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61% of “Entry-Level” Jobs Require 3+ Years of Experience

482 points by giffarage 9y ago

crimsonalucard 9y ago
I get it though. The employer is thinking: Why do I pay you to train you? You should pay me to train you. Lets bring back the apprentice system.
- lazypenguin 9y ago
  That's not the issue, the issue is the terminology. If you don't want to pay to train someone then don't label it an "entry-level" position. The truth is that many want "mid-level/senior-level" employees (3+ year experience requirements) at "entry-level" salaries.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    Look at it from the perspective of a "career in this organization", not "career of this person". It is an entry level job - it's the lowest tier in their ranking, it's the starting place, it's literally the level where new people enter the organization; it's the lowest paid and least respected position they have, filled with the least experienced and least tenured people in the whole company. It's just that they (want to) start with people who have worked (somewhere else) for a few years already; but that does not and can not make it a mid-tier job, that would require them to have other, even lower jobs. Furthermore, saying that 3 years might be a senior level position is stretching definitions - assuming an average lifetime career of 30 years, someone with 3 years experience has less "seniority" than 90% of the workforce.
    - RbrtM 9y ago
      These days your tech career ends at 35, so an average lifetime career lasts 10-12 years.
      - paulie_a 9y ago
        That is laughable. While age doesn't really matter, true senior talent doesn't even begin until someone has worked for at least a decade, which puts most people in their early to mid 30s
        AstralStorm 9y ago
        Depends on when one has started but yes, the expected age in my experience is around 7 years. Shorter if this is on different teams and technologies. This means a college grad will be in 30s. Someone who worked off jobs while in college might get there faster a bit. A passionate experimenter who does a lot of open source dev would be there before you blink but will be hard pressed to prove it. Pity companies do not wish to hire people in high school with actual will to do the thing and learn. Vocational education so to speak. They probably (and rightly) expect a pause for college or other higher education.
      - 80386 9y ago
        What do tech people do after they hit 35?
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
        Well, I'm considerably past 35 and still being hired as a tech developer. Mostly at high $$ to come and fix the problems that young 'uns have created in their wide-eyed naive blithering and fawning over fancy new doodads.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- bcheung 9y ago
  I've said the same thing myself about bringing back the apprenticeship system. That system required a contract of typically 7 years though and that is why masters would take on apprentices. 7 years is a long time but if there is a way to have your investment not just walk out the door after you spent a bunch of resources getting them up to speed that would make it much more feasible. Perhaps a forgivable loan upon completion of the apprenticeship?
  - nradov 9y ago
    Employers can already offer forgivable loans to pay for employee training. One of my former employers handled tuition reimbursement for my Master's degree that way. After I graduated and stayed two more years they wrote off the debt. (I did have to pay income tax on the forgiven debt though.)
  - walshemj 9y ago
    I think 7 was the contractual term for the traditional "craft" apprenticeship blacksmiths starting at 14 - latterly 4 years starting at 15/16 For what's termed higher apprenticeships you either did a craft one first or joined later on at 18 or so. The problem will come is that higher apprentices learn the fundamental building blocks and tech employers want people rote trained in " latest shiny tech" Btw traditional apprentices where not guaranteed a job at the end, it was possible to sack an apprentice but you'd sack them on grounds on breach of contract. As they(or their parents) signed a biding contract - you could not make the redundant though. Modern apprenticeships are normally direct employees now though - not sure about Germany though.
  - sotojuan 9y ago
    A big chunk of the tech industry doesn't think in 7+ years long terms. They think in "next seed round" terms. Therefore, they want senior devs now so they build whatever they need to hopefully hit the user count for the next seed round. If your company thinks short term (e.g. next 2 years) like most tech startups do, hiring juniors and training is out of the question.
- itg 9y ago
  That's sort of what internships are for, but those often restricted to people studying in college, and I've even seen internship applications ask for experience in X,Y, and Z technology.
  - awat 9y ago
    Not to mention there is a whole class signalling aspect to interships. I remember a getting an internship in college with a large defense contractor and them not seeming to understand I needed to know what the exact pay was. As much as I would have liked to play that “cool” I still needed to pay my own rent.
- paulie_a 9y ago
  That is amazingly short sighted by an employer. They don't deserve to have an employee they can train. A company is losing the opportunity to train employees. And if they don't put the effort in early.. They are probably losing their top talent and don't even realize it.
  - crimsonalucard 9y ago
    Right, it's a thinking ahead investment scenario with risk. But if you look at it from a transactional point of view it makes no sense: I pay you to educate you while you provide me with nothing.
    - paulie_a 9y ago
      If an employer is thinking with that mentality, why would I ever want to work for them?
      - Density 9y ago
        Because you need to eat.
      - crimsonalucard 9y ago
        A fair transaction rather than a risky investment? Let me ask you something. Would you work for an employer that will only maybe pay you after one year? Because that's essentially the payoff an employer gets when they decide to take on an entry level hire. Think about it this way. Why would any employer hire you if you have that mentality?
dotcoma 9y ago
Do we need more evidence that "Entry-Level" means "poorly paid"?
- johnnyfaehell 9y ago
  To be fair, I think even the senior levels aren't exactly well paid. According to https://taketheexit.de/ https://taketheexit.de/ 55% of developers feel heavily underpaid and that's something I can believe easily.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    Everybody feels underpaid. You earn more money, then you spend more money, then you wish you had more money. I recently doubled my salary, and I still feel underpaid. In reality, I earn above median wage for my age and experience, and live a comfortable life. But we can always do with more cash.
    - chrisper 9y ago
      There is a big difference between having no money and feeling underpaid.
    - johnnyfaehell 9y ago
      There is a difference between wanting more cash and feeling underpaid. The fact the stat says only a percentage of people feel underpaid kinda rules out your statement that "Everybody feels underpaid".
  - rifung 9y ago
    Sorry couldn't you elaborate on why you can believe it easily? I feel like people in tech are paid very well so this is a surprise to me. If anything I feel overpaid despite being paid much less than most of my peers
    - johnnyfaehell 9y ago
      The average Developer/Engineer/etc works about 60 hours a week, they work on things that generate millions of dollars. They, for the most part, get paid less than the accountant does. I've literally made a company millions in profit, the entire IT department probably earned less than 10% of the amount of that profit amount. The ROI in IT is extremely high, yet you'll see salespeople whose ROI is much lower making a lot more money. A lot of people will say our salaries being below that of accountants, lawyers, etc is because our barrier of entry is much lower. I believe this not to be true, look at the average job board and you'll see a lot of companies who are literally only looking for seniors. Once you get in, you're fine, but getting in when you don't have the qualifications can be a lot harder. It seems like those industries have spent decades/centuries building prestige into their industries while IT seems to put up with an OK salary with lots of pressure and overtime. For the majority of skilled workers, IT workers are poorly paid. While we make more than the median salary, the amount of skill, effort, the time it takes to become good at the job is a lot higher than those making the median. You then have the culture of overtime. It's not uncommon to see PRs from people at 10 pm, be told you need to work the weekend, for projects that aren't fully defined and/or have months left to go in development. Overall, I feel that as an industry, we've massively undersold ourselves and made top-level execs not fully appreciate the value that we as an industry bring. Nevermind the average person, they completely don't value the industry what so ever. The amount of people who default on Web Agency bills who would never default on any other vendor bill is massive. People wanting an ecommerce website for a few hundred pounds.
Waterluvian 9y ago
Won't the market sort out whatever this is? Is there a specific unfair mechanism at play that would prevent supply and demand from finding its balance?
- chroem- 9y ago
  The fact that people need a source of income to live, and that they have very little influence on the price of their labor without collective bargaining.
  - apsec112 9y ago
    People also need food to live, and they have no influence on the price of food; you can't go into Safeway and get a prime steak for $1.50. Yet there is such an abundance of food at such low prices that half of Westerners are overweight. The labor market must have other issues, besides these, if it's having more problems than the food market.
    - 1812Overture 9y ago
      The grocery stores I go to have price tags on everything.
      - AstralStorm 9y ago
        And job offers typically come without price brackets. Moreover the requirements are often written (or processed into mush) by a person who has no clue. This puts you at a major disadvantage. And then there is the problem that a company can easily outwit and outwait you as they have a big buffer. Only people currently in stable jobs or with plenty of f.u. money can match it. If there is a slump in demand or peak in worker supply you will have even less bargaining power.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    That's not how supply and demand works. I'm on the supply side of the labor supply-and-demand curve. I set the price that I'm willing to sell my time at. Nobody else sets my price, and I don't set anybody else's price. On the demand side, there are a bunch of employers who each have their own price for what they're willing to pay for a certain set of skills. Each sets their own price. Nobody else sets it for them. In particular, nobody on the supply side can possibly set the price the demand side is willing to pay. Now, all of what I just said presumes a functioning supply-and-demand market. It breaks down if there's collusion between employers, or in a single-employer situation. Unions may well be needed in such situations. But in a working labor market, demanding more than market price for labor will result in lower demand for labor.
