[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wo...
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Ask HN: Having trouble getting senior applicants, wondering what to
do about it
We're a fairly typical run-of-the-mill mid-size enterprise software
vendor trying to hire for fully-remote SWEs in the "DevOps"
software space (Linux, containers, k8s, yadda yadda). We post in
the usual places including Who's Hiring but we haven't even managed
to backfill a retirement from six months ago, and we're junior-
heavy already. Benefits and salary are good (though salary isn't
posted in the ad), and the people are great, though the work
requires a reasonably deep understanding of the underlying
platforms which a lot of people seem to dislike. I'm wondering if
the work being a higher percentage non-code is what's causing us
trouble, if we're just rubbish at hiring in general, or if it's
something else. What's everyone else's experience attracting
applications from senior talent in this market, and what is
everyone doing to increase their attractiveness? Current hiring
process: - Resume screened by in-house recruiter
- 30m call with them - Resume passed up to engineering
- Hour-long call with hiring manager (typically the engineering
manager of the team the candidate would join) - Take-home
technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's choosing
- Presentation of technical assignment to the team - Offer
Author : throw1138
Score : 101 points
Date : 2022-06-20 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Post the compensation upfront and get rid of your 4hr assessment.
| I would not waste 4 hours of billable time on a mere chance at a
| real interview after having already invested 1.5 hours
| interviewing with your company.
|
| Lower the time commitment by 75%, and pay your candidates for
| their time on their ~1 hour take home assignment, or get rid of
| the take home entirely, and you won't have candidates drop out of
| your hiring process.
|
| tldr: 1.5hr phone interview + a 4hr take home afterwards is
| ridiculous, especially if the compensation bands are a mystery.
| Stop expecting candidates to do ~4hr of free work and pay your
| candidates for their time.
| rantallion wrote:
| > Benefits and salary are good (though salary isn't posted in the
| ad)
|
| Even before seeing your hiring process (and I agree with the
| other comments about that), not listing a salary means I've
| already scrolled past your ad.
|
| We're in an employee's market right now, and there are plenty of
| opportunities out there that are transparent about the comp
| package (and have shorter hiring processes).
| walrus01 wrote:
| The only actually _senior_ people who are going to jump through
| the hoops of doing a 4 hour take home technical assessment are
| the ones interested in:
|
| a) you are offering some absurd amount of stock options for
| something they really think will be valuable in the future
|
| b) the net take-home compensation after federal/state income
| taxes will be absurdly high
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Many people said it already but actual good seniors have networks
| they get offers from and won't/don't do homework. I can see
| myself apply to your offer, but with decades of enterprise
| experience, up to date skills and such I cannot see where
| homework fits. That is why, as a senior, I do not apply but get
| asked for things and those jobs don't have homework or tests as
| they are referrals. I would take a look at your concrete offer
| but I do not know the actual offer or company; feel free to mail
| me, I have a lot of highly skilled friends who might be
| interested, minus the homework.
| harshalizee wrote:
| Honestly, take home tests for a Sr. position is an no go for many
| engineers who have settled down. When I was casually looking, I
| had a strict no asymmetric interview process since I've been
| burned by many companies who never respond after an online/take
| home test. I was surprised how many companies just let me skip
| that part and got me into the onsite interviews.
| crackinmalackin wrote:
| That hiring process doesn't sound too bad to me. I know some
| people are iffy on the take home portion though. I'm looking for
| work at the moment, 5+ years as a Frontend web dev. React.js,
| Typescript and lot's of good CSS skills if anyone is in need send
| me a message.
| dancocos wrote:
| "Take-home technical assignment (~4h)"<-- This right here is why
| senior people aren't interested.
|
| I've got 20 plus years of tech, I've been out of college since
| 1997 and you want to give a 4 hour homework assignment. If get
| you want to get a feel for someone's ability but this is more
| easily done by stating a problem during one of the interviews and
| asking the person "How would you approach this?" Listing for how
| they anticipate problems and tradeoffs.
| pnathan wrote:
| would you like a take-home or would you like a whiteboard
| session?
|
| I need to have useful information that a candidate is more than
| a smooth talker.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _would you like a take-home or would you like a whiteboard
| session?_
|
| "Not if you'd like me to work for you, no." -- An actually
| senior developer in this market
| capableweb wrote:
| What do you get from a whiteboard/take home assignment that
| you can't get from a conversation where you grill them about
| their answers?
| pnathan wrote:
| Conversations allow smooth talkers to run a snow job on
| you. Having a work sample test provides a best-in-class
| hiring filter.
| oaiey wrote:
| If the hiring manager cannot distinguish a smooth talker
| for a senior role position, maybe the hiring manager is
| the problem.
|
| There is nothing a work sample can provide what a
| conversation cannot show for a senior role.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Okay so now we're hiring a hiring manager and a
| developer, great.
|
| ...or maybe people in this thread just don't like having
| to prove they know things in an industry where a lot of
| people don't know things.
| jen20 wrote:
| Perhaps on you. I've never encountered someone where a 5
| minute technical discussion told me less than a full day
| of interview would.
| mrelectric wrote:
| I'm a "smooth talker" but boy, do I fuck you over on
| practical project with 3 seniors sitting next to me.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Only if you yourself don't know what you're talking
| about...
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| Same I skip these. Same with interview processes that front-
| load things with an "Online Assessment".
| orblivion wrote:
| I worked somewhere that had a phone screen with very basic
| coding exercise just to weed out people who had no business
| applying, which was well over half. I imagine the online
| assessment is a similar thing.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Yeah, but as a counterpoint: your years of experience are not
| indicative of your skill, just that you can meet some
| arbitrarily low bar for a long time.
|
| The take-home technical assignment is to determine what, if
| anything, you actually learned in your 20+ years in tech.
|
| A depressingly large number of people with that level of
| experience have not learned anything meaningful.
| porcoda wrote:
| Exactly. 25+ years in tech here too. When a company says "we're
| going to give you homework", that is a giant flashing sign that
| basically reads "we assume your resume is a lie, your
| references are lying for you (or we just aren't going to bother
| calling them), so we're going to test you". Hard pass.
|
| Having been on the hiring side of things, I get far more
| information out of a conversation where I can ask for details
| about someone's background and experience.
| carapace wrote:
| This was my first thought as well. "If you want me to do
| homework to prove I'm not incompetent that means your interview
| process is garbage." and it's an automatic pass on that
| company.
|
| My second thought was noticing that OP didn't actually ask for
| feedback from senior talent, the questions are addressed to
| other people hiring, so I figured I'd keep quiet.
|
| But then I couldn't help myself. ;)
| nickdothutton wrote:
| You arent going to like this, but unless you need large numbers
| of people regularly (big growth trajectory) your best bet for
| quality candidates is going to be referrals from existing members
| of staff.
| majormajor wrote:
| Unless there's something I particularly like about a job, or I'm
| super unhappy in my current one, I'm going to pass on a take-home
| assignment.
|
| I can whiteboard, I can tell you about past projects, sure. The
| demand on my time is fixed. I can communicate and discuss it with
| you. We have a conversation.
|
| Take-home is too opaque and too much of a potential time demand.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| I do not work in software, so I find how hiring works in it
| really odd. The amount of weight put on the interview compared to
| accreditation is unusual, and people in this thread consider that
| normal. There's no certification or examination for minimum
| competency. Looking online, there were attempts at making one,
| but they failed. How did it come to be this way?
| bcbrown wrote:
| Everything about software and software employment is kinda odd.
| The most relevant college degree is fairly irrelevant to the
| actual experience and skills necessary to succeed in industry.
| The field is the result of a merger between rarified theory
| (computation as applied mathematics) and hands-on practice
| (organizing sand to conduct electricity in useful ways).
| There's a high proportion of practitioners without any formal
| training. The industry has existed for about a half-century,
| and now more than half of the top ten companies by market cap
| are software companies.
| corrral wrote:
| I suspect the very horrible interviews at top-comp places exist
| in no small part to make it painful to switch between them, to
| reduce upward pressure on wages. I think it's version 2.0 of
| the earlier wage-fixing scheme they got busted for. That's why
| even a rigorous standardized examination isn't acceptable as a
| replacement for their painful interviews, even though spending
| all that time on whiteboard quiz interviews is expensive--the
| pain is much of the point.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| That makes sense, thanks. Only way an examination could come
| about would be with their collaboration.
| aristofun wrote:
| Care to share something specific to get specific feedback?
|
| What's the point asking generic questions, i just don't get it.
| Whatever the answers -- chances they are helpful for you is near
| zero.
| lbrito wrote:
| I don't get the hate on take homes. Also what's with the
| downvotes? At least you could help me see your point of view by
| explaining.
|
| If anything they are much more time efficient than the
| alternative - grinding dozens of hours of leetcode in preparation
| of live coding challenges. In my experience that is pretty much
| the sole alternative.
|
| There usually is a generous time frame for take homes of at least
| a couple of weeks. This is so much better and more flexible than
| coding challenges - not to mention coding rounds usually take
| several hours for the multiple rounds. Basically there's no time
| disadvantage at all for take homes.
|
| Also speaking as a recent dad, so I get the time constraints.
| jen20 wrote:
| The downvotes are likely because of the false dichotomy you
| present.
| lbrito wrote:
| Like I said,
|
| >In my experience that [code challenges] is pretty much the
| sole alternative.
|
| I would _love_ more options but I can only speak based on my
| own experiences. I 've gone through many interviews and only
| once have any of them escaped this "false" dichotomy. To me,
| and I suppose many others, it is not false.
| k2052 wrote:
| This is a tip for everyone struggling to find someone to hire;
| look in a different pool of candidates and be willing to
| accommodate them. For example, you can find a lot of very skilled
| developers that are disabled.
|
| I know a lot of people that have been coding professionally for
| 10+ years, have popularish open source projects, been lead devs
| at startups etc; yet feel stuck in their current jobs or even
| struggle to get hired. They would instantly job jump to something
| better or would love to switch from contract work to something
| with good health insurance/benefits. You just have to be a
| company willing to accommodate them. And accommodating their
| needs requires far less investment than paying FAANG level
| salaries to attract the same Sr engineers everyone else is
| competing for.
|
| You can find engineers.
| randrews wrote:
| How exactly do you do that? I work for a company also
| struggling to find good senior developers and since the team is
| 100% remote, it's not like we'd have any idea if they were
| disabled or not...
| BadCookie wrote:
| Some ideas ...
|
| - Do not put requirements into the job description if they
| aren't true requirements. For example, "ability to lift 25
| pounds" is one that I see a lot, along with various other
| physical abilities that I don't think devs working from home
| actually need regularly.
|
| - Offer extra paid (or unpaid!) time off, a 4-day work week,
| or other types of schedule flexibility.
|
| - Minimize the required travel or indicate flexibility in
| this area for disabled applicants. (In-person meetups and
| adventures sound fun and totally reasonable for most able-
| bodied people who can travel alone, but for a wheelchair user
| who needs a personal care aide, your quarterly off-site to go
| skiing at Tahoe is, well, not a great fit.)
|
| I'm answering mainly from the perspective of a physically
| disabled person with mobility issues. I'm sure people with
| other sorts of disabilities would come up with a very
| different list.
| yurishimo wrote:
| First, I would post a detailed list of your benefits package.
| This package should include 100% fully paid for health
| insurance that requires zero additional money from the
| employee except for perhaps prescription co-pays (not to
| exceed $20/ea or something).
|
| You should also have a generous time off package and
| generous/unlimited sick days allowance. In Europe, this is
| already the norm. If I'm sick for 2 weeks in bed, I still
| would get paid. Obviously I need a doctor's note after a 2 or
| 3 days, but that shouldn't be an issue if they really are
| that ill.
|
| Finally, really take a hard look at your expectations for
| when work will be completed. If you have a team of 10 devs
| and 2 of them really only work on average 10 months a year
| due to their disability, can you justify that to management
| and still meet your deadlines? Preferably, you work in a
| field where the deadlines are all made up and you can build
| in generous buffers.
|
| This is true in industries like gamedev already. The game is
| sometimes done months in advance of the launch (or should be,
| ideally) and then marketing takes over while the team
| transitions to writing DLC or working on the next project.
|
| It's laudable that you'd want to take on hiring people with
| disabilities but you must be realistic with what you are
| getting yourself into, especially if those disabilities are
| chronic in nature and require frequent visits to a doctor.
|
| In return for providing all of these benefits, you will gain
| some of the most loyal, hardworking, and compassionate team
| members and all around great human beings. I have friends
| with such disabilities and it's not a secret who the good
| companies are to work for. By providing excellent benefits
| like these, you'll also attract a lot of other great talent
| and perhaps make new business partnerships because of the
| network influence of your engineering team. It's well worth
| it, in my opinion.
| alx__ wrote:
| I would offer to compensate for the 4h assignment. That's a huge
| time commitment and basically means a 1/2 day on the weekend or
| evening to complete. They'll have lots of options if they're good
| and will drop annoying assessments like this if they don't feel
| it's worth the time.
| kache_ wrote:
| more $, simple as
| mattnewton wrote:
| I'm a staff engineer @ a big co, and my guess is the assignment
| is filtering out senior people with day jobs already. I hate take
| home assignments since they aren't fairly timeboxed and offer no
| opportunity for me to ask questions or get info about the
| company.
|
| There is nothing realistically preventing other applicants from
| spending 12+ hrs on it over the weekend or whatever, and so I
| feel pressure to also "cheat" on the time box. Not to mention
| this is competing for weekend or family time. Timed interviews,
| even if they take all day are a much easier pill for me to
| swallow, I just burn a vacation day.
|
| I also get something out of the much-maligned leetcode+behavioral
| style of interview- usually 5-10 minutes depending on how long it
| took me to solve the question to ask them about their role,
| tenure and pulse on the company. These quick chats with the
| potential team members are incredibly valuable and missing out on
| them is an understated cost to take-home assignments.
|
| I've only done take home assignments as a junior eng for startups
| that sounded really cool and wouldn't do it any other way, (and I
| never actually ended up working for any of them afterwards making
| the roi kinda bad).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Is the comp enough to make on call tolerable? If one can make
| $150k-$250k without being on call, why would they take a DevOps
| position as a SWE?
| throw1138 wrote:
| There is no on-call. Like I say, it's not a DevOps position,
| but an SWE position requiring more significant knowledge (not
| administration) of the underlying platform than is typical.
| [deleted]
| username314159 wrote:
| I'll just add on the technical assignment: it can be very
| different, and in many cases a 4-hour one is unlikely to be
| interesting. I do like interviews and test tasks, but if it's
| just another CRUD app, I won't be able to start: it's painfully
| boring.
|
| Add that need to present the already boring result, and you need
| something really amazing to make it worth the time. I doubt it
| is.
| taesu wrote:
| 4 hours? try reducing that to an hour.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I am going to add one thing that I haven't heard here. You
| probably need to raise the cash in your offer by a lot. Most mid-
| size companies think that they can get away with offering equity
| at a ridiculous valuation and attract people who aren't true
| believers. Most people aren't true believers in miscellaneous
| DevOps that doesn't involve a lot of code.
|
| I have spoken to a few series-C and D companies that wanted to
| give me $X00,000 worth of stock at their series C valuation. I
| informed them that I needed $X,000,000 of common stock (at that
| valuation) to match the expected value of my gig at the time, or
| I would take $X00,000 of preferred stock (whatever they gave
| their series C investors). They thought that was crazy. If you
| pretend that the people you are trying to hire don't understand
| the economics of your stock price, you are only doing yourself a
| disservice.
| gleenn wrote:
| To continue that very last sentence, you are doing yourself a
| disservice, or like a lot of startups I think people just
| legitamately don't know how to value stocks and I think there
| is definitely a predatory nature to that. Perhaps I'm
| reflecting on my own experience too much, but at my first
| startup I never asked the simple question "Assuming this
| company IPOs or gets bought and exits, what is the most this
| stock would reasonably be worth?". Investors and company
| leaders know what success looks like, and you multiple that
| company success by the percentage of stock you'd have when
| acquired and that's the actual payout you should expect _if
| successful_. Now go ahead and multiple by probability of
| success, and you have what you should expect. I was so proud of
| myself for negotiating for once, getting both a higher salary
| and higher amount of stock, but in the end, the company sold in
| a decent exit, and I pocketed a whopping extra $20K. A rounding
| error in salary given the risk and below-market salary. I
| definitely learned the hard way.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| PSA: For those who don't fully understand the second paragraph
| above, be sure to google 'liquidation preference' before you're
| next evaluating an offer that includes equity or options in a
| private company.
| peter422 wrote:
| But also know that if liquidation preferences are coming into
| play for the company's exit, it's almost certainly a giant
| failure and any late joining employees aren't getting
| anything significant.
|
| If the startup is not growing extremely fast, the stock will
| likely not be worth very much regardless of how "clean" the
| terms are on the preferred stock.
|
| If you expect stock to be a big part of your compensation
| then leave after 2 years of the company's growth is not
| sustained and rapid.
| tfehring wrote:
| Even without getting into the magnitude of the difference, and
| just talking about the direction, I think a lot of folks at
| private startups expect external candidates to value $1 of
| their stock (based on their last 409a) more than $1 of stock in
| a public company. I don't have a strong opinion on how big the
| liquidity premium for equity in a private tech startup should
| be, but I feel pretty strongly that it shouldn't be negative.
| lumost wrote:
| Honestly, I think most startups are betting that employees
| don't know any better. This was true up to maybe 5 years ago,
| but sites like levels.fyi have really made this trade off
| clear to potential employees. Half the time when I talk to a
| potential hiring manager at a private company, they really
| don't know what the equity is worth or how it's structured.
|
| I'd argue that an effective 20-30% discount on 409A for
| employees in series C+ is about right. On a successful, but
| expected, exit - this gives the employee some premium
| compared to working at a public tech company in exchange for
| deferred compensation and liquidity risk.
| bspear wrote:
| Yes, valuations have gone through the roof, but the equity
| grants have not kept pace. This is a huge disservice to
| candidates. Got especially bad in 2021. Really important for
| people to research startup pay before signing:
| https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/
|
| To the OP: if you believe your comp bands are competitive, why
| not share in the posting itself?
