[HN Gopher] Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025
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Hiring a developer as a small indie studio in 2025
Author : jordigh
Score : 117 points
Date : 2025-11-11 04:04 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ballardgames.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ballardgames.com)
| imsurajkadam wrote:
| This is very consuming. If chief tier people start doing this
| thjs then this will start draining "em more. Chief operated
| people should focus and be picky about whom they want to WORK
| WITH.
| ro_bit wrote:
| The blog post is about the hiring process for a three person
| game studio
| overgard wrote:
| Totally curious about the "Candidate used AI to reply"
| murkt wrote:
| Maybe they've left a lot of clearly AI-generated comments. Or
| even wrote the text of the reply with AI. It's usually quite
| easy to tell.
| ValtteriL wrote:
| It was a phone call
| resonious wrote:
| I've seen candidates make odd pauses followed by oddly
| "scripted" replies on a call.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I would have outsourced the initial screening to a hiring agency
| and only interview top 5.
|
| For a 3 people team this 4 weeks hiring process is too tedious.
| aeonflux wrote:
| Results from outsourcing can vary. You might end-up with
| totally unmatched 5 candidates and complain that there is no
| good people on the market. How would asses that the agency did
| good job (or any job at all)?
| ro_bit wrote:
| One note that might be good to highlight in the article is that
| the take-home is expected to be 2 hours long. From my experience,
| they are much longer so I was initially surprised to see take-
| home's being given before an initial call until I looked at the
| assignment itself.
| kassner wrote:
| I still consider this a red flag. The company wants me to put
| time into the hiring process, but they can't be bothered to do
| the same.
|
| If there is at least a recruiter screening first, I'll apply
| and ask about "Bring Your Own Code Examples", mostly when their
| daily work would use tools that I have some code published.
| resonious wrote:
| > but they can't be bothered to do the same
|
| They will need to review your submission, which absolutely
| does take time.
| LtWorf wrote:
| I'm sure the AI will do that.
| stavros wrote:
| Who do you think will write the submission code?
| joshdavham wrote:
| > They will need to review your submission, which
| absolutely does take tim
|
| But that's the kicker: they won't review your submission!
| joshdavham wrote:
| > I still consider this a red flag. The company wants me to
| put time into the hiring process, but they can't be bothered
| to do the same.
|
| Exactly this.
|
| It costs a company nothing to give you a take-home, but it
| will cost you (the candidate) potentially many hours. On my
| last job search, I got burned a number of times where I'd
| work for hours on a take-home only to get ghosted. I don't
| think they even looked at my solution.
|
| Now I have a personal policy where I will refuse to do a
| take-home unless the interviewer sits there with me while I
| do it. This demonstrates to me that the interviewer is
| actually serious and respectful of my time.
| phrotoma wrote:
| It CAN cost nothing to give a take home, but this is not a
| requirement. At my previous employer any candidate that
| made it as far as the take home project was paid for the
| time they worked on it.
| joshdavham wrote:
| That's a good distinction. A paid take home is very
| different than an unpaid one.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Another thing problematic about take-home projects: They
| don't scale for the candidate. Sure, 2 hours is nothing if
| you want a job, but typically the candidate is going to be
| applying for dozens, if not hundreds of jobs. Even 20 take-
| homes just like this is now 40 hours of work--just to get
| through a hiring gate!
|
| It is not "respectful of the candidate's time" if everyone
| is doing it.
| empiko wrote:
| I can see both perspectives. If you are a skilled hiree, this
| seems like a waste of time. But if you are hiring online, you
| will inevitably get a lot of terrible candidates and you need
| to filter them out. If you are a small team, you can't spend
| weeks interviewing randos with little to none coding experience
| for a SE role. The problem is that online hiring is full of
| noise, but both sides suffer from the expenses this creates.
