5 ms·

"We had someone come in interviewing for a senior that I would place as a mid (generously...)" Exactly. Do not be so cocky. This is free market and while you a

"We had someone come in interviewing for a senior that I would place as a mid (generously...)" Exactly. Do not be so cocky. This is free market and while you are entitled to your opinion why should a candidate try too hard to get a position that pays less than half of what he will get elsewhere just because his skills are not up to your standards ? You cannot really assess my skills in an interview the same way I cannot really asses whether it's actually worth taking your offer. Money talks bullshit walks. Eventually at the end of the day all of us unless really financially secure are in it for the money.

throwaway2016a 10y ago
Don't be so quick to judge. Placing someone at mid / senior / junior is not "cocky"... it's pretty subjective if you do it right. The guy missed questions that over 50% of our applicants knew the answers to. I'm not talking the "implement this obscure algorithm from scratch on a whiteboard" kind of question HN is so fond of. The hardest coding question we ask is Fizz-Buzz. But we can't / won't pay him more than we pay other employees with similar or higher skill sets. If we drew a bell curve of all the applicants we had, this guy would be in the middle. His resume was impressive though. My guess is the company that hired him didn't do their diligence and only weighed the resume.
- Sunstruck 10y ago
  It sounds like you don't pay market salaries and are in denial
  - jdbernard 10y ago
    Sounds like he is well aware that they aren't paying market salaries: > - We are probably priced out of the market
    - throwaway2016a 10y ago
      Also what I meant when I said... > I work at a startup that isn't profitable yet so our salaries are very low... ... was "too low... if we could afford it I'd pay three times that much" not "oh look what a great deal we are getting! Haha, suckers!"
      - holydude 10y ago
        Then I guess you are targeting the wrong pool of candidates. Do the candidates know how much can you pay (ranges?). It often happens that I as a candidate have to go through several rounds just to learn that they can't afford me.
        am8 10y ago
        So what Modulo is there to catch people out. If you were a front end developer do you really need this? The fact employers will reject based on a test that is fashionable just because a few coding blogs said so doesn't mean they can't provide value. What about their past work or qualifications? Cocky. Sounds like a clique i'd want to avoid at all costs.
        throwaway2016a 10y ago
        I can't tell if you're being serious or trolling but using modulus in front-end is not all that uncommon. Especially when doing reporting or animation. For years the only way to do zebra striped tables was that way. Also, I never said... 1. We were taking about front-end. 2. We reject solely based on it. I just used it as an example of a type of question. In fact we've hired candidates who didn't know what modulo was because when they encountered it they were able to reason through it. Furthermore... this candidate failed far easier questions that that. I used FizzBuzz as the "hardest" question. Does not knowing Fizz Buzz mean you won't be productive? No. But it is probably a good indicator you aren't commanding of $150k a year this guy got hired for.
        am8 10y ago
        I said Front end as an example could apply to most developer jobs really. Anyway, this guy you placed as a "lower mid", this is your judgement, how do you know it's correct? Did other people say the same? Perhaps he didn't have the skills you were looking for but was good at other things. Saying the other company didn't do their diligence is easy but is that really what happened? If you are hiring developers and placing them as lower, mid, lead etc. you are going to get flak anyway as you're just jailing them and hiring a load of people who only agree with what you think. You're going to get people who are good at developing software who don't care about math(s) or machine learning, give them 2 seconds and Google and they can answer your Modulo question. Is it not about the willingness and enthusiasm to learn? Or do they have to go through "hard" tests to prove they can work out some academic nonsense they are never going to need to use. To prove themselves to the frat. I'd argue a lot of really clever people good at the hardcore Computer science and data analysis type subjects aren't always as good at writing decent code.
  - zyncl19 10y ago
    Not at all. The discussion of whether a person is a senior or mid level developer can be completely separate from a discussion of whether the company pays fairly for those positions.
- holydude 10y ago
  Well I have to tell you this that there are a lot of companies that want you basically re-engineer the whole universe and want to pay you peanuts while I can get a DECENT salary (eg. your 70-75k vs 100k) and have time for my family and hobbies doing less challenging job. I won't comment on whether the guy was or could be a senior because I obviously did not attend the interview but there are many many incredibly skilled people that just suck at doing f2f / online interviews.