golergka 9y ago
"Require"? The fact that something is written in job description as a "requirement" doesn't mean that you won't get hired without it. I think that most jobs I got as a self taught engineer had a degree as a requirement – and it was almost never even mentioned in an interview.
- knowaveragejoe 9y ago
  That's because oftentimes the people writing the help wanted ads aren't the same people doing the hiring for whatever team.
- jesseryoung 9y ago
  Was just about to post this. At least in my experience I think that it's rare for a hiring manager or someone in HR to use an original job description when posting a job. They all Google job postings, find one that fits the title modify the technology parts of it and just post it.
- pnathan 9y ago
  companies who are federal contractors are required to hold the requirements bar, or get very angry auditors/federal investigators on their tail. something I learned at an HR training. So that is useful to prune your search.
rb808 9y ago
I dont really understand what the problem is. If a job says 3 year experience "required", it just means they want people that know what they're doing. If you worked a few summers and are good at something you're qualified to apply.
- TheSmiddy 9y ago
  the problem is that the job is titled "entry level" and then asks for 3 years experience. It's a bait'n'switch that wastes everybody's time. If they only wanted a few summers worth of internships etc they should say that, 3 years experience is commonly interpreted as 3 years continuous on the job experience.
Spooky23 9y ago
It’s not jobs, it’s job postings. You need to demonstrate that no candidates with skills are available to get a visa waiver. It’s called compliance advertising. There’s a whole industry of body shops that do this stuff and collude on rates. The folks they hire are the foot soldiers of banks and government.
- outworlder 9y ago
  This kind of job ad is seen in other countries as well, not just the US, even ones where foreign applicants are really uncommon.
  - toyg 9y ago
    It's not limited to visa-cheating; in certain industries, you have to advertise the position even if you already know who you're going to hire. Look at the backpages of publications like The Economist - do you really think huge companies will find a CEO or Senior Executive with a magazine ad? Of course not.
    - lulmerchant 9y ago
      That's how I got my current job. I was working as a consultant for a company, and we all mutually decided that I should come in and fill a rather high ranking permanent role there. They asked me to write the job description for it, and work with HR to get it posted. That night I went home and applied for the job. That being said, I've never properly applied for a job in my life, and I'm pretty sure this is rather common.
williamscales 9y ago
If you go to college and do an internship or research fellowship each summer, you will come out with "3 years" of experience.
- meaydinli 9y ago
  Is it not mandatory for engineering/CS? I had to do 2 internships for my bachelors, and 1 for my masters.
  - phinnaeus 9y ago
    I did one internship.
  - cbhl 9y ago
    Traditional universities have "summer vacation". :)
  - tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
    Not at the vast majority of schools in the US.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    Depends on the country I guess. In New Zealand it's mandatory for Software Engineering (and other engineering), but not for Computer Science, as it's a science degree.
  - nvarsj 9y ago
    It's not mandatory. But it's incredibly hard to get hired out of school, even a top one, if you don't do any internships. You gotta grind from day 1 in this world.
- filoleg 9y ago
  Can you actually do that/do people do that? E.g., if someone did a software engineering internship for at least one semester every year of their college (4 years), can they count those years as field/industry experience? Albeit not full 4, but 2-3 years?
faitswulff 9y ago
This also explains why I started to get so many callbacks on job applications at year 5 in my programming career: > 3, 5 and 8 are your magic numbers. After 5+ years of experience, you (officially) qualify for most mid-level jobs. After 8+ years, you qualify for senior ones. And 3+ for entry-level, obvs.
- kushalc 9y ago
  Right? We see it all the time. Waterluvian commented below about the hiring markets self-optimizing themselves to efficiency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16702612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16702612 In short, we see so many market inefficiencies in hiring, it'd be hilarious if it weren't folks' lives we were talking about. There's no practical difference between someone who has 4.750 years of experience and 5.250 years of experience, but the market dramatically prefers the latter.
jaimex2 9y ago
And this is why you lie on your entry level resumes kids.
- crazcarl 9y ago
  You absolutely shouldn't lie. But you also shouldn't let your lack of experience stop you from applying to entry level jobs.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    If you don't lie you may be out competed by those who do.
    - ikeyany 9y ago
      Then the focus should be on making it harder for liars to win.
      - treis 9y ago
        How does one searching for an entry level job do this?
        ikeyany 9y ago
        For starters, gravitate towards fields that prioritize substance over style.
        Density 9y ago
        Wouldn't that be a nice universe to live in...
    - usrusr 9y ago
      On the other hand, not checking 100% of the boxes would boost the credibility of your other claims a lot. Clever HR departments might even deliberately add some extremely implausible optional requirements to flag those who are most comfortable lying in their CV.
jamestimmins 9y ago
The buried lede here seems to be "In real life, folks need to apply to 150-250 jobs to get a job". I'd be so, so interested to see the breakdown here, and what causes these types of numbers. Are there just enormous numbers of applicants for every job? Are people applying for jobs they aren't qualified for? How does this compare in tech vs the rest of the job market? The signal/noise ratio must be absurdly low if this is possible.
- hayksaakian 9y ago
  1) Yes. Any job with entry level requirements will get 20-100 applications on craigslist in seattle (my experience). More or less applications on more or less popular platforms 2) Yes. Half or more of the applications I've reviewed are totally unqualified. Either they ignored the requirements or fudge it and flop on the interview. 3) Tech has even more noise than my personal experience due to higher pay scales and increased interest in "working in tech" (without any personal interest / passion in technology)
  - whorleater 9y ago
    >without any personal interest / passion in technology Can I not work in tech without being passionate?
    - username223 9y ago
      Tech work is like sex work: you don't need to feel the passion, but you do need to be able to fake it.
      - your-nanny 9y ago
        Touche
      - lr4444lr 9y ago
        I'm stealing that line.
    - 9y ago
crankylinuxuser 9y ago
This also sounds like a great way to cut out "undesirables". The women can be 'given' social roles and kept out of the tech areas, and minorities are never allowed the 3 years experience. Yeah, its jaded. I've been around the block a few times. Of course nobody outright says these things. They never really have to. The policies enforce those decisions.
- jrs95 9y ago
  This is really absurd, most HR people in this field would go out of their way to hire the demographics you mention. Plus, those years of experience requirements are dumb and nobody, not even large corporations, even enforces them in my experience. The closest thing you'll get to having this kind of requirement be enforced is people that are sticklers for college degrees.
kardos 9y ago
Don't forget that people with 3+ years experience probably aren't applying for entry level jobs
sixdimensional 9y ago
There is an interesting catch-22 I've experienced regarding a recommendation the article makes - if you remove things like graduation dates, previous positions / etc. once you reach a certain age (35+ per the article), potential employers now don't have that information. The catch-22 is, if you're not careful, now employers may think you are NOT senior and so you may be able to get a job, however, it might not be appropriate for your skill level. It can be frustrating for an experienced person. Although, I've found that, once you have a job, generally typical employers don't really care what you've done before and forget your past experience (which is a shame for them!). Depending on the employer, most of them care, "Can you do what I want from you when I ask it of you?" and that's about it. I've also heard the advice that says, if you have the experience, and you want a job, your resume should be explicitly tailored to no more and no less than what a job posting requests. I think the advice of obscuring your information to make yourself difficult to gage from an age perspective is an interesting approach, but it probably fits into the same category of advice. I know this article is likely just a promotional piece for the author's business, but, I have to admit, a number of points felt pretty accurate based on my personal anecdotes.
- kushalc 9y ago
  Definitely not just a promotion. We're a mission-driven company and a we've explicitly chosen as a company to share our learnings with folks (even if it reduces our competitive edge a tiny bit) because we believe it's important to good. Not quite open source, but maybe open knowledge? And while it's nowhere near peer-reviewed academic paper quality (we won't be submitting to Nature or NIPS anytime soon), my personal background is ML — everything we write is backed by cold, hard internal data and we try to stick to the facts. All of that said, yes, people really like our data-driven insights and it does drive traffic. :)
  - sixdimensional 9y ago
    I've always found the truth and good intention to be the best sales tools, so I admire your approach!!!
kushalc 9y ago
Hey guys, I'm the author of this post! (And also happen to be TalentWorks CEO.) A friend sent me this link, I'm happy to answer any Qs. Also, we're hiring. :) If you're sick of spending all your hard-earned education and experience to help Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. increase ad CTR by 0.001%, we're working on some pretty cool technical problems. Just email me at kushal@talent.works.
- stinkytaco 9y ago
  Hmmmm... what have you got for someone with no experience? j/k, but I am curious how much time you think is average for a job search in terms of both hours spent and days/weeks before finding something. You talk about "time and stubbornness" but I'm interested just how much time and how much stubbornness. I realize this varies widely by industry, but I would expect there's some sort of white collar average.
  - kushalc 9y ago