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > To the OP: if you believe your comp bands are competitive,
| why not share in the posting itself?
|
| Leaving that out makes it clear that the post was made in
| good faith. If I thought the submission was just a job ad in
| disguise, I might have flagged it.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I'm at a FAANG and our team has the same problem. Hiring is tight
| right now. Pretty sure we pay more than you.
|
| Benefits and salary are "good"? Example from another situation: I
| own my house not because I made a "good" offer. Plenty of people
| made a "good" offer. I made the _best_ offer.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| > - Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at
| candidate's choosing > - Presentation of technical assignment to
| the team
|
| Are these two jokes? What makes you think you're worth somebody
| wasting their time with such stuff? How about you actually
| interview them properly 1:1 and stop wasting the candidates time?
| oaiey wrote:
| This! The utterly lack of respect is disgusting. The company is
| in need! What if the candidate asks the company to provide an 8
| hours presentations about their processes, people, events,
| dancing capabilities is the CEO?
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Maybe pay significantly above your competition and loudly
| communicate that you do?
|
| When does the mental detachement happens where people reaponsible
| for hiring stop understanding this? Why the headscratching? It's
| dead simple. Just make offers people can't refuse.
| hunglee2 wrote:
| we need to have better diagnostics here
|
| - what is your candidate acquisition strategy?
|
| - what is your assessment strategy?
|
| - what are the conversion ratio's in the assessment stages?
|
| - what do the candidates themselves say if / when they say no?
|
| I don't mean my comment as admonishment, so if you can reply with
| above, I will try to help
| stack_framer wrote:
| > Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's
| choosing
|
| This is why I wouldn't continue interviewing with you, but
| perhaps not for the reasons you think.
|
| Despite my 15 years of experience as a software developer, your
| test will likely have some edge-case question that I won't get
| right. I'm terrible at timed tests, but I'm not a terrible
| software developer. Why should I spend 4 hours of my weekend
| failing to prove myself to you? I'd so much rather spend an hour
| or two having a detailed, technical conversation with you--and I
| think you would too. You can glean a lot from a conversation
| (it's easy to copy/paste code from Stack Overflow, but it's not
| easy to fake it through a lengthy, technical discussion)!
| asfarley wrote:
| No salary listed, hard pass right there.
| corrral wrote:
| If I even bother with an inquiry for a no-salary listing, it's
| going to be to ask what the comp is like. I made the mistake of
| doing an entire interview without knowing in advance that we
| had expectations in the same ballpark, _one_ time. Never again.
| Waste of everyone 's time.
|
| I'm getting that way with interviews, too. Agenda and some
| sense of the topics, scope, and difficulty level of any "quiz"
| shit you're doing, provided to me early in the process, or
| GTFO. You don't need to keep it all secret for it to work.
| FAANG practically publishes study guides. Jim Bob's 3rd-rate
| B2B SaaS isn't going to go down in flames because they
| published too much info about their interview process.
| Meanwhile, making it a pop-quiz with a scope of _literally
| anything_ and with everything about it hush-hush is a bunch of
| pointless stress I don 't need in my life.
| zackmorris wrote:
| I'd recommend hiring an agency for dev ops work instead. That
| level of responsibility (and probably having to be on call) could
| be too much for one person, and also a sign of missing
| infrastructure around E2E testing, CI/CD, backups and monitoring.
|
| It seems like senior professionals reach a career crossroads
| where the opportunity cost becomes too high at any price. I've
| been thinking about getting out of software engineering for
| several years now for that reason. And because I'm tired of
| reinventing the wheel in proprietary ways, only to see the code
| get thrown away because most internet businesses fail early on.
|
| In other words, this might be a problem with the industry, not
| your hiring process. Perhaps a #nocode or managed solution could
| be an alternative?
| mattbee wrote:
| Nobody can help unless you show us your actual ads, your company
| site etc. There could me a million little signals that are
| putting people off.
|
| You've also not said what your pipeline looks like - is there
| nobody coming in at the top? Or are the "great people" not as
| great as you think? Or the "really deep knowledge of the
| platform" is in fact less reasonable or badly paid than you
| think?
|
| If you're stuck, find a good recruiter and pay them properly.
| They can end-run around whatever the problem is, at least
| temporarily and give you informed, discreet feedback on how to
| fix it.
| throw1138 wrote:
| This is a throwaway because I'm just an engineer on the team
| wondering if there's something obvious we're doing wrong, and I
| don't imagine this would be considered desirable attention by
| management.
|
| Would posting a job ad on AskHN requesting feedback be
| acceptable? I ask because I'd have expected to see it a bunch
| if it were. @dang would be very appreciative of your word one
| way or another. Thanks mattbee.
| [deleted]
| mattbee wrote:
| Ohhhh OK.
|
| I'd say _don 't_ post your actual ad because we will find you
| and give you more help than you wanted ;) Like maybe your
| team page is all white men, or your defence contracts are
| very prominent, or your CEO is a public dong.
|
| It's a bit of a yellow flag that you don't feel you can go to
| your managers with this to help fix a team you're obviously
| invested in? But here's two tips that you might be able to
| implement or influence by yourself:
|
| 1) Treat incoming candidates like GOLD. Respond to them
| within hours, same day where at all possible. Make decisions
| really fast, schedule interviews within 1-2 days, drop other
| things to make that happen. Have future managers & engineers
| communicate directly, lightly backed up by HR if you have
| that function (and you trust them). Keep. It. Moving. Make it
| clear their time is more valuable than yours.
|
| 2) Document the whole interview process up-front, put it
| prominently on your ads, specify the damned salary, and stick
| to your word the whole way.
|
| If you execute on both of these points, the FAANGs will not
| be able to come close in a really critical part of the
| process. They will be unclear about what happens next, who
| you're meeting, how important it is, maybe it will be a week,
| maybe it will be 12 weeks, who knows. But they got the
| prestige and the big bucks, and candidates will put up with a
| lot for that.
|
| (fwiw, I co-designed careers.bytemark.co.uk/full-process for
| most of the above reasons, and my current role went from
| introductory chat->3 interviews->contract signed in about 10
| days flat - I like fast recruitment!).
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > careers.bytemark.co.uk/full-process
|
| This is really cool!
| bombcar wrote:
| 1) Treat incoming candidates like GOLD. Respond to them
| within hours, same day where at all possible.
|
| This is a _huge point_ and something to work on. Act
| quickly and work out as many things in advance as you can.
| Don 't be like _unnamed company X_ who kept changing
| interview times and stretching it out so the candidate just
| took the offer from _unnamed large company Y_ instead.
|
| If you get _some_ nibbles on your pipeline treat them quite
| fast, and note where they drop off. Likely for the process
| you have the salary is too low, and people skip out to find
| the same money easier or more money at the same difficulty.
| Beltalowda wrote:
| > Have future managers & engineers communicate directly,
| lightly backed up by HR if you have that function (and you
| trust them). Keep. It. Moving. Make it clear their time is
| more valuable than yours.
|
| Yeah, this.
|
| Not that I dislike recruiters or HR folks or don't
| appreciate the work they do, but with someone with
| engineering experience I can talk to them on an equal level
| and don't need to "dumb down" describing my skills or past
| experiences, and I can usually be a lot more
| straightforward and/or have an actual conversation instead
| of reading my CV out loud, which is what a lot of initial
| screenings are like (it's okay to use the CV as a starting
| point for the conversation). Talking to an engineer is also
| a signal I'm being taken serious as a candidate.
|
| I get that people use recruiters for an initial screen, but
| if it's "recruiter - another recruiter - HR person - coding
| test - finally I talk to a damn engineer (or engineering
| lead)" then that's a bit of a turn-off. At this point
| you're expecting me to spend time to "prove" my technical
| skills and I don't even know if I want to work for you
| because I have no idea what your engineering is like beyond
| the buzzwords your HR people dropped (which is very little
| information).
|
| If you've got more candidates than you know what to do with
| then that's fine, but if not... Using a recruiter for the
| initial (short) screening is fine to go through some basic
| preconditions from both sides, but the second person should
| really be an engineering lead if you're desperate for
| people IMHO.
|
| If you do insist on a code test _and_ you intent on hiring
| the person if nothing strange comes falling out then _say
| so_. A lot of times I have the impression these things are
| shotgunned to a bunch of candidates.
| geekbird wrote:
| This also includes being very, very, very upfront on
| whether your "remote" is: a) real, honest 100% remote, b)
| 100% remote unless you are within X miles of the office, in
| which case it's hybrid, c) hybrid that your management
| thinks is "remote", d) "remote until..." which means you
| will be called back into the office at the C-suite's whim,
| or e) on-site unless you are sick or have to meet a repair
| person at home.
| lostdog wrote:
| Yeah, the real answer is "something is less good than you are
| describing." Ask a senior engineer you've worked with in the
| past to take a look at your job posting and give you some
| honest feedback about what the problem is.
|
| There are yellow flags in your post, but it's unclear whether
| they are problems without details. For example:
|
| > the work requires a reasonably deep understanding of the
| underlying platforms which a lot of people seem to dislike.
|
| Why?
|
| > I'm wondering if the work being a higher percentage non-code
| is what's causing us trouble
|
| Probably.
|
| > Benefits and salary are good
|
| Are you sure?
|
| Plus, where are people dropping out of your pipeline? Is it
| early, suggesting that the job posting isn't great, or is it
| later, so part of the discussion process could be bad?
| bbarnett wrote:
| _> the work requires a reasonably deep understanding of the
| underlying platforms which a lot of people seem to dislike.
|
| Why?_
|
| Willing to bet the 'dislike' is "we have lots of mismashed,
| disorganized stacks, and expect seniors to have 20 years
| experience with all of them." coupled with "Even though some
| tools/stacks/etc have only been around 3 years."
|
| And... even though a senior can pick up a stack in a few
| days, the expectation is to find someone already skilled.
|
| ....
|
| Here's the truth. When I walk onto a new jobsite, I typically
| don't even know the tech. I've worked for EDA companies,
| government departments, startups, geospatial corps, all sorts
| of new and antiquated stacks and tech.
|
| I'm a senior, and I can walk in, and become the subject
| expert extremely fast. I do so all the time, it's why people
| hire me.
|
| That's what being an actual senior _means_. Loads of market
| experience, which makes that learning curve flatten.
|
| $5 says the 'dislike' is an expectation that stuff can't be
| learned fast. I'd scoff.
| geekbird wrote:
| Seriously. I've been doing Linux Systems work for over 20
| years. I've written code at one level or another on over 15
| languages (scripting, macro and compiled) plus various
| forms of markdown. 90% of it I learned on the job, even on
| the fly. I regularly go in to a place ostensibly for one
| thing, and end up their SME on something else.
|
| Do I remember all the details of every language and stack
| that I've touched? Hell no! But there are only so many ways
| to do a for loop or if-then set up. There are only a few
| flavors of regex out there. Anything more I just look it
| up. Part of being a senior is knowing what to look up.
|
| What makes me a senior is my ability to learn on the fly,
| then become an SME, on whatever obscure stack you have. I
| will never know all of it coming in - there's just too much
| stuff out there. But there's very little that is so bad
| that I can't work with it in a few weeks.
|
| But I've been rejected from jobs as "not technical enough"
| because I didn't have recent, full time, on the tip of my
| brain, coding to the algorithm and obscure function level
| in their preferred language "X". It just meant I hadn't
| coded in "X" in the last month. They though the fact that I
| didn't do obscure fanciness without looking things up meant
| I didn't know anything. I wanted to scream and say "No,
| damnit, I just haven't coded in that for two years, I don't
| have an eidetic memory."
|
| This is part of why I hate whiteboards and take home crap.
| I do poorly at them, then get lowballed by smug jerks who
| think that defines what I know and have done.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| first off, 4h assignments are almost never 4h assignments. at
| best they tend to be 4h coding, 1h of non-coding stuff (check out
| repo, branch repo, create repo, pr etc. read specs to make what
| you are going to make)
|
| I have only ever had one actual 4h assignment that took exactly 4
| hours, I was amazed. They actually wanted me to spend more than 4
| hours.
|
| I also had one assignment that had a bug in a particular library
| that was supposed to be used, I spent 4 hours solving that bug,
| at the end of which I could then have spent 4+ hours to make the
| solution.
|
| but most assignments are in the 6-8 hour range while advertising
| 4h.
|
| Part of the reason for this is most assignments are supposedly
| wanting you to make quality solutions etc. which is at odds with
| the supposed reasons for you to take assignments which are, as I
| have heard it stated, that a large number of programmers don't
| know how to program or program so badly it isn't worth hiring
| them. But take home assignments are not just that you can program
| (so you don't make the mistake of hiring someone who then sits
| around for a few months not contributing before you fire them)
| but also that you can produce quality code, that is to say it is
| really worthwhile hiring this person.
|
| think about it, you want to hire a senior, but you think a 4 hour
| assignment is going to really help you determine that they are a
| senior? I remember a fellow I worked with once had a ballpark
| rule that the smallest time a ticket could take would be half a
| day, so 4 hours. Why that? Well once you added in reading the
| ticket, asking about any not well specified parts, made your
| branch, did the code, tested, made pr, accepted code review, you
| were almost always at 4 hours. (it was only a ballpark rule,
| obviously there were some 1 lines, typos etc. that took less but
| most often 4 hours was a trivial ticket)
|
| So you are able to test the quality of a potential hire by giving
| them a trivial ticket?
|
| So this leads to people 'cheating' on the assignment, doing more
| than 4 hours. So maybe 4 hours of coding, but then cleanup, then
| maybe modularization, then documenting what you did sending back
| the message etc. This was basically what that 4h assignment that
| really was 4h I discussed earlier wanted, they wanted me to make
| everything pretty after I finished. They asked me if I had
| another hour what I would have done, I guess at that point if I
| still wanted the job I would have said I would have done these
| things but instead I said I would have taken a nap because I
| finished the job as described in 4. Because, he I am willing to
| take a little test or something to prove yes I can program but
| not waste 4 hours of my life.
|
| I also have a family as has been pointed out is a real filter on
| people being willing to do this.
| l30n4da5 wrote:
| Besides the take-home, which has been addressed in other comments
| (in short, a take-home for a senior role is just a flat 'no' from
| me), it would definitely help to include salary range in the
| postings.
|
| When I was searching, if a company did not include a salary
| range, I automatically excluded it.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Your job description is a close match to what I'm currently
| doing, "senior" developer who gradually transitioned into
| platform engineering due to the need and greater than average for
| a developer familiarity and comfort with the platform and
| infrastructure layers of the stack. I currently work for one of
| the CNCF software vendors doing consulting engineering for
| customers setting up their own platforms for multi-tenant,
| heterogeneous workloads.
|
| I'll say I don't really mind the take-home assessment, contra
| most of what you're seeing here, but 4 hours is pushing it. 1
| hour max is more in line with what I'm willing to do for a pre-
| interview screen.
|
| The bigger obstacle for me is why would I be looking for jobs to
| apply to in the first place? I haven't applied for a job since
| getting out of the Army and moving into the software world at
| all. Not once. Every job I have taken in this industry has either
| been from a recruiter or professional network reaching out to me.
| I've never looked for a job and never plan to, so I'd never see
| your ad and I don't read the Hacker News who's hiring pages.
| Recruiters who don't give a salary range aren't going to hear
| back from me unless it's a FAANG-level company with a well-known
| salary range I already know, though. I'm often annoyed by the
| amount of "not writing code" I have to do, but I'm used to it at
| this point.
|
| I'll just grant your claim as a person who works there that the
| job is sufficiently enjoyable and pays well that I'd consider it
| all things being equal, but the biggest obstacle is just that I
| don't look for jobs. People offering jobs look for me. How good
| your ad is means nothing if I never see it and don't want to see
| it.
| Animats wrote:
| Who does the "30 minute call with them"? That's the first real
| contact, and that's where you're probably blowing the sale. (Yes,
| you're selling.)
| roguecoder wrote:
| It sounds like you may be looking for a very narrow band of
| skills. Awkwardly, people who are into systems administration
| were often there _because_ they didn't have to write code and
| people who were into coding were often there _because_ they
| didn't have to do systems administration.
|
| DevOps as a concept is only about 10 years old, and a lot fewer
| people were doing it towards the start. There just aren't that
| many really senior people out there.
|
| My recommendation would be to think about specific skills you
| would like to add to the team, rather than a generic skill level,
| and see if you can get creative about filling those. If you need
| platform expertise, can you pull from defense contractors & teach
| them the social norms of your company on the fly? If you need
| someone who can lead culture building, does that have to be the
| same person who has the deep platform expertise?
|
| If you really need all the things in one person, you need some
| reason why they'd want to work for you instead of Google. Which
| usually means either paying through the nose, or offering
| something about the culture that appeals to a niche audience.
| Having a particular point of view can be a winning strategy,
| rather than trying to appeal to everyone all at once.
| Helitico wrote:
| I was looking for a job, had 3 offers all of them without an
| assignment.
|
| I had one job opportuniy i liked, with a 4h assignment and i
| didn't get the job.
|
| I fully accept doing and learning for Google or Microsoft or
| Apple etc. but they pay in germany like 30-50k a year more than
| the normal companies.
|
| Normal company is 80k, the others are 120k up to 160k.
|
| And others mentioned it but i want to repeat it: The offer i
| actually took (and it was the best choice as well) was actually
| because an ex collegue pointed me to it. There was already a foot
| in the door.
