
Job Descriptions Should Be Better - beekums
http://blog.professorbeekums.com/2016/07/job-descriptions-should-be-better.html
======
Singletoned
My rule of thumb for writing things like job descriptions is that it doesn't
mean anything unless someone else might write the opposite.

So "Software Engineers who want to write great code" is meaningless, as is
"committed to building the best products".

But I disagree with some of his other examples:

> solve problems from beginning to end: everything from product
> conceptualizations to engineering implementations.

This tends to put me off a bit. Just like "full-stack developer". I agree
everyone should be able to do beginning to end when needed, but I much prefer
to be able to specialize. And I really don't want to be involved with "product
conceptualizations".

> solve the toughest problems fast--the first time

This is also a bit off-putting. It suggests that they aren't very tolerant of
failure. I may just be a bad developer, but I generally assume the first
solution we build won't be the correct one.

~~~
collyw
>This tends to put me off a bit. Just like "full-stack developer". I agree
everyone should be able to do beginning to end when needed, but I much prefer
to be able to specialize. And I really don't want to be involved with "product
conceptualizations".

Depends where you work. Our company has two experienced developers and we can
both do pretty much the full stack - and we need to. We specialize a bit, I am
better at Django, the other guy is better at front end but at the end of the
day we need to be able to do both.

~~~
Dayshine
Ok, that's half the stack... Who specialises in the lower parts?

~~~
quantumhobbit
You aren't full-stack unless you are writing the Verilog for the chips that
run your other code.

Seriously though the term full-stack is pointless as everyone has a different
definition of what that means but still wants to say "I am full-stack"

~~~
philipov
The size and contents of the stack might change from application to
application, but it has a consistent definition as, "Whatever it is we need to
hire developers to do, I can do all of it."

~~~
ryandrake
The parent poster's point was, if you're going to credibly say you "can do all
of it", you need to list expertise in x86 assembly and VHDL on your resume.
Otherwise, you're only a "most stack" developer.

~~~
hyperhopper
Not at all. Most companies will never need to write assembly, or anything at
that level, so its not part of the stack.

If you want to be that pedantic, do you need to forge the metals you use in
your computers since thats part of the stack as well?

~~~
talmand
I would reply on my new machine but I'm still waiting on my drum of oil so I
can process it into plastics for the keyboard.

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jldugger
Lot of heat in this one with only a little light.

> > We are an engineering driven organization and we are proud of our
> engineers. Come join them! > Thank goodness. Every other company is ashamed
> of their engineers.

There's a scene
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6xK0Hefsq0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6xK0Hefsq0))
in IT crowd where upper management is celebrating the completion of a major
project. It's hyperbole, but there's plenty of programmers working in
companies and industries where writing software is sort of a bit role in the
greater company structure. As a sales pitch, it would resonate with those
programmers a bit that software companies have executives who don't ignore
software.

~~~
beekums
Your statement is very fair. However, even though there are definitely
companies that don't value their programmers, I would be surprised if any of
them actually said that in a job description.

How do you tell the difference between a company that does value their
engineers from one that doesn't if both companies say the same thing? It is
not an easy thing to do for sure, but generic uplifting statements don't solve
that problem and don't add to job descriptions.

~~~
crdb
> How do you tell the difference between a company that does value their
> engineers from one that doesn't if both companies say the same thing?

You check if they put their money where their mouth is. Generally, a (well-
funded) company that pays its (senior) engineers the same as or more than its
executives values engineering. To name two, I've noticed both Google and IBM
immediately matching friends' competing offers no questions asked. I know two
other engineers whose base, cash salary was over USD 400,000 / year. Cash is
very expensive to managers, and enormously expensive to startups (equity less
so, but still quite a bit) so it is a reliable signal.

A subtler way might be to check the flavour of engineering projects, and
particularly their time horizon. Bringing up Google again, one SDE mentioned
using machine learning to automate managing their infrastructure. That's the
kind of risky, ambitious, long term project you want to look for.

I personally take mentions of intangible things as negative signals from
experience. Something along the lines of if someone is trying to reassure you
about something, it means they think it's an issue.

~~~
Swizec
How many people does an engineer making 400k have to manage?

~~~
crdb
The first had a small team (< 5) of also highly paid senior developers like
him to build and maintain a set of systems. I wouldn't call it "manage" so
much as "coordinate colleagues". The second was working alone.

In both cases the work was difficult to do, difficult to share across a team
(solve a few hard problems well rather than cycle through hundreds of small
JIRA tickets) and highly value adding for the company which is why they were
willing to pay.

------
selectron
The main thing I want from job descriptions is a salary range. The fact that
companies don't post salaries is a strong counter-point to how companies
complain about how hard it is to hire software engineers.