    We're actually hiring for no-experience positions too! (TBH, some of my best hires were no-experience, high-potential fresh grads who've turned into powerhouses.) I don't suppose you want to be a Marketing Assistant? ;) To your specific Q, yes, it does vary dramatically by location and specialty. In fact, we did an analysis about exactly that a few months ago! Even for white-collar positions, it ranges from ~14 weeks (software engineers) to ~90 days (HR specialists) to >>90 days (mechanical engineers): https://talent.works/blog/2017/09/22/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-a-job-60-days-if-youre-in-hr-or-sales/ https://talent.works/blog/2017/09/22/how-long-does-it-take-t... When you dig in, even specialties that take the same time have very different reasons. For instance, mechanical engineers see a pretty high interview callback rate to job applications, it's just that there aren't _enough_ mechanical engineer job openings out there! OTOH, there are tons of HR specialist job openings but you need to apply to a million jobs to even get one reply.
    - eitally 9y ago
      And those date ranges can vary wildly for extremely differing reasons. Especially for white collar jobs, you may have a negotiation period that last weeks-to-months, especially if you're currently employed while applying.
deleted 9y ago
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adamredwoods 9y ago
Is this because it has become too easy to apply for jobs? Should there be a stronger barrier to even apply to something (ie. take this automated test to apply...)?
- tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
  Then you have people getting others to take the test for them or gaming that in some way.
- dabockster 9y ago
  > Should there be a stronger barrier The job board should say something like "to apply for this job, please show up at our next hiring event on XYZ date". Thoughts?
StaticRedux 9y ago
3+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For some reason people can never get over that. It means 3+ years with a technology. It means don't walk in the door out of a Java college having used nothing else and apply to work on a Triple A game written in C++. It means don't show up after a weekend html course and apply for a job using Node/React. And before you say "well that isn't me for so and so reason", it happens ALL the time to employers. An entry level position does not mean you get to learn on the job from scratch or near scratch. It means that you are at least capable enough to work on small or easy problems and features and an employer or other devs can coach you along the way and you'll know what they are saying to you. That's all it means (to any reasonable employer).
- arkades 9y ago
  Their statements aren’t unique to tech. 3+ years of experience were not restricted to three years -with a technology-. I saw the same shit back when I was doing healthcare QI, and there is no tech to speak of there. In fact, they stated nothing to suggest they were looking at tech firms specifically. You seem to be reading into this what you want to see.
  - StaticRedux 9y ago
    I'm speaking on the subject based on experience in my own field (I don't presume to know other fields). But I believe what I said applies anywhere. > An entry level position does not mean you get to learn on the job from scratch or near scratch.
    - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
      in most fields it means exactly that - or it means "there is a well known educational syllabus that you have already followed and the next X years are the well known practical side of that education. At the end you will be rewarded with membership of a profession" it works for lawyers, civil engineers and accountants. not for software engineers it seems.
stinkytaco 9y ago
I worked part time for a couple of years before I ended up full time in my profession. It's a luxury few people have, but quite common in my line of work. But having hired people, I see this from the other end. I have precisely one person under me. It's all we can afford and I'm in municipal government, so positions are not easy to create. Given that situation, and how hard it is to get rid of someone, I have to be really careful who I hire and that means favoring experience. I expect more supervisors than not are in my position, wanting to mentor but not being able to take the risk.
treis 9y ago
I call bullshit. I searched "entry level developer" on indeed and spot checked 10 of them. Not one said 3 years experience required.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
  As other posters have pointed out, did the ads say 3 years’ experience in a similar job - or 3 years’ experience with a particular language, framework or platform? Even if someone has a Bachelors in CS, I wouldn’t hire for an entry-level C++ gif without 3 years’ experience with the language: I expect them to pick it up during their time in academia - especially as many (of the best) start coding in high-school or earlier. So in fact, I’d be alarmed if an applicant with a CS degree didn’t claim at least 3 years experience with a common instructional language like Java.
  - treis 9y ago
    Id say most didn't have any years listed. They just ask for a degree + experience in pretty basic stuff. A couple asked for 1+ One said 0-3 years
  - fzeroracer 9y ago
    You make a lot of assumptions that end up not playing out so well. For example when I was at university we didn't have a single core language we used for everything; classes bounced around between C#, Java, C++, Python, Ada, HTML, Javascript and so forth. There are graduates that have wide experience but not depth. Which speaking as an aside; I was denied an internship back in college because I didn't have three years of professional experience in Java. Needless to say I found it absurd at the time. You also assume that the best people are coding earlier or have the ability to code earlier. Some of the best developers I've worked with didn't start coding until later in their life.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
paulie_a 9y ago
I remember 2 years after .net came out there were jobs requiring 6 years experience. I asked a recruiter about that and they were shocked I had the audacity to even ask
tyingq 9y ago
Maybe the crackdown on H1B visas will change this? I'm sympathetic to the valid cases, but it was/is being abused.
- toyg 9y ago
  Nah, it's the internet. This phenomenon started right after job websites went mainstream.
gnopgnip 9y ago
Entry level doesn't mean people with no experience, and it means something different for every company. Entry level for the NFL means having 8+ years of football experience for instance. Not every company hires people straight out of highschool or college. But there still are many that will hire people with 0-1 years of experience for entry level roles.
- tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
  X years of experience might also count part time work done during college.
chapill 9y ago
>What can you do? Have the skills the company wants at a price they're willing to pay. That always works for me.
fzeroracer 9y ago
Speaking as someone currently in that position (developer with two years of experience) my personal experiences seem to align quite well with the data they collected. When companies say 'entry-level', they seem to be referring to around 2-3 years of working experience. Not just college + internships, but actual professional experience. It's an extremely silly market to be in right now if you're a fresh grad. All this talk about passion or numbers aside, I've had the opportunity to experience things from the other side and see how many senior-level developers with 10+ years of experience couldn't write an if-statement in their choice of language to save their lives, or even elaborate on basic design choices/decisions.
- cutler 9y ago
  Can you please elaborate? Honestly, I'm interested to hear how anyone with such a low level of technical skill managed to get anyone to believe they were anything more than a junior. It also interests me because recently I've had a number of recruiters try to convince me that I'm a senior just because I've been programming for a living for 12 years. I'm honest enough with myself to admit that although I've used several languages during that time the jobs were all similar, freelance/sole developer CRUD jobs which didn't really challenge me so there was no continuouse progression technically. Sometimes testing was an afterthought so on that basis I wouldn't even qualify as mid-level. The thing is that "senior" means something completely different to a recruiter and maybe also to a manager?
  - fzeroracer 9y ago
    The reason why they were able to seem like they were senior was because they had the work history. Even though their technical skills were lacking, the sheer amount of development history automatically made them a potential candidate worth interviewing. Once you have guaranteed interviews, from there it's just a matter of finding a company with the most lax interviews or one where you can fake it the easiest. At least that's my best guess; I don't fully understand how someone can work for a company for over a decade yet can't understand basic OOP or fizzbuzz-level challenges. It became a serious issue at my company because most of the senior-level candidates we got were utterly useless.
bproven 9y ago
Another interesting factoid I gathered from this is the "avoid ageism" tip about removing dates from graduation + only list last 10 years of job experience. I've always suspected it, but this supports it as a reality. Sad reality that we throw away experience...
jrs95 9y ago
In my experience it's been more like: 61% of Entry-Level Jobs "Require" 3+ Years of Experience. (They almost never do in practice)
alankritjoshi 9y ago
The best I saw on LinkedIn was "3 years of experience required in TensorFlow". Released in late 2015...
- hysan 9y ago
  Recently (few weeks ago) saw a job that required 3+ years professional experience building React Native apps. Announced in early 2015...
  - mlnj 9y ago
    Maybe they are looking for the select few who developed it.
    - hysan 9y ago
      The salary was high, but certainly less than what I imagine a senior dev at Facebook earns and probably far far less than what one of the original core React Native devs earn. So maybe, but unlikely.
    - tuananh 9y ago
      then, they should directly contact with them :) there ain't many that fit the requirements
- headsoup 9y ago
  This to me indicates that it is recruitment companies applying these metrics (3y+, 5y+, 10y+) as a standard for job ads and companies just go with it. I.e. 3y+ is just a shortcut way to sort CV's, not a requirement.
- chrisseaton 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure that's a deliberate joke at this point.
shawn-furyan 9y ago
What you think this does: filter out inexperienced people What this actually does: bias you toward hiring people who are comfortable lying
- drk4 9y ago
  This is the tragedy of it. They are trying so hard to only get the "best of the best" that the only way you can possibly be interested in that position and quality for it is by lying.
justin_vanw 9y ago
"Entry Level" is a euphemism. It doesn't mean "No experience" it means "Not very good so has to work cheap, but can do basic tasks with lots of supervision."
jmadsen 9y ago
It seems to me the whole problem amounts to companies deciding to redefine the word "entry", then acting all disappointed when no one else uses that definition. "Entry" means "to enter the workforce". It means you have pre-work experience such as a specific degree, speak a certain language, etc. If you advertise an "entry level web development" job and I just boot camped for that, I am qualified and will apply. If you want "Junior Developer", say so. (Comment by someone that this is a gimmick to reduce salary sounds pretty right on.)
