5 ms·

How will offering a higher salary deter less qualified people? It seems like it will attract more of all kinds of programmers.

by amock 16y ago

staunch 16y ago
It should improve the ratio though.
- amock 16y ago
  Maybe, maybe not. I think a better way to filter people would be something like Justin.tv or Facebook does where they have applicants write code as part of the application. I don't have any experience with hiring so i don't have any real data, but I'd love to know how effective those are.
  - tkahnoski 16y ago
    Company I work for issues a basic data structures test to be completed in 1 hour for all resumes worth their paper (about 10 to 15 out of 100 candidates). The test boils down to 'fill in these two functions'. About 20% finish both functions correctly in an hour (I still had an infinite recursion at the 1 hour mark and submitted a correct entry 10 minutes later). In conjunction with a phone interview we typically only have an actual sitdown with 2 to 4 candidates out of the initial pool of 100. We recruit out of college so resumes get handed in like candy, but this process has effectively helped us find candidates that are at least capable of learning the monolithic code base and getting fully up and running in a few months. Our company still has an absolute terrible code base. It is very feasible to nuke skilled programmers once you have them.
    - hello_moto 16y ago
      Upvote for being very honest. Isn't this what happened throughout the industry? (with a very few exceptions). This is exactly what makes my belief about "great programmers" just went out of the window: no matter how great an individual is, the fact that plenty software houses have terrible code base show something else. People can blame the businesses, the time-to-market, the deadline or whatnot and I believe you guys. But at the same time, are you being fair toward your profession at the same time? If great programmers do exist, I'm expecting them to change these ugly code bases everywhere to the point where 50% of any companies out there would have good code base (and that includes unit-tests)
      - mikecotton 16y ago
        Unless management has made the decision to invest in a solid-wall backstop of functional tests, then no amount of great programmers can clean up a codebase. I've known and learned from some of the best coders alive, and none of them would wade into a known-good codebase that they didn't have solid experience with or responsibility for and start refactoring. Code that they were on the hook for? Open season. Code that someone else was going to get the call on at 3 a.m.? Wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. Given that, I wouldn't expect '50% of any companies' to be good. "If it ain't broke..." is really good advice about 95% of the time. If you're 50-100% overbooked, you don't screw with other peoples' code just to try to make things better around the office.
      - tkahnoski 16y ago
        My main point is you can find all the great talent you want, but people, just like everything else, are not silver bullets.
  - Cornus 16y ago
    Second most important thing after judging whether you could handle being stuck in a hot office with the guy for a month.
  - jquery 16y ago
    This only works if there's a time-limit. Facebook's doesn't have one, so they make the problems inordinately time-consuming, which has the side-effect of filtering for not just skill, but desire to work at Facebook as opposed to the many alternatives that won't make you spend the equivalent of nearly an entire workday applying. Six months ago when I applied, I spent a day completing a puzzle--and getting their puzzle-bot to accept it... it only runs every few hours, on input which is unbounded so you're not sure how optimized your solution has to be. If your solution doesn't pass, the puzzle-bot does not tell you why. Afterwards they asked me to do another puzzle at which point I voluntarily dropped out of their interview process. Overall I would say the experience was very poor and reflected badly on Facebook in my mind.
vaksel 16y ago
I'd imagine the incompetent ones wouldn't bother applying to jobs that are "way out of their league". If you are "sucky" you might still apply for a $60K job, thinking that you might slide through. But you wouldn't bother applying to a $100K job, thinking that there'd be way more competent people applying so it'd be a waste of time
- starkfist 16y ago
  I'd imagine the incompetent ones wouldn't bother applying to jobs that are "way out of their league". Never done hiring before, eh?
- DomesticMouse 16y ago
  You'd imagine wrong, if my past experience is anything to go by.
- dedward 16y ago
  You'd imagine that, but you'd be wrong - there are a great many technical employees who don't realize they are way out of their league and will apply anyway.
  - danudey 16y ago
    "Hey, I've got 'two years of experience with .NET'! I remember, because it was my birthday last week and on my birthday two years ago I wrote a little digital clock app from a tutorial I found in a magazine. Man, who ever thought ten minutes in Notepad would net me a $100k job! I'm totally going to apply, and when I get this job I'm never working at another Burger King again!"
    - kranner 16y ago
      Upvote for satire!
      - kranner 16y ago
        I'm curious about why this was downvoted. Is "upvote for x" too reddit-y?
timr 16y ago
"How will offering a higher salary deter less qualified people?" You've got it exactly backwards: it's not intended to deter the unqualified, it's meant to attract the qualified. And yes, high salaries do tend to attract good people. Maybe not exclusively, but it's an important factor. So, if the complaint is that "there are no good programmers" (and we assume that your screening process isn't totally arbitrary), there's a pretty good bet that you're not attracting good programmers from the places where they currently work. High salaries are a good way to do that.
- scott_s 16y ago
  You may attract more qualified people, but the number of unqualified people may increase as well. Put another way, you may get more qualified people in absolute numbers, but the signal-to-noise ratio could go up, too.
  - timr 16y ago
    "You may attract more qualified people, but the number of unqualified people may increase as well." ...which is why you have a screening process. When people are complaining that there are no good programmers (and this is a common complaint on HN; it's not just a straw man), there's at least one of two things going on: 1) Their screening process sucks. 2) They aren't attracting good programmers. High salaries help with #2.
    - el_chapitan 16y ago
      Hopefully higher salaries are also going to help keeping your existing programmers, which will alleviate the need to go and get more programmers. Also, if you have a stellar programmer in an interview, they tend to stick out more than their non stellar counterparts.
    - kranner 16y ago
      I'm trying to bring up an automated screening service at http://codeboff.in/ http://codeboff.in/ (self-promo alert) because I think we need way more of these, especially being the sort of people who could make them. Edit: by 'we' I meant 'we as programmers'.