| preciousoo wrote:
| Click the link of the take home and tell me if you expect it to
| take you more than 20 minutes. I don't understand the
| resections here
| dainiusse wrote:
| Curious about "no-AI" policy. From my experience interviewing
| lately AI is allowed,but the task is usually big in a small time
| window. So you quickly spin up the project but I see most of work
| in QA
| testing22321 wrote:
| A friend at a nearly-FAANG said not using AI tooling in the
| interview is now an automatic fail. "Not that you'd be able to
| complete the task on time without it anyway"
| Vegenoid wrote:
| I interviewed at a place that proudly stated that they have a
| goal that x% new LOC are LLM-generated. They didn't say what
| x was, but implied it was high.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| Unless they empower developers to thoroughly review that
| generated code this is a recipe for disaster. And even
| then, reviews are the first thing to be cut when pressure
| goes up.
|
| It's a dangerous line to cross.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't understand why a company would have a goal like
| this which isn't tied to something around business success.
| Measure a meaningful output rather than an input. This is
| like having a goal that x% new LOC are typed by the
| programmer's left hand.
| teiferer wrote:
| That's a good policy. If that's what they do in the job later
| as well, then it allows LLM-skeptical applicants to
| immediately move on.
|
| An interview is a two way street. I'd like the company to
| present itself authentically so that I don't waste time if
| they eventually turn out to have a culture I don't like, e.g.
| demanding LLM coding assistent use.
| qsort wrote:
| How does that work? I assume it's not Leetcode anymore then?
| Current LLMs mostly one-shot these types of algorithmic
| exercises, except maybe for the most difficult ones.
| dainiusse wrote:
| You could get a task something like make a popular service
| that would override default behavior. E.g ntp or something
| similar. Do it in like 30 mins.
| bitwize wrote:
| For general software engineering, the accepted thought is
| you're not really an engineer without the use of AI. Because
| engineering consists of using the right tool for the job,
| applying best practice, making tradeoffs, and justifying
| every decision from a technical standpoint. And it's anti-
| engineering to write the code yourself rather than putting
| your ego aside and taking advantage of AI's huge productivity
| gains.
|
| Game dev is... different. Game devs fancy themselves more as
| artists, and using generative AI is an affront to those
| sensibilities.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| >And it's anti-engineering to write the code yourself
| rather than putting your ego aside and taking advantage of
| AI's huge productivity gains.
|
| Are these huge productivity gains in the room with us now?
|
| LLM-assisted coding makes the easy stuff quick and the hard
| stuff impossible. But I was spending 80% of my mental
| energy on the hard stuff anyway, and the easy stuff was
| down time that's closer to rest than it is to work.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > For general software engineering, the accepted thought is
| you're not really an engineer without the use of AI.
|
| That is not remotely true. It's not clear to me that there
| is a consensus, but if anything people are more skeptical
| than favorable of AI in my experience. And even those who
| favor AI don't make stark declarations such as "you're not
| really an engineer if you don't use it", instead accepting
| that their colleagues have a difference of opinion.
| bitwize wrote:
| > And even those who favor AI don't make stark
| declarations such as "you're not really an engineer if
| you don't use it", instead accepting that their
| colleagues have a difference of opinion.
|
| I have heard this exact statement with this exact
| phrasing from working engineers. When it comes to CEOs
| and the like, making public pronouncements alongside yes-
| you-will-be-graded-on-this AI mandates, it's couched in
| softer terms, like "as a technical company we must use
| these advanced technologies to maximize productivity and
| increase our market advantage", but the subtext is still
| clear: AI refuseniks are not doing their work properly
| and are irresponsible on the job.
|
| Among the investor set there is a much clearer consensus:
| if the organization does not use AI they are not
| maximizing ROI and are being fiscally irresponsible.
| danenania wrote:
| We're using AI tools heavily but also ask candidates to code
| without it in interviews, and I think it's reasonable.
|
| Even if you are primarily using codegen, your own coding
| ability, taste, problem solving, etc. are still deciding inputs
| to the quality of the final result. And it's much easier to
| assess these things in an hour when a human is writing and
| debugging a relatively small amount of code.
|
| AI tools just produce too much code in a short time. It's hard
| to assess what the candidate's quality bar and attention to
| detail are really like when there's so much code to wade
| through. Anyone can vibe code, but not many can do it without
| creating mountains of tech debt... the ones who can are usually
| good programmers with or without AI.
