6 ms·

The endless talent shortage is a farce. Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be c

The endless talent shortage is a farce. Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field. I would say the opposite is true based solely on hiring practices. Look at Google for example, who hire around 1/5000 people that apply. The shortage is artificially maintained because it works in companies favor. It makes engineers more willing to work for low salaries since they have to work so hard to get an offer, and makes it possible for them to import "talent" which is 95% of the time an excuse to import cheap foreign labor. Look at what these H1B's are mostly used for. Yeah sometimes it's specialized jobs but usually just generic "developer" or "consultant". Is it really true that you need to hire an H1B because you can't find a "developer"?. The visa process is meant to be used for skills you can't find in the US, and with this in mind it's clearly failed its purpose

yummyfajitas 10y ago
Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field. Joel Spolsky explains why this does not imply what you think it implies. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html tl;dr; Imagine 1 low quality developer who applies to 9 places and gets rejected. There's also 1 high quality developer who applies to 1 place and gets accepted. Look, 90% of applications have been rejected!
- throwawaydbfif 10y ago
  Inc.com is a really bad source for such information... As if they would be expected to be neutral in such a situation. If this was true you would see it across professions and at every level of position, yet it's something fairly unique to software development.
  - garyfirestorm 10y ago
    I can attest that this is true for mechanical/automotive industry.
  - crusso 10y ago
    Joel Spolsky makes important points in the article. Disregarding them because you don't like the web site that they're posted on is fallacious reasoning.
    - throwawaydbfif 10y ago
      Inc is a publication targeted towards business owners. Nothing about the site is meant to be neutral. It's like learning about Democrats from a Republican website. I wouldn't disregard it so quickly if the source was more neutral.
      - crusso 10y ago
        And that's how echo chambers of thought develop. Only listen to the sources of information that you wish to and disregard others without evaluating what they are providing. Sorry, but Spolsky is normally extremely insightful and if you read the article, he makes many excellent points that are worth considering no matter which angle you're approaching the problem from.
  - mixmastamyk 10y ago
    Indeed, thanks to Spolsky & co getting a scripting job entails a three ring circus of burdens and hazing to get an offer. They are looking for any excuse to not hire you rather than trying to fill a position.
  - valuearb 10y ago
    You aren't asking Inc for a recommendation, if you did their bias would be an issue. Thinking clearly means focusing on facts of the argument, not Joel's job or the site's business.
  - mavelikara 10y ago
    If inc.com is your problem, Joel makes the same argument on his blog here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/
- jarsin 10y ago
  Total BS. I have seen this first hand both as a hiring manager and as an applicant. I have been rejected from jobs based on totally insane interview questions that have nothing to do with the job. In one case I interviewed at 2 competitors. One gave me nothing but trick whiteboard questions, the other emphasized my experience and gave me a real world interview. I was rejected by the whiteboard company and hired by the competitor. My first day on the job I sat down and commited code that ended up in production the very next day and did that for many years afterwords. I have also hired people that had to pass insane interviews due to the company culture and watched them fail at being a developer. I know many good devs that cannot pass these interviews that would run circles around these super whiteboard problem solvers.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    You bring up another reason why 90% of applications might be rejected: false negatives. Consider a hiring filter which rejects 90% of good applicants and 99% of bad applicants. In such a world, consider a population of 10 good applicants. These 10 applicants will go on 100 interviews, be rejected on 90 of them and each will find a job. So in this world where every applicant finds a job, you still get 9/10 applications being rejected. This seems to agree with your (anecdotal, and likely biased [1]) experience. [1] "I got rejected after an interview, therefore hiring is broken" is a perennial topic on HN.
    - drewg123 10y ago
      I think this is probably close to being the case. The Google interview is an "any given Sunday" thing, with a huge amount of luck involved as to choice of interviewer and interview questions. I suspect that a person who got an offer, if forced to re-interview, would fail 9/10 times.
    - jcadam 10y ago
