[HN Gopher] How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as se...
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How fresh grads with zero experience get hired as senior engineers
Author : simmanian
Score : 268 points
Date : 2022-02-11 17:08 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.kuperate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.kuperate.com)
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| This is an H1B "consulting" body shop.
|
| Emphasis on "body". Of course you are housed like a morgue.
| vjust wrote:
| I was the sole tech guy (backend/frontend/help desk).. and my
| boss during the annual review asked me to pick a job title _any_
| title. I was already senior engineer, so went for Technology
| Director. CTO would have worked against me on my next job move.
| stillbourne wrote:
| Titles seem to have more to do with pay scales than they do with
| skill.
| stefanba3 wrote:
| A hiring manager friend at a Seattle unicorn once asked me to
| look over resumes. I didn't have a full grasp of how prevalent
| these "consultancies" are and was puzzled by all the jargon-
| filled, similar-looking resumes from people who were clearly
| working for "consultancies". Now I know, they were all looking
| for a ramp off! Some (many?) may even make great hires, but it' s
| hard to tease them out by looking at those resumes.
| ipaddr wrote:
| A developer doesn't become a senior developer until they realize
| they know nothing and can truly start to learn.
|
| As a junior you want to master the syntax and framework.
|
| As an senior immediate developer you have mastered the
| framework/language and you can do anything. You are sure you have
| found the way and will share and fight for this way over all
| others.
|
| As a senior developer you see more and realize you actually know
| very little. The stack you mastered is one of many and the one
| way can be replaced by a number of different ways.
|
| As a true master developer you realize the framework/language has
| been programming you.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| A shorter article:
|
| Greed is how they get hired.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| Don't care what your title reads. Show me the money. Then, we'll
| see how senior you are.
| lkrubner wrote:
| I remember when I was in high school, I had some friends who
| studied karate, and they were like, "I finally made it to black
| belt." Meaning, they were a master now. They were 16 years old,
| and had maybe 3 years experience. In Taiwan, in the 1890s... uh,
| they would not be regarded as black belt.
|
| Even then it was clear that there was a lot of "belt inflation"
| happening. The karate schools like the children to feel like they
| are making progress, so every 6 months the children got a new
| belt, until finally they were black belts.
|
| It seems like the same thing has been happening with engineering
| titles.
| ok_dad wrote:
| > In Taiwan, in the 1890s
|
| Karate is Japanese, but I get your point.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| I've been involved in hiring decisions on teams I've been part of
| for a long time now. Blatant plagiarism, obvious embellishments
| and more subtle BS is literally part of the game unfortunately.
| This is particularly prevalent when dealing with (almost) any
| consultancy, large and small.
|
| I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the
| largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of
| practice after they overbook themselves for projects for which
| they do not have staff on the bench to fill.
|
| It's sad, but honestly the prevalence of these practices (and
| perhaps growth of them?) only makes the genuine among us more
| valuable. Those who actually posses technical talent and
| experience will be needed more and more by companies who get
| burned by the frauds. Onward and upward I guess.
| [deleted]
| munificent wrote:
| _> is literally part of the game unfortunately_
|
| I strongly disagree with this framing. There is no "game".
| There are just the actions of the individual players. Yes, in
| some sense, lying is part of the "game" in that some players
| will do it.
|
| But extending that to saying "it's part of the game" implies
| that _all_ players _must_ use those moves, which is absolutely
| false. It also implies that you are morally excused from doing
| so because you didn 't _choose_ to lie, you were just obliged
| to by the rules of the "game".
|
| A core concept behind something being a "game" is that it
| exists in a morally isolated sandbox. You can't be a good or
| bad person based on which legal moves you make in a game of
| chess. The _whole point_ is to create an environment where you
| are able to play freely largely unencumbered by the social
| consequences of your moves.
|
| Hiring is the exact opposite of a game. Every move has
| significant stakes, moral implications, and long term
| consequences on the entire field.
|
| I have never lied on a resume and I would massively lose
| respect for anyone who did. They are doing something wrong and
| they should feel bad for it. The fact that other people do it
| doesn't excuse the act any more than the existence of litterers
| makes it OK to throw your trash out the window.
| walleeee wrote:
| > A core concept behind something being a "game" is that it
| exists in a morally isolated sandbox
|
| This is interesting; if true, what of game theory's seat at
| the core of many notions of strategy as deployed for
| explicitly moral purposes?
|
| Also, anecdotally, I've seen pretty good results putting some
| campy, tongue in cheek acknowledgement that I'm _not_ playing
| games in the resume /cover letter space where these alleged
| "rules of the game" might otherwise dictate meaningless
| boilerplate should go
|
| Some employers seem to appreciate honesty and a reluctance to
| bullshit
| munificent wrote:
| "Game" gets used to analyze human behavior a couple of
| unrelated ways.
|
| Game theory as a branch of mathematics is about analyzing
| adversarial and potentially limited knowledge systems. It
| is unrelated to whether some theoretical game is embedded
| in any particular social or moral system. You can look at
| dating, the voting patterns of the United Nations, and
| poker all under the lens of game theory even though the
| former two wouldn't generally be considered "games".
|
| Unrelated to that, over in the world of "ludology" or game
| studies and game development, people discuss what it means
| for a certain system to "be a game" or "not be a game".
| Likewise, they discuss what makes an activity "play" versus
| "not play". Why do we feel some moves are "play-like" and
| others aren't. What defines our notion of fair play? What
| is sportsmanship? What is cheating? Where is the line
| between the game and the metagame?
|
| I'm using "game" in the second sense here, which I think
| applies. When people say something "is a game", often what
| they are implying is that "all legal moves are fair play".
| But I think that value statement is only morally
| justifiable in an environment that _is_ actually game-like.
| And for a social system to be game-like in that way means
| that everyone participating has agreed to the rules of the
| game and accepts that all moves are fair play.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| GP is making up definitions for concepts in ways that make
| no sense. denying the existence of games because you find
| them morally reprehensible doesn't change the fact of their
| existence.
|
| of course games are executed with moral repercussions. if
| anything, that's really the point of games. they are
| simplified, yes, but not amoral.
|
| if anything, most "amoral" or "apolitical" games are widely
| implemented hegemonic tools.
| walleeee wrote:
| Yeah, games seem to circumscribe morality in a particular
| context, maybe in ways that allow us to explore certain
| moral questions, or (to your latter point) ignore others
| kjgkjhfkjf wrote:
| Feel free not to engage in this practice if it offends your
| moral sensibilities, but you will be at a disadvantage if you
| do. Experienced resume readers are aware of the amount of
| self-aggrandizement that goes on, and your modest and
| truthful claims would be subject to the same amount of
| skepticism as everyone else's.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Feel free not to engage in this practice if it offends
| your moral sensibilities, but you will be at a disadvantage
| if you do._
|
| I think one could argue that _all_ moral sensibilities
| exist to place one at an individual short term disadvantage
| in return for potentially better longer term or community
| level outcomes. We don 't need moral codes to get us to be
| immediately self-serving--our natural self interest takes
| care of that. It's like the old joke that if there was a
| shortcut that always worked, it wouldn't be called a
| "shortcut", it would just be The Way.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| How about this framing: It's part of a game that I've seen
| being played throughout my career in tech (software
| development).
|
| I am in no way advocating for that type of behavior. I'm
| merely pointing out that it exists, it seems to be a game to
| some and that those who choose a more genuine path can
| benefit from the follies of those others, however unfortunate
| that might be.
|
| It seems we are in agreement, though perhaps you interpreted
| my words differently than I had hoped people would.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| it is a game in a game-theoretical sense.
|
| if those other individual actors lie and massage their
| resume, does it increase my chance of success by being
| honest, or by lying a little better?
|
| all players _do_ use that move. whether you realize it or
| not.
|
| your moral framework (one i completely agree with, fwiw) is
| only informing your own decisions, not other adversaries.
| throwaway643464 wrote:
| I'll call Infosys out. I've worked with people from there who
| literally did not know how to program. They were moved off
| quickly. There are some solid people there but hard to find in
| my experience.
|
| Akvelon consultants have been consistently better than some
| FTEs in my experience.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Infosys, Cognizant, Gap Gemini, TCS, ATT Global Services,
| Accenture, HCL, Kyndryl, and on, and on, and on goes the
| list.
| zo1 wrote:
| The dirty secret in the industry is that there is a
| _gigantic_ shortage of devs that can do _something_ or
| _anything_. And the clients just don 't want to pay the rates
| that help make that shortage go away. They all want it on the
| cheap and are spoiled by fancy "SAAS" salesmen that
| "magically" solve all their problems for "$30-$500" a month,
| because their SAAS is always the answer.
|
| Literally sitting with a client right now that has gone
| through at least 5 different CRM systems, each time paying a
| 3rd party boutique marketing agency to "set it up and migrate
| it" for them (along with some new ad-campaign software). 3
| different attempts at a data warehouse (because they have a
| gazillion disparate white label and SAAS products in their
| company with no access to any of the data) and someone told
| them they need a "Data Warehouse Cluster", when they barely
| have 20k users. I could rant for hours because the industry
| is broken.
|
| Oh, and they literally blank stare you in the face as you
| explain things genuinely with detail and care, and then turn
| around saying they'll just "consult with their marketing
| agency" to get their advice. But hey, let's all blame
| "consulting" companies because they try make something useful
| using the bottom of the barrel devs. *Not defending Infosys
| or Accenture and their like, though, fully agreed there.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't understand how Infosys still exists. Perhaps this is
| just my bubble showing, but it seems pretty well-known that
| they're a scam factory.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Because it's not only Infosys, there is a whole industry of
| selling underskilled labour for the cheap.
|
| I haven't worked with Infosys, but I have with other four
| companies providing similar services, and they all do the
| same.
|
| It's extremely frustrating, because the budget folks only
| look at the bottom line and would sign contracts with any
| of these firms, leaving hiring managers with the
| responsibility of taking subpar consultants in.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It is not just them and it is a game everyone plays,
| including their clients. I had several engagements with
| them on various projects, we had to use them because the
| internal headcount was limited, while for external
| suppliers there was no limit, so we had up to 5 external
| people for every of ours. Most of these kind of companies
| behave the same, we had small specialized suppliers that
| provided good quality and value for the work, but the
| companies on a comment below are all in the same bucket of
| garbage.
| ameminator wrote:
| >It's sad, but honestly the prevalence of these practices (and
| perhaps growth of them?) only makes the genuine among us more
| valuable.
|
| I _wish_ this were the case, but I don 't think it's true. On
| the one hand, real, proven experts do get called in to fix
| these phonies' messes. On the other, often these people succeed
| often enough that it devalues our labor as a whole. Finally, if
| employers cannot determine real experts from fake, then it
| means they won't pay real experts their full worth (eg 'full
| worth' of 100k, 5% chance it's a fake = pay of 95k).
|
| These costs of lower trust show up elsewhere, but they are hard
| to quantify and make _everyone 's_ life worse.