| zerr wrote:
| Does it also mean no-Googling? Because the first result is
| usually LLM-generated. Should you skip to the next page and
| read only Experts Exchange pages?
| bn-l wrote:
| > Work with Indies -- no formal connection, but the results were
| great! -. Our listing went live at 11:30 AM on October 15th, and
| we had to ask them to shut it down by 6:30 PM on October 17th
| because we had too many candidates. In the end, we collected 159
| applications.
|
| Is this normal in Seattle? That's a tonne of applicants
| especially on what seems like a niche job site. Are they mostly
| junk offshore applications or bots?
|
| Interesting that out of that it looks like 90% were late
| applications or not qualified and only 17 total completed the
| take home.
| npinsker wrote:
| It's not a niche site within its market.
| zipy124 wrote:
| There are an incredible amount of CS graduates, far more than
| the available jobs, so the number of under-employed CS grads
| only goes up with time. If anything I'd have expected somewhere
| around 200-250 apps for that time period.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I met this guy who became a game dev later in life, as in his
| 30s. He has quite the non-traditional resume as far as devs go,
| with no formal CS education.
|
| In any case, he went on to work on a game, and kept doing so for
| years. He hired artists etc. but did the core development
| himself. Released the game, which has now sold over 150k copies
| since the release last year. Obviously not crazy numbers up in
| the millions or tens of millions, but impressive for a first
| release, and from a dev basically learning as he's moving along,
| with a regular 9-5 job and family - doing it purely for the love
| of the game.
|
| Makes me wonder if he'd ever have gotten the chance, had he first
| tried to join some small indie studio, rather than the DIY route.
| doppp wrote:
| Who was it? And what game was it?
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Skald: Against the Black Priory
| ludicity wrote:
| Wow, I didn't buy this because it seemed a bit grim for my
| tastes, but it looked very impressive when I came across it
| a few months ago. Wild that it's one person's passion
| project.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Here's his dev blog: https://www.skaldrpg.com/
|
| So it's been in the works for quite some time
|
| EDIT: And for that mater, the YT channel:
| https://www.youtube.com/@HighNorthStudios/videos
| meheleventyone wrote:
| It's a really great game FWIW.
| KronisLV wrote:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160/SKALD_Against_th
| e...
| ydlr wrote:
| I will definitely check that out. I love the idea of poets
| battling monks.
| brulard wrote:
| Can you share the game? Thanks
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Skald: Against the Black Priory
| endymion-light wrote:
| The thing is - would he have prospered within a small indie
| studio?
|
| My experience is that a lot of the traits highlighted above
| make for brilliant innovators and creators, but actually end up
| being stifled/stopped by leads within a company. Having this
| kind of vision and passion is brilliant until it collides
| within what the founders vision is.
| zwnow wrote:
| This is really worth mentioning. I hate programming with a
| passion if I HAVE to work on something. I love it when I am
| free on chosing what to work on.
|
| Having to work on other peoples ideas, or in regards to
| constraints other people have set for me completely kills the
| joy of doing the work.
|
| Let me explore stuff and Ill be a happy little worker bee,
| give me deadlines on features I consider bs ill procrastinate
| forever.
| mettamage wrote:
| This is what I experience too. I'm a lot like that person and
| I clash with this side of me towards upper management when
| they feel that things ought to be done a certain way.
|
| I'm happy that I'm working for a marketing department
| nowadays and when they need someone technical or someone on
| business insights, they come to me.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I am impressed with the extent of the effort here. I struggle
| with the notion of working with just one other person on a game.
| Building an entire hiring pipeline and documenting it seems like
| something that would immediately kill the dream for me at this
| scale.
|
| There is something that feels very cursed to me about a team of
| size 2~10 for game dev. At this point I'd much rather go solo or
| join a team of 100+. Zero structure or a lot of structure. A
| medium amount of structure seems to bring the maximum amount of
| entropy.
| bluescrn wrote:
| > There is something that feels very cursed to me about a team
| of size 2~10 for game dev.
