosing you have to
earn it. Only a vocal whiny minority is heavily complaining online. If you
think you're highly competent and the problem is with all of these companies,
in whose best interest it is to hire good people, you should think again.

~~~
tracer4201
>I think both algorithmic questions and work samples have an important role.

I'm a senior engineer at one of the top tech companies. I hold the opinion the
interview processed is heavily biased towards college grads or kids who are
fresh on algorithms.

I think this helps us hire mostly kids who are book smart but aren't
necessarily great (or even "good") employees... I'll do some hand waving here
and define good as some combination of being driven and motivated, being able
to work independently, and actually caring about what they're doing.

The question is then - well, how do we do this better? Honestly, I'm not sure.
Hiring quality workers is a difficult problem. Technical interviews allow you
to somewhat measure one of the key aspects of your hire. That being said, some
people aren't made to stand in front of a white board and get judged. They
don't handle that situation really well, and just because of that, they'll
make mistakes that they might not otherwise make.

~~~
dhjsnana83
I think it varies by company, but at mine the questions are very much domain
based for senior people. The focus is greater on algorithms for new grads.

The questions being asked aren't extremely challenging, they can be trained
for. Willingness to learn new things (even if useless) and put in the effort
to pass interviews is a positive signal imo.

On that note, it seems like HN has assumed the only work that exists is
writing CRUD apps and not worrying about performance. There are many roles
where you do need to have a strong understanding of performance and
algorithms, and those are the difference between a smooth rollout and crashes
in the middle of the night.

~~~
akra
What aspect of performance though? Even that means a variety of different
things to different people and it isn't just algorithms. I've met people who
are bad at typical CS algorithms yet know their language of choice very well
and write low-allocation high performance tight code that "does less". Or
people that are used to handling concurrent code which sadly is still somewhat
of a rare skill. Only the algorithms are touched on in typical CS courses;
most aspects of performance tuning come from experience and persistence
spending hours trying to get more performance and less resource usage out of
an application.

------
pkaye
> When hiring senior engineers, the company doesn’t choose the candidate, the
> candidate chooses the company.

Does that mean its the candidates fault when they can't find a job?

~~~
scarface74
If you are truly a senior software engineer with all of the common skills
living in most metropolitan areas in the US in 2019 and can’t find a job, it
most definitely is the fault of the job seeker.

------
s3nnyy
The author is right that the firms are not selling enough and often they are
too picky, have unreasonable slow and effortful hiring process with many
stages of which some don't test the engineer but rather humiliate the person.

I am running a tech recruitment agency and this month I had TWO engineers who
refused to take offers because the companies (two different ones) basically
grilled them too much in the processes and showed off an insufficient company
culture. I know both firms rather well and their environment is actually good.
Seems like firms who aren't yet having a brand name like Google but who are
sufficiently good tend to be arrogant enough to scare of engineers but not
good enough to make them accept an offer.

The arrogance of some firms might seem irrational but it can be explained by
"catastrophe avoidance". Most of the time, hiring a bad engineer is really
much much worse than rejecting a good candidate - that is especially true in
Europe, where it is hard to fire people. Also, every job description is a set
of tasks that is supposed to be done by a person who'd better be REPLACEABLE.
If you wait sufficiently long, YOU WILL FIND SOMEONE ELSE WHO FITS ALSO OR
BETTER. Due to the nature of the employer-employee relationship, firms will
still be "the ones on top".

------
d--b
100% agree.

I am in a good place right now, and I get head-hunted a lot. Sometimes I
answer the calls thinking "why not see what's out there?".

I can't be more annoyed when the guys in front of me just assume there is
nothing else I want in life than to get into their company.

------
mlthoughts2018
There are a lot of comments in the thread claiming that there’s some kind of
“smooth talker” senior engineer candidate, but frankly that is preposterous
and I simply don’t believe all the impossibly perfect anecdata thrown around.

It is incredibly hard to talk clearly about complex projects you’ve solved
before in the specific tradeoff circumstances of some past project or job.
Someone who can do that with great clarity is extremely hard to find and
valuable.