      I've come to accept that I'm no good at whiteboard interviews. The only way I can get hired nowadays is either via a personal referral and/or an employer so desperate (or serious enough about hiring someone in a reasonable time-frame) that they short-circuit their interview process and skip the whole whiteboard hazing process. For my current job, I had a total of 2 phone conversations (first with a recruiter, second with the hiring manager) over the course of a week when they all of a sudden dropped an offer on me. I was a bit surprised by it -- "What? An offer already? Uh, I was expecting some sort of interview first?" I actually nearly walked away at that point, but was... talked into accepting after a little back-and-forth on the salary. But anyway, I just ignore cold-call/emails from recruiters anymore, because I know it will just end in wasted time (like getting rejected after 4 rounds of hazing and a weekend-stealing homework project) and stress/frustration I don't need. Most companies are obviously being overwhelmed with large numbers of high quality applicants for every open position ;)
- serge2k 10y ago
  I'll accept that argument when google recruiters aren't talking constantly about their absurd false negative rates.
jeandejean 10y ago
Tech companies also reject applicants because they are "software engineers wannabe" that are just a bunch of phonies coveting the high salaries. Tying up visas effects only to wage diminution is just a big mistake. But I can't wait to witness the effect of being a lot more selective on visas. We'll see!
- throwawaydbfif 10y ago
  Visas are currently the "easy way out" to get decent developers for cheap. The problem, that's not what they were designed for. Their purpose is to find specialized skills that cannot be sourced otherwise. The most immediate effects of fixing the visa system will be employers suddenly offering "on the job training" to fill these lowly skilled jobs. It's hard to see this as anything but a net positive for US workers
morgante 10y ago
If there's not a shortage of skilled engineers, then why is Google paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? While it's true that the industry has a bit of myopia and tends to focus on a specific subset of engineers as "skilled," there is absolutely a huge shortage of them and massive competition to hire them.
- throwawaydbfif 10y ago
  Google is one of the few companies hiring H1B's for their true purpose. If you look at where most of these visas are going it's clear that a large majority are low quality jobs. It's a disservice to the brilliant visa holders I know as well as US citizens. it's extremely hard for them to get a job at a good company because so many of the visas are getting soaked up by those abusing the system. If there was a huge engineer shortage you would see companies step in to provide developer training problems. This is clearly not happening.
  - warbaker 10y ago
    What? That is happening.
  - morgante 10y ago
    I'm not saying the H1B system isn't abused. It absolutely is, and should be reformed. What I'm disputing is this notion that there's no shortage of qualified developers. There absolutely is—that's why you see substantial salary growth for senior engineers. What exactly do you think bootcamps are? They're outsourced developer training programs whose entire business model depends on the high tech salaries.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
doingmyting 10y ago
The irony of tech interviews is that after a couple years most of the engineers on the other side of the fence would never pass their own tech interview without studying for months. The average guy doesn't know the difference between all the sorting algorithms off the top of his head, or how to balance a red-black tree if you corner him out of the blue one day.
valuearb 10y ago
I've run interviews for a consulting company. Most all of the best applications were from H1B holders.
- throwawaydbfif 10y ago
  Sorry to say this but you've probably got pretty strong selection bias. At least from my experience (I used to be a consultant) consulting jobs mostly attract people that can't get a job elsewhere. They generally include low pay, long hours, and a lot of client interaction. It's no surprise to me that the nation's biggest software consultancies are largely considered the worst places to work as a software developer. H1B's know to apply at these jobs because they have a much better chance of getting them. They have a better chance of getting them because these same companies are generally the ones abusing the system to hire software developers below market rates.
warbaker 10y ago
Tech companies have a strict interview process because a mediocre engineer is actively harmful. At most companies, the hiring manager and interviewers, who are predominantly other engineers, get to decide whether or not to hire a candidate. There simply isn't a mechanism for upper management to manipulate the process in the way you suggest.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