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| If you want good people pay them and respect them. It's crazy how
| you have to explain humanity to people in the tech industry.
|
| If you are good at what you do then there are two reasons you
| will do it. 1. You are paid well 2. You are respected
|
| Don't be annoying about doctors appointments or time off, if they
| do their job just let them do it. Don't make them come into an
| office they don't want to be in, don't make them be in meetings
| that have nothing to do with them and could have been an email.
| It's really crazy simple, just think what you would want and then
| treat people the same.
| v3gajerusalem wrote:
| Why aren't your juniors becoming seniors? Why do so many get rich
| fast companies do that? You're cutting the talent pool.
| JTbane wrote:
| In a lot of companies juniors don't get mentored enough, burn
| out due to low pay, and leave for greener pastures.
| comprev wrote:
| The 4hr take-home test implies you're not after experienced
| "seniors", but rather those self-titled seniors with 3yrs under
| their belt.
|
| Four hours of focus time is A LOT for a candidate with family
| responsibilities and heavily restricts your recruitment pool.
|
| No parent is going to give up a precious weekend afternoon for an
| unpaid assignment.
|
| That plus the lack of salary range will put 95% of "good"
| candidates off.
|
| Instead have a time-boxed "chat" where the candidate is invited
| to talk about a topic they feel strongest in - networking,
| architecture, security, whatever.
|
| As a company you want to leverage these strengths.
| rr808 wrote:
| > Four hours of focus time is A LOT for a candidate with family
| responsibilities and heavily restricts your recruitment pool.
|
| 4 hours is probably OK for a single role. However if you're
| interviewing at 10 different companies it adds up to a lot
| more.
| oaiey wrote:
| It is just not okay. Because I may have kids/wife/elders,
| because I have a job, because I value my spare time, or just
| because I enjoy the birds in the park more.
|
| As a senior I don't do homework. I have a conversation with
| someone if I fit AND if they fit to me. They can test me and
| I will test the them during that conversation
| PheonixPharts wrote:
| > Benefits and salary are good (though salary isn't posted in the
| ad)
|
| Care to put a range on the value of "good"?
|
| My experience when searching is that any company claiming
| "salaries are good" probably isn't even worth my time talking to.
| Occasionally I'll reply to recruiters if the role looks
| interesting but it's not uncommon that they can't even match my
| base, let alone my TC (and I don't even have that great of a TC).
|
| Most truly senior devs that I know are working for a company that
| can offer considerable RSUs in addition to a solid base + bonus.
| When I see "salary is good" I'm assuming you're offering below
| 200k.
|
| If you want senior devs to apply post that your total comp is
| somewhere in the 300k-400k range.
|
| However I'm guessing that your comp is nowhere in that range, and
| I think it's fair to assume that most other senior devs also are
| making that guess.
| [deleted]
| jiggawatts wrote:
| POST THE SALARY.
|
| Senior people are senior because of their work experience, which
| they gain from steady employment.
|
| Almost by definition you are looking to entice busy, employed
| people away from their current jobs.
|
| They don't have the time or inclination to trawl through job ad
| after job ad. Where your competition will ask for 15 years of
| experience and then only after hours of calls and meetings
| reluctantly make an offer half of what the candidate is currently
| making.
|
| You have to stand out from this, or you're perceived as the same
| "waste of time" category.
|
| You're not hiring starving students. You're hiring people with
| options and responsibilities.
|
| Respect their time and value and they'll consider your offer.
| s0rce wrote:
| I've tried to advocate for this at my organization and been
| told that we don't want people primarily motivated by money...
| love2read wrote:
| what else are people motivated by?
| jiggawatts wrote:
| You can motivate juniors by things other than money:
| experience, gaining industry contacts, and filling a resume
| so that they can move on to...
|
| ... more senior roles with actual money on offer instead of
| intangibles.
|
| You're trying to hire senior staff the same way as junior
| staff.
|
| This won't work.
|
| PS: I'm starting to suspect why you're losing your juniors as
| soon as they get some experience...
| svillar wrote:
| Lots of great comments here;
|
| My thoughts on this as other Seniors have pointed out (and I am a
| Senior myself)
|
| 1- I have not looked for a job since 2014, every job since came
| through my network. Then the interviews were basically friendly
| meet&greets but super informal, not a single coding test or take
| home assignment - note than I always started as Tech
| lead/Architect. I put in the hours and took pride in my work,
| have never let anyone down.
|
| 2- Unless I am unemployed and desperate, why would I give you
| between 6 and 7 hours of "free" unpaid labor for an interview
| that might not go anywhere? A big part of the interview process
| is "luck". I have many terrible interviewing stories;
| interviewing is hard and for the most part a numbers and luck
| game. I hate wasting time and for that reason I carefully
| calculate my odds before applying and put more emphasis on gigs
| when I have a sponsor on the inside or where the upside and risk
| make it worth the attempt. Which disqualifies most non tech non
| brand name companies.
|
| My suggestions for you;
|
| 1- Include salary and TC on your job post (it will set you apart
| from others) and will attract more attention.
|
| 2- Shorten/Simplify your hiring process and consider paying folks
| for their time, at least $100hr.
|
| I have interviewed at places where it costs $40 to park for the
| day, you are there for 3-5 hrs for a final in person round, but
| if you don't get an offer they don't validate your parking ticket
| so not only you wasted your time but also spent a bunch of money
| on top of taking a day off from your current job.
|
| Last but not least, think about the state of the market, Seniors
| are likely older, with families and mortgages. in this market,
| stability is important, changing jobs can be a gamble, their
| offer could get rescinded, etc Why take the risk? This will be
| true in the next 12/24 months, what is the incentive - unless the
| candidate is already unemployed.
|
| Thanks for your time.
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| > Then the interviews were basically friendly meet&greets but
| super informal, not a single coding test or take home
| assignment
|
| I have 20 years experience and this is completely alien to my
| experience. I've gotten lots of job referrals over the years,
| but all it did was get my foot in the door. From there, it was
| the standard interview process with whiteboarding and take home
| tests. What am I missing here?
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Not sure. The majority of comments from Seniors with 20 years
| of experience so far (including myself) are of the same type.
|
| Friendly meet and greets that are informal, no coding test or
| take home assignment.
|
| My best guess is your job referrals aren't from senior level
| people, while ours are. The CTO is the one who wants me. Or
| the top Senior who has control of the process.
|
| But I'm just guessing. The norm for me is informal
| conversation.
| justrudd wrote:
| For me (20+ year club):
|
| 1.) Senior Dev referred me, and they had a remarkable
| relationship with management - informal chat and offer that
| afternoon
|
| 2.) Senior Dev referred me, and they had a normal
| relationship with management - regular interview
|
| 3.) CTO referred me - informal chat with them and the CEO,
| offer letter handed to me at the end of the chat with the
| CEO.
|
| So I've found that it really depends on who is referring
| you and what type of relationship they have with the person
| that controls the money.
|
| edit: fixed formatting.
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| 1) Senior Dev referred me to his hiring manager. Regular
| job interview from there.
|
| 2) Hiring Manager I worked with for a few years prior
| agreed to give me a job. Ghosted me a week later.
|
| 3) A guy I worked closely with for 2 years later became a
| medium-sized startup CTO. I asked him for a job. He said
| yes, then referred me to the hiring manager. Normal
| interview from there on out.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Just to clarify: I'm not complaining. I have no problem
| going through job interviews to prove myself. But, it
| would be nice if I could figure out what I'm missing and
| not have to do that. Maybe it's a difference in
| reputation? I'm not seen as the hotshot. I'm the go to
| guy.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Agreed, well said. I could make a similar list as you
| did, but it's essentially the same.
|
| VPs, and CTOs most often, informal chat, offer.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, the last couple of jobs in particular it wasn't
| getting a standard referral through the HR system. The
| first we were clients of a technology analyst firm CEO
| who I knew quite well and had met and spoken with at many
| events. The second was someone who had been clients of
| ours at the consulting company. In the first case, the
| "interview" was a lunch. In the second, it was a semi-
| normal hiring process but I talked to the most senior
| folks, starting with a chat with the product head, first.
|
| Really haven't had a "normal" hiring process since first
| job out of grad school (shudder) 25 years ago.
|
| Not dev per se but technology role.
| sanderjd wrote:
| For me the difference has been the size / stage / ...
| prestige? of the company. Referrals have been a foot in the
| door and no more for me at very mature, well known, in demand
| companies, but more of an immediate hire at smaller, earlier,
| or obscure companies.
| aaomidi wrote:
| 4 day work week.
| IAmPym wrote:
| If you give someone a take home 4 hour assignment you better be
| paying contracting rates. I have been in situations where someone
| gives an assignment of a problem they are actively working on.
| I'm not working for free.
| tmaly wrote:
| Your process seems reasonable. How detailed is the job spec? Is
| there something you could add to it? Is the screening process by
| recruiter consistent?
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Ultimately employment is a market. You're expecting something in
| exchange for some money.
|
| Your objective is to get as much of "something" for the least
| amount of money.
|
| The candidate's objective is to get as much money for the least
| amount of "something". Junior candidates are more flexible on
| this as they might do it for the passion of the tech or to make a
| name for themselves but seniors already have a "name" and no
| longer need to work for "exposure".
|
| Your current situation seems to be that your competition offers a
| better deal than you do - employees manage to find other places
| where they can either get more money or get the same money you're
| offering for much less "something". That "something" includes the
| overhead of the interview process such as the tech test, etc.
|
| In short, either offer more money or demand less "something" _and
| make it known_. 4-day work week, flexible working hours, no on-
| call, etc.
|
| In addition, you're asking for specialized skills which means you
| need to consider markets beyond employment. If your prospective
| employee can make the yearly salary you're proposing in a 3-month
| consulting gig, there's no reason for him to even consider your
| offer. You mention that most applicants dislike the
| specialization you're asking for - maybe because those who like
| it don't even apply, potentially for the above reason.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I'd add to this, as someone who runs an eCommerce business: the
| general public is surprisingly lazy when it comes to optimising
| the returns on their time/money.
|
| We've found things like attractive pictures, high-ranking
| listings and reduced legwork for customers have a far greater
| impact on sales than the price or quality of the good itself.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| DevOps folks are in high demand because everybody and their
| mother is on the k8s/complex deployment train.
|
| My last boss told me it was harder (and cost more) to hire DevOps
| folks than software engineers.
| lwelyk wrote:
| So you require 90 minutes of interviewing followed by a 4+ hour
| long unpaid homework assignment complete with a presumable
| additional hour of presenting the homework assignment to a team
| without them knowing what the pay could be.
|
| I think you'd have to not have many other opportunities to be
| worth putting up with that much for the potential for a job.
| Imagine if they interviewed at even one other place that required
| this much from them, they wouldn't have the time.
| solumos wrote:
| full day on-site is better than a 4hr take-home
| mr90210 wrote:
| I personally tend to ignore positions that don't post the salary
| range. I've been burnt before by not knowing how much can the job
| actually pay.
| geekbird wrote:
| Seriously.
|
| I applied for one position who asked what I wanted, then told
| me that the top of their range was $5K less than my minimum,
| was I still interested? LOL, no. My minimum is my minimum now,
| no dropping it for a hard luck story or company in a cheaper
| area. Been there, done that, burned that t-shirt.
| Bishop_ wrote:
| DevOps isn't exactly an ancient field. I know you said you're
| already junior heavy but even if building someone up takes you
| six months you're going to likely be better off in the meantime
| than trying to find someone able to produce the value you need
| from day one.
|
| My employer is also having trouble attracting senior frontend
| devs right now and our take seems to be that there's a lot of
| competition for good candidates, that's unlikely to change in the
| short term.
|
| EDIT: Not to doom, but times are changing, might be worth
| evaluating if you really do _NEED_ a senior. A lot of the way
| people look at used cars, and housing, (and gas prices), and
| remote work has changed in the past few years. Maybe easily
| acquiring senior devs is something that is also changing.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| Totally food for thought, but here are my 2.7349 cents:
|
| The hiring process doesn't seem to, and of course this is totally
| an completely assumptive-- based only on the list of items in
| your post, reflect any reason _why_ a senior engineer would want
| to apply there. Most people want one of two things: more money or
| more growth. Right now, I 'd guess, that potential candidates
| aren't feeling either from the ad. Is the salary _actually_ good?
| Reading the job details I can say I 'd expect at least ~$200k/yr
| cash, some sort of yearly cash bonus, and equity in the company.
|
| Additionally, there may be language in the job ad; which, turns
| off more experienced candidates, e.g. "ninja," "rockstar," "10x".
| Very subtle changes to the language you use can completely change
| your applicant pool for both good and bad, it's worth
| experimenting via services that help with this (by reviewing the
| job ad) or consultants (though I'd try a service first, gonna be
| a lot cheaper).
|
| Finally, seeing your stack being ops related, I'd guess a lot of
| qualified people are assuming you don't pay enough or will have
| awful work life balance. Are folks on-call 24/7? Salary might be
| alright unless your on-call 20% of your life-- in which case
| maybe it ain't. Speaking to that in the ad might really help
| pique some folks interests (if the work-life balance is good).
|
| Good luck!
| ipaddr wrote:
| "Presentation of technical assignment to the team"
|
| awful idea...