I saw one comment that said something along the lines of hearing a candidate
talk fluently about tech details (at a very specific implementation level) of
past work, but then put them in front of a keyboard and they go “hmm urr uhh”
or whatever.

This is frustratingly dumb. First of all, senior engineers should spend way,
way more of their time thinking and directing architecture choices or
prioritization than writing code, _especially_ in early stage projects or
companies.

Second, I’m absolutely certain that the coding question you’re asking to
generate this himming and hawing is some Cracking the Coding Interview
bullshit trivia question that this senior engineer hasn’t thought about in 20
years since their algorithms class in college because they were too busy
actually solving real business problems for people (including a few rare
problems that involved detailed deep dives into novel or complex algorithmic
solutions).

We harass and haze people with bullshit trivia, then turn around and don’t
even ask them what problems they have really, actually solved before, or
invent reasons to rationalize that if they solved a lot of problems before,
they’re just some sort of smooth talker and somehow the only proof is if they
memorized Floyd’s cycle detection algorithm or some other ludicrous bullshit.

What a deeply humanity-hostile industry it is!

------
productpinata
I definitely agree with some of the points (job descriptions and onboarding
are generally dumpster fires, to highlight just two), but it has a little too
much of a stereotypical young developer feel for my tastes. There are fine
engineers out there who aren't overly concerned about the dress code, for
example, but care deeply about diversity, social good, and/or benefits other
than basic salary.

There is so much more to technical hiring that a leader has to know about and
consider. If anyone would like to read a different perspective, I recently
finished a long blog series (~60 pages if it were a book) that tries to
consider a more complete human approach:

[https://medium.com/@productivitypinata/i-got-99-problems-
and...](https://medium.com/@productivitypinata/i-got-99-problems-and-your-
hiring-practices-are-all-of-them-cb1e6a5877ea)

~~~
cloogshicer
Hi, author here, thanks for your feedback. I did mention that not everyone
will care about these things, but I like your point about diversity and social
good. Probably things I should've included.

Looking forward to reading your post!

------
nailer
I had an interview for an engineering manager role with a London fintech
startup, from 11AM to 4PM, with each hour designed as a 'gauntlet' of some
kind.

There were no breaks. When I went to urinate, it took time out from their
quiz. Someone stood outside the door.

Interviewing is mentally exhausting: a couple of hours in I started to flag
from lack of food. By the end of the 5 hours, after eating and regaining my
abilities, I thought that an environment that didn't give me a moment to eat
during the courting phase, wouldn't care that much for my welfare once I'd
actually signed on.

After a couple of days they got back, assuming I was still interested, and
told me feedback which consisted of "really knows his stuff, but is often a
poor communicator". Yes, so is everyone when they're presenting for 5 hours.

------
calewis
I might send this to the 1000’s of clueless recruiters that spam me every day,
and can’t understand why I don’t want a .net job in Wigan for £12,000 p.a

------
Adamantcheese
On the subject of recruiter emails, I just recently got one for a job at my
former employer, a clear indication that the recruiter didn't read my resume
at all. Also I've gotten an offer for a 3 week contract senior developer
position on the other side of the continent. I swear that recruiter must have
been mental or desperate.

From my perspective as a job seeker, it's pretty obvious that recruiters
really just don't care. And the weird mental games being played on applicants
with increasingly stupid and inflated requirements only means you're going to
have fewer applicants.

------
jeffrallen
Ssssh, don't let the secret out. The fewer great workplaces, the better for
those of us who happen to have a great workplace and need to recruit!

~~~
cloogshicer
Haha, author here, sorry about that. Can I quote you on that for the book? :P

~~~
jeffrallen
Quote away. The great workplace in question is EPFL's DEDIS lab.

~~~
cloogshicer
Awesome, thanks!

------
dankoss
I have talked to several interviewers with a buying mindset, and the thing
that annoys me the most is that they always ask why I want to work for
$COMPANY_NAME, especially if it's a well known SV company.

They don't understand: I don't need your job, your recruiter called me, so
what is it $COMPANY_NAME has to offer me that's better than my current senior
level gig?