|
| Very small teams can be great - so long as you are able to
| focus on building a game, not building a company. You need to
| treat it more like a game jam, at least in the early stages of
| a project. Just make things, see what works, rapidly prototype
| and iterate.
|
| But you probably all need to be equal partners in the project
| from the start for it to work well. It's not so good for
| creative work when there's a management/employees 'them and us'
| divide from the start.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Having worked on games in giant teams and small teams my own
| preference is actually on the smaller end. Ten people feels
| like a comfortable limit. I'm very much a generalist though and
| love contributing to all the different bits and pieces of a
| game. As such I generally find larger teams overly
| bureaucratic, slow to move and stifling. Solo dev requires a
| lot of mental fortitude because there is no one else to carry
| the momentum.
| chr1ss_code wrote:
| "Our take-home lets candidates code." - As a dev, I absolutely
| hate the practice of such assignments.
|
| Every non-junior dev/coder should already have at least some
| indicators out there showing how they code - GitHub, a personal
| site or any other resources. For juniors or CS graduates there
| might be bit of a grey zone, but even then, with how widely
| available web space is nowadays, there's really no excuse not to
| have something out there if you are serious about the "love for
| coding".
|
| So the sentence "we need to respect people's time as much as our
| own" seems flawed to me, because you obviously don't respect the
| time of the candidates who coded for nothing for you.
|
| To me, that is also a huge red flag when considering a position.
|
| Important should be assessing someone's theoretical knowledge of
| software patterns, principles and architectures ..just getting a
| feel for their nerd level. Seeing how much they actually care
| about code and details, whether they can really express
| themselves and if they could communicate a problem clearly.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| This (particular) take home assignment looks absolutely fine to
| me. If you can't do it under 2 hours (maybe I couldn't? I've
| never used Unity) then you shouldn't _want_ to work there.
| nradov wrote:
| Lol you clearly don't have much experience. Most of the best
| developers have all of their code locked up in corporate
| repositories and have nothing they can legally share.
| stevoski wrote:
| This is a good write-up.
|
| If you've never run a hiring process, it's hard to get a feel for
| just how difficult and time-consuming it is.
|
| And risky - hiring someone wrong for the role is very expensive
| and disruptive. And yet more likely to happen that you'd think,
| even with a rigorous selection process.
| edent wrote:
| Why not list the salary up front? That reduces the number of
| people with wildly different remuneration expectations?
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| Yeah, I lose a lot of interest whenever I am asked my salary
| expectations.
| chihuahua wrote:
| I'd prefer to get that out there early in the process, rather
| than go through 5 interviews and then find out they're
| offering half of my minimum requirement.
| FinnKuhn wrote:
| Because they hope that someone gives them a number that is
| lower than the salary they had in mind.
| lone-cloud wrote:
| Bingo. Discussing salary is a game and the first person to
| say a number loses.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's totally unserious to ask a candidate to negotiate
| against himself by providing a ceiling. As the candidate,
| just say $1M/year and move on to the next employer. If
| they're not asking a serious question they should not
| expect a serious answer.
| TZubiri wrote:
| A more generous interpretation is that they want to find out
| what the market salary is. How are they supposed to know what
| the market price is if they say their salary range first?
| patja wrote:
| They are legally required to include the salary range in the
| job posting in Washington State.
| Maxatar wrote:
| No they're not.
| chihuahua wrote:
| If the company has 15 or more employees.
|
| If this company meets the conditions so that the law applies
| to them, you can apply there, and then report them, and
| potentially collect a few thousand dollars when they get
| fined by Washington state.
| roenxi wrote:
| The perspective here is subtly baised - look at the diagram down
| the bottom and realise that they were always only going to hire 1
| person, so all the reasons that they give for not hiring the
| person are, in fact, not reasons that the person filtered out
| wasn't hired. They are processes to rank the applicants. If there
| were more candidates they'd add more reasons not to hire most of
| them, if there were less candidates the reasons not to hire would
| start to disappear.