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| AD: Put the pay scale in the ad. Let's not waste everyone's time.
| Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's
| choosing: If you want 4 hours of someone's valuable time a) pay
| for it, or b) commit 4 hours of your time. Either is reasonably
| fair Presentation of technical assignment to the team: That's
| just straight-up pay-for-the-time. If you've all come this far in
| the process, there must be some interest and it only seems fair.
| Also, why do you care what the team thinks? They're either on the
| initial phone-screen, or you really don't care what they think.
| Don't waste the team's time. If you really care, make that 45-60
| minutes.
| [deleted]
| stevetron wrote:
| I won't do 'assignments'. I understand the reasoning, but I'm
| just plain burnt-out on test-taking of any-kind after I left grad
| school. I also don't want my 'test' answer to actually get used
| to solve a problem they actually had. To me, that is work-
| product-for-free.
|
| Most of the code I've previously written is considered
| proprietary and I'm restricted to not disclose. That leaves me
| with only being able to show-off screen shots of personal
| projects.
| jen20 wrote:
| If I were to ever do a take home test, I would absolutely
| attach an AGPL 3.0 license to it.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| The thing a lot of people want and don't have is the ability to
| work from anywhere in any time zone. Give the people what they
| want and they shall come to you.
| colinsane wrote:
| > Benefits and salary are good (though salary isn't posted in the
| ad)
|
| if the salary is _actually_ good, then you should be showing that
| off in your job listing in the same way you show off your other
| benefits.
| kevdragon6 wrote:
| Add on-call load/expectations for the job if any. If your company
| has a fairly stable platform that is not constantly on fire and
| paging 24/7 -- that will be a positive.
| nickmyersdt wrote:
| Steps 1-4 plus probation period is sufficient. The rest is bs.
| alexanderh wrote:
| I don't respect any HR Team/Company that demands tests,
| assessments or homework as part of the interview/onboarding
| process. If you don't have a competent enough team, that can
| identify I know what you need me to know just by talking to me, I
| don't respect your company philosophy, I will assume your team is
| incompetent or not fully formed, and I will choose not to work
| for you. Its a cheap cop-out for HR to not have to do their job
| and not have to involve working members of the team in the hiring
| process. If you need to "Test" me to hire me, I find it
| disrespectful. It means you already don't trust me, so I will
| never trust you.
|
| Also there's lots of incredible talent out there, who are
| horrible test takers or do poorly under the context of the stress
| of performing for an interview... these people actually tend to
| be more talented than the people that are good test takers and
| good under that kind of pressure. You're shooting yourself in the
| foot by not considering them.
|
| Hiring "the best candidate for the job" is a nebulous term that
| HR has misinterpreted to mean "most technically skilled during an
| unrealistic interview test". The best candidate is really the
| person who interfaces with a team the best on an interpersonal
| level, and they will grow in to their position over time, and
| fill in any gaps in technical experience they don't have if they
| are truly passionate about their field. Either a lead person has
| leadership traits or they don't. Some technical homework
| assignment and presentation will prove nothing.
| ikiris wrote:
| Sounds like your version of good, and the market of candidate's
| version of good, do not align.
| rajman187 wrote:
| As others have pointed out, a possibly less-than-exceptional comp
| plus a 4-hour assessment will ensure many people opt out of
| applying. Given that folks could get anywhere from $400 to $1200+
| / day for contracting gigs, you're asking them to give up
| $100-$300+ worth of time for the chance at a role that in all
| likelihood pays less than what they can land at many other
| places. That may not be a lot of money for some people, but if I
| were to part with it for little to no upside why not just buy way
| OTM calls/puts and see if they print later?
|
| A lot of other pertinent comments re: time commitment trade-offs
| for people with families or even having to decide between burning
| some PTO for this
| WheatM wrote:
| stevetron wrote:
| These days, I find myself slightly-handicapped: I'm had emergency
| eye surgery to correct a detached retina condition. I'm told that
| I won't get back normal eyesight in that eye. I practically live-
| to-code. I used to do 'hardware design' until I spent my middle-
| age years back in universities getting 2 degrees in computer
| science. But now, reading tires out my one good eye quickly. I'm
| not "comfortable" driving a car anymore with my reduced eyesight.
|
| 1. I would not want stock or stock options, i don't care who you
| are, for compensation. 2. Taking care of the commute for me would
| be very very helpful. 3. You might offer to pay-off my
| outstanding student loan balance (it's 6 figures at this point)
| up front. 4. You must favor LGBTQ+ staff.
|
| And yes, I'm sure I won't get hired with this list, so I'll just
| stay 'retired' as it's easier and cheaper.
| pilgrimfff wrote:
| I won't even consider companies with a take-home assignment.
|
| If you stick with it, be sure to give candidates a heads up that
| that's part of the process by the time they chat with the
| recruiter. Otherwise you're being really disrespectful of their
| time.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| "SWEs in the "DevOps" software space (Linux, containers, k8s,
| yadda yadda)"
|
| Eh. That is a pretty hard hire right now in GENERAL. That kind of
| hire is a months long process. BUT! Super worth it if they are
| good.
| _Parfait_ wrote:
| If you're scared of posting the salary range after a dozen people
| have asked..there's your issue. Fin.
| zo1 wrote:
| My best guess is the take home assignment. Not going to happen if
| you ask me. You want credentials? Then look at my degree/diploma,
| my portfolio, experience and whether I know what I'm talking
| about in the interview. That's it. You don't ask a senior
| experienced surgeon to perform an op for you to prove he can do
| the job, and neither should you for this.
| doopy1 wrote:
| I think a 30-60 min assessment should be enough, and maybe you
| can also list the salary?
| Jugurtha wrote:
| What are the vertices and edges of your hiring graph?
|
| What are the conversions like for each edge? Candidate finds out
| about you ---> Candidate Contacts you ---> Step 0 ---> Step 1...
|
| If there are not many viewing your offers, you may want to
| consider your channels.
|
| If you have views but not applications, you may want to consider
| your copywriting.
|
| If you're getting applications but they're not following through,
| contact them and ask why.
|
| If you sent offers they did not accept, ask for more info on why
| they didn't accept.
|
| Make a graph for transitions from each step to the other. Look at
| the percentages and numbers. Look for dropouts, etc.
|
| View it like a conversion funnel, or more accurately a graph.
| arpyzo wrote:
| Are you hiring a DevOps engineer, or a software engineer? While
| there's overlap, these are fundamentally different things.
|
| Focus your job description on either: 1. A software engineer who
| can (and is willing) to do some DevOps work. 2. A DevOps engineer
| who can (and is willing ) do some software development.
| throw1138 wrote:
| Definitely #1, and the ad is fairly up-front with that.
| tootie wrote:
| I've been having the same problem. It's actually a lot to ask
| of someone to be a solid coder but also willing to do on-call
| support. The direction we're looking is to replace "DevOps"
| with "Platform Engineering" and retain an MSP to do on-call
| tier 1 and 2 support.
| nitrixion wrote:
| To echo what a few other comments have said, seeing "DevOps"
| as part of the responsibilities for a role is an immediate
| turn off to me. I want nothing to do with DevOps. It isn't
| interesting work (to me) and there are currently a lot of
| opportunities to do interesting work. DevOps also isn't
| challenging work (to me), it is simply frustrating work
| because I do not want to learn it, I just want to complete my
| dev task and move on to the next.
| e12e wrote:
| You don't specify how far candidates progress down your pipeline.
| I'd guess that if you get no applicants; post more details in ads
| (eg: sallary/benefits, 100% remote ok/no remote etc).
|
| Not sure if 1 hour 30 minutes _before_ technical assignment makes
| sense - maybe 15 min with hr, then assignment - then more face
| time?
|
| I agree with general sentiment that 4 hour assignment doesn't
| square well with "senior". Maybe take home assignment (look over
| for 1 hour give or take) then 1-2 hour technical/architectural
| discussion with technical team lead? Preferably with a real
| problem recently encountered and solved by the team?
| randomtwiddler wrote:
| 4 hour technical assessment is a bit heavy after I've already
| invested 1.5 hours into the process.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Pay more, and disclose it. Unless there's something that stands
| out about your company, no one is interested in going through the
| process to be offered mediocre pay. Or find something else to
| offer (say $5000 personal equipment + guaranteed attendance at
| AWS Reinvent or something similar)
|
| Are you paying candidates for the take-home?
| coffee_is_nom wrote:
| Post the salary, don't make me spend 6+ hours before I find out
| you are offering less than what I already make.
|
| TBH I think I perfectly fit your profile but I am not in the
| market. And the idea of a 4 hour take home assignment is not
| helping.
|
| Best of luck OP!
| gigatexal wrote:
| "Benefits and salary are good" is subjective. Can you provide
| examples so we can verify?
|
| What's your hiring process like? What's your company rep like?
| How are the interviews ram? Any steps taken to help interviewees
| feel comfortable? Etc etc
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Unless the employer has a reputation of providing above average
| compensation, anytime at least a pay range and description of
| benefits is not provided, it is safe to assume they are not
| competitive (for above average people).
| gigatexal wrote:
| Which is why I am stoked Microsoft is going to disclose
| salary ranges for their roles.
| blankusername_ wrote:
| I have the interest and skills to work in a position like you
| described. If you're interested, I'd be happy to give your
| process a shot and give feedback. Feel free to reach out, here's
| my LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qwertyq
| anarticle wrote:
| Four hour assignment is instant pass. My Rolodex is huge, I don't
| need an exam. In god we trust, all others pay cash.
| burnte wrote:
| Yeah, the last three steps are killing you. I'm not going to do a
| 4 hour skill assessment, period. No senior people will. We're not
| making a solid 6 figures because we're idiots faking our way
| through the world.
|
| Skip that assessment and presentation, and implement a 90 day
| probationary period like everyone else.
| alexanderh wrote:
| THANK YOU, THIS ^^^
|
| Any company needing to "Test" me, is an instant sign of
| disrespect. It means you already don't trust me so I don't
| trust you. Now obviously there needs to be some accountability,
| and I think a 90 probationary period is a perfect compromise.
|
| When you are hiring senior talent, we aren't desperate or dying
| for your job. You need to sell it to us. You need to
| accommodate us. You need to make it easy for us. Assignments
| are a sure fire way to let me know you have no idea what you
| are doing, and don't have competent people on your team who
| would be able to just talk to me and tell i know what i'm
| doing.
| vba616 wrote:
| Everybody on HN always gets huffy and prima-donna-ish about the
| idea of a take home assignment. So I'll try to provide a
| different perspective.
|
| For some people, like me, at least in theory, I would love it,
| because it's much easier for me to shine than when put on the
| spot in an interview.
|
| I like to talk in an interview, but I'm no good at retrieving
| technical knowledge in real time.
|
| Unfortunately, in real life, the one hiring process I went
| through that required a take-home assignment, I realized at the
| end, I wasted my time doing it, because ultimately it was not
| deciding the outcome, but a regular in person coding session was.
| I assume this is because you never know how clever people can be
| in cheating remotely, so they can't really trust the applicant
| did the project.
|
| Now, the way you list your steps in hiring suggests the take-home
| assignment (and presentation) _is_ the final qualification, not
| the first screen. Which should be good, if it really is your
| intention...except...
|
| I see a contradiction in your post. You want a "SWE", a "senior",
| and someone who already has a "deep understanding" of the
| underlying platform.
|
| The whole point, for an applicant, of doing a take home
| assignment is that they can demonstrate their _intelligence_
| rather than knowledge or ability to think quickly on their feet.
| If you don 't want that sort of person, and it seems you don't,
| then who do you expect to apply?
|
| I'm approaching the same conclusion as other people, but I'm
| trying to avoid explaining it in terms of seniors being too good
| to do take-home assignments.
|
| Plenty of people in tech hate interviewing, don't have good
| networks, and some of them have a lot of experience. Maybe not
| with your tech, and maybe not with a SWE title though. You'd call
| them juniors, maybe. Or, you'd treat someone who's never been a
| SWE per se like they didn't know what a computer was.
|
| Something I have never understood was why hiring seems to almost
| always be following a paradigm of filtering the pool of
| candidates for a very specific imaginary perfect hire, rather
| than taking the best candidate available independent of the job
| and figuring out how to utilize them.
|
| And an afterthought: your use of "rubbish" suggests you are in
| the UK, while "fully remote" suggests you are seeking global
| candidates, and maybe your idea of a reasonable salary in the UK
| for a "senior" nullifies your willingness to hire from anywhere.
| Obviously there are lower wage areas, but maybe the people you
| are looking for are mostly in higher wage areas.
|
| Also, just wondering - suppose a candidate takes much longer than
| 4 hrs or whatever you consider normal. Is that a problem in your
| mind? Are you screening for that? Are you happy hiring them as
| long as they don't brag about how long it took, and do a good
| presentation?
| alexanderh wrote:
| >. I assume this is because you never know how clever people
| can be in cheating remotely, so they can't really trust the
| applicant did the project.
|
| I mean.. in the tech world tho... Unless you are literally
| having someone else do the assignment for you entirely, what
| exactly constitutes 'cheating'? Isn't it common knowledge that
| most programmers refer to StackOverflow (or the equivalent site
| for devops) all day?
|
| This is what I find so dumb about assessments and tests in the
| tech space.... there is no such thing as "cheating". Either you
| know how to google and figure something out or you don't. Most
| people can't just pull solutions off the top of their head.
| Tech is too broad. You have to do research.
|
| And if thats not what you mean by 'cheating', I just don't
| believe people are applying to jobs out there and having other
| people literally do entire assignments for them.... If you
| can't do the work yourself, you would be fired in no time... so
| whats the point? Or if you can have someone else always do the
| work for you, why not still hire that person if the works
| getting done either way?
|
| There is no "You might not always have a calculator in your
| pocket, so we need to test that you know this stuff off the top
| of your head" in tech. I will always have a calculator, robust
| IDE, and google. Tests and assignments for hiring in tech are
| completely bogus, at all levels.
| dam_broke_it wrote:
| 99% chance you will have BOTH a take home test AND quiz show
| interviewS'.
| summertime42 wrote:
| As an option - everyone has stated the easy problems of no salary
| listed and the take-home assessment - if you KNOW your salary is
| low, offer 4-day workweeks instead. I mean x4 7-8 hours, not
| 10-hour days. It might help hook some traffic.
|
| You also might have to open up the doors to 1099/C2C consultants,
| as well. Or talk to a staffing company and borrow some resources
| to get stuff done in the meantime.
|
| A good pipeline can hire a candidate in 3-4 hours. You have to
| run a technical interview, but I personally prefer verbal over
| paired-programming. I will refuse to do take-homes at this point
| and refer to my active github.
| dam_broke_it wrote:
| Take home assignments GTFO; pay me or forget it.....
| cottonseed wrote:
| Where are you losing people in your hiring process? Are you
| getting no initial applications? Do you give the coding exercise
| but they never do it? Do you give an offer but they turn it down?
| There is a lot of speculation in this thread but you should have
| the data.
| joegahona wrote:
| Are you paying candidates to do the technical assignment?
| noasaservice wrote:
| > - Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at
| candidate's choosing
|
| I refuse to do this since I don't do unpaid work.
|
| And frankly, you want me to sink .5h+1h+4h = 5.5h unpaid on your
| demands? Nope. Not going to happen.
|
| And I work as a senior AWS & Azure cloud/systems engineer. My
| resume speaks for itself. And if that's not good enough, I'd be
| glad to have a sit-down with a few of your own system engineers.
| If that's not adequate for you, then the problem is you.
| xupybd wrote:
| Are you being too specific?
|
| Most senior people have the experience to make good decisions and
| to guide the younger staff. What they may not have is experience
| in your tool set. But that can be picked up quickly, their
| seniority cannot.
| basilecom wrote:
| Sounds like the pay is too low.
| tuckerpo wrote:
| > - Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at
| candidate's choosing
|
| That's probably your problem. You've gotta respect people's time.
| It'd be ok if that were the final step in the process, but it
| looks like it's followed by Yet Another Interview Round (TM). Try
| to slim that down, or remove the "presentation" aspect, and have
| it be the team's burden to audit the assignment. Ask for a small
| writeup explaining their technical decisions from the candidate
| instead.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| It's taken me 8 months from starting to hire to having our new
| devops hire start.
|
| here in the UK these types of positions are some of the hardest
| to fill within Engineering. Hiring software engineers is
| comparatively a walk in the park.
| apeace wrote:
| If you're having this problem, your first step is to get the
| recruiter out of the process. Start screening all resumes
| yourself.
|
| I've had some bad experiences with recruiters, both in-house and
| otherwise, and I feel they usually get screenings wrong. But
| there's an even more important reason for you to take over this
| process now: you don't know where your dropoff is.
|
| You need to get familiar with what's going on. Are you not
| getting any good resumes? If so, then the problem is your
| outreach. Are you getting lots of great resumes but they drop off
| after the first call? Then the problem is your sales pitch on the
| call.
|
| If it's your responsibility to fill this position, then it's time
| to get your hands dirty in the data and figure out where the
| problem is.
|
| Without more data on where you have dropoff, these are my takes
| on your process:
|
| - The other commenters in this thread are right: the 4-hour
| assignment is likely a huge issue. I'd be shocked if you didn't
| have a huge dropoff there. There's no incentive for senior
| engineers to do this type of thing, because so many companies
| want to hire them. It's better to take your chances on someone
| who seems good, and be prepared to fire them if it turns out
| you're wrong.
|
| - You should put a salary range in the job posting. You said
| "benefits and salary are good", but literally the only reason to
| not list these things in a posting is if they're not actually
| that good. You may need to pay more for someone very senior. They
| may be expecting more -- even substantially more -- than the
| person who just retired.
| valbaca wrote:
| Post the salary range. It's 2022, you can't just say "Benefits
| and salary are good " That is absolutely meaningless.
|
| You're wanting ~6hrs investment (30 call, 1hr interview, and 4hr+
| assignment) for an offer? NO thank you.
|
| Why the scare quotes around "DevOps"? Is it DevOps or not? These
| words do mean things and matter.
| sunaurus wrote:
| > Is it DevOps or not? These words do mean things and matter.