------
edhowzerblack
One thing that employers should keep in mind is that the candidates they would
like connect with probably already have jobs. Many people I know simply do not
reply to recruiters if they are adequately paid and reasonably happy in their
current job. The reason why is simple. If they did, they would simply be
volunteering to spend a bunch of time doing take-home projects and coding
exercises for free without even knowing if the company administering said
technical assessments would pay them more or offer them a more fulfilling job!

So it's not just that you're selling (as opposed to buying) because the
candidate is "senior", you're selling because you're trying to lure someone
away from a job they already have. Asking someone how much they're making now
so that you can offer them the same salary or a measly ten percent more and
then giving a homework assignment is not exactly enticing someone to switch
jobs!

------
gwbas1c
As a happily employed person who occasionally interviews for another job, I
find coding samples a turn-off.

Why? Two reasons:

\- If the coding sample is in a language (or large framework) that I will
learn on the job, I don't think I will have any success. Something that's a
20-minute job for one person could be a 5 hour "learning exercise" for me.

\- If the sample is something like a bugfix or enhancement where I have to go
through the whole process, the time commitment is just too large. I have to
come up to speed with new frameworks, conventions, idioms, layouts, designs,
which is time consuming. Then, the review process itself may be time
consuming, or slow to get feedback if company engineers don't see my work as a
priority.

I prefer coding samples that require very little ramp-up and process. Let me
use a language that I'm familiar with. (If I will learn a language on the job,
let's agree on a language that I and the evaluating engineer are comfortable
with.) The coding exercise should be fun, without assuming knowledge of
extensive frameworks or processes.

In general, good coding assignments look like a high school coding
competition, or a topcoder question.

[Edit]: What I've really liked, in the past, was a company that did a very
basic coding sample instead of a phone screening. It took me about 90 minutes
to write, and was rather fun.

What I had to do was write a small program that navigated a maze. Navigation
occurred by loading parts of the maze through a web service. Other than that,
there were no requirements for language, framework, process, ect.

In short, I didn't have to onboard myself, or have extensive domain knowledge,
in order to do the exercise.

I find coding exercises that require extensive domain knowledge are only
useful when screening subject experts. IE, we're hiring someone who has
extensive knowledge in language X with framework Y and design patterns Z.
Sometimes teams need domain experts, other times they need experienced
engineers who learn the tools on the job.

[Edit 2] The statement "When hiring senior engineers, the company doesn’t
choose the candidate, the candidate chooses the company." is very important
when choosing a skillset. Part of what sells a job to me is the opportunity to
work on a new language, framework, ect. This is why coding assignments that
require extensive domain knowledge are, ultimately, a turn-off.

~~~
dublo7
My pet peeve is getting a coding assignment with a bug or syntax error or
misplaced curly bracket that turns the coding exercise into a trick question.
The compiler or editor would catch all that stuff so don't expect me to do it
by hand unless you're paying me to work in notepad.

~~~
gwbas1c
A good coding exercise has the candidate demonstrate that the candidate knows
how to program a computer.

Stuff like that just means it's time to walk away from the interview.

------
jvannistelrooy
While I agree with a lot of the suggestions in this post, I disagree with the
_" you’re not buying, you’re selling"_ part. It's just not that one-sided.

I think the proces of hiring or applying works best when it's a conversation
between equals. Both the employer and applicant have something of value to
offer, and both expect something of equal value in return.

Many employers and applicants act like the other side should be happy to talk
to them (they're granting them a favor). If you really think the other side
has more to gain from talking to you than yourself, why did you decide to have
the conversation in the first place?

Sure, markets are not perfect, so the most popular employer in a city and the
best engineer with nowhere-to-find expertise might both be able to act as a
buyer. For the rest of us: _We 're buying, and we're selling._

------
rafiki6
This is good and all, and many of the comments here explore the nuances.
Something all of it seems to miss is that one persons "senior" engineer is not
another persons "senior" engineer. This designation is meaningless and it
usually is a failure of a company to properly assess their needs when creating
a role. Some approach it by using a wishlist of framework and language
knowledge (that quickly turns into a checklist). Others approach is by years
of experience doing x,y,z. Fact is, a "senior" engineer is code for "person I
want to hire who is right for the job and who needs little guidance". Many
people fit that bill.