- Aloha 9y ago
  Entry Level ought to be 'willing to train', Junior, some experience, Senior, 8+ years of experience. Sadly title inflation is also a thing.
  - epicureanideal 9y ago
    I think part of the problem is the titles themselves... "Senior" implies "Highly Experienced" meaning "lots of years of experience". Whereas it's completely possible for a person with 3-4 years of experience to be a "Very Good Engineer" within their specific domain and be as valuable, respected, listened-to, etc. as a "Senior Engineer". It doesn't happen often, but it happens. If we had titles more like "Apprentice", "Journeyman", and "Master" Software Engineer, then we wouldn't have this issue. Someone could be a Journeyman after 2 years or 4 depending on how rapidly they progressed through their "apprenticeship" phase, and to "Master" as soon as they had completed sufficiently complex work to have completed a "masterpiece" equivalent.
    - bweitzman 9y ago
      Those titles are gendered, unfortunately. If we want such a system, we should adopt new titles that are more inclusive.
      - grzm 9y ago
        AFAICS, the only one that's explicitly gendered is "journeyman". We've had a pretty good track record swapping out "person" in such situations when it's an issue. One might take issue with "master", and some senses of "master" are gendered, but some are not, such as senses 1c (particularly applicable here) and 1d: > "c : a worker or artisan qualified to teach apprentices (see 1apprentice 1b)" > "d (1) : an artist, performer, or player of consummate (see 1consummate 1) skill (2) : a great figure of the past (as in science or art) whose work serves as a model or ideal" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master
known 9y ago
Let's be realistic; Entry level jobs are filled with recommendations/connections;
tyler_larson 9y ago
I guess it depends on how "experience" is defined. I had 8 years of "experience" programming before my first full-time paid job. I am somewhat entertained every time a see jobs requiring 10+ years of experience with Go or Typescript or Swift. It's a sign of just how well-thought-out these postings are.
puppetmaster400 9y ago
This is failure of education.
jorblumesea 9y ago
I have heard that in many cases, these are actually H1B/Visa positions, where they can set requirements that no one realistically hit, then use that to cover that position with a visa. Reason being, then you can say "no qualified applicants". Is there any truth to this? Or is it just FUD?
PeterStuer 9y ago
Over here the labels are 'junior', 'medior' and 'senior'. They are primarily used as a pay-scale indicator. It's not that recruiters are dumb and looking for fresh graduates with 3 years of industrial work experience, it is that they are looking for people with 3 years of experience that will accept working in the 'junior' pay-scale knowing that it will be 2-3 years before they move up to the 'medior' payscale. Many/most companies in the IT industry fail to have a decent technical 'ladder', so upping the 'label' once every two years while basically not changing the job is way of pretending that your developers are having a 'career'. Traditional 'entry level' does not exist at most places as the bulk of companies don't want to pay for the training/mentoring phase. Too much overhead given the projected short career span.
- EnderMB 9y ago
  In the UK, I've noticed more companies moving to Entry -> Junior -> Mid-level -> Senior. To me, this makes sense, as it allows easier access for people re-training or coming in outside of school without a degree. Graduates come into junior roles due to their degree, whereas school leavers or those that have re-trained spend some time as an entry-level developer. I've worked with a few entry-level developers, and they've worked their way up through companies to land senior-level roles in a few years. Sure, it took them a bit longer than a university graduate, but there was a route into the industry for them. It was a bog-standard job (agency dev for clients) but when opportunities are few and far between it's a great way to get passionate people in.
greatartiste 9y ago
If you are applying for a job remember that frequently the job description will have been "improved" by a HR drone with little else to do who adds words and phrases she doesn't understand but thinks should be in a job advertisement. I had this happen last year when I needed a junior team member (electronics/IT). I wrote a job description saying no experience needed but you must be able to demonstrate an interest in the field so hobby/side project whatever. Without asking me HR "improved" this by saying 3 years experience was needed but the salary remained at entry level so we had very few applicants. Thankfully HR aren't involved in the choosing who to interview stage so I can choose using my original criteria. When it came to the interview day someone from HR is there but they are usually pretty clueless and if they are given some busy work to do we can choose who we want. So be aware this happens and if you want an entry level job just go for it.
collyw 9y ago
Isn't this just useless management trying to be cheap? In a company I worked for, I saw a LinkedIn ad for an intern with experience in a lot of specific tech that would have been more intermediate to senior level. For around a tenth of what I was being paid. I know in that case it was the company owners trying to be cheap and not having much clue about IT.
mrarjen 9y ago
Best way to get a job is through networking with people, I had a year of unemployment and after sending out hundreds of applications I ended up getting asked by a friend to do some work for him instead. In a matter of fact all jobs I had, have basically been thanks to people I know who worked at those companies.
thepra 9y ago
Am I the only one who thinks that basing your actual skills only on how many years of work you had is a little bit retarded?
jlebrech 9y ago
yes, you have to spend 3 years doing something you don't like doing while you learn 1 skill that you actually want.
ry_ry 9y ago
Phone post, so may be a little disjointed... Until very recently I was frontend lead for a fairly large UK site, and one of the best hires I ever made was a 32 year old former-recruiter with no commercial programming experience, and no CS background. However it was far from plain sailing. We had mutual friends and whilst chatting in a pub, and they won me over with their passion and enthusiasm for what I discovered was their dream job. I brought them on as a jr, into a small talented team with measures in place to ensure there was the opportunity to learn on the job and appropriate tasks to work on, but it quickly became apparent they were out of their depth. I worked on mentoring in work and and pointed them in the direction of stuff they might look at outside of work to dodge the bullet. My work started to suffer because I was spending so much time mentoring, fixing code that had become irrevocably tangled and trying to manage a very stressed & frustrated jr dev. Eventually I had no choice but to move them into a different team where the work was less technically demanding and more html/css focused, with a small salary cut. Everybody was disappointed with the situation but the alternative was letting them go. Three years later, that dev rejoined the core engineering team a more experienced developer, passion intact, and having learned their trade in a lower pressure environment, comfortable they could handle the role. I'm incredibly proud of them for the way they handled the situation and am absolutely confident this time will be a success. That said, it'll probably be the last time I hire a dev with zero development experience. As an investment in an individual it's incredibly worthwhile, but despite the happy ending, the whole experience was fairly disastrous.
- samayylmao 9y ago
  To me, this is very different than someone who has graduated with a CS degree or self-taught with a portfolio of open source contributions/personal projects. An understanding of basic concepts obtained in the ways described above is very different from 0 experience. And on paper to a recruiter, what I've listed above counts as 0 real-world business experience. edit: it is nice to hear this situation worked out for you though!
- justherefortart 9y ago
  There's a huge difference in no work experience and no experience at all. Hiring college grads without a lot of real world experience gives you the opportunity to mentor and train in good methodologies that I find older developers will refuse to implement without incessant fighting. It is more work initially but the long run payoff has been fantastic in my experience. When you manage based on yearly expectations that are attainable life is so much more enjoyable. The biggest key is management and upper management buy-in. Sadly that's exponentially more difficult to get when most places see IT as a sunk-cost instead of an opportunity to deliver more efficient workflows internally and externally. I'm on the fence about working with developers that don't have college degrees. The gaps in their skill-set frequently causes issues no matter how much experience they've had.
throwaway2016a 9y ago
Apologies for a post that s pretty much 100% anecdotal... This article rings true to me. My wife ran into this after college only for her industry (biomedical engineering) it is 5 years for "entry level" and they didn't even count her paid college jobs even though they were relevant experience. Robotics is even worse. Unless you've been building robots as a hobby for the last 5-10 years (which is a VERY expensive hobby btw) it doesn't matter how much other engineering or programming experience you have, they won't take you. I got lucky with the opposite. I started paid programming in high school and employers counted my high school and college jobs as experience and I had three competing mid-level offers at graduation. So I skipped entry level entirely. And this was in 2007 right before the recession really kicked in so companies were already starting to hold back on hiring. On the flip side, an actual entry level coder we just hired expects to be working on fun new R&D stuff even though he has 0 experience and I thought we set expectations during the interview. We have him working on bug fixing and client change orders (he will eventually get to R&D but someone needs to fix the bugs, we can't all work on just the "fun" stuff).
jaclaz 9y ago
What I often cite (for fun): https://tudorbarbu.ninja/message-to-recruiters/ https://tudorbarbu.ninja/message-to-recruiters/ most notably "This is how most job ads sound nowadays:": We’re looking for a person with more than 100 years of experience in software development, coding everything from BIOSes to cloud applications, knowledge of all past, present and future operating systems and setting up secure networks. The applicant must also be able to juggle up to twenty balls and read hieroglyphs, be fluent in Swahili and dance like Michael Jackson (especially moonwalking – nice to have at corporate Christmas parties).
- tracker1 9y ago
  It's not just now... I remember 10-20 years ago, and even more recently seeing jobs requiring X years of experience in Y tech. When Y tech only existed for half of X or fewer years.
Density 9y ago
We're almost in the society from the movie Elysium. The US went from being the land of opportunity to the land of overqualified uber drivers and warehouse workers.
unixhero 9y ago
This should he a banned tactic by every Ministry of Labour