|
| I'm surprised at this comment, in my experience, that word has
| almost no meaning at all.
|
| It can mean anything from "Engineering teams are responsible
| for everything, including development and operations" to "We
| have a third DevOps silo inbetween our developer and operarions
| silos".
| hellohowareu wrote:
| It does have, in my opinion, quite clear meaning as a term,
| otherwise it wouldn't exist as a term.
|
| Obviously it means setting up & maintaining application-
| ecosystem infrastructure:
|
| Servers/Containers/VMs, CICD, monitoring, logging,
| integration/production testing, permissions, and various
| automated jobs/workflows <-- that sort of stuff. So that
| developers can just focus on programming.
| Humdeee wrote:
| Exactly this. I can't think of a better way to punch yourself
| in the groin as a recruitment activity. Be transparent because
| it's respectful.
| codenesium wrote:
| When I see a job posting with no salary all I think is what are
| they scared of? Must be low. A 4 hour project for a senior? For
| DevOps? I could spend those 4 hours pinging people in my network
| and probably have interviews scheduled.
| potamic wrote:
| Good, experienced people would usually have built a decent
| network for themselves over their career. As seniority grows, you
| will find them less and less applying for new jobs, and more and
| more relying on their networks for new work. And if they are
| good, they very likely are sitting on open offers from well known
| ex-colleagues that they could take up at anytime. You will do
| much better to tap in through your own networks, find suitable
| candidates and reach out to them directly to get them interested.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| This is a great point. I cannot imagine doing a real interview
| at this point. I decided to do one the last time I was job
| hunting just to see what the world has to offer.
|
| I was interviewed for a position, and was clearly perfect, but
| I couldn't get that across to more than half of the people
| interviewing me. I had some people in my corner, but others
| were concerned I wasn't technical enough which is hilarious.
|
| Why would I subject myself to that? I can get a job in a
| heartbeat from anyone who has ever worked with me in the past.
|
| It's a demeaning and dumb process interviewing with people you
| don't know, when you interview people who know you, they just
| pitch you on why you should join them.
|
| They don't even ask me questions, because they know I am going
| to be one of if not the top contributor. They've seen it, they
| don't have to guess on if I happen to forget syntax on a sql
| command because I am not focused on sql at the moment.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _cannot imagine doing a real interview at this point_
|
| Eh, if someone refers me for a job they may need others' buy
| in. The take-home technical assignment, on the other hand,
| would be a show stopper. That's consulting. I charge for
| that.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Sure, I've had to have a phone conversation for additional
| buy in, but it hasn't critically changed the matter.
|
| Although by "real interview", I was indicating interviewing
| with people I didn't work with in the past. I wasn't
| referring to additional phone conversations for buy in.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| Yeah at startups we called those people "pushons". Basically,
| the CTO would say hey, "this is eric, s/he starts tomorrow".
| Mercenaries. Pros. No interviews, no questions, no linked
| ins. Usually "pushons" turn into top performers. With a 6
| month runway and cash being burned - we didn't have much time
| for fizzbuzz.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Exactly. There is no hiring better than the ones you have
| experience with already. You know what you're getting.
| angarg12 wrote:
| This should be the top comment. Many senior, great engineers
| aren't looking, and when they do, they usually don't just apply
| to job postings.
|
| You need to overhaul your hiring process for Senior+ folks. Tap
| onto your network, encourage existing employees to refer
| candidates, or otherwise just reach to prospect candidates.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| This is the right answer. There are a level of people that
| exist as Senior+ people that anyone they've worked for or
| with would take in a heartbeat. They'd move mountains to have
| you.
|
| Those people are not part of your talent pool if you put up
| barriers to entry for them. I understand those barriers exist
| to keep unethical people out, but that's just the trade off
| you have to accept with barriers in.
|
| You're not going to get top class people.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| You are paying a market rate for the 4 hour technical assignment
| of course? Wait, you don't want to commit that kind of resources
| to someone who's not an employee yet? Well it works the same way
| for them.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| What's the salary?
| gwnywg wrote:
| I wonder, how often people would check candidate public repo and
| hire based on that? I have not seen this to happen to my network,
| people are asked to do homework assignment or algo coding in
| front of somebody but had never been hired based on their github.
| I'd imagine public github repo to the programmer is like
| portfolio to the artist, should be good indication?
| dejawu wrote:
| I'm not senior in title, but I recently accepted an offer from
| a place that looked over my publicly visible GitLab projects
| and bypassed the technical challenge based on that work. We
| still had a technical conversation to confirm that I knew what
| I was talking about. Their willingness to do this played a huge
| role in me choosing their offer.
| MauroIksem wrote:
| Post the salary. Expecting someone to give you 5-6 hours of their
| time for FREE while not knowing if they even want the job is
| stupid.
| atraac wrote:
| > salary isn't posted in the ad
|
| I don't know how US job market looks like right now but if this
| was in EU I would simply keep scrolling if there wasn't a salary
| range unless your name was really recognizable. There's too many
| offers to waste time writing emails/messages that lead to
| bullshit pitch-calls that waste my time before some recruiter
| gracefully tells me what the potential salary is.
| imhoguy wrote:
| It is beauty competition. Disclaimer: I am biased gray-hair
| contractor who's milking own network.
|
| "fairly typical run-of-the-mill mid-size enterprise software
| vendor" - read: boring, maintenance, legacy, but that is ok, I
| work on such stuff when it pays decent daily rate;
|
| "fully-remote SWEs in the "DevOps" software space (Linux,
| containers, k8s, yadda yadda)", "higher percentage non-code" -
| sysadmin, jira queue, SEVs, on-call duty, yaml development, no
| essential prog lang skill, o'rly you need SWE?
|
| "we're junior-heavy already" - babysitting, scrum;
|
| "haven't even managed to backfill a retirement from six months
| ago", "the work requires a reasonably deep understanding of the
| underlying platforms" - seek Sol. Architect or on-board into
| small area first, legacy can wait;
|
| "take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's
| choosing" - what? take-home k8s cluster? Maybe better try some
| gig/probation week, daily rate applies ofc.
|
| I think I would fit, but why I should move my lazy ass off my
| golden handcuffs just before summer?
| pjungwir wrote:
| Post the salary range.
|
| From what I can tell DevOps is the hardest thing to hire for
| right now, and it commands the highest salaries. It's tough to
| find someone who can code and troubleshoot code problems, but
| also has all the skills of a sys/net/cloud/k8s admin, and is
| willing to put up with the higher stress of that role.
|
| Most qualified people have already done their best to get a job
| they're happy with. Personally I'm not making FAANG money, but as
| a self-employed freelancer I still do pretty well. So it's hard
| to see hidden-salary listings as anything other than a waste of
| time. 90% of them will come in too low. Things like a four-hour
| coding assignment just prove to me that it's smarter not to
| bother. If you make it that pointless for qualified candidates
| you'll only hear from the unqualified ones.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| anyway, it seems it takes 5 steps to get to the offer.
|
| I am reminded of a thing I had an Accenture a couple years ago
| where they kept passing me along to people and the last one came
| with an offer and it was too late, I had just taken another
| offer.
|
| I would try a 3 step process.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Whats the salary range?
|
| Whats the bonus / stock structure?
|
| Whats the product?
|
| Honestly, the process you list only works if you pay well and
| have great benefits.
| physicsguy wrote:
| Our process for an SME in the UK:
|
| CV screened.
|
| 30 minute call with engineering manager
|
| Tech task < an hour for a senior level applicant. Nothing here
| that's difficult at all
|
| Technical interview where we ask questions based on the content
| of that exercise
|
| Offer
|
| Even with that we're struggling, but we're loathe to reduce it
| because the technical exercise has shown that a lot of people
| talk the talk but can't walk the walk. We're doing it in a way
| that's "write an API end point for something real world-y" so no
| leetcode and it's incredible how many people say they know
| Framework X but can't even do this basic task.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > Benefits and salary are good
|
| In your opinion :)
| lazyant wrote:
| Post on https://www.reddit.com/r/devopsjobs/ and you'll get free
| feedback on the specifics. Usually a combination of:
|
| - low salary. - not remote. - long/cumbersome interview process
| (for ex, 4hr take-home is too much and you are selecting for
| people who have the time to do them and not better offers). -
| other yellow/red flags (bullshit language in the ad, what company
| does etc).
|
| I'm a devops guy with experience hiring and interviewing, feel
| free to email me for a quick comment on your posting.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > Benefits and salary are good (though salary isn't posted in the
| ad)
|
| "I understand that most people are interested in working to
| exchange labor for money to support their addiction to food and
| shelter. But we don't post how much money we are willing to
| exchange for said labor and I wonder why I can't get qualified
| candidates who are interested"
|
| Does that about sum it up?
|
| And on top of that you expect me to do a take home assignment as
| a "senior" employee when even public companies that offer cash
| and RSUs (not lottery tickets - ie "equity") only require a 5
| hour interview loop?
| ivanech wrote:
| "Take-home technical assignment (~4h)"
|
| Last time I was interviewing, I had ~5 take-home assessments sent
| to me. I didn't finish any of them. Much easier to prioritize a
| live interview. Less risk of having my time wasted.
| rmk wrote:
| The 4h take-home will narrow your funnel a lot. Most senior
| people will not do a free 4-hour take home. Try replacing it with
| a 2-hour interview by 3 people (that is, three 40-minute
| interviews each). One interviewer can do a hypothetical design
| question and the two others can do a programming question each.
| These do not have to be very difficult, but only to ensure that
| you are not hiring an architecture astronaut. If they can code
| and can explain a coherent design + some followup questions, the
| hiring manager can do a resume deep-dive and behavioral questions
| (all 4 people must be alert to behavioral cues).
|
| EDIT: For a devops person, you could do one programming
| interview, one design interview, and another interview of various
| subject-specific technologies including networking, access
| control, alerting/monitoring and database management.
| silisili wrote:
| As someone who used to do devops but now SWE - Do you have a link
| or contact? I've been considering something new but being picky,
| but in the worst case I can give you my honest feedback.
| toss1 wrote:
| My first question would be to look at the steps in your hiring
| process as a series of filters.
|
| Do any steps that have either a larger drop-off than the others
| or a larger drop-off than in your past experience? What is the
| reason for the drop-off, are applicants dropping out/ghosting
| you, or are you rejecting them?
|
| Do you have any data or insight on firms competing for these
| applicants? For example, are you putting in place an obstacle
| such as the 4h take-home assignment that your competitors do not
| have? Are you not posting compensation when your competitors are?
| Might these be subtracting more value than they add to the
| process?
| zip1234 wrote:
| 1. Post the comp levels if not available on something like
| levels.fyi. If the comp is above average, sell on it.
|
| 2. Make it a paid technical assignment. I don't think your
| process is unreasonable except some may object to the assignment.
| If you make it paid it is much less objectionable.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >Benefits and salary are good (though salary isn't posted in the
| ad)
|
| Stopped reading right there
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| We've been unsuccessful finding senior roles lately. The job is
| slightly underpaid, but the technologies, team, and everything
| else are amazing.
|
| It's difficult to communicate that in a job rec. I'd never leave
| for a much more higher paying role because the weight of being on
| a team of real experts working on real challenges far outweighs
| additional money.
|
| Just the way it goes out here. For the same reasons you wouldn't
| be able to hire me, other people won't be hired for less than
| what they want.
|
| Edit: The "slightly underpaid" comment is getting all the
| attention, so I'm just going to make it literal.
|
| 200k before considering stocks, and other benefits, remote US.
|
| That's what I consider slightly underpaid. It's not a euphemism
| for "massively underpaid"
| vba616 wrote:
| Think about it. You expect to hire people making less right
| now, because most people won't take a pay cut if they aren't
| forced to.
|
| But if you are paying $200K, then presumably you will not hire
| anyone who is now making $100K, $50K, or $5K. So you're
| restricted to a fairly narrow band.
|
| Where is your "glass ceiling", the minimum someone has to be
| making for you to take them seriously?
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| How much someone is making now is not part of the analysis on
| if they would be a good hire. I wouldn't even ask this within
| the process.
| vba616 wrote:
| Let's set aside whether it's explicitly screened for or
| discussed.
|
| If, hypothetically, you knew what they were making, either
| as a dollar figure or implicitly because of their
| previous/current job description, what would be the
| minimum?
|
| I'm asking something which necessarily has an answer, even
| if you won't answer it.
|
| I'm asking about the limits to your imagination - where is
| the boundary between a plausible hire and and one that is
| not? Both in numeric terms _and_ all the stuff associated
| with it.
|
| When I wrote $5K, that was a serious possibility - think of
| it as 4 lakh rupees per annum.
|
| You don't seriously go through the same analysis for
| everybody. Nobody does. Maybe you won't share exactly when
| you jettison the analysis, but the important thing is to
| realize this is where the problem lies, and questioning the
| implicit rules related to shortcutting your process.
| abeyer wrote:
| > think of it as 4 lakh rupees per annum
|
| So is your question _actually_ "Will you/why won't you
| hire overseas remote, rather than in the US?"
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| I don't even know how to respond to your line of thinking
| here. You've already stated that if I tell you the truth,
| then I'm lying, because the truth isn't true.
|
| You clearly have an issue you've experienced that bothers
| you, and you are critically concerned with it. That makes
| sense. Best of luck to you.
|
| It doesn't change the reality which is in my case, in the
| situation I'm discussing, the previous salary of the
| person applying is a completely irrelevant part of the
| hiring process.
| hpagey wrote:
| is the stock liquid? checkout levels.fyi for senior / staff
| level compensation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _job is slightly underpaid, but the technologies, team, and
| everything else are amazing_
|
| I would be sceptical of someone describing themselves as senior
| who falls for this. Pay them properly. If you can't afford
| cash, make it up in stock and responsibility and flexibility
| and be open that you're proposing that tradeoff from the start.
| You'll filter out everyone with a mortgage or kids close to
| college or a lifestyle they love, but that's better than hoping
| someone falls for the schtick Silicon Valley regularly foist on
| twenty somethings.
|
| (I would also be sceptical of someone describing themselves as
| senior responding to job postings versus being recruited, but
| that may be more bias than truth.)
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > I would be skeptical of someone describing themselves as
| senior who falls for this. Pay them properly.
|
| 100%. Seniors are likely to have families, kids, etc. I'm not
| leaving a job for "dream tech, or dream team" if I'm taking a
| step down, or for a lateral compensation move.
|
| Given the current economic/inflationary environment "slightly
| underpaying" is massively underpaying them.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| I literally meant slightly underpaying. I'm sorry, if I
| realized people weren't going to use the words I said with
| their own meaning, I would have said it differently.
|
| I'm not marketing a job to you, I'm just saying that it
| doesn't pay as high as the highest offers I get for roles
| which I wouldn't take to replace it.
|
| Edit: Let's just make this literal, it's 200k without
| considering stock, benefits, etc. I consider that slightly
| underpaid, but the idea you can't raise a family on it is
| mind boggling.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Thanks for the update (with the numbers), I was about to
| reply that without a number it's hard to gauge what
| 'slightly underpaying' means.
|
| It would be interesting to see if you added a pay range
| if you got any additional hits. I'm not a devops guy, so
| I can't say whether it's underpaying or not. It doesn't
| seem unreasonable to me.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| It's also a remote US role, and it isn't Devops, as much
| as Software Engineering.
|
| It's going to depend a lot on where you live for how
| competitive the numbers are, but I don't care where
| someone lives. I need someone equally as useful as
| everyone else in the team. It's a very high quality team,
| so it's a challenge certainly. But pay isn't the issue,
| it's differentiating yourself from all the other
| positions that say similar things, but don't mean it.
|
| Like, every job rec says the same boring things. everyone
| wants "a+ players" or "force multipliers" or whatever bs
| they say. I wouldn't apply for the role as listed in the
| rec, and I know the job is great!
|
| It's tough to say, no really, this is dope.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| I mean, it's entirely reasonable if those are your
| objectives. I don't decide pay, so I have no say in those
| details.
|
| I do agree that you don't find seniors by job postings very
| often, but we have had success with it provided the job
| posting is narrow on a technology that is specialized, so you
| know the candidates in a way. They come from a company you've
| worked with, or interacted with on some vertical.
| confidantlake wrote:
| Me and many other people I know will not do take-home
| assignments. Top paying (FAANG) companies do not require them.
| brailsafe wrote:
| I agree with others on the technical assessment. I'll at least
| give you some points for offering it after speaking to someone
| for an hour which a lot of companies don't do--it's a really
| fucking low bar. I don't know that I'm necessarily senior by
| everyone's metric, but I've been in development for nearing 10
| years depending how you look at it. I usually count it as
| something like 7-10 if someone wants to scrutinize, because
| really I'm just an IC without much more responsibility. I'd do
| *A* technical assessment, but not a 4hr one, and only if the
| resulting career move would be really impactful or I'm desperate.
| I'm planning to do a full day of Amazon interviews at the end of
| the month just because I've never worked at a fang and don't
| think I'd pass, so it's a challenge and a healthy time risk for
| high potential outcome. There's nothing more defeating than doing
| a lengthy technical test for an arbitrary company, only to be
| told something like my formatting was bad while using HackerRank,
| or to have some arrogant Junior review the submission and have it
| not be to their standard. You don't get time back. I wouldn't
| work for my current contract if there was a chance I wouldn't get
| paid, and I ain't doin it for many others.
| sdwolfz wrote:
| `- Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's
| choosing`
|
| This. Get rid of this. Everybody that reads this, get rid of it
| if you have such a step in your interview process.
|
| Do a 1 hour maximum live challenge instead, or skip it entirely
| if the candidate has any public code you review and good enough.
|
| This is what I've done in the current company and we've managed
| to hire some extremely good senior candidates because of it.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Option 1: Train juniors Option 2: Pay a lot more
|
| Stop the take homes. They suck.