|
| In particular, companies are in some sense bluffing with the
| "Didn't Qualify" category. I've seen hiring situations where
| nobody qualifies but they actually need to fill the position -
| they hired someone who didn't qualify and trained them up. They
| did a great job. "Didn't qualify" is only a real category for the
| most demanding jobs. Software is just not one of them, nobody has
| any idea if dev is going to be good or not before they hire them.
| Companies often have a hard time picking which devs are the
| productive ones when they've already hired the dev.
|
| So we've got an article about a process used to rank devs, and no
| particular evidence of whether the dev hired is actually very
| good. Which is fine, still an interesting read. But it is good to
| keep a clear perspective. This is one of those situations where
| doing big parts of the process by fair dice roll is not
| necessarily an inferior approach.
| k__ wrote:
| To be fair, "outside of budget" and "didn't qualify" are pretty
| much catch all.
| c0balt wrote:
| There's also team culture fit, which depending on
| (mis)application can be very broad too.
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| I think the article was more about the gates in the applicant
| 'funnel' rather than describing their method of ranking
| applicants as suitable developers.
|
| The best dev for the job may have been 'unqualified' given that
| they were looking for "a generalist who can do both Unity and
| services coding."
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah I'm reminded of the military on this Veteran's Day. You
| join and you aren't qualified for anything at that point. But
| they take a chance, they train you, and most rise to the
| challenge.
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| this is a very keen observation about most hiring processes.
| even places that make noises about "hiring good people and
| figuring fit out later" seem to mostly, anecdotally, reduce the
| process to "hire the person least likely to fail at following
| the exact job description".
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Eh, kind of. Right now I'm hiring for a role where nobody
| remaining in my applicant pool is qualified (all have only some
| of the experience I need) but I'm probably still going to hire
| one of them. Does that "qualify" them? No. It just means I'm
| probably going to hire despite it.
| creer wrote:
| > companies are in some sense bluffing with the "Didn't
| Qualify" category.
|
| This is to the point that it's not "bluffing" but simply "how
| the world works." What's unfortunate is that many new grads
| (and some veterans) live with the impression that they need to
| meet (or lie about) all these "requirements". When the real
| world never operated like that.
|
| Still, some job ads are written to show both "essentials" and
| "nice to have".
| floor2 wrote:
| Often, there's a recruiter or HR person (or piece of
| software) that's doing an initial screening against those
| "requirements" though, often with zero understanding or
| context.
|
| Recruiters hiring for a Java role will pass on a candidate
| with 10 years of C# experience, or other similar tech-stack-
| swapping scenarios where the skill set is 95% transferable
| because they don't know anything about the actual
| technologies or understand the work.
|
| And of course, the lack of honest feedback makes the whole
| system inscrutable. Did you get ghosted because the job was
| fake? Because your resume lacked some key words? Because they
| had a referral? Because they preferred more diverse
| applicants? Because they never even looked at your resume?
| Because you have too many years of experience? Too few? Who
| knows!
| lone-cloud wrote:
| This sounds like an incredibly toxic hiring process and not a
| company I'd ever want to work for. So you apply for a job and in
| response they (maybe) email you back asking for your expected
| salary (great way to filter out anyone worth hiring btw) and if
| you're cheap enough they then ask you to do work on a take home
| assignment. Everyone here thinks that this is okay and they want
| to be interviewed this way?
|
| "Since we are focused on efficiency, we need to respect people's
| time as much as our own". How exactly does this process respect
| the candidates time?
| animal531 wrote:
| For the game industry this is practically amazing.
|
| Firstly, for 99% of appointments they usually don't care how
| good of a developer you are. You may have invented 10 new
| technologies and have revolutionized the field, if you can't
| show them a portfolio of games you have shipped then they don't
| care. They don't hire you for a developer/code role because
| you're a great developer, they hire you because you've shipped
| some games before (which is totally a different metric). For
| whatever reason the whole industry is stuck in this mentality,
| they can't differentiate between the metrics of appointing a
| great developer vs trying to find someone that can ship titles.
|
| Asking for expected salary is a pretty quick way to filter
| because no one ever lists their requirement in their cv. If the
| job listing included their range then they might have gone with
| just assuming that the applicants would be within that range,
| but it doesn't hurt to check.
|
| The test itself is quite easy and straightforward, if anything
| the real gotchas around it would be to stand out significantly
| from everyone else.