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| You bring up a good point...the overall pull downward that
| the phonies bring to our field. Businesses trust (software)
| engineering teams less. Perhaps overall industry pay rates
| are brought down, too, though I don't have personal
| experience or knowledge about that.
|
| However, that point you make about the 'proven experts'
| getting called in is where my original (and perhaps overly
| broad) comment came from. If you can align yourself with the
| industry as one of those fixers, and then actually deliver on
| that promise, there is immense value to capture. If you can
| carefully build a small team of people that can do this
| regularly, there is even more value to capture and share with
| people who actually deserve it.
| nebulous_two wrote:
| If they succeed then aren't they an acceptable fit for the
| role? If it devalues the role then that means the job isn't
| as demanding as the title makes it seem.
| ameminator wrote:
| The definition of 'success' varies. If you mean 'completed
| the project on time with decent quality' -> then no, that
| doesn't happen _as_ often as with tried and true experts.
|
| When I said 'success' I meant: 'achieved a basic level of
| competency after bungling one or several projects, often
| with unknown or unquantifiable bugs and then move onto the
| next company / role with few consequences'.
|
| More succinctly: caused harm to others/ project and still
| got a paycheck.
| pvarangot wrote:
| Yeah that would be great is success meant "sound
| engineering that meets the requirements and is delivered on
| time without generating friction with stakeholders or
| adding unneeded complexity". Unfortunately on some
| companies that don't actually ship much of what gets
| engineered success means "we got to the next financing
| round" or "our skills got noted by upper management so we
| are still allowed to hang around". Bad engineers survive in
| the last two environments and at the same time stockpile
| credentials about how many years they were senior at Google
| or Lyft or whatever, but they really can't actually
| engineer anything most of the time.
| srvmshr wrote:
| > I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the
| largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter
| of practice after they overbook themselves for projects for
| which they do not have staff on the bench to fill.
|
| Infosys, TCS & Accenture comes up immediately to my mind.
|
| There are hardworking people in these companies no doubt. Many
| times it gives an opportunity to the less fortunate as well. In
| general, however their workforces are poorly trained & business
| practices borderline unethical (The good ones quickly leave).
| These companies pay peanuts to their employees, and most of the
| latter are sticking for the promise of an onsite deployment.
| There are horrid tales of client having to lock horns with the
| TCS/Infosys service manager to get the contracted job done.
|
| Case in point: managers at a Japanese giant are shaking their
| head in frustration since they are locked-in to a Infosys
| contract. No way they can shake them off due to poor project
| documentation & shaky installations which require heavy service
| & maintenance. Choosing an alternative would bring in a tidal
| wave of expenses, so keeping the status quo. It is deeply
| unfortunate that they bill their clients higher for the same
| shoddy work culture as the number of years roll-by. I assume
| this will continue as long as the cost of renegotiated
| contracts are lesser than switching to a different firm, or the
| tech stack is rewritten for a newer project.
| dvtrn wrote:
| _some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this
| as a matter of practice after they overbook themselves for
| projects for which they do not have staff on the bench to fill_
|
| Been my experience your regular software org does something
| very similar. Who among us hasn't had to drop an entire epic's
| worth of work to go spin up some MVP (that eventually becomes a
| bug-riddled production shitstorm) of a component because a
| claim got made on a sales call that "we've been working on it
| for weeks" and a promise got made that "we could have a demo
| ready to go just for you by the end of the quarter"? Because
| you're "the senior".
|
| Not saying it's the norm.
|
| Just that it happens probably more than it should.
| corpdronejuly wrote:
| My response is. You lied not me, and I know how many
| recruiters emailed me this week and you don't. Please don't
| play those games, I am here because I want to be. Lies make
| me not want to be.
|
| Yeah I'm replaceable, but the pain of that replacement is
| _usually_ more than the pain of making a sales guy eat some
| crow.
| corpdronejuly wrote:
| It amazes me that simple honesty and integrity wind up being
| such a huge value add.
| vjust wrote:
| And I suppose this is the opposite of Apple's strategy. There was
| a recent WashingtonPost article, apparently, _any employee_ once
| they quit Apple (and become ex-employee) - HR changes their title
| to "Associate" - this affects future job verification &
| prospects, and someone filed a lawsuit on this.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The publish date on this post is today (Feb 11th) but I think
| I've seen this exact article posted to HN before (perhaps with a
| different title).
| simmanian wrote:
| Author here. I wrote this post after my comment on the post
| you're mentioning was rather well received. People asked me to
| write about that experience in more detail, so I did and shared
| it here. It's a related story, not an identical one.
| gundmc wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation - I, like OP, was experiencing
| some wild deja vu.
| [deleted]
| raincom wrote:
| This game of getting OPT,CPT, H4-EAD candidates and putting them
| though some boot camp and free housing is at least 24 years--
| remember Y2K and dot com. Indian and Chinese international
| students in the USA know about it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Jesus Christ what an everloving nightmare.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| This whole tale could have been me in Europe, 17 years ago.
|
| I was desperately looking for a job, and these consulting firms
| are a dime a dozen. So there I went, fresh off uni, interview
| with a medium sized consulting firm from Mexico.
|
| First day, one of the managers bragged about putting half dozen
| engineers in a motel, at walking distance from the customer
| offices, three per room, only things they did were work, eat and
| sleep, for six straight months.
|
| Knowing no better and in dire need of money, I took the job.
|
| Six months in, and after several weeks working 60 hours, I quit
| the day after I had a heat stroke because they moved us in a new
| office space with no windows or A/C.
|
| I learnt afterwards that they were charging the customer 4x the
| rate they were paying me. Of course, they had "sold" me as a
| "senior developer".
| kodah wrote:
| > While I certainly don't approve of these practices, I'm also
| not saying that these companies are only evil. I view that they
| serve a very strong need in some corners of the system, like a
| coding bootcamp for the less fortunate.
|
| Absolutely not. I was in college for CS/CE, dropped out during an
| economic crisis, joined the military, and had to work my way
| through technician, network engineer, systems engineer, DevOps,
| SRE, and finally I am a very senior SWE. That was over a decade
| long journey and has made quite an impact on how I've lived my
| life.
|
| I didn't lie to get jobs or interviews, I didn't embellish.
| Instead I had to research what was being done with my resume, I
| had to work with third-party recruiters, I had to _write letters
| to hiring managers to get interviews_. The people that are the
| subject of this article had the privilege to go to and finish
| college, _that_ is your free pass. You don 't get to cheat the
| job market just because you _think_ you deserve it.
|
| If you can't tell, I'm incredibly frustrated reading this post.
|
| Edit: I do feel for people who have a lack of opportunity. I was
| there, I lived it, I felt it. That said, it's certainly not the
| only emotion I connect with when reading this story.
| patcon wrote:
| Saying all this with thoughtful consideration:
|
| First, I hear ya. But I don't feel he's described his
| colleagues well enough for me to have your convictions. I can
| tell that even in reading it, I'm dropping into the roles the
| sorta people I grew up with. And that gives me my own sense of
| the slippery slope.
|
| For some people there's no path. Military service (USA or Euro
| or whatever) is a great catch-all that many people use to braid
| their own bootstraps, and I'm happy you had it, but many people
| don't have that luxury. I'm not saying it wasn't brutal work
| and commitment, but access to the ability to DO hard work (with
| rewards instead of extraction) is often luxury.
|
| Some people need to hustle more, and that usually means being
| scrappy. I feel for your perspective because I've been on your
| side, criticizing the tactics of extended family from other
| cultures. It didn't go well, and I've since learned that what
| some families need to do to survive and succeed looks very
| different from what I might assume is right. I don't like it; I
| don't do it; I don't want it to be that way; but I can't
| dismiss it.
|
| Anyhow, much love
| simmanian wrote:
| Thank you for sharing and I think your opinion is certainly
| valid and it would create more trust if everyone shares your
| principles. I was just trying to convey this idea that they are
| there because they serve a need. If we want to imagine a world
| without these practices, we should probably start by tackling
| the system itself, not by attacking the surface level actors
| only.
| kodah wrote:
| I wish the world would've been that charitable to me.
| Instead, had I failed I'd be a +1 on another DOD statistic. I
| wouldn't have even registered in turnover for most software
| companies. Nobody would've missed the SWE without a degree
| beyond my friends. There are few, if any, DEI dashboards that
| would've tracked a SWE without a degree or an enlisted
| veteran.
|
| On one hand, I hate that people seek accountability so much
| from individuals. I think individual decisions are so low
| level most of the time that it makes seeing the bigger
| picture very difficult, if not impossible. On the other hand,
| this story is the antithesis of my professional life, and the
| very principles that may have projected my career also did
| damage to my personal life because of the focus they
| demanded. I know what's lost and that makes reading about
| someone who just _wanted more_ than what they were already
| given so hard to read.
|
| Edit: I do feel for people who have a lack of opportunity. I
| was there, I lived it, I felt it. That said, it's certainly
| not the only emotion I connect with when reading this story.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Honest question: why didn't you use the GI bill to get free
| college? If you were in and have the "post-9/11" bill (most
| veterans do if they were in the military at any point in
| the past 20 years) then you could get a monthly allowance
| and free college at many good state universities. Most
| universities will accept any veteran who has a GED or HS
| diploma, regardless of grades, as long as they take the SAT
| or ACT (ACT is easier, IMO) and score above the absolute
| minimum. Universities love the guaranteed VA money!
|
| I, for instance, paid my way through 3 years of college
| using the GI bill, and the monthly allowance I got paid for
| my apartment and food and etc. for the whole 3 years. I had
| to go during summers, too, to get the allowance, but I
| finished a whole math degree during that time. I also got
| medical coverage from the VA during that time, though that
| might have been because I'm a certain percentage disabled
| veteran (I am not sure if VA healthcare is included with
| the GI bill?).
|
| Maybe now you're all set and don't need it, but I find it
| alarming how many veterans never use the benefits they
| earned in their service.
| kodah wrote:
| Good question, and one I've answered here before.
|
| > why didn't you use the GI bill to get free college?
|
| I did. I went back for a semester, but the money wasn't
| enough in my area. I found myself working part time and
| going to school full time, then eventually doing both
| full time. The stress got to me and I dropped out again.
|
| > Most universities will accept any veteran who has a GED
| or HS diploma
|
| Maybe now, but this is not true as far as my experience
| goes. The only college that would take me at the time was
| a community college. I assume this is because I had
| dropped out mid-semester before. Some context, I was in
| the DEP and was selected early, so I left with about a
| weeks notice (This was 2009). When I applied to four year
| universities I was rejected fairly quickly.
|
| > I find it alarming how many veterans never use the
| benefits they earned in their service.
|
| Same, however, I think there's tell-tale signs of why.
|
| Loss in institutional trust is one:
|
| - The VA provides pretty abysmal care in most places with
| long waiting lines and subpar coverage. I, up until
| recently, have been missing a tooth that they extracted
| in-service and told me the VA would replace with an
| implant. They would never agree to finishing the work the
| Navy started.
|
| - I've also had the VA fight with me over what bills need
| to be covered under disability and which I needed to pay
| for, with them pursuing my tax return at one point (When
| I really needed that money.)
|
| - Proving disability with the VA was litigious. Around
| they time I gave up they started demanding I show up at
| some court in Waco, TX which was _hours_ from where I
| lived. If I went to an outside doctor, I needed to have
| cash to cover whatever they wanted to do because the VA
| would frequently protest paying my medical bills - even
| at VA locations.
|
| Another is the lack of post-service programs. I really
| needed help getting my life back on track, dealing with
| issues in mental health, etc -- these services were
| either sparse or did not exist where I was at the time.
| In the military I was given a week long course called
| "Seps & TAPS".
|
| Last, and maybe not least, I was exhausted. I spent a
| total of a year in country and returned to civilianhood
| right around a year after I got back. Having to go to
| school full time and having to make up for what the Post
| 9/11 GI Bill wasn't covering wore me to the bone, along
| with dealing with the VA - who would always insist I
| skipped work to come see them.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| My reaction was feeling really bad for the
| students/apprentices/whatever they are, who seem to me clearly
| in a terrible situation with few options and being exploited.
| trashacct6969 wrote:
| Throwaway account for obvious reasons.
|
| I had a really similar experience as my first software dev job
| and this post brought up a lot of old memories. I ended up
| writing quite a lot, but I hope it's helpful for someone else in
| a situation like this. It wasn't until I started reading HN that
| I began realizing how common these types of experiences may be.