~~~
beekums
That is a pretty basic piece of info that companies like to exclude. They tend
to just post "competitive salary" when in fact a lot of the ones that state
that pay well below market.

~~~
Aeolun
Most companies that actually pay a competitive salary should have no issues
posting that in their job advertisements.

~~~
maxxxxx
I remember a company I had a contract with sometimes (not always) posted jobs
and advertised a pretty high salary. These salaries were actually competitive
and not just in line with the competition. You can't imagine how easy it is to
find high quality people that way. Go figure...

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Sophistifunk
It's far worse here in Australia. Almost every job ad is written by a slimey
salesman in a recruitment company, so: a) The ads are deliberately vague so
you can't go direct to the client b) A single job / employer will be listed in
several vaguely-worded ads from competing rent-seeking-middlemen c) For the
invaluable work of obfuscating the description and wasting everybody's time,
these people will take 10-20% of your gross wage.

~~~
movingtooz
Any advice for finding dev jobs in Australia? Moving to Melbourne from London
in a few months and I've only been told to look on seek.com.au. Is this where
you're having issues with recruiters?

~~~
daurnimator
After almost a year searching for a job in Melbourne, I now work remote (in
melbourne) for a bay area company.

I found locally there was very little that paid well that wasn't in a C# shop.

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s3nnyy
Hiring engineers is truly a sourcing problem. Bad ad-copy is part of this
problem.

When I interview companies, I almost always find something that makes them
special (young engineers, exceptional tech-stack, real engineering-driven
culture etc.). This is what I pitch to potential candidates.

Maybe ad-copy of (great) company is often bad, even if engineers write them
because authors ca not see the peculiarities of their company compared to
other companies. (In German we call this "Betriebsblindheit" and there seems
to be no translation to English
([https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsblindheit](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betriebsblindheit)).
Maybe this is one reason why recruiters / staffing firms still exist. Good
recruiters know the companies in their market well, can judge them more or
less neutrally and match accordingly.

Full disclosure: I am well-connected tech-recruiter in Zurich and if you're
thinking of moving here and getting a tech-job, feel free to contact me - you
find my email address in my HN profile. Also you can read my blogpost "8
reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in IT":
[https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-
moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-
switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90)

~~~
jdmichal
> In German we call this "Betriebsblindheit" and there seems to be no
> translation to English.

The literal translation would be "business-blindness" or "working-blindness",
and you're correct that there's not really a good immediate translation that I
can think of. It's maybe a kind of sensory familiarity -- the non-perception
of things that are familiar. Like how you forget that the loud air conditioner
is blowing, because it's been constantly droning for a while.

------
systemtest
I want to know more about what I am going to do on a day-to-day basis. The
last job I quit was because I spent about three days a months writing uptime
reports and incident descriptions in Microsoft Excel and Word. And about five
days per month on manual testing (clicking through the web-interface to see if
everything was still in place). I'm a specialized back-end developer, hire a
(way cheaper) document writer and tester for that.

Had they told me what I was going to do beforehand I would've declined the job
and that would have spared them a lot of money on onboarding and orientation.

~~~
cs02rm0
> I'm a specialized back-end developer, hire a (way cheaper) document writer
> and tester for that.

I'd suggest, even if you think a document writer and tester is way cheaper,
you're probably not charging enough for your time. I've always found an
inflated rate a very effective way of avoiding tedious work.

~~~
maxxxxx
"I've always found an inflated rate a very effective way of avoiding tedious "

That's something I have found too. The more you make the less inclined they
are to waste your time.

------
zubat
With a lot of hiring processes I get the impression of filters tuned to the
exact match of skill and experience requirements, plus some padding. This is
systemically bound to fail because the candidate pool for any one cross
section of a growing area is going to be small enough to put you in
competition over the qualified candidates. As well, it tunes for a stodgy
"best practices" mindset, with no chance of spreading skills diversity through
your team.

For a field requiring some creativity as well as learned knowledge, enthusiasm
and willingness to learn really matters, and the easiest way to induce
enthusiasm is actually to go a little off of the mark and present candidates
with an opportunity to learn the role based on their existing strengths. That
presents some risk, and it's much harder to make it work as you go for
"senior" candidates. But case-by-case, there are always ways to offset that
risk if you are creative enough - better ways than putting folks who claim to
know everything under the microscope in order to fail them as fast as
possible, a process which builds a high level of mistrust.

~~~
crdb
One reason you put filters is to import foreigners. I haven't seen the US side
of things but in other locations I've worked, you are required to list jobs on
a national jobs database for a couple of weeks first and in theory to prove
you couldn't find locals before hiring foreigners. The H1B system looks
similar.