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| A few paragraphs below, the article answers that the company
| can't afford to pay as much as some others; I assume if you are
| being already being paid way over the market rate you should
| keep working at the place you're at.
|
| As for the take home, I'd take it or any other kind of non-
| conventional question that allows me to show me my skills,
| rather than the usual interview where your interviewer gives
| you an algorithm or system design question they couldn't solve
| themselves, with the occasional smirk as they watch you fumble
| through that question.
| lone-cloud wrote:
| I might be a masochist, but I actually enjoy system design
| interviews and they're quite formulaic. Resources like
| "System design in a hurry" are great for narrowing down the
| formula.
|
| Where I live (BC, Canada) actually has a law requiring all
| employers to list the position's salary range, which is great
| for cutting down on the "expected salary expectations" dance.
|
| I don't like take homes as it's (highly likely) a one way
| time commitment and if you're truly looking to show off your
| skills it would take you hours.
| patja wrote:
| Washington State (where this company is based) has the same
| law about including salary ranges in job postings
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| If the system design interview is designed in a sane
| manner, which most of them are, thankfully for now.
|
| Unfortunately, some interviewers ask questions that they
| themselves have not thought through properly, which leads
| to "interesting" discussions followed by a
| disqualification. While I've not had to face that issue
| first-hand as an interviewee, I've seen interviewers who
| wouldn't have been able to pass their own interview, for
| example.
| stakhanov wrote:
| I wouldn't do a take-home unless they do an interview first,
| to signal they value my time and are acting in good faith.
| (HR people don't count).
|
| Then, when they give me the take-home, I would ask how many
| other people are in the stage with me. If it's 20, with only
| one candidate getting hired, forget it. My expectation in
| such situations would be that they won't be able to trim the
| pipeline as much as they will need/want to by applying purely
| objective/rational criteria, and I'd end up getting rejected
| on grounds of "inability to mind-read subjective
| preferences".
| preciousoo wrote:
| I wonder if the people replying bothered to look at the take
| home question. I wish I had an interview like that, it would
| be the second easiest interview I've ever done in my life,
| and then task is interesting and easy to me, as someone who
| just started learning unity a week ago
| rockyj wrote:
| I assume you have never seen the German software recruitment
| process. 6+ rounds spread over 3 months (with no ghosting in
| the middle if you are lucky). Here is the current process -
|
| - Apply online
|
| - Initial screening with recruiter if they like your resume
| (book a 45 mins slot)
|
| - Take home assignment or online assessment (2 -4 hours)
|
| - First technical screening interview (1-1.5 hours)
|
| - Second technical interview (system level, deep dive, 1.5
| hours)
|
| - Product manager interview (1 hour)
|
| - Senior leadership interview (1 hour)
|
| - Final offer
|
| Between all these rounds, you need to book meetings and it
| usually takes 1-2 weeks between rounds.
| nradov wrote:
| Is that part of the reason why the German software industry
| is generally so sclerotic and unproductive?
| mono442 wrote:
| To be fair, it is more difficult to lay off in Germany so the
| company takes more risk.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| > great way to filter out anyone worth hiring btw
|
| This seems to imply that there is a significant causal link
| between a developer's salary and the quality and quantity of
| their output, and I just don't think that's true in the general
| case.
| preciousoo wrote:
| > Hi, I'd like to work for your company > Great, state your
| price and availability If match: > create a simple project(<1
| hour of work) that demonstrates familiarity with technologies
| that will be used on the job. If done, check for team fit.
|
| This is toxic to you???
| amundskm wrote:
| Unless they are paying for the 1 hour of work then yes. If
| the company wants to know if someone can do something then
| look at their github or bring them in for an interview. Do
| not do work for free.
| preciousoo wrote:
| The take home assignment is to create a web service that
| changes the color of a cube, hardly anything cutting edge.
| Do you expect to be paid for coding interviews too?