|
| The company I worked for was a small consultancy specialized in
| customizing/integrating an enterprise software package sold by
| one of the big old names in enterprise IT. There were several
| F500 companies in their clients list.
|
| The interview was extremely cursory and positive, like the one
| described in this article. I was offered a position almost
| immediately which was quite surprising given my lack of
| experience with their domain. The company also had a very
| "family-like" atmosphere, everybody I dealt with, including the
| owner, was actually very friendly and supportive throughout.
| Single digit headcount. There were a couple H1-B visa holders on
| staff, but it was not the majority. They cultivated the same kind
| of "we are all in this together" kind of attitude. It wasn't
| until I went on site for my first assignment that I realized how
| they operated.
|
| I went through about two weeks of training then was flown out to
| the HQ of one of our biggest clients. Huge, household name F500
| company, I had no experience with that kind of organization
| before. I vividly remember the first day on site. I am just off
| the flight and eating in the client's cafeteria with the owner of
| the consultancy and two coworkers. The owner tells me that he has
| told everyone on the client's team that I am a senior consultant
| with 5 years experience. At that time, I was just a couple years
| out of college with no relevant work experience, only some hobby
| level programming skills. I was totally blindsided and was
| immediately put into meetings with the client's team where I had
| to think fast in order to present myself properly. I was
| presented as a resource for the client's team to learn from,
| meaning I had to field questions, equivocate, then follow up
| later after I had asked my co-workers at the consultancy for
| help. I'm sure I was no use at all during those first couple
| weeks and I shudder to think of how I presented to the client's
| team. I know there was at least one other co-worker who was put
| in a similar position at the same time.
|
| At the time, for me personally there was no question about
| whether I should go along with this or not. I had hotel and
| flights paid for and no other immediate career prospects. To be
| totally honest, I didn't immediately feel an ethical conflict,
| mostly a naive sense of responsibility to not let my coworkers
| down and a curiosity about whether I could actually do the
| technical work that the client expected. I was also very curious
| about the large, corporate environment which I had never worked
| in before.
|
| I gradually learned that our consultancy's headcount was
| overstated by a factor of 10 to 100, depending on the client.
| Members of our extremely small team were rotated in and out to
| clients in order to give the appearance of a much larger team. I
| believe my boss' strategy was to use the inevitable staffing
| difficulties this caused as leverage in negotiations with our
| clients, in order to demonstrate that we were highly in-demand
| experts. I also learned that the software we specialized in was
| completely oversold relative to the customer's needs, and shipped
| with huge swathes of functionality missing or broken. These
| missing or broken features were responsible for generating a ton
| of revenue for not only our consultancy, but at least two other,
| much larger firms. One would almost think it was a deliberate
| design decision.
|
| The post mentions imposter syndrome, I would be curious to hear
| more about how this experience affected that for the author.
| Oddly enough, my own experience with a shady consultancy had a
| huge personal benefit in overcoming my own feelings of imposter
| syndrome. I am a good communicator and realized that I could
| quickly learn the jargon and social conventions of this
| workplace. After a couple weeks on the job I was actually
| productive and built out some major chunks of custom
| functionality. I learned quickly and the work was not really that
| technically challenging. If anything, it showed me that you could
| survive in large organizations like our client company by being
| an effective communicator and that most of the people employed
| there weren't intimidating wizards. I actually really enjoyed
| working with many of our client's staff and wish I could have
| done so under better circumstances.
|
| I left after a little over a year. The amount of pay wasn't too
| bad but there were several unannounced late paychecks that
| spooked me. Also, even though my skills were up to the task and I
| worked well with my teams, the feeling of constantly looking over
| one's shoulder and having to keep up the management's lies really
| took a mental toll. At first it was exhilarating, but eventually
| I came to the same conclusion that the OP did where I felt I
| could not build a career on this foundation. I completely changed
| industries to shake up the depression that settled on me. Shortly
| afterwards, I learned my boss was engaging in some sort of tax
| scheme that caught up with him, resulting in him dissolving the
| company then fleeing the US for a time.
|
| Ultimately working for this company taught me a lot of soft
| skills and not a lot of transferable technical skills. My opinion
| is that the burnout I felt, leading me to change careers,
| probably had a detrimental effect on my long-term career
| prospects. I later realized I actually enjoyed and excelled at
| software dev and could have been much further along that path by
| now if my first experience wasn't so bad. Overall I have very
| mixed feelings about the experience but it was formative for
| younger me learning how the world works.
| simmanian wrote:
| Wow, thank you so much for writing out and sharing your story.
|
| >I would be curious to hear more about how this experience
| affected that for the author.
|
| I think you and I have a lot of similarities on this regard. I
| also learned later in my career that I don't have to be a
| technical wizard to provide a lot of value to teams and
| projects. My biggest strengths are being an effective
| communicator and being able to come up with sustainable
| solutions that solve the problem at hand while also being
| maintainable in the long run. When it comes to things like
| coding itself, I'm mediocre.
| barrenko wrote:
| Maybe they've read "Designing Data-Intensive applications".
|
| (Semi-joke)
| notapenny wrote:
| I'm reading it right now. Does that mean I get a pay raise? :D
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| To be fair, if you can actually implement the strategies within
| using real technology (AWS, your own kafka cluster etc), then
| you deserve to be senior.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I'm not sure I get the joke... that's actually a great book. Is
| the joke that they read that book and no other book?
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| I read it like: Someone reads (skims?) that book, vaguely
| grasps the power of the concepts therein and then begins to
| treat everything like a nail that needs their
| hammer...failing to realize that many times and at many
| companies a simpler approach is good enough and the better
| choice for many definitions of better.
|
| That insistence to see everything as a nail once you learn
| the hammer is the hubris of the not-actually-senior software
| engineer. Those who can determine when the complex approaches
| are warranted versus when they are not is the real senior.
| AmericanBlarney wrote:
| When I was interviewing developers from a very large offshoring
| firm, they covertly had an account manager listening in to take
| down the questions for future candidates. Each interview, I'd ask
| a slightly different variation and it became obvious what was
| going on when a candidate gave a textbook answer to the question
| I'd asked the previous candidate, including references to tables
| I hadn't mentioned and that had no purpose in the problem I
| presented them.
|
| Also had an incident where I interviewed one person but am pretty
| sure someone different showed up and was completely clueless
| about the most basic tasks. Within a week I think they figured
| out that I was onto them and made some excuse to quit about
| taking a contract closer to home.
|
| Honestly, at this point many American companies have an office of
| their own offshore, and it's generally considered more
| prestigious and better condensated to work for those companies
| directly, so I assume there's close to zero talent left in the
| large outsourcers.
| raincom wrote:
| Indian offshoring companies like Wipro, TCS, etc pay $500 per
| month for fresh graduates from the engineering colleges, where
| lecturers are incompetent. In a team of 10, only two are
| capable, all others are for billable hours for these companies.
| Some of these newbies can learn and improve skills and jump to
| other companies in a couple of years.
|
| In the end, what matters is the cheapest labor, and billable
| hours. Account managers are judged on how much profit they
| bring.
| anononaut wrote:
| I presume something must have caused you to start giving
| slightly different questions, right? You did so because you
| wanted to see if they were collaborating in this fashion.
|
| What was that "something," if you don't mind me asking?
| osrec wrote:
| Large outsourcing companies are not really hired for talent (at
| least not from what I saw in the investment banking world).
|
| They're hired as scapegoats, and attached to an already failed
| project. Then they're publically blamed for the failure, while
| the actual guy responsible gets away with murder (and maybe
| even hops into a new internal role with better pay).
|
| If I was to rename the consulting/outsourcing industry, I would
| probably call it the "professional scapegoat" industry.
| a4isms wrote:
| There is no standard whatsoever for the adjective "Senior" when
| applied to engineers:
|
| Sometimes it means, "Able to work without someone looking over
| their shoulder at all times."
|
| Sometimes it means, "Able to lead and mentor others."
|
| And sometimes it means, "Has organizational skills above and
| beyond engineering skills, able to lead cross-team initiatives
| and deal with all the human/organization issues around the
| engineering."
|
| The latter definition is the most interesting to me, it describes
| what "Staff" and "Principal" engineers do in most orgs. But if I
| had to pick a line to draw, I'd say that while a Staff or
| Principal spends most or all of their time working on projects
| that involve the human/organization issues around the
| engineering, a senior engineer is one who does this at least part
| of the time.
|
| There are other, perfectly valid perspectives on what makes an
| engineer "senior," but what I like about this one that's relevant
| to TFA is that this kind of "seniority" is hard to fake.
| tom-thistime wrote:
| 'Senior Engineer' is just a pay grade. I'm sorry, maybe the
| world should be a saner place, but that's how it is.
| hhlevnjak3 wrote:
| And it often just means: most senior person working on this
| project or for this company. Even if that's 1 or 2 years of
| experience.
| tom-thistime wrote:
| It could be that meaningful, but sometimes it's not.
| curun1r wrote:
| As someone who has hired a new grad into a "Senior Engineer"
| role, it meant the title of the salary band that met the
| candidate's salary requirements to make our offer competitive
| with the other offers he received.
|
| We wanted to hire a junior role since our team was already
| relatively senior. But the company's salary bands were not at
| all competitive for entry-level developers. So we classed the
| new hire as senior to make it work.
|
| Some companies' policies are stupid and inflexible and
| engineers would rather just work around the problem than having
| to fight against HR.
| heyitsanewacco wrote:
| Ding ding ding, we have a winner!
|
| I'm running a hiring competition right now for a "Senior."
| The pay band is less than what entry level startups pay. So
| we rotate through a never ending stream of kids who leave for
| better salaries because we don't have any higher levels.
|
| Sometimes we do get lucky and pick up a mediocre lifer (like
| me) so HR sees no incentive to change.
|
| Never take a job for a company where you are not on the value
| chain!
| distrill wrote:
| > Sometimes we do get lucky and pick up a mediocre lifer
| (like me)
|
| why?
| krinchan wrote:
| Because not everyone feels the need to rate their self-
| worth by how much wealth they've hoarded. I'm already set
| for retirement and I have my house nearly paid off. I'm
| comfortable and I don't make $250,000 a year. I barely
| work more than 32 hours a week and I just got promoted.
| Full time work from home with a free working trip back to
| my old stomping grounds to catch up with friends twice a
| year.
|
| Why would I break my psyche with burnout, stress, and
| work I despise just to make someone else exponentially
| more money so I can make _marginally_ more money I don't
| need? Miss me with that hustle porn, thanks.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Honestly, that sounds like heaven.
| lostlogin wrote:
| To a lot of people conditions matter more than money.
| trentnix wrote:
| Maybe he bought a house in the neighborhood. Maybe he
| really likes writing COBOL. Maybe his spouse works there
| as well. Maybe he is simply extremely risk averse.
|
| There are a number of good reasons somebody might decide
| to stay put, even if it might be more lucrative or
| exciting elsewhere.
| trentnix wrote:
| I think you've nailed it.
|
| Prospects, if they can overcome the flattery of being offered
| a title beyond their skill and experience, should actually
| recognize such as a warning sign. After all, a company
| willing to do such a thing is likely a place full of stupid
| and inflexible policies where HR has too much power.
|
| Sorry you have to play such games to get decent talent, but
| beware a nasty side effect: your _actual_ senior engineers
| are going to need new titles to reflect the peer group they
| actually belong to. They may be (and perhaps rightly so)
| insulted by the insinuation that a new graduate is equally
| valuable to the company.
| yardie wrote:
| I worked at a company where there were lots of managers,
| directors, and coordinators. And just as many people under
| them. When I reached the top of my band I had to hire
| someone. Not because there was more work that needed to be
| delegated but because I had to move up to the next title
| "manager" and needed at least 1 person to manage.
| nimbius wrote:
| id agree with these points, but argue its an everything kind of
| package that comes within the first year of someone hiring on.
|
| whenever I help hire a senior-level engine mechanic or
| technician for a shop, I need to know they can do the work
| without a lot of supervision. I also need to know theyll
| resolve the issues on the shop floor and be able to communicate
| those issues to a customer as well as a greenhorn tech straight
| out of a brake shop without chewing them up if its their fault.
| They need to have the ability to delegate things, get along
| with people and get the job done.
|
| most of all, i dont need the team to see "a new senior mechanic
| just got hired." I need the team to see a new mechanic and form
| a consensus that she _is_ senior based on their walk, not my
| talk. in that first year ill spend more time in the break room
| sucking down folgers and listening, or just walking the floor
| stocking ear plugs and soap dispensers and waiting to see what
| they do.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| If you look around Indeed, Senior Engineer is basically equal
| to 5 years experience.