------
tschwimmer
Hot take: many (most?) startups don't need talented senior engineers and won't
even pay for them. They have products that do not have performance constraints
or that would benefit from mastery of any one specific technology.

What startups need is engineers who can show up to work, understand
requirements, point out potential shortcomings, write code on an approximate
timeline and be willing to fix their mistakes. As it turns out, you don't
always need a senior engineer to do that. You certainly don't need a 10x
rockstar ninja engineer.

Where I've seen startups struggle in the past is fostering a culture of
mentorship. When you're hiring fresh grads or people early in their careers,
your employees will want someone to give them honest and personalized advice.
It's pretty hard for people that are early in their careers to fill that role,
so you may need some senior engineers to do that.

Overall, I think this article is a bit fanciful in the expectations it makes
around recruiting. Sharing stuff like internal processes, team size etc are
definitely helpful to the candidate but are costly to the employer. This
information may be confidential or provide a competitive advance. They may
also vary by team will definitely vary over time. Overall I think it's
unrealistic to expect the company to be very forthcoming about this type of
thing until they make the offer.

The interviewing stuff also seems to come from a good place but represents
wishful thinking. Companies (even startups) hold significant leverage in 99%
of interview situations and therefore are strongly inclined to err on the side
of false negative. Their thought process goes like this: "sure, you may be
amazing but because you're not willing to jump through my arbitrary hoops (6
hour coding exercise, 3 rounds of onsites, etc) I'm willing to hold out for
someone who is equally as good."

I'm not saying any of this is good for the candidate, but it's unrealistic to
expect companies to start to treat senior candidates any better given the way
the labor market is set up. In fact, I'd expect this kind of treatment to get
worse as the bumper crop of younger engineers trained in the late 2000s starts
to level up in experience.

------
nfriedly
In my experience, one of the key ways to get an engineer interested in a role
is to tell how much it pays up front, and make sure that number is appropriate
for the experience level you're targeting.

------
p1necone
The blurred out job posting image is not very well blurred out. I could
probably work out what it says if I spent some (tedious) time on it.

The point it gets across is very very clear and useful though.

~~~
scarejunba
It's not blurred out to hide who it is. It's blurred out so we don't get stuck
in the details. It's a UX technique.

EDIT: Well...fuck. Don't know how I missed that. He actually says it's to hide
the poster.

~~~
cloogshicer
Author here, you were right though, that was the actual intention. I even
cheated a bit on the highlights. I just wanted to get my point across and not
get lost in details.

Not revealing the employer (without going through the work of unblurring as
the HN detectives have already done) was just an added bonus.

------
eatonphil
If you only start thinking about selling a candidate when you _meet_ one then
you missed the bigger opportunity to build a corporate reputation of
supporting developers in their careers (e.g. with open source, developer
blogs, etc.).

With that in mind, focusing on the bits highlighted here doesn't make sense.
Attract smart/experienced/motivated candidates and your boring hiring process
or your flawed onboarding process doesn't matter as much.

------
iblaine
This is clickbait to sell a book. "Having trouble doing the thing? The problem
doing the thing is you. Buy my book for $45, then you can do the thing."

~~~
cloogshicer
Hi, author here, thanks for your feedback. What did you think about it was
clickbait? I genuinely believe that most companies can improve a lot of things
when it comes to hiring. And they don't know how to do it, because they have
the wrong mindset.

If something about this was too flashy, please let me know.

------
Nursie
Sorry, I see this at the end and I can't really take the article seriously any
more -

> I have more than 7 years of experience in Software Development, Product
> Management and Project Management

7 years is enough now, to be making industry recommendations about difficulty
hiring senior staff?

I'm not saying you can't get a good idea of part of the industry in that time,
but it seems a bit of a stretch to claim sweeping knowledge of the whole
space.