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| I've noticed an increasing reticence from senior programmers I
| know to have anything to do with DevOps. They see it as an
| aggravation they don't want in their lives. Somebody posted a
| little while back about it being easy to find consulting work in
| DevOps with relatively little skill, especially AWS pricing,
| specifically because devs at companies aren't putting in the time
| to learn AWS properly.
|
| Has anybody else noticed the same? Or am I way off base?
| corrral wrote:
| Large swaths of the developer community have long seen
| commercial-platform-specific certifications as a bad path, and
| DevOps seems pretty heavy on that. Goes back at least to the
| days when people were picking up MCSE and Cisco certs and such
| and trying to base a career on them (sometimes successfully!
| But a stigma definitely developed around those certs, too)
| geekbird wrote:
| What's worse is that they want full-on programming, leetcode,
| algorithm mashing for jobs that end up being nothing more than
| slinging yaml or json and maybe tweaking a Jenkins job.
|
| That's the reality of DevOps - it's not primarily development,
| it's applying frameworks to infrastructure and deployment
| tasks. Get a senior sysadmin in operations and pay for a few
| courses in what you need from them.
| necovek wrote:
| I find it funny that you said "learn AWS properly" -- have you
| loaded AWS services page recently? I've seen even very
| experienced DevOps engineers struggle to remember what was the
| service name to get into "parameter value store" (and I already
| forgot, and that was two weeks ago).
|
| AWS is a mess. You learn just enough to get by and long for the
| days of simplicity where you could manage a bunch of servers
| yourself.
|
| Oh, sorry, we are using Azure or GPC or OpenStack, that's an
| entirely new set of names for you to even know what you are
| looking for.
|
| K8S is just the same. Every company decides on an "easier to
| use tool" like k9s that you have to learn from scratch if you
| don't want to jump through hoops to just use kubectl directly.
|
| If anything is a definition of boring work, it's this: work to
| assemble a bunch of existing pieces without creating anything
| really new. I like being tasked with creating things, not being
| an assembly line worker who's got to learn terminology de jour.
| rr808 wrote:
| I think the way devops is right now is that a few great tech
| companies have it as an interesting role where there is time to
| write code and improve things. Most companies treat devops as
| regular ops, as in developers do all the interesting work and
| expect ops to be on call 247 to keep all the crappy bits
| running.
| ternaryJimbo wrote:
| Why is the salary not posted? What do you gain by not posting a
| range?
| crackinmalackin wrote:
| I'm in between jobs at the moment and a lot of people here are
| commenting with some very reasonable hiring practices that I
| actually haven't seen out in the wild yet. From what I'm seeing,
| the take home assignment process is getting out of control.
|
| The take home assignment process seems to vary wildly between
| different companies. One place wanted me to complete a take home
| assignment that was estimated to take between 30 - 40 hours.
| Another startup had me come in for a 3 hour interview, and then
| asked me to take home assignment after the onsite interview. Hard
| pass.
|
| I think I still prefer the take home assignments over the
| leetcode misery. But, candidates like myself will quickly find
| themselves having to pick and choose which ones they want to
| complete because some are just asking way too much.
| jhot wrote:
| I'm someone who is likely your target candidate and I just went
| through the hiring process so here are my thoughts without seeing
| an example ad post (which you should link to):
|
| - There are a ton of job openings right now in DevOps and similar
| roles. I spent about 2 days applying to as many as I could and
| that filled my entire next couple weeks with interviews/tasks. I
| went through interviews, received offers, and chose one all from
| those two days of applying, so unless a candidate sees your offer
| early in their search that could be a source of low application
| volume.
|
| - Is the fact that it's a fully remote position prominent in your
| postings? I personally only applied for positions I could tell
| were fully remote at a glance.
|
| - Put the salary range in the posting. I am way more likely to
| apply if I know ahead of time that it's going to be worth my
| time.
|
| - Are you strict on coding languages? I am pretty flexible but
| still have my favorites. If you're C#, I'm out (no offense to
| those who like it, I started out my career in the .NET world and
| ended up feeling trapped there and I'm not going back).
|
| - How quick are your turnarounds from application submission and
| interviews? Lots of companies are moving quickly to get people
| through the hiring process and if you're not then you'll be
| passed up for other companies.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > no offense to those who like it, I started out my career in
| the .NET world and ended up feeling trapped there and I'm not
| going back
|
| I actually think C# is pretty decent for a big general purpose
| language, but I understand this sentiment. No one wants to talk
| to me about anything other than .NET positions. I can usually
| squeeze a decent raise out of it, but I'm approaching my
| ceiling.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I started out my career in the .NET world and ended up
| feeling trapped there and I 'm not going back_
|
| Can you expound on why you felt that way?
| throw1138 wrote:
| Remote is in the title of the post and mentioned multiple times
| throughout the post.
|
| I dare say we're not posting frequently enough, that's a good
| point.
|
| It's against company policy to put the range in the ad. Very
| very stupid, but probably nothing I can do about that.
|
| We have three languages mentioned in the ad. But any senior
| candidate can be introduced to new technologies so they're not
| in the "requirements" section.
|
| We could probably improve turnaround time, but the lack of
| applicants alongside natural attrition is making that even
| harder to make happen.
|
| Thank you jhot!
|
| Copypasta: This is a throwaway because I'm just an engineer on
| the team wondering if there's something obvious we're doing
| wrong, and I don't imagine this would be considered desirable
| attention by management.
| matwood wrote:
| > It's against company policy to put the range in the ad.
| Very very stupid, but probably nothing I can do about that.
|
| This is already against the rules in CO and soon WA and NYC.
| Your company may as well get use to posting ranges. Ranges
| are also thought of to lead to more equitable outcomes for
| those working at the company.
| jhot wrote:
| I am in CO and saw one ad that had a link to a special page
| on their website to "comply" with this regulation. It was a
| blanket statement that salary can be between $20k (can't
| remember the low end but it was something like that) and
| $1MM based on position and experience. I was very put off
| by that and did not apply. I didn't take the time to look
| into the legality of using a blanket statement like that
| but it seems sketchy to me.
| bombcar wrote:
| The legality is "not so much" but for smaller companies
| they can get away with it (because small companies are
| unlikely to have defined titles and bands to begin with).
| danamit wrote:
| > Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's
| choosing
|
| This one should be paid, I would ignore this one if I am going
| thru other applications, if the salary is good I'd mention it
| before bringing up any 4-hours technical assignment.
| jake_morrison wrote:
| I did one of these after a long day spent deep in the guts of the
| web framework (Elixir/Phoenix) trying to optimize performance
| under DDOS on an ad-tech system.
|
| They gave me a codebase with a "REST" API for their mobile client
| that had some problems and wanted me to spend "4 hours" adding
| features to it and fixing any problems that I saw.
|
| I made the changes, then told them that the biggest problem was
| that their REST API was just ad-hoc JSON over HTTP, with ill-
| defined data and poor error handling. I recommended using
| GraphQL, which defines the over-the-wire format and error
| handling, reduces network round-trips, and is "self-serve",
| avoiding many meetings between front-end and back-end people and
| increasing dev velocity.
|
| This was too much for them, as they were expecting some changes
| to put lipstick on the pig. I said that there were other REST-
| based frameworks that would add standard structure (e.g. JSON
| API) and support introspection with e.g. OpenAPI.
|
| I got rejected because I "didn't have enough experience with the
| framework", and "it didn't seem like a good fit". Their "seniors"
| doing the interviewing were not able to build a system that
| worked before they ran out of money, and they are now out of
| business.
| dijit wrote:
| I'm willing to go through the process and give you direct
| feedback.
|
| I'm a Senior "DevOps" (Sysadmin), resume is here:
| dijit.sh/resume.pdf
|
| Sounds conceited; but if you want to know how an outsider feels
| about your companies and the process: this can be an effective
| way.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Think you might want to know that there is a flaw in your page
| navigation. Under 'About me', clicking 'View portfolio' goes to
| 'Contact me' section.
|
| Nice page otherwise.
| dougk16 wrote:
| Agreed with the vibe of other comments here. It's hard not to
| come off snobby, and the market won't allow such snobbery
| forever, but for now the reality is that a senior engineer is
| interviewing YOU, not the other way around. Anything longer than
| a few emails and maybe a one hour conversation and you risk them
| moving on. Technical assignment is definitely pushing it, unless
| perhaps it's paid.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Most likely, your offer is just too low.
|
| Senior developers almost by definition have experience with their
| own market value and plenty of offers from their network. If
| you're going to offer less than what a friend's company offers,
| you'll need to have insanely amazing tech to compensate. And I'm
| always assuming that companies pay badly if they are cagey about
| naming the salary. I mean you also didn't say if you were
| offering $100k or $300k annually.
| thrill wrote:
| Having just spent 3 weeks on 4x hour long interviews and
| completing a day long coding problem along with a "code while I
| watch" to get to the point that "we're tabling this for a few
| months" I suspect many of us senior types are just tabling the
| job seeking process ourselves until we seem to be in actual
| demand.
| BadCookie wrote:
| Sometimes companies pay for the time it takes to complete a
| take-home project. I think it's a good idea, especially now
| given all the hiring freezes and especially for a remote
| position where the applicant has no idea how many other
| applicants (around the country/world) they might be competing
| against.
| OJFord wrote:
| Has anyone ever expected (or received) payment for time off
| to attend interviews though?
|
| Seems to me like a bad reaction to the relatively new thing,
| but actually the criticism applies just as well to the older
| thing.
|
| (Maybe it should all be paid! Though having job search funded
| by prospective employers does seem a bit weird.. I think
| really I just think it's neither here nor there in terms of
| morality or whatever - but the 'take-home' isn't
| fundamentally different from the interview. If anything it
| might be better in this regard already, since I don't have to
| take time off for it (but also can, if I prefer that to
| spending my evening/weekend on it)?)
| BadCookie wrote:
| The difference is that interviewing costs the company in
| the form of the time required from existing employees,
| whereas the company could ask 50 people to do a take-home
| project for free at essentially no cost to them.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Agreed; if you have to have the 4 hour assignment, paying a
| market wage for a senior dev for those 4 hours, at least
| shows that you are serious about filling the position.
| bombcar wrote:
| In the past often the ones that didn't pay would at least fly
| you over to headquarters and wine/dine you and put you up at
| a hotel for a night or two, which was a nice "off the books"
| payment.
| corrral wrote:
| > Take-home technical assignment (~4h) or similar at candidate's
| choosing
|
| If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't do
| this, I'll skip you.
|
| Many seniors ( _actual_ seniors, not 3-years-of-experience
| seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and
| instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more than
| talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Lol, take home technical assignment. Why would I ever? I'd much
| rather have a comfortable conversation with someone who has
| worked with me in the past. I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour
| assignment for you.
| jitix wrote:
| But isn't the alternative to take home assignment leetcoding
| on whiteboards? Last time I was interviewing in the US market
| was in 2017 and it was literally just these two options. And
| the assignments tended to be long - like a week long. (tbh
| there were a few companies that pre-offered and just wanted
| one general discussion round with the team but they felt
| shady and desperate, and one was a literal consultancy)
|
| Could someone articulate what's the norm now for non-FAANG
| pure-tech companies? I might go back to the open market next
| year after grad school since I don't have much of a network
| in Canada.
|
| (I have decent 10y+ experience at startups and a unicorn, in
| both big data analytics and full stack applications and I'm
| good at system design, take home assignments and even live
| coding but really suck at physical white boarding complex
| algorithms with someone literally watching over me)
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| I think where the disconnect is occurring is that
| leetcoding on whiteboards, and home assignments are not the
| norm for many of us who are Senior.
|
| I have 20y+ experience in startups, unicorn, large
| companies, big data analytics, full stack applications, and
| system design.
|
| I am not asked to interview with whiteboard coding when
| someone wants to hire me from a referral. They are
| glorified meet and greets.
|
| This is what having a network of people who have worked
| with you before, and have seen your productivity does. You
| don't interview the same way other people do, people want
| you for you, because they know that it doesn't matter what
| the technology is, you're going to provide a crazy level of
| value, and they want that level of value in their
| situation.
| [deleted]
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I've been duped into take-homes a few times. The one time I
| wasn't ghosted after submitting, they asked me to come in
| for an on-site... to do leetcode.
| Redsquare wrote:
| Agree, I will laugh at you asking me to do anything at home
| before we have a contract
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Like... interview?
| corrral wrote:
| I think "senior" has at least two types. There's the FAANG-
| alum seniors who are used to and will put up with full-day or
| even multi-day interviews full of leetcode shit or "gotcha"
| edge-case quizzes about language features you trained
| yourself to avoid a decade ago or take-home assignments ("4
| hours" sure except the other candidate put in 12 hours and
| lied about it, so...) for that sweet, sweet crazy-high comp.
| Unless you're offering these sorts a CTO position, they're
| not applying to your non-FAANG-tier-comp-and-security-and-
| presige company. Period.
|
| Then there's senior in most of the rest of the industry. We
| don't do long, annoying interviews. If your process drags on
| we've already accepted one of our other offers. We don't make
| FAANG money (mostly) but we also don't put up with horseshit.
| You want me, or not? If not, 100 other companies do, so bye
| and have a nice day.
| jacobyoder wrote:
| > ("4 hours" sure except the other candidate put in 12
| hours and lied about it, so...)
|
| Recently went through this. Got an email at 2pm saying
| "please run through this exercise". Looked at the doc, then
| decided to hit it. I submitted everything back before 6pm.
| It was around 2.5 hours, and I took a short break in the
| middle. I screen-captured my whole session (not sent in)
| but to have a little souvenir of the exercise. There's
| really not much way I could have 'cheated' on the time
| because there was only 4 hrs tops between sending the email
| and submitted my results.
|
| Their estimate was 'we expect this to take 2-3 hours', and
| they weren't all that wrong. I could see someone less
| experienced taking more than 2 hours just on one of the bad
| queries - unless you've seen the pattern(s) before it's
| hard to recognize and refactor quickly.
| jen20 wrote:
| > FAANG-alum seniors who are used to and will put up with
| full-day or even multi-day interviews full of leetcode shit
| or "gotcha" edge-case quizzes
|
| As a current FAANG employee, I didn't put up with that
| bullshit from anyone including FAANG companies.
| duped wrote:
| People say this and I have yet to find a company that doesn't
| do some kind of technical assessment. But I _have_ seen
| multiple coworkers with 10-20 years of experience as software
| engineers with glowing recommendations get fired because they
| couldn 't write software. So I'm a little happier to have
| some bar for myself and coworkers to clear.
|
| > I'm never, ever doing a 4 hour assignment for you.
|
| Boo hoo, you need to spend four hours of your life to take
| home multiples of the median American family's income. It
| blows my mind how conceited some people in this industry can
| be, and I'm glad I don't work with them. This is one reason
| why the take home is a great filter.
| smeagull wrote:
| > Boo hoo, you need to spend four hours of your life to
| take home multiples of the median American family's income.
| It blows my mind how conceited some people in this industry
| can be, and I'm glad I don't work with them. This is one
| reason why the take home is a great filter.
|
| Point is they don't need to, and companies that insist on
| it are hurting only themselves.
|
| > But I have seen multiple coworkers with 10-20 years of
| experience as software engineers with glowing
| recommendations get fired because they couldn't write
| software
|
| I can imagine multiple reasons for this to occur at a
| company and a bunch of them reflect poorly on the build and
| architecture at the company
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| You're not responding in good faith with your "boo hoo"
| comment. No one is crying here. The point here is there are
| many, many companies that don't require a 4 hour take home
| technical assessment, and thus people can decide to do them
| or not.
|
| The post is about this topic, so the responses are about
| the topic. You think that 4 hour take home technical
| assessments are a reasonable filter. Awesome, you are a
| person who can apply for the position op is focused on.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly the point they're missing - if _everyone_ does
| it, it 's part of the shit sandwich you have to eat. But
| if you're the _only_ one doing it, there are entire
| classes of applicants that will pass you by.
|
| _Hiding_ that you 're going to spring it on people
| should give you numbers, by the people who ghost you the
| moment it appears, if you wanted to test for it.
| cableshaft wrote:
| If I'm interviewing at multiple companies and they all do
| that, that's 4 hours per company I want to check out. And
| let's be honest, most of these I've been asked to do
| weren't reasonable to do, and do well, and double check, in
| four hours, despite the claim. Eight hours is more
| reasonable to do them properly, usually.
|
| If I interview at three places, that's three days of unpaid
| work (or 6+ evenings after I've already worked a full day
| at my normal job), and if I'm _already_ making "multiples
| of the median American family's income" elsewhere, then it
| becomes less attractive to put up with that, especially if
| other companies aren't asking for it.
|
| Like I just can't find the energy to put up with Amazon's
| 2.5 hour span of unbroken time take-home test, no matter
| how desperate they make themselves sound or how often they
| contact me (which is almost every week at this point). When
| I last considered it, I was already having trouble juggling
| just finding holes in the day to manage about 30 interviews
| I ended up doing, across about 8 companies. I had no energy
| to study for, and then do, that exam on top of it (I did do
| three 45-60 minute exams, across three evenings, for three
| other companies, though).