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| My very first job even before I graduated was 'Senior' (not a
| brag, an indication that the title doesn't mean much.) Mid-
| level individual contributors at Goldman Sachs are 'Vice
| President'. These titles can't be read literally, can't be
| quantified, and can't be compared between companies. Any
| attempt to do so is futile.
| pmontra wrote:
| I think I started going to interview customers with my boss
| very early on my first job in the 90s. I've been given a team
| to manage after two years and I started doing interviews,
| analysis, requirements, etc on my own. Basically I was a
| senior engineer by then. The company was always very
| supportive so if I had to ask for advice I had somebody to
| ask to. After all 1/n-th of my boss' career depended by the
| outcome of my job.
|
| Of course I'm much better at that kind of job now. I wonder
| how I could really understand my customers but obviously it
| was good enough.
| andi999 wrote:
| I think what is important is once to have seen couple of
| times the happy path (successful project) and at least the
| unhappy path (unsuccessful project) and see how a senior can
| mitigate the repercussion of the unsuccessful project.
| Basically see the stuff which no book tells you.
| a4isms wrote:
| Pardon me while I blow the dust off the standard quip about
| "years of experience:"
|
| "Is that one year of experience, repeated five times?"
| gmadsen wrote:
| id rather have someone with one year repeated 5 times than
| someone with just one year. Those aren't equivalent
| [deleted]
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| In my job, I was able to get a position just as "Software
| Developer." I didn't like devaluing "Software Engineer" and
| I didn't want to be seen as a WordPress guy if I used "Web
| Developer." (My job is web development with Laravel.) And
| lastly, I didn't want to be called "Junior" (because I have
| less than 5 years experience).
| kolla wrote:
| When I read "senior" I often interpret it as "has a lot of
| experience" which has nothing to do with skill. Speaking for
| myself who has a shit ton of experience in a lot of tools,
| techniques, languages and so on but is SHIT in most of them.
| I'd be hired before a lot of better candidates based on my
| years of experience in the area but not because of my skill in
| the area.
| flatiron wrote:
| Sometimes it means "someone who can bill $300 an hour" with no
| relation to actual ability. I was a "senior" three years out of
| college and I had no clue what in the world I was doing.
|
| Come to think of it after 20 years I kinda still feel that way.
| nebulous_two wrote:
| So imposter syndrome is justified sometimes is what you're
| saying?
| Swizec wrote:
| To quote a meme: "You all can't have impostor syndrome,
| some of you gotta just be bad at your jobs"
| vsareto wrote:
| If we're going that route, then there are definitely a
| good number of jobs that will make you look bad no matter
| how good you really are.
|
| Companies can be imposters too; we just like to blame the
| workers first.
| phs318u wrote:
| I once heard it put this way, "If you're absolutely
| certain that you have impostor syndrome, then you
| probably don't have impostor syndrome."
| dgb23 wrote:
| I like this quote.
|
| While I think impostor syndrome is real, I also can't
| believe that so many actually have it (judging from media
| mostly). I cannot personally relate either. I can relate
| with insecurity, anxiety and so on _very_ much. But much
| of that has been based on a lack of experience, practice
| and knowledge. When those things can heal "impostor
| syndrome" then it's not impostor syndrome - you'd still
| have it.
|
| There is also a thing that comes up after more experience
| rather than less: "nobody has a clue what they're
| doing"-syndrome.
|
| The idea or realization that real competence or knowledge
| is a fad in the first place. Everyone just tries really
| hard to figure stuff out, but nobody _really_ achieves
| that. There's confidence, good communication and so on,
| but those things are orthogonal to what I'm describing.
| And I include very smart and capable people here. In the
| end it's all based on a "wishy-washy, good enough, it
| works so far, those are my assumptions" kind of deal.
|
| Not everything is impostor syndrome. Much of it is some
| version of any of the above, or just plain humbleness.
| Swizec wrote:
| > "nobody has a clue what they're doing"-syndrome
|
| The more advanced you are in your career, the more your
| job should be to solve _novel_ problems. Things you, at
| least, haven 't solved before. Preferably things _nobody_
| has solved before.
|
| If all you're doing is work you already know how to do,
| you should find a more interesting job imo.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > someone who can bill $300 an hour
|
| god.. that hurts. I've worked 10 years in the industry, have
| rescued code bases and currently am lead engineer and cto of
| a startup. I've tried doing some moonlighting but people balk
| when I quote them $80/hr.
|
| I really need a better network. plus my soft skills are
| terrible.
| a4isms wrote:
| I have demonstrated my ability to convince clients to pay
| amounts of money like this for my skills. And yes, the not-
| so-secret thing about consulting is that if you're able to
| convince a client that you're worth $500 an hour, it's just
| easy to convince them to pay $300 an hour for the work of a
| colleague of yours they've never seen.
| dkarl wrote:
| Ugh, I encountered this a few times early in my career
| (early 2000s.) The worst case was a team from a large,
| expensive, high-end consulting company. There was one A
| player who was fast and sharp and absolutely invaluable,
| two developers who were slow but diligent, one guy who
| everybody avoided because he was pissed off that he wasn't
| as smart as the A player, and one engineer who spent all
| day in front of an IDE but never checked in any code. Once,
| as a prank, a couple of my coworkers sent me over to "help"
| this last person (to be clear, the prank was on both me and
| the person I was sent to help.) They were staring at code
| that was just syntactically wrong, and not in a subtle way.
| It was a Java source file, and the line that they were
| working on, which I think was the only line they had
| changed, did not look like Java. They couldn't see what was
| wrong with it, and honestly neither could I, in the sense
| that I could only see that it didn't look like Java. This
| person had been "working" on the project for several weeks,
| and from that point on, I felt intensely sorry them,
| because they came to work every day for eight hours, and
| sat in a chair looking at an IDE, going to meetings,
| staying late if the A player stayed late, etc., nobody ever
| talking to them, and I can't imagine what kind of bizarre
| hell that was for them. I didn't feel comfortable talking
| to them about it because there was an age and culture and
| language gap, so I'll never know. When the consulting'
| contract was up, we renewed, but that person was replaced
| with another slow but diligent worker, and I never saw them
| again.
| missing_paren wrote:
| What a sad story!
| zuhayeer wrote:
| We try to map some of these titles across different companies
| with Levels.fyi
|
| We also normalized some of the scope and responsibility
| definitions for software engineering levels based on what we've
| seen through company leveling rubrics that we collect:
| https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html
| alex_anglin wrote:
| In the context of 'IT Consulting Companies,' which the blog
| post is about, it means that clients are paying a higher
| billable rate than for more 'junior' staff.
| a4isms wrote:
| I have worked in consulting, and internally, the above was
| pretty-much our definition of "senior" that we used to
| determine who was billed out at "senior rates:" The engineers
| who also had customer-facing skills and coordination skills
| and understanding the customer's byzantine constraints skills
| and so forth.
|
| Those who focused on just coding were billed out for less
| than those who spent time in meetings and writing words.
| pjc50 wrote:
| I was made "senior developer" three months out of university
| for exactly this reason. It helped that I also knew what I
| was doing, but the whole 1st dotcom bubble was a crazy time.
| robbyking wrote:
| On a related note, I dated a woman who was promoted to vice
| president of a small start up when she was in her 20's. She had
| to hide her title on her resume when she left because no
| established firm wanted to hire someone whom they assumed
| they'd need to pay a quarter million dollars to be competitive.
|
| Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you.
| a4isms wrote:
| My sole stint as a VP was in a thirteen-person startup. I had
| that title for pseudo-legal reasons, we needed a VP.
|
| My later role as Director of a 50-person engineering group in
| a 200-person startup was way more relevant in terms of my
| experience managing development.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > She had to hide her title on her resume when she left
|
| An easy fix for that would be to add the number of employees
| she managed and the size of the company. The title is scary
| but she did manage people and did report to the CEO, so to me
| it is a VP position. Of course, that won't map 1:1 when
| hiring into a new company (doubt she'll be reporting to the
| CEO) but the person she might report to would be managing an
| org of a similar size to her previous company.
|
| > because no established firm wanted to hire someone whom
| they assumed they'd need to pay a quarter million dollars to
| be competitive.
|
| 250k total comp (including some equity) doesn't sound
| outlandish to me. Very much in the market for someone who had
| lead experience in her 20's. Some fresh grads land that out
| of school.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _had to hide her title on her resume when she left because
| no established firm wanted to hire someone whom they assumed
| they 'd need to pay a quarter million dollars to be
| competitive_
|
| That's bizarre given Wall Street has been abusing the Vice
| President title for generations now. (VPs at American banks
| report to Managing Directors, a middle-management level of
| which there are hundreds if not thousands. It's the tier
| above Associate, _i.e._ straight out of B school or with a
| year or two of Analyst experience.)
| ska wrote:
| > Sometimes grandiose titles can work against you.
|
| Early stage startups can be especially hilarious that way,
| especially when young founders/early stage employees
| mistakenly feel they need a "big" title to be taken
| seriously...
| rsynnott wrote:
| Also, oddly, banks, where everyone seems to be a VP at the
| very least.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| When I worked for a bank it was explained to me that
| early on foreign banks and financial institutions would
| not take a call from someone other than a VP, so they
| made all the bankers VP's to get work done. That was
| probably an over simplification.
| ceras wrote:
| Thing is, within the banking industry, these end up being
| fairly standardized titles. Titles mean less across
| industries, but within an industry, there's _some_
| consistency. In fact in banking, these are more
| standardized than tech industry titles are.
|
| Typically at banks, the ranks are: analyst, associate,
| VP, managing director. Everyone eventually gets to VP, so
| it's not a particularly high level. It's similar to how
| tech companies have a level everyone is supposed to reach
| (often "Senior"). So, analyst is an entry-level role,
| associate is a mid-level role (2yrs experience, or a
| higher degree), and VP is a terminal role. VP is a wide
| band, though, so there's often sub-levels within that
| (whether publicly visible or not): managing director is a
| very high title at a bank.
| skatanski wrote:
| In banks in engineering it was once explained to me, that
| dev salaries require a title (in comparison with other
| staff). Hence ordinary developers are often titled AVP,
| VP or AD.
| ska wrote:
| I think this is mostly a technical requirement related to
| signing authority (e.g. for lots of things you need to be
| an officer).
|
| Of course, the VP being the threshold target role for
| this is a choice, but it seems to be useful in contexts
| like banks to have some sort of dividing line.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| My cofounder and I just used "Design Lead" and "Dev Lead"
| as our titles for nearly a decade - I only reluctantly took
| the mantle of "CTO" after taking outside investment, as
| they insisted on grandiosity - said it was amateurish to
| have small titles whilst employing 50+ people.
| pkaye wrote:
| Titles are not standardized. Some companies a "member of
| technical staff" is a starting position and in others its
| the highest engineering position.