Every tech company I've worked at rejects well over 90% of their applicants and has an interview process that would be considered insane in almost any other field. Joel Spolsky explains why this does not imply what you think it implies. http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html tl;dr; Imagine 1 low quality developer who applies to 9 places and gets rejected. There's also 1 high quality developer who applies to 1 place and gets accepted. Look, 90% of applications have been rejected!

throwawaydbfif 10y ago
Inc.com is a really bad source for such information... As if they would be expected to be neutral in such a situation. If this was true you would see it across professions and at every level of position, yet it's something fairly unique to software development.
- garyfirestorm 10y ago
  I can attest that this is true for mechanical/automotive industry.
- crusso 10y ago
  Joel Spolsky makes important points in the article. Disregarding them because you don't like the web site that they're posted on is fallacious reasoning.
  - throwawaydbfif 10y ago
    Inc is a publication targeted towards business owners. Nothing about the site is meant to be neutral. It's like learning about Democrats from a Republican website. I wouldn't disregard it so quickly if the source was more neutral.
    - crusso 10y ago
      And that's how echo chambers of thought develop. Only listen to the sources of information that you wish to and disregard others without evaluating what they are providing. Sorry, but Spolsky is normally extremely insightful and if you read the article, he makes many excellent points that are worth considering no matter which angle you're approaching the problem from.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  Indeed, thanks to Spolsky & co getting a scripting job entails a three ring circus of burdens and hazing to get an offer. They are looking for any excuse to not hire you rather than trying to fill a position.
- valuearb 10y ago
  You aren't asking Inc for a recommendation, if you did their bias would be an issue. Thinking clearly means focusing on facts of the argument, not Joel's job or the site's business.
- mavelikara 10y ago
  If inc.com is your problem, Joel makes the same argument on his blog here: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/
jarsin 10y ago
Total BS. I have seen this first hand both as a hiring manager and as an applicant. I have been rejected from jobs based on totally insane interview questions that have nothing to do with the job. In one case I interviewed at 2 competitors. One gave me nothing but trick whiteboard questions, the other emphasized my experience and gave me a real world interview. I was rejected by the whiteboard company and hired by the competitor. My first day on the job I sat down and commited code that ended up in production the very next day and did that for many years afterwords. I have also hired people that had to pass insane interviews due to the company culture and watched them fail at being a developer. I know many good devs that cannot pass these interviews that would run circles around these super whiteboard problem solvers.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  You bring up another reason why 90% of applications might be rejected: false negatives. Consider a hiring filter which rejects 90% of good applicants and 99% of bad applicants. In such a world, consider a population of 10 good applicants. These 10 applicants will go on 100 interviews, be rejected on 90 of them and each will find a job. So in this world where every applicant finds a job, you still get 9/10 applications being rejected. This seems to agree with your (anecdotal, and likely biased [1]) experience. [1] "I got rejected after an interview, therefore hiring is broken" is a perennial topic on HN.
  - drewg123 10y ago
    I think this is probably close to being the case. The Google interview is an "any given Sunday" thing, with a huge amount of luck involved as to choice of interviewer and interview questions. I suspect that a person who got an offer, if forced to re-interview, would fail 9/10 times.
  - jcadam 10y ago
    I've come to accept that I'm no good at whiteboard interviews. The only way I can get hired nowadays is either via a personal referral and/or an employer so desperate (or serious enough about hiring someone in a reasonable time-frame) that they short-circuit their interview process and skip the whole whiteboard hazing process. For my current job, I had a total of 2 phone conversations (first with a recruiter, second with the hiring manager) over the course of a week when they all of a sudden dropped an offer on me. I was a bit surprised by it -- "What? An offer already? Uh, I was expecting some sort of interview first?" I actually nearly walked away at that point, but was... talked into accepting after a little back-and-forth on the salary. But anyway, I just ignore cold-call/emails from recruiters anymore, because I know it will just end in wasted time (like getting rejected after 4 rounds of hazing and a weekend-stealing homework project) and stress/frustration I don't need. Most companies are obviously being overwhelmed with large numbers of high quality applicants for every open position ;)
serge2k 10y ago
I'll accept that argument when google recruiters aren't talking constantly about their absurd false negative rates.

jeandejean 10y ago

Tech companies also reject applicants because they are "software engineers wannabe" that are just a bunch of phonies coveting the high salaries. Tying up visas effects only to wage diminution is just a big mistake. But I can't wait to witness the effect of being a lot more selective on visas. We'll see!

throwawaydbfif 10y ago
Visas are currently the "easy way out" to get decent developers for cheap. The problem, that's not what they were designed for. Their purpose is to find specialized skills that cannot be sourced otherwise. The most immediate effects of fixing the visa system will be employers suddenly offering "on the job training" to fill these lowly skilled jobs. It's hard to see this as anything but a net positive for US workers

morgante 10y ago

If there's not a shortage of skilled engineers, then why is Google paying people hundreds of thousands of dollars a year? While it's true that the industry has a bit of myopia and tends to focus on a specific subset of engineers as "skilled," there is absolutely a huge shortage of them and massive competition to hire them.

throwawaydbfif 10y ago
Google is one of the few companies hiring H1B's for their true purpose. If you look at where most of these visas are going it's clear that a large majority are low quality jobs. It's a disservice to the brilliant visa holders I know as well as US citizens. it's extremely hard for them to get a job at a good company because so many of the visas are getting soaked up by those abusing the system. If there was a huge engineer shortage you would see companies step in to provide developer training problems. This is clearly not happening.
- warbaker 10y ago
  What? That is happening.
- morgante 10y ago
  I'm not saying the H1B system isn't abused. It absolutely is, and should be reformed. What I'm disputing is this notion that there's no shortage of qualified developers. There absolutely is—that's why you see substantial salary growth for senior engineers. What exactly do you think bootcamps are? They're outsourced developer training programs whose entire business model depends on the high tech salaries.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

doingmyting 10y ago

The irony of tech interviews is that after a couple years most of the engineers on the other side of the fence would never pass their own tech interview without studying for months. The average guy doesn't know the difference between all the sorting algorithms off the top of his head, or how to balance a red-black tree if you corner him out of the blue one day.

valuearb 10y ago

I've run interviews for a consulting company. Most all of the best applications were from H1B holders.

throwawaydbfif 10y ago
Sorry to say this but you've probably got pretty strong selection bias. At least from my experience (I used to be a consultant) consulting jobs mostly attract people that can't get a job elsewhere. They generally include low pay, long hours, and a lot of client interaction. It's no surprise to me that the nation's biggest software consultancies are largely considered the worst places to work as a software developer. H1B's know to apply at these jobs because they have a much better chance of getting them. They have a better chance of getting them because these same companies are generally the ones abusing the system to hire software developers below market rates.

warbaker 10y ago

Tech companies have a strict interview process because a mediocre engineer is actively harmful. At most companies, the hiring manager and interviewers, who are predominantly other engineers, get to decide whether or not to hire a candidate. There simply isn't a mechanism for upper management to manipulate the process in the way you suggest.