482 points by giffarage 9y ago

I get it though. The employer is thinking: Why do I pay you to train you? You should pay me to train you. Lets bring back the apprentice system.

lazypenguin 9y ago
That's not the issue, the issue is the terminology. If you don't want to pay to train someone then don't label it an "entry-level" position. The truth is that many want "mid-level/senior-level" employees (3+ year experience requirements) at "entry-level" salaries.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  Look at it from the perspective of a "career in this organization", not "career of this person". It is an entry level job - it's the lowest tier in their ranking, it's the starting place, it's literally the level where new people enter the organization; it's the lowest paid and least respected position they have, filled with the least experienced and least tenured people in the whole company. It's just that they (want to) start with people who have worked (somewhere else) for a few years already; but that does not and can not make it a mid-tier job, that would require them to have other, even lower jobs. Furthermore, saying that 3 years might be a senior level position is stretching definitions - assuming an average lifetime career of 30 years, someone with 3 years experience has less "seniority" than 90% of the workforce.
  - RbrtM 9y ago
    These days your tech career ends at 35, so an average lifetime career lasts 10-12 years.
    - paulie_a 9y ago
      That is laughable. While age doesn't really matter, true senior talent doesn't even begin until someone has worked for at least a decade, which puts most people in their early to mid 30s
      - AstralStorm 9y ago
        Depends on when one has started but yes, the expected age in my experience is around 7 years. Shorter if this is on different teams and technologies. This means a college grad will be in 30s. Someone who worked off jobs while in college might get there faster a bit. A passionate experimenter who does a lot of open source dev would be there before you blink but will be hard pressed to prove it. Pity companies do not wish to hire people in high school with actual will to do the thing and learn. Vocational education so to speak. They probably (and rightly) expect a pause for college or other higher education.
    - 80386 9y ago
      What do tech people do after they hit 35?
    - zimpenfish 9y ago
      Well, I'm considerably past 35 and still being hired as a tech developer. Mostly at high $$ to come and fix the problems that young 'uns have created in their wide-eyed naive blithering and fawning over fancy new doodads.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
bcheung 9y ago
I've said the same thing myself about bringing back the apprenticeship system. That system required a contract of typically 7 years though and that is why masters would take on apprentices. 7 years is a long time but if there is a way to have your investment not just walk out the door after you spent a bunch of resources getting them up to speed that would make it much more feasible. Perhaps a forgivable loan upon completion of the apprenticeship?
- nradov 9y ago
  Employers can already offer forgivable loans to pay for employee training. One of my former employers handled tuition reimbursement for my Master's degree that way. After I graduated and stayed two more years they wrote off the debt. (I did have to pay income tax on the forgiven debt though.)
- walshemj 9y ago
  I think 7 was the contractual term for the traditional "craft" apprenticeship blacksmiths starting at 14 - latterly 4 years starting at 15/16 For what's termed higher apprenticeships you either did a craft one first or joined later on at 18 or so. The problem will come is that higher apprentices learn the fundamental building blocks and tech employers want people rote trained in " latest shiny tech" Btw traditional apprentices where not guaranteed a job at the end, it was possible to sack an apprentice but you'd sack them on grounds on breach of contract. As they(or their parents) signed a biding contract - you could not make the redundant though. Modern apprenticeships are normally direct employees now though - not sure about Germany though.
- sotojuan 9y ago
  A big chunk of the tech industry doesn't think in 7+ years long terms. They think in "next seed round" terms. Therefore, they want senior devs now so they build whatever they need to hopefully hit the user count for the next seed round. If your company thinks short term (e.g. next 2 years) like most tech startups do, hiring juniors and training is out of the question.
itg 9y ago
That's sort of what internships are for, but those often restricted to people studying in college, and I've even seen internship applications ask for experience in X,Y, and Z technology.
- awat 9y ago
  Not to mention there is a whole class signalling aspect to interships. I remember a getting an internship in college with a large defense contractor and them not seeming to understand I needed to know what the exact pay was. As much as I would have liked to play that “cool” I still needed to pay my own rent.
paulie_a 9y ago
That is amazingly short sighted by an employer. They don't deserve to have an employee they can train. A company is losing the opportunity to train employees. And if they don't put the effort in early.. They are probably losing their top talent and don't even realize it.
- crimsonalucard 9y ago
  Right, it's a thinking ahead investment scenario with risk. But if you look at it from a transactional point of view it makes no sense: I pay you to educate you while you provide me with nothing.
  - paulie_a 9y ago
    If an employer is thinking with that mentality, why would I ever want to work for them?
    - Density 9y ago
      Because you need to eat.
    - crimsonalucard 9y ago
      A fair transaction rather than a risky investment? Let me ask you something. Would you work for an employer that will only maybe pay you after one year? Because that's essentially the payoff an employer gets when they decide to take on an entry level hire. Think about it this way. Why would any employer hire you if you have that mentality?

dotcoma 9y ago

Do we need more evidence that "Entry-Level" means "poorly paid"?

johnnyfaehell 9y ago
To be fair, I think even the senior levels aren't exactly well paid. According to https://taketheexit.de/ https://taketheexit.de/ 55% of developers feel heavily underpaid and that's something I can believe easily.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Everybody feels underpaid. You earn more money, then you spend more money, then you wish you had more money. I recently doubled my salary, and I still feel underpaid. In reality, I earn above median wage for my age and experience, and live a comfortable life. But we can always do with more cash.
  - chrisper 9y ago
    There is a big difference between having no money and feeling underpaid.
  - johnnyfaehell 9y ago
    There is a difference between wanting more cash and feeling underpaid. The fact the stat says only a percentage of people feel underpaid kinda rules out your statement that "Everybody feels underpaid".
- rifung 9y ago
  Sorry couldn't you elaborate on why you can believe it easily? I feel like people in tech are paid very well so this is a surprise to me. If anything I feel overpaid despite being paid much less than most of my peers
  - johnnyfaehell 9y ago
    The average Developer/Engineer/etc works about 60 hours a week, they work on things that generate millions of dollars. They, for the most part, get paid less than the accountant does. I've literally made a company millions in profit, the entire IT department probably earned less than 10% of the amount of that profit amount. The ROI in IT is extremely high, yet you'll see salespeople whose ROI is much lower making a lot more money. A lot of people will say our salaries being below that of accountants, lawyers, etc is because our barrier of entry is much lower. I believe this not to be true, look at the average job board and you'll see a lot of companies who are literally only looking for seniors. Once you get in, you're fine, but getting in when you don't have the qualifications can be a lot harder. It seems like those industries have spent decades/centuries building prestige into their industries while IT seems to put up with an OK salary with lots of pressure and overtime. For the majority of skilled workers, IT workers are poorly paid. While we make more than the median salary, the amount of skill, effort, the time it takes to become good at the job is a lot higher than those making the median. You then have the culture of overtime. It's not uncommon to see PRs from people at 10 pm, be told you need to work the weekend, for projects that aren't fully defined and/or have months left to go in development. Overall, I feel that as an industry, we've massively undersold ourselves and made top-level execs not fully appreciate the value that we as an industry bring. Nevermind the average person, they completely don't value the industry what so ever. The amount of people who default on Web Agency bills who would never default on any other vendor bill is massive. People wanting an ecommerce website for a few hundred pounds.

Waterluvian 9y ago

Won't the market sort out whatever this is? Is there a specific unfair mechanism at play that would prevent supply and demand from finding its balance?

chroem- 9y ago
The fact that people need a source of income to live, and that they have very little influence on the price of their labor without collective bargaining.
- apsec112 9y ago
  People also need food to live, and they have no influence on the price of food; you can't go into Safeway and get a prime steak for $1.50. Yet there is such an abundance of food at such low prices that half of Westerners are overweight. The labor market must have other issues, besides these, if it's having more problems than the food market.
  - 1812Overture 9y ago
    The grocery stores I go to have price tags on everything.
    - AstralStorm 9y ago
      And job offers typically come without price brackets. Moreover the requirements are often written (or processed into mush) by a person who has no clue. This puts you at a major disadvantage. And then there is the problem that a company can easily outwit and outwait you as they have a big buffer. Only people currently in stable jobs or with plenty of f.u. money can match it. If there is a slump in demand or peak in worker supply you will have even less bargaining power.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  That's not how supply and demand works. I'm on the supply side of the labor supply-and-demand curve. I set the price that I'm willing to sell my time at. Nobody else sets my price, and I don't set anybody else's price. On the demand side, there are a bunch of employers who each have their own price for what they're willing to pay for a certain set of skills. Each sets their own price. Nobody else sets it for them. In particular, nobody on the supply side can possibly set the price the demand side is willing to pay. Now, all of what I just said presumes a functioning supply-and-demand market. It breaks down if there's collusion between employers, or in a single-employer situation. Unions may well be needed in such situations. But in a working labor market, demanding more than market price for labor will result in lower demand for labor.

golergka 9y ago

"Require"? The fact that something is written in job description as a "requirement" doesn't mean that you won't get hired without it. I think that most jobs I got as a self taught engineer had a degree as a requirement – and it was almost never even mentioned in an interview.

knowaveragejoe 9y ago
That's because oftentimes the people writing the help wanted ads aren't the same people doing the hiring for whatever team.
jesseryoung 9y ago
Was just about to post this. At least in my experience I think that it's rare for a hiring manager or someone in HR to use an original job description when posting a job. They all Google job postings, find one that fits the title modify the technology parts of it and just post it.
pnathan 9y ago
companies who are federal contractors are required to hold the requirements bar, or get very angry auditors/federal investigators on their tail. something I learned at an HR training. So that is useful to prune your search.

rb808 9y ago

I dont really understand what the problem is. If a job says 3 year experience "required", it just means they want people that know what they're doing. If you worked a few summers and are good at something you're qualified to apply.