| derwiki wrote:
| Sometimes they do! My last company worked with title
| companies and it's a little "insulting" to send less than a
| director to meet with them.
| zaphod12 wrote:
| oh yeah, this is super true of sales. everyone in your
| sales org needs absurd titles or nobody will ever speak
| to them. Just one of those things apparently.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Yep, indeed. I'm technically the CTO of the startup I'm
| helping to found. And even though I'm 37, I haven't been in
| tech long enough to feel like I've earned that title, so my
| LinkedIn says Chief Software Architect (I made it up).
| camhart wrote:
| "It's interesting, these titles," Musk said. "You know
| that there's actually only three titles that actually
| mean anything for a corporation? It's president,
| secretary, and treasurer. And technically they can be the
| same person. And all these other titles are just
| basically made up. So CEO is a made-up title, CFO is a
| made-up title. General counsel, a made-up title. They
| don't mean anything."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXtjnNWUeAk
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Love it. Yeah I find myself mentoring junior engineers,
| writing code myself, reading documentation on tech I've
| never worked with before, designing email templates,
| writing marketing copy, crafting business plans,
| calculating sweat equity, etc etc. So at the end of the
| day...tf do titles mean
| shard wrote:
| I thought General Counsel means you have a JD?
| shadowfox wrote:
| You generally need that and typically reasonable
| experience wrangling different legal matters at scale. I
| guess Musk was just being Musk.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| I think that Musk is technically right.
| [deleted]
| smorgusofborg wrote:
| I think this quote is actually about a different point.
| The President, Secretary and Treasurer don't need any
| actual credentials for their role like a council needs a
| JD, but they have specific responsibility/liability in
| corporate legal structures.
| noodlenotes wrote:
| The funny thing is that I might assume a CEO/CTO at a
| small startup has less experience than a "Chief Software
| Architect." My assumption would be that the executives
| are founders and that there's not a minimum experience
| requirement for founders.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Interesting, hadn't thought of that. But wouldn't you
| assume the same of an architect at a small startup?
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| If you take the stereotypical Silicon Valley style start
| of 2-4 founders in their 20s or early 30s, someone is
| gonna be CTO, and there's a good chance they'll have
| relatively little experience. But a Chief Architect, I'd
| assume was an experienced early hire rather than a
| founder.
| [deleted]
| radicalbyte wrote:
| How long have you been in tech? I'm 41 and have been in
| tech since I was 17 :) I've been calling myself an
| Architect but after working with some experienced CTOs..
| lets say I now know my value/position. If I ever work for
| someone else then that's the minimum position I'd take.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I've got about 10 years of experience, I didn't discover
| my knack for programming until my late 20s,
| unfortunately.
| ButterWashed wrote:
| Having just taken a job as a l Lead SRE in a large
| consultancy despite not being skilled or experienced enough
| I'm terrified that I'll struggle to move to a new org solely
| because of my job title. It's jarring how much of an impact
| it has made on me and I don't really know what to do about
| it. I'm aware that it's only really a problem when I move but
| I don't think the work and tech I'll be exposed to will help
| me reach a level where I'll be confident.
| quacked wrote:
| Just rephrase the job title on your resume so it's faithful
| to reality but not the literal title.
|
| At my last job, my formal title was "Systems Integration
| Engineer", which has a real industry definition as
| recognized by various engineering fellowships. Since I did
| very little formal Systems Integration at the job, I
| labelled myself as a "Cargo Logistics Engineer" on my
| resume. It worked fine.
| valbaca wrote:
| This is hilarious because I recently had a junior dev come to
| me to discuss issues they were having with their
| (incompetent) software manager.
|
| She said "I don't understand why he doesn't understand the
| technical aspects. It must be me...I must be bad at
| communicating because [the manager] was a CTO at a startup!"
|
| I literally laughed out loud. Her communication skills were
| fantastic, but she was so new and naive to think that titles
| from a startup have literally any worth.
| jollybean wrote:
| While it might have been a young CTO at a small startup,
| the field of technology is vast, it's not the job of the
| CTO to understand all aspects of it.
|
| Similarly, when I started in Engineering, I didn't
| understand quite how much complexity existed in all the
| other areas of running a company, I've since learned much
| about them and have much more respect for CEO's who have to
| manage all of those issues.
| ianbutler wrote:
| Depends on the startup to be fair.
| [deleted]
| metacritic12 wrote:
| Could you just downgrade yourself without the company's
| consent? A upgrade seems fraudulent, but a downgrade...
| moron4hire wrote:
| At Apple, they do that for you when you leave!
| viksit wrote:
| Can you explain what this means?
| csmiller wrote:
| https://twitter.com/techmeme/status/1491808263339270149?s
| =21
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I've struggled with that, having been in the same position
| - I was a "VP" at a six-person startup over ten years ago.
| Of course, I didn't anything remotely VP-ish there - I was
| programming computers, same as I've ever done. But, that
| _was_ my title. So... do I write that on my resume and be
| honest about my title or write a title that 's honest about
| what I was actually doing?
| jghn wrote:
| IMO it's always fine to be creative when listing a past job
| title, PROVIDED you are trying to provide more accurate
| information and not deceive. I've had titles that do not at
| all accurately reflect my day to day, so I list them as
| something more topical. However I will never portray myself
| as having more authority nor more day-to-day experience
| than my title would have otherwise conveyed.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Yes, I never use my official title in the company emails.
| There were some funny moments in the past when some people
| thought someone reporting to me was my boss, but it was
| always funny. These days people in my team have more
| impressive titles than me, I am totally fine with that.
| yunyu wrote:
| A quarter million dollars is what a typical new grad offer
| looks like nowadays
| corpdronejuly wrote:
| It's not typical. It is possible though.
| anamexis wrote:
| Where typical = atypical
| notyourday wrote:
| Incorrect. The tax code makes this kind of an offer an
| exception rather than a rule. There's a reason why Amazon
| just now upped the top $ into 300k range. That's also a
| reason why most of astronomical cash salaries are done as
| B2B via pass through entities.
|
| The vast majority of people talking about those salaries
| just heard of a few people that make that money and
| extrapolated to the rest.
| ska wrote:
| > a typical new grad offer
|
| That's mare than stretching "typical"
| gambiting wrote:
| I love how HN sometimes behaves as if the entire world is
| one or two small corners of the US.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| It is highly likely that the former vice president of a
| startup is actually from one of those two small corners
| of the US (given that these also seem to be hot startup
| scenes), so it isn't a weird assumption for senior roles
| (not new grad ones). It isn't mentioned if she is a SWE
| or not, however, which would make a huge difference.
| gambiting wrote:
| I don't know, I think saying that it's "typical" to be
| paid 250k as a graduate is pretty damn weird.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps the thinking is: if you keep saying it, it may
| become true.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Read the domain name. The entire world _is_ these corners
| in the US.
| selestify wrote:
| If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US -- which
| plenty of people do -- it is indeed a pretty typical
| offer
|
| Love how I'm downvoted for pointing out a fact. I mean,
| for fuck's sake, look at levels.fyi. And look at how many
| people FAANG and FAANG-adjacent startups hire every year.
| It's really not that rare. But hey, stay in denial.
| tragictrash wrote:
| It might not be rare to you but you have to realize that
| there are 6+ billion people on this planet. It's fucking
| rare.
| selestify wrote:
| No duh, but a city of a million people is a pretty
| fucking big city. It's not _that_ rare.
| lovich wrote:
| You realize rarity is referencing the relative percentage
| of an event or item and not the absolute number right? If
| you have 1 million people in the numerator, but 100
| million in the denominator, then the rate is pretty rare
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| On a planetary scale, I wouldn't actually consider that
| 'pretty fucking big'. For comparison (metro areas,
| figures from Wikipedia):
|
| San Francisco: 4.7 million
|
| Berlin: 6.1 million
|
| London: 14.3 million
|
| NYC: 20.1 million
|
| Shenzhen: 23.3 million
|
| Tokyo: 37.5 million
| tragictrash wrote:
| I never realized how big Tokyo is. Wow.
| robbyking wrote:
| What percentage of US workers work in FAANG and FAANG-
| adjacent companies?
| gambiting wrote:
| >>If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US --
| which plenty of people do
|
| Yes, and globally that's still nothing. You are talking
| about the elite of the elite, chosen ones among the
| chosen ones. In other 1st world countries, and even in
| majority of USA no, recent graduates are not paid quarter
| of a million dollars. There's a select, very exclusive,
| very limited group of people who do. But like others have
| pointed out already - that's not "typical" by any
| definition of the word.
| selestify wrote:
| It's definitely not atypical when you're talking about
| over a million people combined. That's a pretty big
| population.
| gambiting wrote:
| Milion people graduate from those top 10 universities
| every year? How big are those universities????
| selestify wrote:
| gambiting wrote:
| But we are specifically talking about graduates being
| paid quarter of a million dollars, so why are you
| bringing absolute numbers into the mix? Should I compare
| it against the absolute number of people working
| everywhere in the world? Because then that million won't
| be so large suddenly.
|
| If you want to do this properly tell me how many
| graduates out of all graduates per year get paid quarter
| of a million dollars when they start. Because it will be
| such an insignificant number that again - using the word
| "typical" to describe it will be just delusional.
| selestify wrote:
| I was paid nearly $200k on graduation. And I was the
| least paid out of all my classmates, because I went to
| Seattle instead of Silicon Valley.
| t-writescode wrote:
| The Median Income in King County, where you work, is 90k
| / year. That's absurdly high in this country; but it's
| still less than HALF what you make. Check yourself.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Exactly. Even if we take MIT which seems to graduate AT
| MOST 10,000 students each year -- times 10 (10x)-- it's
| only 100,000 graduates. The 1 million comes from where?
| gambiting wrote:
| They did reply earlier that they meant all people in US
| but later deleted the comment.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| I wasn't aware that "elite of the elite" included many
| public schools that aren't even that difficult to get
| into. If you're a California resident UCSD, UCI, UCB,
| UCLA, UCSB are all accessible schools that give you a
| very solid shot at a FAANG job out of college. If you're
| a Michigan resident, same goes for UMich. Illinois, UIUC.
| Georgia, Georgia Tech. Texas, any number of great state
| schools. These schools are not that difficult to get
| into. They're also public, so there is no legacy
| shenanigans happening to boost wealthy applicants.
|
| If you grew up in a shitty high school, you can go to a
| community college and then transfer to one of these state
| schools. I know for certain California has excellent
| policies that favor CC applicants transferring in. There
| are multiple ways in the door if you apply yourself.
|
| Perhaps consider that a student that can't even get into
| a state school has no business or ability to write code
| at a level that would merit a 250k salary. The bar is on
| the floor.
| selestify wrote:
| That was literally me. Went to community college and, as
| you say, had a much easier time transferring to a UC. I
| wasn't even among the smartest graduates in my program --
| not by a long shot. And yet, opportunities abound.
|
| Like I said, the software engineering job market is red
| hot right now. I rejected a few offers and they still
| asked me a few months later if I would be interested in
| joining. That's how desperate they are for anyone with
| even a reasonable amount of talent.
| [deleted]
| belter wrote:
| Those salaries are only possible, because most of it is
| stock compensation, highly inflated due to the biggest
| stock market bubble of the last 30 years.
|
| As of next week, as soon as the Fed starts raising rates,
| the stock market will crater. These compensation values
| will then become what companies are really willing to
| pay. Not much different from other parts of the world.
|
| If you factor in the risk of bankruptcy in the US due to
| unexpected medical bills and that you have to be on the
| 0.1% of Developer pools in the US, does not make it so
| amazing.