How will offering a higher salary deter less qualified people? It seems like it will attract more of all kinds of programmers.

by amock 16y ago

How will offering a higher salary deter less qualified people? It seems like it will attract more of all kinds of programmers.

staunch 16y ago

It should improve the ratio though.

amock 16y ago
Maybe, maybe not. I think a better way to filter people would be something like Justin.tv or Facebook does where they have applicants write code as part of the application. I don't have any experience with hiring so i don't have any real data, but I'd love to know how effective those are.
- tkahnoski 16y ago
  Company I work for issues a basic data structures test to be completed in 1 hour for all resumes worth their paper (about 10 to 15 out of 100 candidates). The test boils down to 'fill in these two functions'. About 20% finish both functions correctly in an hour (I still had an infinite recursion at the 1 hour mark and submitted a correct entry 10 minutes later). In conjunction with a phone interview we typically only have an actual sitdown with 2 to 4 candidates out of the initial pool of 100. We recruit out of college so resumes get handed in like candy, but this process has effectively helped us find candidates that are at least capable of learning the monolithic code base and getting fully up and running in a few months. Our company still has an absolute terrible code base. It is very feasible to nuke skilled programmers once you have them.
  - hello_moto 16y ago
    Upvote for being very honest. Isn't this what happened throughout the industry? (with a very few exceptions). This is exactly what makes my belief about "great programmers" just went out of the window: no matter how great an individual is, the fact that plenty software houses have terrible code base show something else. People can blame the businesses, the time-to-market, the deadline or whatnot and I believe you guys. But at the same time, are you being fair toward your profession at the same time? If great programmers do exist, I'm expecting them to change these ugly code bases everywhere to the point where 50% of any companies out there would have good code base (and that includes unit-tests)
    - mikecotton 16y ago
      Unless management has made the decision to invest in a solid-wall backstop of functional tests, then no amount of great programmers can clean up a codebase. I've known and learned from some of the best coders alive, and none of them would wade into a known-good codebase that they didn't have solid experience with or responsibility for and start refactoring. Code that they were on the hook for? Open season. Code that someone else was going to get the call on at 3 a.m.? Wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. Given that, I wouldn't expect '50% of any companies' to be good. "If it ain't broke..." is really good advice about 95% of the time. If you're 50-100% overbooked, you don't screw with other peoples' code just to try to make things better around the office.
    - tkahnoski 16y ago
      My main point is you can find all the great talent you want, but people, just like everything else, are not silver bullets.
- Cornus 16y ago
  Second most important thing after judging whether you could handle being stuck in a hot office with the guy for a month.
- jquery 16y ago
  This only works if there's a time-limit. Facebook's doesn't have one, so they make the problems inordinately time-consuming, which has the side-effect of filtering for not just skill, but desire to work at Facebook as opposed to the many alternatives that won't make you spend the equivalent of nearly an entire workday applying. Six months ago when I applied, I spent a day completing a puzzle--and getting their puzzle-bot to accept it... it only runs every few hours, on input which is unbounded so you're not sure how optimized your solution has to be. If your solution doesn't pass, the puzzle-bot does not tell you why. Afterwards they asked me to do another puzzle at which point I voluntarily dropped out of their interview process. Overall I would say the experience was very poor and reflected badly on Facebook in my mind.