TheSmiddy 9y ago
the problem is that the job is titled "entry level" and then asks for 3 years experience. It's a bait'n'switch that wastes everybody's time. If they only wanted a few summers worth of internships etc they should say that, 3 years experience is commonly interpreted as 3 years continuous on the job experience.

Spooky23 9y ago

It’s not jobs, it’s job postings. You need to demonstrate that no candidates with skills are available to get a visa waiver. It’s called compliance advertising. There’s a whole industry of body shops that do this stuff and collude on rates. The folks they hire are the foot soldiers of banks and government.

outworlder 9y ago
This kind of job ad is seen in other countries as well, not just the US, even ones where foreign applicants are really uncommon.
- toyg 9y ago
  It's not limited to visa-cheating; in certain industries, you have to advertise the position even if you already know who you're going to hire. Look at the backpages of publications like The Economist - do you really think huge companies will find a CEO or Senior Executive with a magazine ad? Of course not.
  - lulmerchant 9y ago
    That's how I got my current job. I was working as a consultant for a company, and we all mutually decided that I should come in and fill a rather high ranking permanent role there. They asked me to write the job description for it, and work with HR to get it posted. That night I went home and applied for the job. That being said, I've never properly applied for a job in my life, and I'm pretty sure this is rather common.

williamscales 9y ago

If you go to college and do an internship or research fellowship each summer, you will come out with "3 years" of experience.

meaydinli 9y ago
Is it not mandatory for engineering/CS? I had to do 2 internships for my bachelors, and 1 for my masters.
- phinnaeus 9y ago
  I did one internship.
- cbhl 9y ago
  Traditional universities have "summer vacation". :)
- tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
  Not at the vast majority of schools in the US.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Depends on the country I guess. In New Zealand it's mandatory for Software Engineering (and other engineering), but not for Computer Science, as it's a science degree.
- nvarsj 9y ago
  It's not mandatory. But it's incredibly hard to get hired out of school, even a top one, if you don't do any internships. You gotta grind from day 1 in this world.
filoleg 9y ago
Can you actually do that/do people do that? E.g., if someone did a software engineering internship for at least one semester every year of their college (4 years), can they count those years as field/industry experience? Albeit not full 4, but 2-3 years?

faitswulff 9y ago

This also explains why I started to get so many callbacks on job applications at year 5 in my programming career: > 3, 5 and 8 are your magic numbers. After 5+ years of experience, you (officially) qualify for most mid-level jobs. After 8+ years, you qualify for senior ones. And 3+ for entry-level, obvs.

kushalc 9y ago
Right? We see it all the time. Waterluvian commented below about the hiring markets self-optimizing themselves to efficiency. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16702612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16702612 In short, we see so many market inefficiencies in hiring, it'd be hilarious if it weren't folks' lives we were talking about. There's no practical difference between someone who has 4.750 years of experience and 5.250 years of experience, but the market dramatically prefers the latter.

jaimex2 9y ago

And this is why you lie on your entry level resumes kids.

crazcarl 9y ago
You absolutely shouldn't lie. But you also shouldn't let your lack of experience stop you from applying to entry level jobs.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  If you don't lie you may be out competed by those who do.
  - ikeyany 9y ago
    Then the focus should be on making it harder for liars to win.
    - treis 9y ago
      How does one searching for an entry level job do this?
      - ikeyany 9y ago
        For starters, gravitate towards fields that prioritize substance over style.
        Density 9y ago
        Wouldn't that be a nice universe to live in...
  - usrusr 9y ago
    On the other hand, not checking 100% of the boxes would boost the credibility of your other claims a lot. Clever HR departments might even deliberately add some extremely implausible optional requirements to flag those who are most comfortable lying in their CV.

jamestimmins 9y ago

The buried lede here seems to be "In real life, folks need to apply to 150-250 jobs to get a job". I'd be so, so interested to see the breakdown here, and what causes these types of numbers. Are there just enormous numbers of applicants for every job? Are people applying for jobs they aren't qualified for? How does this compare in tech vs the rest of the job market? The signal/noise ratio must be absurdly low if this is possible.

hayksaakian 9y ago
1) Yes. Any job with entry level requirements will get 20-100 applications on craigslist in seattle (my experience). More or less applications on more or less popular platforms 2) Yes. Half or more of the applications I've reviewed are totally unqualified. Either they ignored the requirements or fudge it and flop on the interview. 3) Tech has even more noise than my personal experience due to higher pay scales and increased interest in "working in tech" (without any personal interest / passion in technology)
- whorleater 9y ago
  >without any personal interest / passion in technology Can I not work in tech without being passionate?
  - username223 9y ago
    Tech work is like sex work: you don't need to feel the passion, but you do need to be able to fake it.
    - your-nanny 9y ago
      Touche
    - lr4444lr 9y ago
      I'm stealing that line.
  - 9y ago

crankylinuxuser 9y ago

This also sounds like a great way to cut out "undesirables". The women can be 'given' social roles and kept out of the tech areas, and minorities are never allowed the 3 years experience. Yeah, its jaded. I've been around the block a few times. Of course nobody outright says these things. They never really have to. The policies enforce those decisions.

jrs95 9y ago
This is really absurd, most HR people in this field would go out of their way to hire the demographics you mention. Plus, those years of experience requirements are dumb and nobody, not even large corporations, even enforces them in my experience. The closest thing you'll get to having this kind of requirement be enforced is people that are sticklers for college degrees.

kardos 9y ago

Don't forget that people with 3+ years experience probably aren't applying for entry level jobs

sixdimensional 9y ago

There is an interesting catch-22 I've experienced regarding a recommendation the article makes - if you remove things like graduation dates, previous positions / etc. once you reach a certain age (35+ per the article), potential employers now don't have that information. The catch-22 is, if you're not careful, now employers may think you are NOT senior and so you may be able to get a job, however, it might not be appropriate for your skill level. It can be frustrating for an experienced person. Although, I've found that, once you have a job, generally typical employers don't really care what you've done before and forget your past experience (which is a shame for them!). Depending on the employer, most of them care, "Can you do what I want from you when I ask it of you?" and that's about it. I've also heard the advice that says, if you have the experience, and you want a job, your resume should be explicitly tailored to no more and no less than what a job posting requests. I think the advice of obscuring your information to make yourself difficult to gage from an age perspective is an interesting approach, but it probably fits into the same category of advice. I know this article is likely just a promotional piece for the author's business, but, I have to admit, a number of points felt pretty accurate based on my personal anecdotes.

kushalc 9y ago
Definitely not just a promotion. We're a mission-driven company and a we've explicitly chosen as a company to share our learnings with folks (even if it reduces our competitive edge a tiny bit) because we believe it's important to good. Not quite open source, but maybe open knowledge? And while it's nowhere near peer-reviewed academic paper quality (we won't be submitting to Nature or NIPS anytime soon), my personal background is ML — everything we write is backed by cold, hard internal data and we try to stick to the facts. All of that said, yes, people really like our data-driven insights and it does drive traffic. :)
- sixdimensional 9y ago
  I've always found the truth and good intention to be the best sales tools, so I admire your approach!!!

kushalc 9y ago

Hey guys, I'm the author of this post! (And also happen to be TalentWorks CEO.) A friend sent me this link, I'm happy to answer any Qs. Also, we're hiring. :) If you're sick of spending all your hard-earned education and experience to help Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. increase ad CTR by 0.001%, we're working on some pretty cool technical problems. Just email me at kushal@talent.works.

stinkytaco 9y ago
Hmmmm... what have you got for someone with no experience? j/k, but I am curious how much time you think is average for a job search in terms of both hours spent and days/weeks before finding something. You talk about "time and stubbornness" but I'm interested just how much time and how much stubbornness. I realize this varies widely by industry, but I would expect there's some sort of white collar average.
- kushalc 9y ago
  We're actually hiring for no-experience positions too! (TBH, some of my best hires were no-experience, high-potential fresh grads who've turned into powerhouses.) I don't suppose you want to be a Marketing Assistant? ;) To your specific Q, yes, it does vary dramatically by location and specialty. In fact, we did an analysis about exactly that a few months ago! Even for white-collar positions, it ranges from ~14 weeks (software engineers) to ~90 days (HR specialists) to >>90 days (mechanical engineers): https://talent.works/blog/2017/09/22/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-a-job-60-days-if-youre-in-hr-or-sales/ https://talent.works/blog/2017/09/22/how-long-does-it-take-t... When you dig in, even specialties that take the same time have very different reasons. For instance, mechanical engineers see a pretty high interview callback rate to job applications, it's just that there aren't _enough_ mechanical engineer job openings out there! OTOH, there are tons of HR specialist job openings but you need to apply to a million jobs to even get one reply.
  - eitally 9y ago
    And those date ranges can vary wildly for extremely differing reasons. Especially for white collar jobs, you may have a negotiation period that last weeks-to-months, especially if you're currently employed while applying.

deleted 9y ago

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adamredwoods 9y ago

Is this because it has become too easy to apply for jobs? Should there be a stronger barrier to even apply to something (ie. take this automated test to apply...)?

tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
Then you have people getting others to take the test for them or gaming that in some way.
dabockster 9y ago
> Should there be a stronger barrier The job board should say something like "to apply for this job, please show up at our next hiring event on XYZ date". Thoughts?