| [deleted]
| marcellus23 wrote:
| > If you graduate from any top 10 school in the US --
| which plenty of people do
|
| Since when does "typical" mean "graduated from a top 10
| school"? That's why you're being downvoted.
| selestify wrote:
| Because those schools collectively admit tens of
| thousands of students every year. It's not that rare.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Maybe it would be helpful if you gave your definition of
| "typical"?
| selestify wrote:
| Good point. I mean "typical" as in, entirely expected
| within a nontrivial portion of the population. Where
| absolutely nobody would be surprised that you're making
| this much.
|
| Is it typical for the general population to make a
| million a year? No, but it is entirely typical for
| investment bankers and quants at hedge funds. To say that
| is atypical of the average worker in America -- well, of
| course, but that isn't a very meaningful statement when
| you're specifically discussing people in investment
| firms. And that's what this article is about -- the
| subset of the population for which this is entirely
| normal and expected.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I thought it was over a million?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Yeah but this is less than 1/10 of 1% of the number of
| people that graduate every year. By the same logic you
| could say that everyone has trust funds, because most of
| the people in this small slice have them. Just because
| something applies to the top 0.1% of the US doesn't mean
| it applies to the rest of the 99.9%. This is the problem
| with wealth and opportunity disparity in this country.
| The haves think that the have nots are in that position
| due to choice. It's not a choice to be born into poverty.
| selestify wrote:
| It's not a choice to apply yourself and get into a good
| school? I mean seriously, given how hot the US software
| market is, there's no excuse.
|
| And FWIW, I come from a poor immigrant background. My
| family was on welfare. I got free lunch at school. The
| American dream come true. Sorry that not everyone can
| hack it in life.
| thealfreds wrote:
| I like how the person above can also say the following.
|
| > Why is it nonsense? The wealthy and connected can
| already give their progeny undue access to opportunities
| via their social networks, and can afford the best
| education that money can buy. That's already way more of
| an advantage than the average citizen gets. Besides, the
| whole point is to maximize equality of opportunity.
|
| For computers, not everyone can afford computers in
| America. I was lucky to find a job walking fields as a
| child to afford one but that opportunity doesn't exist
| for everyone.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Exactly, and not everyone knows to go do this stuff. It's
| like this NPR piece on why there are so many sprinters in
| Jamaica.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/151956595/a-need-for-
| speed-in...
|
| Spoiler - it's because it's seen by kids. If a kid in
| Jamaica wants to be a runner it's obvious to them what to
| do. Its being told to them every day in their sports
| entertainment, local events, advertising, etc. It a kid
| in Jamaica wants to be a CS person, they have no clue
| what to do. No TV ads, local clubs, events, races, all
| grooming them day by day to he a better programmer. We
| have that in the US, in the Bay area, etc. We are
| grooming young STEM folks from the beginning.
| achenet wrote:
| That's not the full story.
|
| The book << The Sports Gene >> discusses that the West
| African heritage of Jamacians actually gives them a
| genetic advantage. I forget the details but basically, to
| resist malaria they have sickle cell anemia which leads
| to powerful anaerobic systems ideal for sprinting.
|
| You could put someone of different genetic stock in the
| same culture bit they wouldn't be as successful at
| sprinting.
| gambiting wrote:
| Ah yes, after all a lottery winner will advise everyone
| around them to play lottery - clearly it works, they are
| the best example.
|
| Once again, you are refusing to acknowledge that the word
| "typical" is not appropriate here. Even in your example
| it's not typical for American people to achieve that
| American dream, as America is absolutely awful on the
| social mobility scale.
|
| Edit: also it's really classy you are just deleting your
| replies to my comments instead of actually engaging in a
| discussion. Your choice I suppose.
| selestify wrote:
| t-writescode wrote:
| Blue collar workers are some of the hardest working
| people I know. Some of them make as much as 40k per year.
| Yes, I said "as much".
|
| You really, really need to check yourself. You have no
| idea how good you have it.
| selestify wrote:
| Oh I know I have it good. 1% in terms of income. And I
| come from a really unprivileged background. Uneducated
| parents, family on welfare. Shit man, we were so poor, I
| got into college for free based on needs.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Then check yourself and your privileged "everyone gets a
| 200k offer unless they're stupid and lazy" statements.
| selestify wrote:
| sangnoir wrote:
| Were your parents - I'm quoting you here - "dumb and
| lazy"? Since they didn't pull themselves bup by the
| bootstraps like you did, and yet they allegedly had the
| same opportunities as you.
| selestify wrote:
| They did actually, work their way up from where they
| started. And eventually got to immigrate to America,
| where opportunities are much better and their kids could
| thrive. It's the stereotypical thing where immigrants to
| this country are much more hardworking and appreciative
| of the opportunities they have here compared to their
| home country, versus the native population who doesn't
| appreciate just how good they have it in America. I
| wouldn't be surprised if my kids turn out that way --
| it's just how it is.
| gambiting wrote:
| Hahahah, ok dude, if that lets you sleep well at night
| then sure. One thing is for sure - that your belief is
| unfortunately pretty typical.
| selestify wrote:
| Thanks, I do sleep like a baby.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Exactly my point, folks with privilege like yourself
| don't even understand what privilege they have and have
| taken advantage of their whole life.
|
| I did (apply myself). I did work my ass off to get into,
| and out of, (good) engineering school and pay for it
| also.
|
| It simply wasn't an option for me to go to an expensive
| private or out of state school with a price tag of a
| couple hundred thousand dollars. So I went to the best
| school I could afford. Many folks are in this boat. It's
| not for a lack of trying or intelligence - it's for a
| lack of privilege.
|
| Edit - I also want to acknowledge that compared to many
| folks in the world I am very privileged. It only serves
| to highlight my point even further. These statements are
| less about me personally and more about me recognizing
| that I, and many others in our HN world are very
| privileged in one way or another as compared to he
| average American, or Human.
| selestify wrote:
| My family was so poor, I got into college for free. Talk
| about unprivileged.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| But you had the privilege if uncommon intelligence and
| test taking ability. Not all privilege is money.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You're going to have to pick one between
|
| >>> So I went to the best school I could afford. Many
| folks are in this boat. It's not for a lack of trying or
| intelligence - it's for a lack of privilege.
|
| and
|
| > But you had the privilege [o]f uncommon intelligence
| and test taking ability. Not all privilege is money.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Not really. It's not so black and white. My point is that
| above a certain threshold of GPA/test
| scores/"intelligence" college is free. If you are below
| that threshold college is not. For those of us that were
| below that threshold, for whatever reason, we had to
| figure out how to pay for it. Within that bucket there
| are people who's family can just pay for it, no matter
| how expensive (these are the people going to Harvard and
| Wharton out of pocket), and there are those who simply
| can't afford to pay 200k for an education because they
| don't have it. Those folks then choose state Schools
| (which I went to and are wonderful). My point is that the
| average graduate of Wharton has a much higher average
| starting salary than the average state school. Therefore
| tying a family's ability to pay more tuition with a
| graduates average salary being higher.
|
| It's simply the way the world works. The rich get richer.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| So just to be clear, you're repudiating your statement
| that when people can't afford to attend college, that's
| not for lack of intelligence on their part?
| selestify wrote:
| Too bad. Life isn't fair. Evolution got us to where we
| were, and I'm glad that we have consciousness due to
| relentless natural selection.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I'm not complaining about it. Just recognizing it.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Nonsense, you were privileged to be the right kind of
| "poor", the kind of poor that the system caters to. Just
| because the system gave you a big hand up does not imply
| that it does for everyone in equal conditions. You were
| privileged and you don't even realize it.
|
| There are many poor people that are never given that
| opportunity regardless of ability. To those people, you
| had an easy path.
| beauzero wrote:
| Please stop using that word. It sucks the life from you
| because you think it excuses you from self analyzing why
| you aren't happy where you are. Life is not fair if you
| are a human, cat, squirrel or mouse. We are born into a
| specific set of conditions...look around and move but
| please stop using the word privilege. Everyone and
| everything is different.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I actually agree with this, if only because of the
| political connotations the term "privilege" has acquired.
|
| I think a better term would be "advantages". It
| adequately describes the meaning that's being conveyed
| without carrying the implication that it's necessarily
| completely outside of the individual's control.
| DarylZero wrote:
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Just what is it with extra privileged people and being
| allergic to admitting it.
|
| You seriously, honestly, from the bottom of your heart,
| think that 90% of the 70k people living in the Complexo
| do Alemao are just lazy and don't fix their lives due to
| sloth?
|
| Before you start, I'm happy with my life and my
| circumstances.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I am very happy where I am. Within myself, I am not
| blaming anything for lack of anything but rather
| celebrate my successes and what has come from my hard
| work.
|
| That doesn't mean I can't recognize that folks are
| different, and that where we start out most definitely
| has an impact on how far we go.
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| I went to a public in-state school with poor parents.
| Full need-based financial aid in school. I made 6 figures
| out of school and currently make the big numbers you
| claim are impossibly rare.
|
| You claim that not everyone is intelligent enough to make
| it into these schools in another post but we know from
| science that even just changing the way you study can
| improve performance by half a standard deviation [1]. So
| maybe you just didn't work as hard as the competition?
| Maybe you didn't look at all the aspects of _how_ you
| work and do some self-reflection about working more
| efficiently?
|
| Don't blame intelligence when your own decisions have
| much more impact on overall performance than 10-20 points
| of IQ do. Why do you think Asians comprise 50% of school
| populations where affirmative action is banned? Hint:
| it's not because of superior intelligence, but work
| ethic.
|
| [1]: https://www.gwern.net/Spaced-repetition
| _wldu wrote:
| Georgia Tech is consistently ranked a Top 10 CS program
| (worldwide) and their OMSCS program now accounts for 10%
| of all MSCS degrees issued. It costs about 6,000 to 7,000
| USD total:
|
| _" OMSCS started in January 2014 with 380 students.
| Enrollment increased each semester (excluding summer
| terms). In 2019 I believed that we were very close to the
| peak, since we are graduating more and more students. But
| then, the pandemic hit and we have kept growing every
| semester. This spring term we just passed a new mile
| stone - we have over 12,000 students, 12,016 to be
| precise. We might be at the peak or very close to it.
| Apparently, OMSCS is the biggest degree program, online
| or not in any subject in the US and probably the world.
| More importantly, the degree is of the same quality of
| the on campus program. We have 56 courses (we started
| with 5); several courses now have over 1,000 students. We
| graduated 1,970 in 2021 for a total of 6,470 so far. We
| are graduating in a year well over 10% of the number of
| those that graduate with MS in CS in the US."_ - Zvi
| Galil
|
| _Online, Cheap and Elite_ :
| https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-
| learning/article/2018...