~~~
flavious
Who knows, maybe he has valuable things to share. It's like that with any
book. It also depends on the readership.

------
fogetti
[Sarcasm on]I think the most shocking of this is that an engineer with 7 years
is already a senior these days. I even heard more shocking things like people
with 3-5 years are already seniors. So what about people with 15 years? How
shall we call them? Super senior? How about 30? Call them mega-giga-super-
senior? And 40? Principal-giga-senior?[Sarcasm off]

Having said that, I actually agree with everything the article says.

~~~
bgirard
Senior is typically one or two promotions above the entry level. After that
the titles resemble something like this:

Staff

Senior Staff

Principal

Senior Principal

Distinguished

Fellow

~~~
purple_ducks
_Typically_, all those titles don't exist unless you're in IBM-size company.

At best, somebody might have a "tech lead" title but it's not what people hire
for.

_Typically_, companies hire for grad, junior, software engineer and senior
software engineer.

Maybe principal once in a blue moon.

------
nayuki
It's a solid, good article. But the repetitive 4 boxes to enter your email
address to sign up for their newsletter, that annoyed me quickly.

~~~
cloogshicer
Hi, author here, thanks for your feedback, I'll tone it down a bit next time.

------
simonsaidit
I’ve Been fortunate enough since my first job to always find a place that
wants me and sells themselves. Once in a while i ran into companies that tried
the testing and other bs and i either just left or told them it would’nt
happen and they accepted. Stuff like being allowed to use Linux in a Windows
only organisation or not be locked in for x months was something i could talk
through.

------
m3kw9
You need to ask open ended questions and expect detailed answers that only an
experienced engineer would be able to answer. And keep asking more and more
details. Only another experienced engineer would know if that are bsing. Most
companies put way too much on whiteboarding. Failing whiteboard guarantees you
lose the job seem to be very inefficient.

------
enjoyitasus
Agreed with this. There's a rebuttal on this regarding how similar this is for
Senior Product Managers: [https://productmanagerjobs.com/blog/trouble-hiring-
senior-pr...](https://productmanagerjobs.com/blog/trouble-hiring-senior-
product-managers-it-s-probably-complicated/)

------
scanr
I think that this should be true for any position. I find you can generally
get better people working with you if you put effort into making them feel
like they will be valued, compensated fairly and that the role will be
meaningful. And then delivering on it.

------
cutler
The author confuses buying/selling with supply/demand. There is no connection
between them - the employer is always buying.

------
mastef
I love how firms have an issue hiring senior engineers, when the last few
firms I've spoken with deemed me "overqualified".

Another buddy with longterm CTO experience had 150 applications with a 2% hit-
rate.

On the "better" AngelList CTO/Senior jobs we can clearly see that there's
already 50-100 other applications submitted.

So is this really that big of an issue as presented?

~~~
borplk
constantly complaining about the job market being tough is a strategy for
companies.

they could have a 1,000 perfect candidates lining out the door willing to work
for peanuts.

At that point they would adjust their expectation from "peanut" to "half a
peanut" and they would still moan about "skill shortage".

~~~
mastef
Similar to adding the words "bad economy" in discussions regarding performance
evaluations and raises. Cop outs based on mostly arbitrary "market mechanics".

------
pascalxus
This post was right on the money about a lot of things. Great Post!

------
iamdave
Curiously editorialized title submission?

------
ycom_j
Thought I would add my own thoughts to the difficulty here and just talk about
the process I brought into the last place I worked at. I came in as a Director
at a time when the company had a...let's say not too great set of developers
overall from a skill level perspective (the company thought they were amazing!
That's maybe a story for another time). I'm proud of the process I introduced
there because it led to my meeting and befriending some top tier gentlemen.
While it may not work for everyone (and I understand it perhaps weeds out some
candidates) it seemed to do all right. Here it is, for anyone to steal if you
so feel it useful:

* 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.

------
clanrebornwow
We just started hiring remotely. We've 1:4 ratio of local:remote.

~~~
flavious
Define "We".