StaticRedux 9y ago

3+ years doesn't mean 3+ years "in a job". That makes no sense. (Well, maybe for some companies it does, but you don't want to work there anyways). For some reason people can never get over that. It means 3+ years with a technology. It means don't walk in the door out of a Java college having used nothing else and apply to work on a Triple A game written in C++. It means don't show up after a weekend html course and apply for a job using Node/React. And before you say "well that isn't me for so and so reason", it happens ALL the time to employers. An entry level position does not mean you get to learn on the job from scratch or near scratch. It means that you are at least capable enough to work on small or easy problems and features and an employer or other devs can coach you along the way and you'll know what they are saying to you. That's all it means (to any reasonable employer).

arkades 9y ago
Their statements aren’t unique to tech. 3+ years of experience were not restricted to three years -with a technology-. I saw the same shit back when I was doing healthcare QI, and there is no tech to speak of there. In fact, they stated nothing to suggest they were looking at tech firms specifically. You seem to be reading into this what you want to see.
- StaticRedux 9y ago
  I'm speaking on the subject based on experience in my own field (I don't presume to know other fields). But I believe what I said applies anywhere. > An entry level position does not mean you get to learn on the job from scratch or near scratch.
  - lifeisstillgood 9y ago
    in most fields it means exactly that - or it means "there is a well known educational syllabus that you have already followed and the next X years are the well known practical side of that education. At the end you will be rewarded with membership of a profession" it works for lawyers, civil engineers and accountants. not for software engineers it seems.

stinkytaco 9y ago

I worked part time for a couple of years before I ended up full time in my profession. It's a luxury few people have, but quite common in my line of work. But having hired people, I see this from the other end. I have precisely one person under me. It's all we can afford and I'm in municipal government, so positions are not easy to create. Given that situation, and how hard it is to get rid of someone, I have to be really careful who I hire and that means favoring experience. I expect more supervisors than not are in my position, wanting to mentor but not being able to take the risk.

treis 9y ago

I call bullshit. I searched "entry level developer" on indeed and spot checked 10 of them. Not one said 3 years experience required.

DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
As other posters have pointed out, did the ads say 3 years’ experience in a similar job - or 3 years’ experience with a particular language, framework or platform? Even if someone has a Bachelors in CS, I wouldn’t hire for an entry-level C++ gif without 3 years’ experience with the language: I expect them to pick it up during their time in academia - especially as many (of the best) start coding in high-school or earlier. So in fact, I’d be alarmed if an applicant with a CS degree didn’t claim at least 3 years experience with a common instructional language like Java.
- treis 9y ago
  Id say most didn't have any years listed. They just ask for a degree + experience in pretty basic stuff. A couple asked for 1+ One said 0-3 years
- fzeroracer 9y ago
  You make a lot of assumptions that end up not playing out so well. For example when I was at university we didn't have a single core language we used for everything; classes bounced around between C#, Java, C++, Python, Ada, HTML, Javascript and so forth. There are graduates that have wide experience but not depth. Which speaking as an aside; I was denied an internship back in college because I didn't have three years of professional experience in Java. Needless to say I found it absurd at the time. You also assume that the best people are coding earlier or have the ability to code earlier. Some of the best developers I've worked with didn't start coding until later in their life.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

paulie_a 9y ago

I remember 2 years after .net came out there were jobs requiring 6 years experience. I asked a recruiter about that and they were shocked I had the audacity to even ask

tyingq 9y ago

Maybe the crackdown on H1B visas will change this? I'm sympathetic to the valid cases, but it was/is being abused.

toyg 9y ago
Nah, it's the internet. This phenomenon started right after job websites went mainstream.

gnopgnip 9y ago

Entry level doesn't mean people with no experience, and it means something different for every company. Entry level for the NFL means having 8+ years of football experience for instance. Not every company hires people straight out of highschool or college. But there still are many that will hire people with 0-1 years of experience for entry level roles.

tytytytytytytyt 9y ago
X years of experience might also count part time work done during college.

chapill 9y ago

>What can you do? Have the skills the company wants at a price they're willing to pay. That always works for me.

fzeroracer 9y ago

Speaking as someone currently in that position (developer with two years of experience) my personal experiences seem to align quite well with the data they collected. When companies say 'entry-level', they seem to be referring to around 2-3 years of working experience. Not just college + internships, but actual professional experience. It's an extremely silly market to be in right now if you're a fresh grad. All this talk about passion or numbers aside, I've had the opportunity to experience things from the other side and see how many senior-level developers with 10+ years of experience couldn't write an if-statement in their choice of language to save their lives, or even elaborate on basic design choices/decisions.

cutler 9y ago
Can you please elaborate? Honestly, I'm interested to hear how anyone with such a low level of technical skill managed to get anyone to believe they were anything more than a junior. It also interests me because recently I've had a number of recruiters try to convince me that I'm a senior just because I've been programming for a living for 12 years. I'm honest enough with myself to admit that although I've used several languages during that time the jobs were all similar, freelance/sole developer CRUD jobs which didn't really challenge me so there was no continuouse progression technically. Sometimes testing was an afterthought so on that basis I wouldn't even qualify as mid-level. The thing is that "senior" means something completely different to a recruiter and maybe also to a manager?
- fzeroracer 9y ago
  The reason why they were able to seem like they were senior was because they had the work history. Even though their technical skills were lacking, the sheer amount of development history automatically made them a potential candidate worth interviewing. Once you have guaranteed interviews, from there it's just a matter of finding a company with the most lax interviews or one where you can fake it the easiest. At least that's my best guess; I don't fully understand how someone can work for a company for over a decade yet can't understand basic OOP or fizzbuzz-level challenges. It became a serious issue at my company because most of the senior-level candidates we got were utterly useless.

bproven 9y ago

Another interesting factoid I gathered from this is the "avoid ageism" tip about removing dates from graduation + only list last 10 years of job experience. I've always suspected it, but this supports it as a reality. Sad reality that we throw away experience...

jrs95 9y ago

In my experience it's been more like: 61% of Entry-Level Jobs "Require" 3+ Years of Experience. (They almost never do in practice)

alankritjoshi 9y ago

The best I saw on LinkedIn was "3 years of experience required in TensorFlow". Released in late 2015...

hysan 9y ago
Recently (few weeks ago) saw a job that required 3+ years professional experience building React Native apps. Announced in early 2015...
- mlnj 9y ago
  Maybe they are looking for the select few who developed it.
  - hysan 9y ago
    The salary was high, but certainly less than what I imagine a senior dev at Facebook earns and probably far far less than what one of the original core React Native devs earn. So maybe, but unlikely.
  - tuananh 9y ago
    then, they should directly contact with them :) there ain't many that fit the requirements
headsoup 9y ago
This to me indicates that it is recruitment companies applying these metrics (3y+, 5y+, 10y+) as a standard for job ads and companies just go with it. I.e. 3y+ is just a shortcut way to sort CV's, not a requirement.
chrisseaton 9y ago
I'm pretty sure that's a deliberate joke at this point.

shawn-furyan 9y ago

What you think this does: filter out inexperienced people What this actually does: bias you toward hiring people who are comfortable lying

drk4 9y ago
This is the tragedy of it. They are trying so hard to only get the "best of the best" that the only way you can possibly be interested in that position and quality for it is by lying.

justin_vanw 9y ago

"Entry Level" is a euphemism. It doesn't mean "No experience" it means "Not very good so has to work cheap, but can do basic tasks with lots of supervision."

jmadsen 9y ago

It seems to me the whole problem amounts to companies deciding to redefine the word "entry", then acting all disappointed when no one else uses that definition. "Entry" means "to enter the workforce". It means you have pre-work experience such as a specific degree, speak a certain language, etc. If you advertise an "entry level web development" job and I just boot camped for that, I am qualified and will apply. If you want "Junior Developer", say so. (Comment by someone that this is a gimmick to reduce salary sounds pretty right on.)