vaksel 16y ago

I'd imagine the incompetent ones wouldn't bother applying to jobs that are "way out of their league". If you are "sucky" you might still apply for a $60K job, thinking that you might slide through. But you wouldn't bother applying to a $100K job, thinking that there'd be way more competent people applying so it'd be a waste of time

starkfist 16y ago
I'd imagine the incompetent ones wouldn't bother applying to jobs that are "way out of their league". Never done hiring before, eh?
DomesticMouse 16y ago
You'd imagine wrong, if my past experience is anything to go by.
dedward 16y ago
You'd imagine that, but you'd be wrong - there are a great many technical employees who don't realize they are way out of their league and will apply anyway.
- danudey 16y ago
  "Hey, I've got 'two years of experience with .NET'! I remember, because it was my birthday last week and on my birthday two years ago I wrote a little digital clock app from a tutorial I found in a magazine. Man, who ever thought ten minutes in Notepad would net me a $100k job! I'm totally going to apply, and when I get this job I'm never working at another Burger King again!"
  - kranner 16y ago
    Upvote for satire!
    - kranner 16y ago
      I'm curious about why this was downvoted. Is "upvote for x" too reddit-y?

timr 16y ago

"How will offering a higher salary deter less qualified people?" You've got it exactly backwards: it's not intended to deter the unqualified, it's meant to attract the qualified. And yes, high salaries do tend to attract good people. Maybe not exclusively, but it's an important factor. So, if the complaint is that "there are no good programmers" (and we assume that your screening process isn't totally arbitrary), there's a pretty good bet that you're not attracting good programmers from the places where they currently work. High salaries are a good way to do that.

scott_s 16y ago
You may attract more qualified people, but the number of unqualified people may increase as well. Put another way, you may get more qualified people in absolute numbers, but the signal-to-noise ratio could go up, too.
- timr 16y ago
  "You may attract more qualified people, but the number of unqualified people may increase as well." ...which is why you have a screening process. When people are complaining that there are no good programmers (and this is a common complaint on HN; it's not just a straw man), there's at least one of two things going on: 1) Their screening process sucks. 2) They aren't attracting good programmers. High salaries help with #2.
  - el_chapitan 16y ago
    Hopefully higher salaries are also going to help keeping your existing programmers, which will alleviate the need to go and get more programmers. Also, if you have a stellar programmer in an interview, they tend to stick out more than their non stellar counterparts.
  - kranner 16y ago
    I'm trying to bring up an automated screening service at http://codeboff.in/ http://codeboff.in/ (self-promo alert) because I think we need way more of these, especially being the sort of people who could make them. Edit: by 'we' I meant 'we as programmers'.