------
auslander
Infrastructure. Not a single mention in this 700 thread. Thats where senior
engineers are most required.

------
impostersyndrom
i can't believe all of the replies to this thread. us nerds get a bit too
myopic about the details and fail to see the forest for the trees. let's zoom
back and look at the Earth from the Moon.

what other industry has hiring rituals premised on assuming The Candidate is a
shape shifting imposter and then testing The Candidate using various Gom
Jabbars to verify The Candidate is a human who can code? do attorneys and
doctors and professors device elaborate exams and gotcha questions to spring
upon The Candidate because The Candidate might be a total fraud? to be honest,
this implicit assumption that The Candidate is an outright liar and con-man
and that we have to "catch" them in their lies before we let them into The
Club has been an enormous turn off for me in this entire industry. and i'm
saying that both as The Senior Engineer put in charge of hiring developers as
well as being The Candidate dozens of times and having to go through multiple
Voight-Kampf tests to prove "yes, i can code."

why don't attorneys and doctors have the same problems we do? they pay more,
so the incentives are there for The Candidate to rote memorize a bunch of text
books and talk impressively while being unable to perform The Work themselves.
is the problem that anyone can call themselves a Software Engineer and there
is no way to prove it? is the problem inherent to the nature of software
itself, in that the problems we solve and the solutions we apply are
constantly changing ephemeral logical abstractions which cannot be repeated
because every context has a totally different set of constraints, so it always
reduces to Apples vs Oranges? is the problem inherent to the nature of Nerds
and Autists and the personality types who tend to become software engineers?
is being a Coder the Nerd's version of The Jock's hazing rituals? are we Nerds
just as big of bullies and assholes as The Jocks, bullying our own and shaming
each other against meaningless goal posts? we often hear now about how our
Industry lacks "diversity" and how we need to be more "inclusive" to women and
blacks. well how do you think women and black people feel about our bizarre
and harsh hiring rituals of hazing and shaming and accusing of being The
Imposter and your Interview test is to prove to us that you are not? i think
we as an industry need to tone down our bullying hiring rituals if we hope to
ever stop being an elite club of oppressors.

just last week i got rejected as The Candidate because i didn't have 10 years
of React experience. "sorry, you're not senior enough", even though i had
twice the number of years of raw dev experience than the punk kid over ten
years younger than me who was in charge of hiring. i have seen this happen to
me a dozen times, where i am rejected because i know too much about a Domain,
and can go into gory technical detail about internals and implementations,
which intimidates The Juniors who know one Javascript framework and think they
are Seniors and who don't want a Real Senior around who might take their
promotion slot away from them.

i don't even think in terms of "Junior" and "Senior" anymore. those are not
useful buckets to divide the vast world of software development. instead, i
think in terms of "what rad shit have you coded and what gets you excited
about code and what kinds of things do you wish you could code or what do you
code for fun on nights and weekends?" sadly, the vast majority of
"professional coders" draw a blank at that question and they have zero answer,
because for them coding is just a job. they never even knew it was For The
Love of the Game. general interest and curiosity seems to be a better litmus
test, because "interest is aptitude", and if you're the kind of brain who
takes things apart for fun to figure out how they work and then try to put the
system back together, then that proves you're a left-brain thinking INT(J/P)
type of mind who is naturally suited for software engineering. the rest can be
taught or learned on The Job as needed to fill in the gaps.

------
jness_maximus
Thought I would add my own thoughts to the difficulty here and just talk about
the process I brought into the last place I worked at. I came in as a Director
at a time when the company had a...let's say not too great set of developers
overall from a skill level perspective (the company thought they were amazing!
That's maybe a story for another time). I'm proud of the process I introduced
there because it led to my meeting and befriending some top tier gentlemen.
While it may not work for everyone (and I understand it perhaps weeds out some
candidates) it seemed to do all right. Here it is, for anyone to steal if you
so feel it useful:

* Candidate applies * Within 24 hours, the candidate has a personal reply from our in-house recruiter. That E-mail explains the _entire_ interview process and sets up a brief 15-20 min phone screen with the candidate.

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).

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.