Aloha 9y ago
Entry Level ought to be 'willing to train', Junior, some experience, Senior, 8+ years of experience. Sadly title inflation is also a thing.
- epicureanideal 9y ago
  I think part of the problem is the titles themselves... "Senior" implies "Highly Experienced" meaning "lots of years of experience". Whereas it's completely possible for a person with 3-4 years of experience to be a "Very Good Engineer" within their specific domain and be as valuable, respected, listened-to, etc. as a "Senior Engineer". It doesn't happen often, but it happens. If we had titles more like "Apprentice", "Journeyman", and "Master" Software Engineer, then we wouldn't have this issue. Someone could be a Journeyman after 2 years or 4 depending on how rapidly they progressed through their "apprenticeship" phase, and to "Master" as soon as they had completed sufficiently complex work to have completed a "masterpiece" equivalent.
  - bweitzman 9y ago
    Those titles are gendered, unfortunately. If we want such a system, we should adopt new titles that are more inclusive.
    - grzm 9y ago
      AFAICS, the only one that's explicitly gendered is "journeyman". We've had a pretty good track record swapping out "person" in such situations when it's an issue. One might take issue with "master", and some senses of "master" are gendered, but some are not, such as senses 1c (particularly applicable here) and 1d: > "c : a worker or artisan qualified to teach apprentices (see 1apprentice 1b)" > "d (1) : an artist, performer, or player of consummate (see 1consummate 1) skill (2) : a great figure of the past (as in science or art) whose work serves as a model or ideal" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/master

known 9y ago

Let's be realistic; Entry level jobs are filled with recommendations/connections;

tyler_larson 9y ago

I guess it depends on how "experience" is defined. I had 8 years of "experience" programming before my first full-time paid job. I am somewhat entertained every time a see jobs requiring 10+ years of experience with Go or Typescript or Swift. It's a sign of just how well-thought-out these postings are.

puppetmaster400 9y ago

This is failure of education.

jorblumesea 9y ago

I have heard that in many cases, these are actually H1B/Visa positions, where they can set requirements that no one realistically hit, then use that to cover that position with a visa. Reason being, then you can say "no qualified applicants". Is there any truth to this? Or is it just FUD?

PeterStuer 9y ago

Over here the labels are 'junior', 'medior' and 'senior'. They are primarily used as a pay-scale indicator. It's not that recruiters are dumb and looking for fresh graduates with 3 years of industrial work experience, it is that they are looking for people with 3 years of experience that will accept working in the 'junior' pay-scale knowing that it will be 2-3 years before they move up to the 'medior' payscale. Many/most companies in the IT industry fail to have a decent technical 'ladder', so upping the 'label' once every two years while basically not changing the job is way of pretending that your developers are having a 'career'. Traditional 'entry level' does not exist at most places as the bulk of companies don't want to pay for the training/mentoring phase. Too much overhead given the projected short career span.

EnderMB 9y ago
In the UK, I've noticed more companies moving to Entry -> Junior -> Mid-level -> Senior. To me, this makes sense, as it allows easier access for people re-training or coming in outside of school without a degree. Graduates come into junior roles due to their degree, whereas school leavers or those that have re-trained spend some time as an entry-level developer. I've worked with a few entry-level developers, and they've worked their way up through companies to land senior-level roles in a few years. Sure, it took them a bit longer than a university graduate, but there was a route into the industry for them. It was a bog-standard job (agency dev for clients) but when opportunities are few and far between it's a great way to get passionate people in.

greatartiste 9y ago

If you are applying for a job remember that frequently the job description will have been "improved" by a HR drone with little else to do who adds words and phrases she doesn't understand but thinks should be in a job advertisement. I had this happen last year when I needed a junior team member (electronics/IT). I wrote a job description saying no experience needed but you must be able to demonstrate an interest in the field so hobby/side project whatever. Without asking me HR "improved" this by saying 3 years experience was needed but the salary remained at entry level so we had very few applicants. Thankfully HR aren't involved in the choosing who to interview stage so I can choose using my original criteria. When it came to the interview day someone from HR is there but they are usually pretty clueless and if they are given some busy work to do we can choose who we want. So be aware this happens and if you want an entry level job just go for it.

collyw 9y ago

Isn't this just useless management trying to be cheap? In a company I worked for, I saw a LinkedIn ad for an intern with experience in a lot of specific tech that would have been more intermediate to senior level. For around a tenth of what I was being paid. I know in that case it was the company owners trying to be cheap and not having much clue about IT.

mrarjen 9y ago

Best way to get a job is through networking with people, I had a year of unemployment and after sending out hundreds of applications I ended up getting asked by a friend to do some work for him instead. In a matter of fact all jobs I had, have basically been thanks to people I know who worked at those companies.

thepra 9y ago

Am I the only one who thinks that basing your actual skills only on how many years of work you had is a little bit retarded?

jlebrech 9y ago

yes, you have to spend 3 years doing something you don't like doing while you learn 1 skill that you actually want.

ry_ry 9y ago

Phone post, so may be a little disjointed... Until very recently I was frontend lead for a fairly large UK site, and one of the best hires I ever made was a 32 year old former-recruiter with no commercial programming experience, and no CS background. However it was far from plain sailing. We had mutual friends and whilst chatting in a pub, and they won me over with their passion and enthusiasm for what I discovered was their dream job. I brought them on as a jr, into a small talented team with measures in place to ensure there was the opportunity to learn on the job and appropriate tasks to work on, but it quickly became apparent they were out of their depth. I worked on mentoring in work and and pointed them in the direction of stuff they might look at outside of work to dodge the bullet. My work started to suffer because I was spending so much time mentoring, fixing code that had become irrevocably tangled and trying to manage a very stressed & frustrated jr dev. Eventually I had no choice but to move them into a different team where the work was less technically demanding and more html/css focused, with a small salary cut. Everybody was disappointed with the situation but the alternative was letting them go. Three years later, that dev rejoined the core engineering team a more experienced developer, passion intact, and having learned their trade in a lower pressure environment, comfortable they could handle the role. I'm incredibly proud of them for the way they handled the situation and am absolutely confident this time will be a success. That said, it'll probably be the last time I hire a dev with zero development experience. As an investment in an individual it's incredibly worthwhile, but despite the happy ending, the whole experience was fairly disastrous.

samayylmao 9y ago
To me, this is very different than someone who has graduated with a CS degree or self-taught with a portfolio of open source contributions/personal projects. An understanding of basic concepts obtained in the ways described above is very different from 0 experience. And on paper to a recruiter, what I've listed above counts as 0 real-world business experience. edit: it is nice to hear this situation worked out for you though!
justherefortart 9y ago
There's a huge difference in no work experience and no experience at all. Hiring college grads without a lot of real world experience gives you the opportunity to mentor and train in good methodologies that I find older developers will refuse to implement without incessant fighting. It is more work initially but the long run payoff has been fantastic in my experience. When you manage based on yearly expectations that are attainable life is so much more enjoyable. The biggest key is management and upper management buy-in. Sadly that's exponentially more difficult to get when most places see IT as a sunk-cost instead of an opportunity to deliver more efficient workflows internally and externally. I'm on the fence about working with developers that don't have college degrees. The gaps in their skill-set frequently causes issues no matter how much experience they've had.

throwaway2016a 9y ago

Apologies for a post that s pretty much 100% anecdotal... This article rings true to me. My wife ran into this after college only for her industry (biomedical engineering) it is 5 years for "entry level" and they didn't even count her paid college jobs even though they were relevant experience. Robotics is even worse. Unless you've been building robots as a hobby for the last 5-10 years (which is a VERY expensive hobby btw) it doesn't matter how much other engineering or programming experience you have, they won't take you. I got lucky with the opposite. I started paid programming in high school and employers counted my high school and college jobs as experience and I had three competing mid-level offers at graduation. So I skipped entry level entirely. And this was in 2007 right before the recession really kicked in so companies were already starting to hold back on hiring. On the flip side, an actual entry level coder we just hired expects to be working on fun new R&D stuff even though he has 0 experience and I thought we set expectations during the interview. We have him working on bug fixing and client change orders (he will eventually get to R&D but someone needs to fix the bugs, we can't all work on just the "fun" stuff).

jaclaz 9y ago

What I often cite (for fun): https://tudorbarbu.ninja/message-to-recruiters/ https://tudorbarbu.ninja/message-to-recruiters/ most notably "This is how most job ads sound nowadays:": We’re looking for a person with more than 100 years of experience in software development, coding everything from BIOSes to cloud applications, knowledge of all past, present and future operating systems and setting up secure networks. The applicant must also be able to juggle up to twenty balls and read hieroglyphs, be fluent in Swahili and dance like Michael Jackson (especially moonwalking – nice to have at corporate Christmas parties).

tracker1 9y ago
It's not just now... I remember 10-20 years ago, and even more recently seeing jobs requiring X years of experience in Y tech. When Y tech only existed for half of X or fewer years.

Density 9y ago

We're almost in the society from the movie Elysium. The US went from being the land of opportunity to the land of overqualified uber drivers and warehouse workers.

unixhero 9y ago

This should he a banned tactic by every Ministry of Labour