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Looks great on paper but the people you really need to
| reach don't have undergrad done. Is this one of those
| rare masters one can complete with no undergrad done?
| [deleted]
| pavlov wrote:
| When a large part of the compensation is stock, it's
| worth remembering that share prices can go down too.
|
| Meta/FB is down 35% since September. Many public mid-cap
| software unicorns are down 50%. Smaller companies that
| IPO'd last year are often down even more than that.
|
| If you joined one of these companies last fall and got a
| $150k base salary + $400k stock grant that vests over
| four years, your total compensation was $250k when hired,
| but is now down to $200k after the stock has lost 50%. Of
| course the stock price may go up again. (But it also may
| not, as anyone who lived through 1999-2001 remembers.)
| [deleted]
| imwillofficial wrote:
| It is objectively rare by every use of the word. Your
| doubling down is embarrassing.
| alan-hn wrote:
| In what fields?
| selestify wrote:
| Computer science, obviously.
| conanbatt wrote:
| It's almost as if HN was made by and for one of the small
| corners of the US.
| hourislate wrote:
| Post W2 or it's not true.
| selestify wrote:
| levels.fyi bro. You get to L4/E4 within a year or two,
| which is for all practical purposes basically "new grad"
| lovich wrote:
| 2 years in is explicitly not new grad. New grads are new
| grads.
| selestify wrote:
| Sure, if you want to get specifically technical about it.
| The overall gist of what the OP was talking about is
| still true. At most, you could say they're slightly
| exaggerating, and should reword to "It's not at all
| unusual for new college grads to make $250k a year."
| lovich wrote:
| I don't think it's overly specific. New grads out of
| college are a mostly unknown value that is measured using
| proxies like GPA and pedigree. After 2 years of
| employment you've shown what value you can bring or have
| been removed from the employer.
| digisign wrote:
| Inflation and housing scarcity are real. This story is
| probably 3-10 years old.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| The is especially prevalent on Wall St where the major banks
| have VPs car Ming out of their ears. They're the equivalent
| of senior managers elsewhere.
| srvmshr wrote:
| At my current startup, I recommended everyone to hold the
| title of Research Engineer. I was to be recruited as a
| Software architect / Principal tech lead, but I chose to keep
| this title too & suggested the same to my peer & immediate
| junior. Something good that I learned from Facebook
| Engineering flat organization structure.
|
| Keeping the hierarchy flatter helped more honest
| communication. There were lesser inhibitions to talk &
| express opinion. In any disagreement, experience seniority
| played the subtle hand to navigate discussion.
|
| Compensation matters, title shouldn't.
| austincheney wrote:
| Looking at many job posts _senior_ means capable of using React
| and capable of talking about, but not necessarily using,
| TypeScript. When senior sounds like faster junior I really have
| trouble finding what actually differentiates a senior from a
| junior at these organizations.
| draw_down wrote:
| bitwize wrote:
| Oh God, I got two paragraphs in and thought, "This sounds like
| Unbounded Solutions/BrighterBrain/Enhance IT." They called me a
| few times, then I looked them up and discovered their business
| model, and everything in me said "avoid, avoid, avoid". Knowing
| there's another firm doing this, and hearing the sordid details,
| has me feeling blackpilled at the state of the industry.
| g051051 wrote:
| The apartment mentioned in the article stirred up some memories.
|
| Back in the early 90's, I worked for a company that had a long
| term contract for software development and support in another
| city. The team that worked on that project would rotate up and
| stay in an apartment that the company maintained there. While I
| never worked on the project and never saw the apartment, I heard
| many tales about it, which indicated that it was terrible. Too
| small, non-functioning amenities, just an utter dive. The team
| that worked there would just grouse about it to other devs, but
| never said anything to management, because they assumed they were
| just being cheap.
|
| Well, someone finally mentioned it (probably during an exit
| interview) and management was shocked. They had been paying top
| dollar for what they thought was a luxury apartment, and instead
| were getting ripped off. I think they wound up getting a
| different, better apartment for the devs.
| trhway wrote:
| >management was shocked
|
| after 30+ years in the industry whenever i read things like
| this the Casablanca always comes first to mind.
| xwdv wrote:
| This reads like a human trafficking story, picking up cheap fresh
| grads and exploiting them to work way below market wages and
| making sure they can't leave.
| a4isms wrote:
| Savour with a side of H-1B visa:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Staff is the new senior
|
| Senior is the new "mid level" dev
|
| Dev is the new "junior" dev
|
| Especially in times when managers want to retain their best, they
| often can't get HR to budge on salaries. So they promote them to
| get them into a competitive salary range.
| dumbfounder wrote:
| s/Staff/Lead/
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It depends on the company. In my company (100,000 employees,
| but in IT less than 3,000) "senior" can be a college student,
| even "senior manager" can be a 22 year old college student,
| while "director" is the lowest level manager (with people
| reporting). They changed the titles recently saying "we have to
| align to the market", but it was to compensate the low salaries
| with high, meaningless titles.
|
| For example a colleague was hired as an electrical engineer in
| a manufacturing plant in Germany. Because she did not speak
| German well enough (she is an immigrant), they gave her the
| position of plant IT manager with "senior manager" title. She
| is not even an IT person, just graduated college in EE, she
| does not know to write a line a code if her life depends on it.
| But hey, she is a senior! that is the point of the article.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| There are also companies that post fake jobs and then use the
| good resumes with minor tweaks to help market their own
| employees. It's so dodgy, wish there was a way to improve
| transparency.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| This is actually really shocking to me, I had no idea.
| paxys wrote:
| I know a few people who have gone this route and now have very
| successful careers. Getting a job as a new grad is hard as it is,
| and if you are on a visa you barely have a month or two before
| you must obtain sponsorship or pack up and leave the country.
| "Consultancies" like this one give you a buffer, beef up your
| resume with fake experience and give you interview training, with
| the end goal of getting you a permanent tech job and getting a
| cut of your salary for the first N months.
|
| Honestly, I don't even fault them for it. The author seemed a bit
| naive about the situation he was getting into, and he left, which
| is fair. Ultimately this whole thing is just a symptom of a
| broken immigration and hiring system. If an embellished resume
| can fool an entire big tech interview panel and the candidate
| actually does good work for them moving forward, who should take
| the blame for it?
| tgflynn wrote:
| While I'm not at all surprised that foreign students could
| easily get sucked into this kind of scheme what really
| surprises me is that an American CS grad would not have much
| better options, especially with all the hype about "lack of
| workers".
| paxys wrote:
| I know at least a handful of people who graduated out of my
| CS program at a very reputed university but probably couldn't
| do fizzbuzz. And even otherwise, in recent years companies
| have massively cut down on new grad hiring because they don't
| want to spend time and money training them. Much easier to
| poach an experienced engineer from a competitor instead.
| tgflynn wrote:
| That strikes me as rather unlikely. Surely to pass at least
| some courses some not completely trivial amount of coding
| was required. Maybe the issue is the context in which the
| "Fibuzz" test is given is so different from that of class
| work or real work that the candidate just isn't used to
| operating under those conditions. I can especially see that
| if you're expected to recite every line of code perfectly
| over the phone or write them out on a whiteboard in front
| of a bunch of people.
| simmanian wrote:
| I intend to write a personal take on this topic as well. I am
| not a CS grad, but I definitely know CS grads who struggled
| to find work after college. One went to a bootcamp and still
| couldn't find a job. In my view, we tend to focus on the
| people that make it easily than those who struggle to get
| close.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| One real moral of this story may be that the immigration system
| is so broken, and it has cascading consequences. Why not let
| people on student visas stay longer while job-searching?
| ijustwanttovote wrote:
| I know people who got hired as Staff Engineers fresh from coding
| bootcamp.
| exdsq wrote:
| I got senior last summer after 7 and a half years... each to
| their own I guess! But even now I question the title so no idea
| how people can do it with 0 years experience and a little bit
| of JS/React knowledge
| sangnoir wrote:
| This article sounds like uninformed speculation. Every semi-
| serious will do (or outsource) candidate background checks to
| verify identity and employment history. It may be possible to
| fake histories to _customers_ at body shops /WITCH because the
| employer is in on it, everywhere else, the lies will be short
| lived.
| vmception wrote:
| End justifies the means, to me this doesn't cross the line,
| except for the potentially visa fraud part and the feeder org
| could just be upfront about what they're doing.
|
| For the us citizens into something like that it doesn't matter to
| me.
|
| Once you get in the organization and good salary figure it out,
| it's the big tech that has an inefficiency screening process that
| isn't good for anyone. They should be having their own bootcamps
| imo, train your potential employees.
|
| Given what software engineer actually do at all levels, there is
| no reason to waste your life and time on a ladder unless you
| personally want to feel more comfortable in the role
| tdeck wrote:
| As soon as I saw the word "consulting" it was all I needed to
| know. These companies want to bill someone out to the client as a
| senior engineer while paying them new grad wages. That's all
| there is to it. If you've ever worked with consultants this won't
| be a surprise.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I swear this story was already posted earlier in the week with
| another popular post. I can't find it though.
| dave_sid wrote:
| Grad schemes are generally the way any graduates get introduced
| to a company in any career.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Side note: there are (legitimate) training services that teach
| coding and interviewimg skills that have a setup where they try
| to get you a job (without fudging your CV). If you don't get a
| job you pay very little, but if you get a (good) job you pay
| similar to 10% or your salary for a few years. A pretty smart and
| entrepreneurial arrangement in my opinion. (Unfortunate I don't
| remember the name or further details, I had read this in the
| newspaper in Mumbai perhaps 4 years ago.)
| jcun4128 wrote:
| Where I was at senior was the base title. Then there were numbers
| after the title and team lead after.
|
| At the time I would not have marketed myself as a senior but
| that's what they paid me as/my title and I kept the job for
| almost two and a half years so I guess I'm senior?
|
| I avoid using the word engineer though as I don't have a degree.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > I accepted a job offer ... They promised they would
|
| When an employer you don't know promises something other than in
| writing, ask them to put it in writing. If they don't, you might
| still take the offer, but it would be an offer _without_ said
| promise.
| druadh wrote:
| Not senior, but junior...
|
| I recently started Web Development (well, it's been almost a year
| now). I am technically in a 'Junior' position, but I've read
| articles stating that it's only detrimental to list yourself as a
| Junior.
|
| What are your thoughts? Am I still a Junior after a year? Should
| I keep the "Junior" label on my resume/linkedin if I'm still a
| Junior?
| wccrawford wrote:
| My standard advice is to use a job title that fits your
| ability. If you don't, it's going to be a bad fit.
|
| That said, if you're looking for a new job and are still a
| junior, you're probably switching far too quickly.
|
| My plan was to switch at 3 years experience, at which point I'd
| drop the junior title for sure. I ended up staying longer
| (because they increased my pay very well the first 3 years, and
| then started screwing me over) and my second job was "lead
| developer", which I still have 11 years later. I'm sure I could
| get more money if I switched, but I like my job and my company
| and my coworkers, so it's been hard to find anything I want
| more, no matter the money.
|
| In short, no, if you switch jobs, you shouldn't call yourself a
| junior, one way or another.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > That said, if you're looking for a new job and are still a
| junior, you're probably switching far too quickly.
|
| couldn't disagree more. people should change jobs every week
| if they're able to. why stay at company A making X, if
| company B is willing to hire you now, for 1.5-3x? if you stay
| at a company for an arbitrarily long period of time, you're
| just throwing away tons of money
| delecti wrote:
| > why stay at company A
|
| It obviously isn't a universal preference, but I get most
| of my job satisfaction from having deep familiarity with
| the ecosystem I work with. I don't get that level of
| familiarity before a year or two, and it only gets stronger
| from there. I'm about to hit 4 years at my current job and
| my job satisfaction has never been higher. I might be able
| to make more money by hopping to a FAANG, but I would
| surely take a hit to my happiness.
| ratorx wrote:
| From a pure immediate money perspective, sure changing
| immediately to a higher paying job makes sense.
|
| However, generally each new job comes with a ramp up time
| before you become useful and then a further ramp up before
| you can develop new skills (in my limited experience).
|
| I don't think I could properly progress in my career by
| building higher level skills if I had to learn new
| organisational practices and technical skills every few
| months. And arguably, IMO proper progress is essential to
| securing significantly higher salaries in the future (but
| I'm not sure how the total money aspect works out though).
| evanmoran wrote:
| Junior is fine for a year or two. Lots of people start that way
| so if your career really is just starting it's ok to be junior,
| intern, or associate to get in the door. Then try to get a
| title change / promotion when you can by asking what their
| expectations are. Usually it's pretty fast at that level so it
| should easy for them to speak to.