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > Like I just can't find the energy to put up with
| Amazon's 2.5 hour span of unbroken time take-home test
|
| By the sounds of it, that test would be the best bit of
| your time at Amazon.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Haha, yeah that certainly hasn't helped motivate me to go
| through their process.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| My personal policy on these assignments used to be that you get
| 4 hours free, and you agree to be billed for the rest at my
| consulting rate. Now I am down to 2 hours. Most of my network
| has a 1.5 hour test as a formality, and it's not that much
| longer than a phone interview.
|
| Someone I spoke to recently had the audacity to ask for 20
| hours of free work in the intro call, and I just shook my head
| and hung up.
| the_watcher wrote:
| I just wrapped up a take home project. When I was told about
| it, I told the HM that I withdraw from processes that include a
| take home. They told me that they understood, but that this one
| really did only take an hour or two, and that they'd send it
| over to me anyway. All they asked was that I take a look, and
| if I completed it, they'd send me a $150 Amazon gift card. I
| took a look, and it really did seem straightforward (basically
| testing what I'd expect a live, 30-45 minute DS interview to
| cover), so I went ahead and did it. I ended up spending 2.5
| hours on it, but only because I got sucked into making very
| pretty charts.
|
| I'm pretty anti-take home, because they're usually scoped as
| "it should only take you 4-5 hours, here's a project that would
| take an in house DS a week at minimum", but if they were
| actually scoped like this one (and even mildly comped), I
| really wouldn't mind much.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I think I share your interpretation, plus it is possible to
| scope something small that's (gasp!) interesting. The last
| one I did was use the company's product to create something
| and then demo it to the team. In addition to a gift card is
| was (almost) fun.
|
| IMO a (very small) take-home assignment is the least-worst of
| a lot of generally bad options. A pairing exercise focused on
| teamwork and communication (vs hardcore coding) is the only
| other option I even consider these days.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Conversely, to some extent I can't specify, if someone senior
| _does_ applies to a "regular" job, it might mean their former
| coworkers don't want to work with them...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm a "senior" (I was 55 when I started looking), and I didn't
| have a "network," because I was a manager, and wanted to get
| back into technical stuff (I'm _very_ good at technical stuff,
| but I was paid to manage). I had a network of pretty heavy-duty
| people, but they all knew me as a manager, and I didn 't want
| to put them on the spot for technical stuff, since that wasn't
| how they knew me.
|
| That basically meant that I had to come in the front door to
| places I was interested in.
|
| I was a bit "picky," because I wanted to do stuff that
| interested me. I didn't really care about making a lot of
| money, or beanbag chairs, or whatnot. I wanted to do work that
| engaged me.
|
| I'm a very experienced Apple native developer, and I'm good at
| writing stuff that talks to other stuff (like client/server
| systems, device control, realtime video, etc.). I'm good at
| writing APIs and SDKs. Making devices sit up and beg is
| something I've always enjoyed.
|
| So places that did stuff like that, interested me.
|
| In my experience, I was treated like absolute crap. After a few
| rounds of "interviews" (which seemed to be opportunities for
| relatively young engineers and managers to patronize and
| condescend me), I just said "bugger this for a lark," and
| decided that I was retired. I set up a small company, so I
| could buy toys, and started following my own muse. I found some
| folks doing non-profit stuff, that couldn't afford people of my
| caliber, and started working with them, for free.
|
| It was the best decision I've ever made. In the last five
| years, I've probably done more work than I did in two decades
| previously, I've learned more, every day, than I have, since my
| twenties.
|
| _[UPDATED TO ADD] If you want "senior" people, they are likely
| to come with a rather fetching shade of grey to their well-
| coiffed pompadours, and I'd suggest that it would be rather
| self-destructive to treat them badly. There seems to be
| considerable resentment towards us older folks. I'm not one to
| judge whether or not it is merited (in my case, it is
| definitely not), but it may interfere with efforts to recruit
| more experienced folks._
| xhrpost wrote:
| I'm super happy that you found such a fulfilling role!
|
| Was wondering if you could elaborate on this a bit:
|
| > I set up a small company, so I could buy toys, and started
| following my own muse.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The Great Rift Valley Software Company[0] is a small
| corporation that allowed me to use a bit of my retirement
| money without tax penalties.
|
| [0] https://riftvalleysoftware.com
| nairodd wrote:
| awesome story, what kind of non profit do you work with
| exactly?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| We are a small 501(c)(3), creating an app that is aimed at
| a particular demographic. It is an amalgam of a simple
| social media graph, and a location-based event database.
|
| It's not really device control, but it does involve a
| fairly robust iOS app, talking to multiple servers, and
| synthesizing relationships.
|
| I won't go into a whole bunch of detail in public. Like I
| said, it serves a fairly narrow demographic, and won't
| really make a huge splash.
|
| I've been writing software for this demographic for
| decades.
|
| I can always chat about it offline.
| anon291 wrote:
| The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're saying
| no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture applies to
| more senior people than juniors.
|
| I used to do these assignment. Now I simply don't sorry.
|
| My schedule is
|
| 6:30 AM wake up with youngest daughter, to let wife sleep in
| (she takes care of her all night)
|
| 9:00 AM hand off youngest daughter to wife, who takes both
| girls the rest of the day. I go to my home office
|
| 12:00 PM lunch with family / kids
|
| 1:00 PM back to work
|
| 5:00 PM off work... Cook dinner / watch kids while wife cooks
| dinner. Set up table. Eat with family.
|
| 6:30 PM Play with kids for an hour
|
| 7:30 PM Bathtime + off to bed
|
| 9:30 - 10:30 PM Infant child actually goes to sleep
|
| 10:30 - 11:00 PM Wife and I chat about our day and spend 30
| minutes of time actually being together
|
| 11:00 PM sleep until 6:30 the next day
|
| Exactly where in that schedule am I supposed to fit a FOUR HOUR
| coding assignment. That's ridiculous. Unless you're providing
| child care, this is simply too much.
|
| A one hour interview... I can handle.
|
| Perhaps you'd get better leads by allowing for a choice. For my
| last job search. I had several different companies all in the
| upcoming AI accelerator space. Two of them had assignments. I
| said no thanks. The others did interviews. I got a good raise
| (base + stock options)anyway. I don't think I lost anything
| saying no to the ones with assignments.
|
| Alternatively, perhaps pay people to complete the assignments.
| dominotw wrote:
| FAANG type interviews are all day affairs with 5+hr of
| interview and breaks in between. Senior or not. I don't see
| anyone getting hired in 1 hr.
| lewispollard wrote:
| I don't know what exactly OP is assigning to applicants, but
| in my experience a "four hour" coding assignment can be
| completed in an hour or two - and they don't have to be
| consecutive hours, it just means four hours is your limit and
| you have a few days or a week to complete it in.
| geekbird wrote:
| I had one take-home "4 hour" assignment that required me to
| install two different, poorly documented, third party
| packages on my computer before I could even begin to write
| the code. The Java-loaded piece of junk that I needed
| didn't work with my existing setup, and I wasn't going to
| rebuild my entire system just for some arbitrary
| assignment. It might have been "4 hours" if I already had
| an environment with all the extra cruft that they used, but
| if I had to fart with VMs or rebuild my machine? No, just
| no.
|
| It's reasonable to expect someone have various languages on
| their personal boxen, and maybe git, but not repositories,
| specialized third party tools, etc. I don't run Puppet at
| home, for example.
| wizofaus wrote:
| I actually asked a company that had already offered me a
| position recently if they had a technical test. The one
| they sent me was clearly stated and it was easy to
| configure everything needed. If it had been otherwise I
| very likely wouldn't have accepted the offer.
| conradfr wrote:
| In my experience a (not timeboxed) 4 hours coding
| assignment will actually take at least a day.
|
| Is not necessary malicious from those companies, they just
| underestimate the time their test take.
| geekbird wrote:
| IMO, most engineers massively under-estimate the time it
| takes to do "simple" tasks if you don't already have the
| infrastructure/environment set up for it.
| anon291 wrote:
| Yeah it doesn't matter. The truth is that when you give an
| assignment like this, you want me to invest up to four
| hours in it, while you don't want to invest a single minute
| of company engineer time watching me solve it. Basically,
| you're expecting more of me than you are willing to give
| yourself. That's a huge red flag.
|
| That being said, even if it takes an hour, I still have to
| allocate 4 hours for it.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| I had a 4-hour assignment requiring a full weekend (10
| medium to difficult queries on an unknown 20 table database
| and document with business analysis for the query results +
| additional code to extract from api and save to db with
| your own schema + additional queries on top of this).
|
| I also had an 1-hour where i couldn't build the provided
| code and had to go through maven repos and older versions
| of the major test component to make it work after a couple
| hours and then lost any motivation to write the simple
| exercise.
|
| I also had an honest one once, where the instructions were
| clear, you will need a full weekend to do it. I liked the
| job and i completed it, only to be rejected because they
| didn't like my scala syntax.
|
| Sorry, but i won't take home test again and have to gamble
| whether it's an actual 1h test or a full weekend one, or
| some random guy will spend 1 minute only to reject me.
| bonzini wrote:
| > perhaps pay people to complete the assignments.
|
| Assuming this is legal at all according to current employment
| contracts, it's a huge pain for the new employer's payroll
| and more stuff to keep track for the employee's income tax.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > it's a huge pain for the new employer's payroll
|
| They're the ones giving take-home assignments.
| the_watcher wrote:
| Two companies have offered me Amazon gift cards, one of
| them told me that it's far easier for tax purposes (my
| understanding is that this is why user research often
| offers them, rather than cash). I assume they could give
| prepaid debit cards too, for people who prefer not to shop
| at Amazon.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know what the law is. Years ago, but I've been
| paid for doing a focus group in cash. So there's
| presumably some threshold where you can just have
| essentially a petty cash business expense.
|
| Obviously meals and so forth as well. (And, assuming the
| law hasn't changed, US government employees have to pay
| for even a modest meal at a company's executive briefing
| center.)
|
| OTOH, I've had 1099s for even very modest side-consulting
| revenue.
| giaour wrote:
| > So there's presumably some threshold where you can just
| have essentially a petty cash business expense.
|
| $600
| ghaff wrote:
| How surprisingly sensible. :-)
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I've had companies get around this with gift cards. I did a
| application-project and got a $300 amazon card (I think).
| This can come out of someone's general budget and doesn't
| need accounting to be involved, and can also (plausibly)
| treated as a "thank you" by the applicant, not income.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >Assuming this is legal at all according to current
| employment contracts, it's a huge pain for the new
| employer's payroll and more stuff to keep track for the
| employee's income tax.
|
| Is it actually? I run a small business, and have trialled
| people a few times. I normally just transfer them the $x
| and report it as a business expense, same as you'd do with
| a contractor.
|
| Maybe it's not technically 100% compliant, but I'd be
| incredibly surprised if the tax office kicked up a stink
| about something so petty.
|
| (Then again, maybe it's just a "she'll be right mate"
| attitude that permeates even government departments here in
| Australia)
| the_watcher wrote:
| In the US, you might end up having to send a whole bunch
| of 1099s, which I am sure would be a pain.
| maplechori wrote:
| under $600 you don't need a 1099
| ghaff wrote:
| In the US, you probably need to issue a tax form; this
| can be handled through a third party but then is a bit of
| a pain for the candidate. (I've had it work this way as a
| consultant on the side.)
|
| Depending on the potential employee's contracts and
| business rules, doing a side project for someone may or
| may not be 100% kosher.
| aoms wrote:
| I couldn't agree with you more. This is my life.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| > The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're
| saying no to anyone with kids, which I'm going to venture
| applies to more senior people than juniors.
|
| Completely agree here - like a fool I recently went through
| an entire day's worth interviews for a role (hello Stripe
| recruiters!!) that required both me and my wife taking PTO,
| with her looking after the kids while I talked to one junior
| dev after another about data modelling and "culture fit".
| ghaff wrote:
| As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour assignment
| isn't that bad--especially as an alternative to a day of
| interviews. If they give you the assignment and it's
| immediately obvious that it's actually a 20+ hour
| assignment, you can always just walk.
|
| When I worked for a technology analyst company, we would
| ask for writing samples--which most potential hires would
| already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd have to create
| one. It was very reasonably a non-negotiable requirement
| given that's what they'd be doing day to day.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour
| assignment isn 't that bad--especially as an alternative
| to a day of interviews._
|
| On a relative scale that might be true. In absolute terms
| you've already lost a high proportion of good senior
| people who might otherwise have been interested either
| way. Most good developers I know would just walk on
| seeing a 4-hour assignment that was actually a 4-hour
| assignment. Some would accept a full day of interviews if
| the employer had a reputation for being a good place to
| work and offered exceptional compensation but plenty
| wouldn't and I doubt any would for an employer that
| wasn't very top tier. Risk/reward and all that.
| ghaff wrote:
| To be honest, at some point if someone wants to work at
| Google and can get a job at Google--especially if the
| name and/or the salary is what they really care about--
| it's probably in the best interest of a lot of companies
| to just move on.
| Silhouette wrote:
| I'm sure that's true but another point I was trying to
| make there was that IME even top tier companies exclude a
| significant proportion of good developers by having
| excessive hiring processes. The kind of applicant who
| _could_ get hired by those companies doesn 't have to put
| up with those processes and at least here in the UK the
| pay at even top tier companies with annoying hiring
| processes isn't so much better than everyone else that
| it's worth the sacrifice.
| ghaff wrote:
| In the US, there's probably a pretty significant delta
| between top SV big tech salaries and a lot of the rest.
| Of course, those companies probably exclude a lot of
| competent developers and other companies can offer other
| opportunities besides just salary that big tech can't
| (more interesting projects, less of a hiring gauntlet,
| smaller scale, etc.) But if someone is willing to and can
| get through the hiring gauntlet--and really cares about
| the comp--it's hard to compete.
| anon291 wrote:
| No it's not. When i do interviews in-person (even if
| virtual) , I get the benefit of meeting my future
| colleagues and learning more about the company. It's much
| more a two-way benefit, versus an assignment where only
| one party (the company) gets any information from the
| other (me).
|
| > When I worked for a technology analyst company, we
| would ask for writing samples--which most potential hires
| would already have. But, if someone didn't, they'd have
| to create one. It was very reasonably a non-negotiable
| requirement given that's what they'd be doing day to day.
|
| The equivalent in tech is asking for a portfolio, which I
| have an ample amount of on github. I'm more than happy to
| hand this over to potential employers for them to gauge
| my work. But, the idea that I could complete a 4hour
| assignment within a week is ridiculous. My portfolio
| comes through constant, marginal improvements that make
| up a working system in sum. I've collectively spent more
| than 4 hours on most projects on GitHub, but they're done
| at my leisure, in my miniscule amounts of spare time,
| just spread over many years. But again, the idea of
| spending a solid four hours on any of them is just
| laughable. I have no time to do that.
|
| Also, when you get to full day interviews, it's typically
| a sign the company wants you. Having been in both the
| hiring manager position and the candidate position, I've
| only once seen a full day interview end in a "No" and it
| was for particular circumstance.
| dataflow wrote:
| > As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour
| assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative
| to a day of interviews.