If you already have a candidate in mind, making the JD fit their CV both
repels other qualified local candidates ("it says 4.5 years of Erlang backend
experience, I'll get rejected") and makes it easy for you to justify the
foreign hire. There's usually someone in HR who used to work for the relevant
government ministry who will tell you exactly how to word the job ad and later
visa application and appeals.

Note in case not obvious: I'm not advocating doing this.

------
gtzi
Here's a list of job descriptions that some may find handy; check the IT part
for example: [https://resources.workable.com/job-
descriptions](https://resources.workable.com/job-descriptions)

------
Shanea93
I've been thinking about this a lot recently as we come to hire our third
software engineer, in a company which historically hasn't valued their
engineers - but with our help has changed a lot in the last year. With myself
being the technical team lead going forward, it's important for me that my
engineers understand what they will be doing and what value they provide to
us, so I've been leaning towards the following:

We're looking for a senior software engineer with PHP experience who is
interested in learning Golang in the near future. You don't have to enjoy
working in Magento, as we're stripping out as much as possible, but a
knowledge of Zend Framework 1 or 2 would be a significant benefit.

We've worked on some cool problems recently, like converting our monolithic
architecture to auto-scaling EC2 instance groups, moving our local development
from using a "dev.domain.com" domain to Vagrant (and soon, Docker across the
stack) and writing custom security monitoring tools for our various bespoke
applications.

Outside of the every day work of managing our E-commerce websites, you have
fairly unlimited scope for the projects you work on, as long as the team sees
value in the idea. You get one day per week to work on whatever you want and
to experiment with new languages.

We don't currently allow remote working, but we're in talks with the MD to
allow us to work from home one day per week, with a view to increase this
going forward.

Your hours are fixed, you're expected to leave at 5.30, though very
occasionally you will get a call out of hours if you're on call (which is a
voluntary, paid schedule.)

------
adrianratnapala
> The whole point of them is to provide a candidate a description of what a
> position is like.

The trouble is I don't think its possible to know what a position is like
until you start it. At least it has been thus with all my jobs so far.

Best you can do is tell the candidate what (a) skills are needed, and (b) what
the team is doing. I guess a lot of these job descriptions are doing a poor
job of (b) by trying to be too bubbly.

~~~
haylem
I asked a few times to be allowed to lurk around the offices, either directly
one the day of the interview, or for a day prior to my starting date (but
after having signed a contract, though). Helps to get a feel of the place at
least, if not necessarily of your day job (but obviously, looking at your
future team's activity is recommended here).

Generally it was positively received, although in large companies there was
some deflection with "non-issues", like:

\- "oh but you know, our insurance does not cover for you being here" (oh
yeah? So I was totally covered during the interview?) \- "we'd need to notify
security" (hmm, I'm already here) \- "you know, everybody is probably too
busy" (I'd hope so...) \- "not sure where we'll put you" (and when I start in
2 weeks, if that desk hasn't appeared, I also don't show up?)

And even with these casual "non-issues", I actually never was denied this.
Usually I stuck for one or 2 hours.

1 company let me stay for a day (they had flown me in for the interview and
_wanted_ me to stick around, which says a lot already).

Another one allowed me to attend an entire day of team meeting. After I had
received a contract, but still, something like 2 months prior to my starting
date. And that actually is what made me accept the offer as I hadn't signed it
yet.

~~~
jschwartzi
One of my mentors makes it a point to always ask to meet the team he will be
working with during the interview, rather than just meeting the hiring
manager. I would consider it a huge red flag if your interviewer didn't allow
you to meet your potential future team members.

------
wodenokoto
In my very limited experience companies often don't know what they are in need
of, and therefore end up writing all sorts of things.

~~~
wastedhours
Very true - I actually helped rewrite the JD for my own job after I'd handed
in my notice. They were going to repost the one that I went for, but the
nature of the role had changed so much it was almost unrecognisable (that
being said, £25k for someone to do everything from sysadmin to social media,
i.e. about as much full stack as you can do without writing an operating
system was utter BS...).

If I wasn't still there to tell them, it'd have been total nonsense.

------
coldcode
At my employer (very large) the hiring managers don't get to see the job
descriptions that were written by HR and resumes can only be submitted to some
system that limits how many can be submitted by each recruiting agency. So we
never get anyone to even interview that matches what we need unless we cheat
the system.

------
divanvisagie
Great article but bright purple background was so intolerable I had to switch
to safari and use the reader. I actually wanted to share it to someone but
decided not to assault their retina.

~~~
beekums
Yikes! I just got a new monitor and realized what everyone else in the world
was seeing. That WAS terrible. I hope you find the new color scheme less
painful.