| megapolitics wrote:
| A previous employer of mine gave all devs the title of
| "Technical Specialist" as opposed to some variation of
| "Software Developer." They also had a progression system where
| "Junior" was not actually the lowest rung, but the second-
| lowest after "Graduate". Needless to say I just put "Software
| Developer" on my CV without a second thought.
|
| The only time I would recommend putting the "Junior" title on
| your CV/Linkedin is if you get a promotion which could be
| perceived as faster-than-average upward progression.
| Leherenn wrote:
| I would say drop it. Personally, I see "junior" positions as a
| way for companies to advertise they're willing to hire people
| with little to no professional experience (e.g. new grads).
| Once hired, a "junior" probably has the same responsibilities
| as a "normal"/non-senior developer, just less is expected of
| you, so there's little reason to differentiate. You just have a
| bit more to learn.
| [deleted]
| spatley wrote:
| I would avoid the junior label, I see most backgrounds listed
| as `web developer` and then promoted to `senior web developer`
| Fiahil wrote:
| A first job is always a "Junior" one, whether the title says it
| or not.
|
| In my current company, you're in a junior position until five
| years of experience or two years of tenure. So, of course
| you're still a "junior" after a single year.
|
| Big titles and fast promotions are potential red flags, avoid
| inflating your current position. It's like saying "I'm super
| strong with a perfect GPA" in a interview, well lol, you're
| going to get wrecked.
| uncomputation wrote:
| This is another reason that, while I understand people's
| complaints, I still believe CS interviews should include
| algorithmic and whiteboard tests. I know they may seem "outdated"
| or "irrelevant" to some, and yes, it is very unlikely that you
| will need to implement Dijkstra's algorithm by hand without any
| reference, but it is more that it shows a general competence in
| computing which will transfer to other, more relevant areas.
| Also, another key insight to whiteboarding is whether you can
| recognize the fundamental nature of the problem as an instance of
| another problem, which is essential to CS since the entire field
| is about solving problems efficiently.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| >since the entire field is about solving problems efficiently.
|
| The entire theoretical CS field yes. In the practical field of
| CS engineering, this is only a subset of the useful competences
| and a small one at that _. Communication, working as part of
| team, reliability, ability to look up and learn things you don
| 't currently know, caring about the state of the code you
| write, mentoring others, being able/willing to push for things
| you believe can be done better (not just in terms of algorithm,
| but processes affecting the entire business) etc. are all as
| important.
|
| I would much rather hire someone that sucks in algos/data
| structure, but is fairly good on all those other points than
| the opposite.
|
| So yes, whiteboarding can be useful to assess how a candidate
| is doing on one of the specific skills that are useful for a CS
| engineer, but if 50% to 90% of your hiring decision is based on
| that, just like it is in FANGs today, you have an inadequate
| hiring process IMHO.
|
| _ For the average SDE job. If your job is to implement and
| optimize a compiler, then sure it's extremely important.
| oriolid wrote:
| I used to have a co-worker exactly like you describe. He was
| great for consulting business: the clients liked him him so
| much that they hired two additional consultants. One to fix
| everything that he broke and another to do the job he was
| supposed to do and took credit for.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Statistics tell me two things:
|
| * A sample of one is not relevant
|
| * You also used to have many other coworkers that weren't
| very good at whiteboarding, since even very good
| engineering teams in FANGS have many people like that, and
| that didn't have that problem since you specifically said
| you had one occurence of that.
|
| So hear me out: maybe there isn't a single predictor that
| you can just automatically throw at interviewees, like a
| hard leet code problem, and hope that it will magically
| filter out the very best engineers for you to pick from.
| Maybe you should have an interview process that test the
| different areas I mentioned proportionally to what the
| actual job you are recruiting for requires.
| oriolid wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me, but I can
| tell you that this ex-coworker would have been more
| convincing.
| notapenny wrote:
| Knowing Dijkstra's algorithm off the top of your hand doesn't
| show a general competence in computing. It shows that you've
| memorised Dijkstra's algorithm and can get through leetcode
| "problems". Does the person you're hiring need this knowledge
| to do their daily job? If not, then you shouldn't be wasting
| your time questioning them about it.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Funnily enough in my career, whenever I took a job after an
| algorithm and whiteboard test, I would find myself doing the
| most basic CRUD applications whereas when I interviewed in a
| more humane way, by talking and exploring the knowledge set I
| bring to the table, I ended up working with cool algorithms in
| some highly technical areas.
| babyshake wrote:
| You mean you're not constantly balancing binary trees and
| implementing your own bubble sort algorithms? I figured from
| interviews that this is 95% of what engineers at SaaS
| companies are doing.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If I hire you, I'm going to be a lot more interested if you
| know how to get a backtrace for every thread in a process than
| if you can whiteboard Dijkstra's algorithm. I'm going to be a
| lot more interested if you know anything the issues with
| denormals and use of -ffast-math than any of your familiarity
| with sorting algorithms (which will no doubt exceed mine). I'm
| going to be a lot more interested in whether you understand how
| to iterate over a utf8 string than your understanding of how to
| construct an AST and use it.
|
| I worked in a (good) CS department for 4.5 years. They did not
| teach programming skills to anyone. Most (not all, but most) of
| the jobs you might be hired to do require far more from the
| programming skills area than the "computer science" area.
| People coming out of that program (even at the PhD level) often
| didn't not even understand how to use a debugger!
| hnfong wrote:
| Agree on what you said. Whiteboard tests on textbook algorithms
| is a really efficient *and* lazy way of objectively testing a
| candidate's abilities. The nature of the questions will prevent
| the interviewer from mistakenly getting impressed by hyperbole.
|
| That said, I do understand why people complain about algorithm
| questions -- it's undeniably a good filter if you have a large
| pool of candidates (and a reasonable predictor of ability), but
| it's mostly irrelevant to most software jobs today since you
| can usually import textbook algorithms as OSS modules.
|
| The "correct" but harder way to interview is to tailor the
| interview questions to your actual requirements. This is much
| more involved and it requires the interviewers to divert
| attention from whatever they're working on just to set the
| problems. Setting a problem that's at the right difficulty
| level and evaluates the right set of skills precisely tailored
| to the team's needs is _hard_. (I don 't think most typical
| software engineers have the chops to do this, even experienced
| senior ones.)
|
| So it's kinda understandable that everyone just randomly picks
| something from leetcode and use that instead. It's probably not
| so much a failure of the software industry on the recruiting
| side, but more of a symptom of how we have failed to come up
| with skills, tricks, standards and practices that everyone
| actually agrees on. (eg. it's mostly fruitless to determine
| whether a candidate is hire-worthy with a question like "would
| you use Javascript to implement a backend system?") At least
| the algorithm questions are objectively agreed to be true (even
| if possibly irrelevant) by everyone and is actually part of
| most CS cirricula...
| digisign wrote:
| > shows a general competence in computing
|
| It shows you've solved a similar problem recently and have
| gonads of steel, with a bit of overlap of how good an employee
| you'll be.
|
| A short test contract after a bit of legwork is far more
| revealing imho.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It really depends on what kind of developer you're looking for.
| In the web applications I've worked on, knowledge of
| application architecture and experience with linux trumps
| anything I learned in a college course.
|
| Based on my experience, theory problems on white boards is
| about as useful as dropping a CUPs automation problem on
| unsuspecting interviewees.
|
| Build me a CUPs driver that drops pdf into in folder in 15
| minutes or less. Without documentation.
|
| _Bonus points if you can ask if you can skip that bullshit and
| install and configure an existing a package._
|
| Note: I'm a senior developer with at least a decade of
| experience. I don't just slap two libraries together. If you
| want to have fun, dig into how macOS sandboxes CUPs. My bash
| scripts were _not_ happy.
| quesera wrote:
| I'm confused by your juxtaposition of declared familiarity to
| nonstandard capitalization of CUPS.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Because it's been two months since I've worked with it and
| I'm absolutely terrible at spelling.
|
| I capitalized it three different ways as I wrote it and
| picked the one that looked correct. :)
| lnenad wrote:
| I'm a firm believer that you should include them, if they are
| part of the job. If not, especially if they're completely
| unrelated, then they're just a reason somebody is going to have
| a harder time passing your interview. If you want that, that's
| your prerogative, but generally IMHO you should focus on
| finding owners, people who are going to give it their best to
| provide quality and love their code/contribution. Whether they
| know how to rock from day one, or they're going to learn it on
| the job.
|
| It's not an easy thing to look for, I know, but it's what we
| should be striving towards IMHO and what I'm focusing on. So
| far it has had great results, with a few misses, but a better
| success rate than just handing out technical stuff.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| The place I used to work at hired fresh grads into senior
| positions exclusively to make the job more attractive. Sr.
| Engineering (position) had a much wider salary band, so it was
| apparently easier to hire fresh grads with a Masters degree into
| those positions, on the lower end of the band, and keep them
| there for 2-3 years before actually handing out any raises.
|
| We also had very cheap company housing, and a lot of other perks.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Hiring consultants has really gone into the toilet. Senior Data
| Engineers who don't know what upsert is. Senior Developers who
| can't answer simple questions about a stack they have "3 years
| experience" in. Senior AWS Architects who stumble on simple
| architecture questions and insist on switching an 80K qps stack
| to API Gateway.
|
| I presume because the real seniors these consulting firms
| depended on are working for FANNG/MAMMA?
|
| Of course all of these firms want 2 weeks of "exploration" up
| front...
| rmk wrote:
| Looks like H-1B abusers have touched a new nadir of chicanery and
| skullduggery. They prey on people who are not able to get
| interviews or jobs on their own, but have compelling reasons,
| such as crushing debt incurred to study in the U.S., to even
| consider debasing themselves in this way. There have been a
| couple of enforcement actions by the DoJ in Jersey and a few
| other places, but they have barely touched the tip of the
| iceberg.
|
| Once a company sponsors an employee for a Green Card application,
| it has every incentive in the world to exploit and mistreat the
| employee. And many companies routinely act on the incentives.
|
| It's unfortunate that a lot of the mass focus is on illegal
| immigrants, who have less of a legal standing and moral case than
| those who have followed the laws of their host country to the
| letter, but still find themselves treated like dirt. This is one
| of the unfortunate byproducts of electoral politics and
| representative democracy: sometimes, there are groups that are
| unlikely to matter electorally given their numbers, and their
| concerns are always given short shrift no matter how legitimate.
|
| Of course, the H-1B system itself has done enormous damage to the
| industry by enabling companies such as IBM to mass fire entire
| cohorts of older people. As usual, efforts at reform have been
| fitful, uneven, and have been subject to the vagaries of the
| political winds.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| I feel like these titles are a big reason we don't disclose our
| salaries in the US (beyond other cultural issues) - the title is
| our flex. It's always seemed to me that they are a bit
| meaningless though. I'm a super senior engineer at my current
| company because I've been here for a lifetime. I have a lot of
| skills that port from company to company, but to my current
| company, I'm even more valuable because I know how to keep this
| train moving and how to get the tracks switched if need be. I
| have no doubt I'd need time to become that useful as an engineer
| at another company. My point is, titles are to some extent, onjly
| pertinent to your current setting.
| kayson wrote:
| I feel like I read this exact story on HN a few months ago...
| cdiamand wrote:
| Couple of days ago, even:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30150343&p=2#30151071
| ziggus wrote:
| I've mentioned this before, but I think the conflation of
| 'developer' and 'software engineer' can really cause confusion
| when hiring. These are different roles that most HR, management
| and even most 'developers' aren't clear on. When you aren't clear
| on what a 'software engineer' actually does, and don't hire based
| on what that role really means but based on some other semi-
| related criteria like 'works well with clients' or 'bills lots of
| hours', you're going to wind up with a lot of confusion.
|
| Here's the IEEE's take on the differences, based on their
| certification programs:
| https://www.computer.org/education/certifications
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