|
| Don't forget to multiply that by however many companies
| they're interviewing at.
| anon291 wrote:
| IME, the 4 hour assignment comes at the 'coding
| interview' stage, and most companies have a full day of
| interviews right after. Compared to companies with a one
| hour coding screen... by the time I even would get to the
| 4 hour assignment I likely already have three or four ful
| day interviews lined up
| lelanthran wrote:
| > As something of a counterpoint, a literal 4-hour
| assignment isn't that bad--especially as an alternative
| to a day of interviews.
|
| As a counter counterpoint, that only makes sense if the
| candidate is applying to a single place.
|
| If the candidate has lined up 4 interviews, they're not
| going to get 16 hours in the week to complete them. The
| fifth place that has no 4 hour interviews will get the
| candidate.
| user00012-ab wrote:
| Seems like a good way to weed out people that are constantly
| taking time off to deal with kid issues.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Seems like a good way to weed out people that are
| constantly taking time off to deal with kid issues.
|
| That's just a different way of saying "a good way to weed
| out seniors", which is what the original concern was - not
| enough seniors.
|
| Looks like it works, though.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Please tell me where you work so I can tell everyone I know
| who has or wants to have kids to avoid it
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Oh man, I hope you say things like this out loud so your
| coworkers and employer can hear you.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| hopefully you forgot the /s at the end of your comment?
|
| at any rate evidently 89.615% of people become parents
| https://www.quora.com/What-percentage-of-people-become-
| paren...
|
| so, probably not a good thing to weed out.
| anon291 wrote:
| Meh, I'll walk happily to the bank with my $400k
| compensation, while some company pats itself on the back
| over avoiding someone who spends time with their children
| LOL.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Yes, then they can focus on hiring those who*:
|
| 1. want to work from home to take their new bearded dragon
| to the vet.
|
| 2. have their moms contact me about work load.
|
| 3. pre-emptively book a sick day for Monday because they
| "plan to get really messed up this weekend".
|
| People with kids are the worst employees!
|
| * These have all happened to me in the past year.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| This is just the wrong way to think about things if you
| actually want to hire senior devs. But it's not surprising,
| most companies are only used to dealing with being in a
| position of power.
| speedgoose wrote:
| In which part of the world do you work? Where I work,
| family is a lot more important than work. We help each
| other and taking time off for our family is normal and
| expected.
| mr90210 wrote:
| I smiled reading your comment. You seem like a good partner
| and father. Keep up the good work.
| RhodesianHunter wrote:
| Anecdotally, as someone with three kids I'd much rather do a
| take-home 4 hour assignment than the usual round of
| interviews since I can work the former into my schedule
| however I like.
| wizofaus wrote:
| "The thing with 4hr technical assignments is that you're
| saying no to anyone with kids"
|
| Is 4 hours the amount of time the candidate is being given to
| complete it, or roughly how long the employer expects it will
| take? In the past I've generally come up with tests I know
| can be done in an hour or so (2 tops), but allowed 24 hours,
| exactly because not everyone is going to be in a position
| they can dedicate those 2 hours to it right there and then.
| Sure, those that did take the full 24 hours to complete I
| tended to apply higher expectations towards when judging, but
| at the end of the day it didn't make much difference - the
| tests were only to weed out those that had clearly made a
| poor career decision (and there were surprisingly many of
| those, to the point we switched to testing before
| interviewing).
| jjav wrote:
| This. Four hour assignment? That's a hard No. Unless you're
| very clearly offering something far above the norm (in either
| total comp or autonomy or working conditions or a combination
| thereof), I'm certainly not going to bother with your interview
| process.
| roguecoder wrote:
| I've found that for the biggest numbers people expect me to
| memorize a bunch of bullshit from year three of MIT's CS
| program, so if anything I think this is better than most.
|
| If a company doesn't bother to check how well I'm going to do
| the job, it makes me worried about what sort of smooth-talking
| incompetents I'm going to get stuck working with down the line.
| jghn wrote:
| Even when I'm not looking I'm always willing to followup on the
| latter sort of interview opportunities. You never know and
| they're pain free for everyone involved. The value to both
| parties having each other vetted by a trusted third party is
| huge.
|
| I'd only do the standard style interview if I was desperate for
| a job.
| TheMerovingian wrote:
| Agreed. If you give out take-home tests, they shouldn't take
| longer than an hour.
|
| Unless, you pay them for the time. A few companies I applied to
| 6-7 months ago offered this. However, if you're on unemployment
| benefits, this may count as income.
| mr_gibbins wrote:
| Absolutely agree. People with 10+ years, a good network and
| decent resume pop their head up above the parapet and get
| instantly mobbed with offers. They're on the market 2 weeks,
| tops.
|
| No-one good is going to do a takehome just so the hiring team
| can rub their beards and feel superior while they pick over the
| code. That approach worked a few years ago, in today's
| recruitment bear market you don't pick the candidates, the
| candidates will pick you.
|
| We are having precisely the same trouble as you by the way -
| junior-heavy, but experienced folk are extremely thin on the
| ground, and we go from CV to offer within a week. One chap
| joined (for a few days) and left because he had started
| somewhere else at the same time - they won out. We're moving to
| 1-stage interviews, offer on the same day. Higher risk but we
| have no choice.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| I agree 100% and imo is the proper approach in such a market.
| I was trying to explain this to people that the market has
| changed and the hiring pipelines must be simplified and
| significantly shortened and i kept getting the opposite
| outcome, more rounds and more time to make an offer to good
| candidates and eventually "we cannot find anyone, keep
| looking".
|
| Companies keep their traditional pipelines with average time
| to hire time of 2+ months and think they will find and hire
| loyal people in this rapid market where people accept offers
| on top of others or with just a couple days or weeks in their
| new position. And they keep filtering others because "no
| culture fit", "not sure about this line of code in the take
| home assignment" and other nonsense.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > We're moving to 1-stage interviews, offer on the same day.
| Higher risk but we have no choice
|
| Anecdotally, I've seen people actually been put off by this.
| Perhaps make it 2 interviews just to not seem desperate. It's
| not my own reaction, but I could see why people might think
| "They're _really_ desperate, there must be something wrong
| there "
| techdragon wrote:
| The counter to this is not extra interviews but increasing
| the importance of the people in the interview. A one pass,
| 60 minute interview with the CEO and/or CTO on the call
| tells me a lot more about the kind of company.
|
| One of the reasons I went independent consultant/freelancer
| is because I no longer face hiring bullshit like multiple
| interview rounds. I don't charge to discuss the problems,
| sign an NDA if need be, and I get to talk frankly with both
| technical and business people to work out if I'm a good
| fit, zero pressure. I've turned down work and recommended
| other people I know would be better.
|
| I fit the "senior" role here and honestly I'd be ok with
| the 4hr take home on one condition... pay me.
|
| One tactic I know people are trying is to "flip" a
| freelance contractor by gradually offering work and then
| pitching the full time gig, convincing them to jump onboard
| when everyone already knows it's a good fit and no one has
| d as any risks.
| bythreads wrote:
| I never understood why people are so dogged on hiring -
| just get a senior consultant - pay 2-3x and save the
| equity. it's faster and in the end the expenses level out
| (cost of hiring, 401, insurance etc.)
|
| Make the contract with 1 months notice both ways and it's
| pretty much for all intent and purpose a hiree
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| based on term and employment conditions (ex: onsight for
| years) they run the real risk of retroactively being
| classified as an employee. The only way to avoid this is
| to hire a consultant who comes from another company...
| where they're typically an employee, so someone else
| solves the problem.
| cercatrova wrote:
| > A one pass, 60 minute interview with the CEO and/or CTO
| on the call tells me a lot more about the kind of
| company.
|
| Depends, if I had this, I'd think, why is the CEO
| spending time in an interview instead of running the
| company? Sure, it's part of their job but after a certain
| scale of company size, it makes me think they must truly
| be desperate if the company is bringing out C-level
| executives to interview.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| It may seem odd, but I experienced this. I'm starting a new
| job in a few weeks and, while my path was definitely eased
| due to an internal referral, I got the job really easily,
| which makes me a little nervous, due to either the hiring
| situation or expectations.
| culpable_pickle wrote:
| Communication here is key. If the process is described well
| and reasons explained, I believe it could work just fine.
| scruple wrote:
| > They're on the market 2 weeks, tops.
|
| My last search lasted 9 days from when I put out the signal
| to having interviewed (for 3 companies) and negotiated an
| offer and submitted my resignation and 2 weeks notice.
| dominotw wrote:
| > My last search lasted 9 days
|
| i think you did disservice to yourself by optimizing for
| minimizing downtime between jobs. You should've played the
| field longer and gone for the highest bidder. I am 100%
| sure you are not getting paid your worth.
| nindalf wrote:
| > If I can get a similarly-paying job at a place that doesn't
| do this, I'll skip you.
|
| Just wanted to back this up a little bit. This is exactly what
| happened to me on my last job search.
|
| I was interviewing with 5-6 companies. It didn't make sense for
| me to spend a whole weekend for a _chance_ at an offer from a
| single company. Instead I spent that time brushing up on
| design. In hindsight that was the right call.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| Not to mention that usually the required time for take-home
| assignment is 2-3x the advertised one.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I have not found this to be the case, but I think the usual
| idea is that if it takes longer than advertised, you should
| probably stay away from the job.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Yeah. They're looking for seniors, but they're treating them
| like juniors. Then they're surprised that they can't find any
| seniors.
|
| You want _actual_ seniors? Seniors have options. You have to be
| a place that seniors want to work, want more than they want to
| work somewhere else. Take home code assignments don 't fit
| anywhere in that.
| scruple wrote:
| > Many seniors (actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience
| seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and
| instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more
| than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.
|
| Just wanted to back this up a little bit. This is exactly what
| happened to me on my last job search. I'm currently in between
| jobs, starting the new gig after the 4th of July holiday. The
| company that I went with: I had a 30 minute call with an
| engineering VP and the hiring manager that was followed by an
| hour long panel with a few members of the team that I'm
| joining. I also learned after I had accepted the offer that the
| person who referred me internally spent about 45 minutes
| chatting with the same engineering VP about me specifically
| before they reached out. This was for a staff/lead position and
| I've got over 15 years in the industry.
|
| I specifically sought out referrals from former colleagues and
| friends where the interview process put a lot of emphasis and
| weight on the internal referral and it worked out really well
| for me. I really hope that this is a sign of things to come,
| not just for myself and my future employment but for others, at
| least at the ( _" actual"_) senior level.
|
| edit/ Added some more context...
| scarface74 wrote:
| This is me exactly. My prior three jobs were based on my
| network referring me to a hiring manager (Directors and
| CTOs), us meeting for lunch and talking about their issues
| and how I would help them solve them. Then me meeting the
| rest of the team and them giving me an offer.
|
| I would never do a "take home test". Even my current job at
| $BigTech - working in the cloud consulting department doing
| exactly the type of work the original poster is looking for -
| involved a 5 hour behavioral loop and definitely not a "take
| home test". They offered cash and real stock. Not equity that
| statistically will be worthless.
| in_cahoots wrote:
| Not to mention the amount of time it takes to make a good
| presentation. For a 1 hour presentation that's easily 8+ hours
| of work right there.
| RangerScience wrote:
| I think I might (for non-network referrals) respond with "my
| hourly rate is $XX".
|
| Has anyone done this? Has it worked?
|
| PS - I also try to add on a 30m review of /their/ code, but so
| far it hasn't worked. I still ask!
| Silhouette wrote:
| Snarky responses in interview processes like quoting an
| hourly rate might seem attractive but I urge you to avoid
| them. The best case is probably that it immediately ends the
| process but you get a moment's satisfaction. However you
| could easily be seen as unprofessional and that damage to
| your reputation could come back to bite you later when you're
| applying for something you really do want. If someone is
| asking too much just turn them down politely and move on. No
| need to burn bridges.
|
| However asking to see some examples of their real
| code/documentation is a legitimate request IMHO and something
| I did in my later interviews when I was working as an
| employee. I'd usually bring it up at a second interview when
| we knew both sides were serious and they asked if there was
| anything I'd like to know more about. Nowhere ever thought it
| was an unreasonable request in my experience and some took it
| as a good sign that I was sincerely interested. Probably the
| majority of places actually did find something I could look
| at, though some refused and usually cited something like
| confidentiality or trade secrets. Of course the ones who
| showed me good code were more likely to get me to work for
| them than the ones who refused or showed me bad code.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Replace that with "my hourly rate is $XXX" and you will be
| good. Developers tend to under-charge for consulting, and
| this interview is likely to be a very short-term gig so you
| should charge more than you are worth on a long-term gig.
|
| Edit: By the way, one company has actually paid for my time
| to do a take-home at my consulting rate. Most of them balk.
| SergeAx wrote:
| It's okay. It seems you just don't love coding. This is totally
| normal, it is okay to write code 9 to 5 five (or even four)
| days a week, get the paycheck and then spend all other time
| with your friends, family, doing some activities and hobbies.
| You just never become a really good programmer and will never
| know what it feels like working with really good programmers.
|
| Update: I understand that it is frustrating to realize. It is
| also okay to use a downvote button to cope with the
| frustration. In the end, nobody gets hurt and it feels better
| immediately.
| bluedino wrote:
| I'd rather do four hours of a take home exercise on my own
| time, than block out an entire day to interview with 5-6 people
| in a row.
| vsareto wrote:
| >actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience seniors
|
| I like how things are confusing enough to need this
| distinction, but also we still don't know if you're talking
| about actual seniors and not principal engineers
| lostdog wrote:
| It looks like the take-home replaces a full day of 1-1
| interviews. That does seem reasonable (though I personally
| think it's the wrong trade, and the 1-1 interviews are more
| informative).
| lozenge wrote:
| One - is this made clear to the candidate, two -
| "presentation to the team" - if the team is four people,
| that's four chances to be rejected from the position, which
| is the same as the "multiple 1-1 interviews back to back"
| gauntlet. Does this presentation also require preparation
| work?
| [deleted]
| rockbruno wrote:
| OP mentioned its a run-of-the-mill mid-size enterprise
| software company, which should rule out any necessity on
| their part to run full day interviews a-la FAANG. A 4h
| project would then be very overkill unless they're extremely
| confident about their technical ability
| lbrito wrote:
| >have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and instantly
| have multiple options that won't have them do more than talk to
| the team and manager for an hour or two.
|
| Wow. I have 10 years of work experience, the last few being
| "senior". I have a few friends and many recruiters I could
| reach out to, but absolutely expecting a full fledged 30-round
| interview like anyone else. I envy you!
| Clubber wrote:
| >Many seniors (actual seniors, not 3-years-of-experience
| seniors) have a network and can say "hey I'm looking" and
| instantly have multiple options that won't have them do more
| than talk to the team and manager for an hour or two. If that.
|
| I couldn't point to this more. The recruiting circus is so bad
| and has been for _decades_ , I don't even bother talking to
| recruiters anymore. If by some chance I actually did, I'd pass
| on the 4h test unless I was absolutely desperate. I haven't
| been absolutely desperate since the dot bomb, and a recruiter
| hosed me over by inviting me for an interview for a job he
| didn't really have.
|
| He might not be fucked, but he's probably fucked. It's not so
| much his doing (albeit the 4h test is a deal breaker for most
| seniors), it's just the landscape has been so bad for so long,
| and seniors already have a network, unless he knows somebody
| who knows somebody, he's probably SOL.
|
| The only thing I can think of is offer and post a salary that
| is 20%-50% above market and hope for the best. You'll be
| attracting and filtering out a bunch of bad candidates though.
| An alternative to that is find the best junior/mid you got,
| make him team lead and give him some motivational speeches. If
| you're lucky, they'll rise up to the task.
|
| For what it's worth, back in the day when I started, it was
| typically a 10m phone call, 1 hour in person interview, then
| yay or nay. If the candidate wasn't working out, they'd let him
| go.
| matwood wrote:
| Yep, the only way I'll send a blind resume and think about
| jumping through hoops is if it's a super interesting company I
| want to work for. Otherwise, I just asked my friends and
| network and skip all the hiring BS.
| geekbird wrote:
| I've found some companies are so process bound that they'll
| go the full set of interview, test, coding rounds even for a
| personal referral.
|
| I have over 20 years of experience, and then they wonder why
| I start laughing when they start asking the newbie basic
| questions. It get even more absurd when they start asking
| about stuff that no one does more than once or twice a year
| except in very "edge case" type jobs. I'm a sysadmin, not a
| full time software developer, but I still get the dweebs who
| want me to do a leetcode b-tree sort with whatever fancy
| algorithm they read about last weekend in the hot language du
| jour.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Benefits and salary are good (though salary isn't posted in the
| ad)
|
| Why hide the salary if you think it's good?
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