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Personally, I don't mind burning some time to interview
| for free. But I expect the company to also burn the time
| of their own engineers as well. It displays a degree of
| commitment and seriousness from them about this meeting.
| I'm never going to let them yank my chain and dance for
| them when all they've done is send an email. But I'm also
| not desperate for work, so it's a good filter for me to
| know what kinda dogshit work culture you've got.
| andoando wrote:
| Salary expectations should always be the first conversation imo
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| Should be posted BEFORE the first conversation.
|
| When a recruiter reaches out to me, my first response is my
| resume and expected hourly compensation (I primarily do
| consulting/contract work).
|
| I provide different numbers based on whether WFH, Hybrid, or
| In-office, and for any type of commuting, I figure that out
| and work it into my day, so if I'm looking for $150/hr, and
| the commute is 1 hour each way, that is an extra 2 hours per
| day in the office, if I'm in the office for 3 days a week,
| that is 46 hours of billable time (to me), but still only 40
| to the employer, so my $150/hr becomes $172.50/hr.
| rnewme wrote:
| Mike, ludum dare co-founder (and sole maintainer these days) is
| looking for work. For your consideration please
| https://mikekasprzak.com/Resume-MikeKasprzak.pdf
| lunias wrote:
| IMO the take home assignment is trivial, even for non-game
| developers with zero Unity experience; maybe you don't need a
| take home assignment at all. I also think that asking people to
| "not use AI" when you have absolutely no way of enforcing it is
| just self-deception.
| cs02rm0 wrote:
| 20 people given a take home test for one role?
|
| I get icky feelings about these. Clearly, 18 out of 20 submitted
| something so I guess most people go along with it and perhaps I'm
| an outlier.
| zahlman wrote:
| > If we see potential, the first step is always asking the
| candidate upfront for their expected salary, availability, and
| whether they want full-time or part-time. Since we are focused on
| efficiency, we need to respect people's time as much as our own.
| Most candidates appreciate it; for example, it immediately
| filtered out a very qualified candidate whose salary ask was 4
| times our budget.
|
| I feel like the "respectful of applicants' time" thing to do
| would be to state a salary range in the posting.
| chihuahua wrote:
| In fact, for companies of 15 or more employees, this is legally
| required in job postings in Washington state, where the company
| from the article is based.
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| annoyingly in WA/CA where salary ranges are required, liquid
| RSU comp is not (and that's often the majority of the comp).
| sentrysapper wrote:
| > You must ask candidates to solve problems directly related to
| the role. If you're hiring a game programmer, knowing how to
| detect fraud in bank transactions is irrelevant knowledge if that
| task never appears on the job.
|
| I wish more companies understood this. In all my years of
| interviews I never got a coding interview or take home
| programming assignment that even remotely resembled the work they
| needed.
| creer wrote:
| > always asking the candidate upfront for their expected salary
| [etc - to respect and save everyone time]
|
| Isn't that a dark pattern (in addition to being a time saver for
| everyone)? It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't kind
| of thing.
|
| This is an adversarial question in a process which needs to be
| ruthless against the time-wasting applications, but also needs to
| be cooperative with future co-workers.
|
| If you are open to a broad range of salary in exchange for
| perhaps working at a super exciting place, then there is no good
| answer. Even "I'm open to a broad range of salary if that's
| needed to work at a super exciting place" is not a great answer.
|
| Leaving it to the legal requirement of posting an expected salary
| range and negotiating from there might be a better way.
| creer wrote:
| The article includes actual numbers of the filtering funnel!
| Excellent!
|
| "Late applications" though: Wouldn't it be very wasteful though,
| to dismiss a third of candidates simply because late application
| when the posting was live just two days? As admitted, the hiring
| process is time consuming. It seems wasteful then to filter on
| "available during the 2 day posting window"! That availability
| was not a serious job requirement.
| codr7 wrote:
| Hiring for the exact needs you think you have and rejecting
| anything that doesn't match exactly is not very constructive.
|
| Chances are, you're going to see applicants with combinations of
| skills you couldn't even have imagined.
|
| Humans are complicated.
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