throwaway2016a 10y ago

Don't be so quick to judge. Placing someone at mid / senior / junior is not "cocky"... it's pretty subjective if you do it right. The guy missed questions that over 50% of our applicants knew the answers to. I'm not talking the "implement this obscure algorithm from scratch on a whiteboard" kind of question HN is so fond of. The hardest coding question we ask is Fizz-Buzz. But we can't / won't pay him more than we pay other employees with similar or higher skill sets. If we drew a bell curve of all the applicants we had, this guy would be in the middle. His resume was impressive though. My guess is the company that hired him didn't do their diligence and only weighed the resume.

Sunstruck 10y ago
It sounds like you don't pay market salaries and are in denial
- jdbernard 10y ago
  Sounds like he is well aware that they aren't paying market salaries: > - We are probably priced out of the market
  - throwaway2016a 10y ago
    Also what I meant when I said... > I work at a startup that isn't profitable yet so our salaries are very low... ... was "too low... if we could afford it I'd pay three times that much" not "oh look what a great deal we are getting! Haha, suckers!"
    - holydude 10y ago
      Then I guess you are targeting the wrong pool of candidates. Do the candidates know how much can you pay (ranges?). It often happens that I as a candidate have to go through several rounds just to learn that they can't afford me.
      - am8 10y ago
        So what Modulo is there to catch people out. If you were a front end developer do you really need this? The fact employers will reject based on a test that is fashionable just because a few coding blogs said so doesn't mean they can't provide value. What about their past work or qualifications? Cocky. Sounds like a clique i'd want to avoid at all costs.
        throwaway2016a 10y ago
        I can't tell if you're being serious or trolling but using modulus in front-end is not all that uncommon. Especially when doing reporting or animation. For years the only way to do zebra striped tables was that way. Also, I never said... 1. We were taking about front-end. 2. We reject solely based on it. I just used it as an example of a type of question. In fact we've hired candidates who didn't know what modulo was because when they encountered it they were able to reason through it. Furthermore... this candidate failed far easier questions that that. I used FizzBuzz as the "hardest" question. Does not knowing Fizz Buzz mean you won't be productive? No. But it is probably a good indicator you aren't commanding of $150k a year this guy got hired for.
        am8 10y ago
        I said Front end as an example could apply to most developer jobs really. Anyway, this guy you placed as a "lower mid", this is your judgement, how do you know it's correct? Did other people say the same? Perhaps he didn't have the skills you were looking for but was good at other things. Saying the other company didn't do their diligence is easy but is that really what happened? If you are hiring developers and placing them as lower, mid, lead etc. you are going to get flak anyway as you're just jailing them and hiring a load of people who only agree with what you think. You're going to get people who are good at developing software who don't care about math(s) or machine learning, give them 2 seconds and Google and they can answer your Modulo question. Is it not about the willingness and enthusiasm to learn? Or do they have to go through "hard" tests to prove they can work out some academic nonsense they are never going to need to use. To prove themselves to the frat. I'd argue a lot of really clever people good at the hardcore Computer science and data analysis type subjects aren't always as good at writing decent code.
- zyncl19 10y ago
  Not at all. The discussion of whether a person is a senior or mid level developer can be completely separate from a discussion of whether the company pays fairly for those positions.
holydude 10y ago
Well I have to tell you this that there are a lot of companies that want you basically re-engineer the whole universe and want to pay you peanuts while I can get a DECENT salary (eg. your 70-75k vs 100k) and have time for my family and hobbies doing less challenging job. I won't comment on whether the guy was or could be a senior because I obviously did not attend the interview but there are many many incredibly skilled people that just suck at doing f2f / online interviews.