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Name and Shame: IBM
- jaysonelliot 8y agoThe OP doesn't focus on this in the post, but they're a recent grad with no work experience. Maybe it was a bit of a cattle-call experience, but IBM is sorting through thousands of similar grads and needs some way to screen them for technical positions when many will have no professional history. If being asked to take some tests, then flown out for a stay in a nice hotel and a big mixer (with some great networking opportunities, btw), then offered a six-figure salary at your first job out of school requires a "name and shame," then the OP sounds a bit entitled.
- ravenstine 8y ago> Maybe it was a bit of a cattle-call experience, but IBM is sorting through thousands of similar grads and needs some way to screen them for technical positions when many will have no professional history. Respectfully, that's bullshit. IBM has the money to hire enough people to conduct an actual recruitment process. Then again, I'm the type of person who refuses to work for any company that "process" can and should solve fundamentally human issues. If people are making it through the process with insufficient technical skills, then IBM might as well be setting their money on fire.
- pmiller2 8y agoI don’t think it matters at all that OP is a new grad. From start to nearly finish, what was described was a terrible experience. The offer was not good, and the rest of the process was mostly a sham. I don’t think I’d want to work for a company that would do that to anyone. If even 1/2 if what OP says is true, then fuck IBM.
- CSEThrowaway 8y agoI agree it was a little much to complain about the offer, but it was not competitive at all.
- NotQuantum 8y agoConsidering OP could have spent part of that 3 day retreat looking up what new grad salaries are at IBM.
- seattle_spring 8y agoLook at the replies too: a bunch of incredibly rich, spoiled brats who had everything paid for by their parents through graduation. Now that they're done, they expect a high tech, luxury 2br apartment in the most expensive city in the world to be affordable on day 1. Anything less is "basically poverty."
- _m96l 8y agoYeah, look at these people, expecting to be paid their market value! I mean, they're just engineers, right? They should be thankful for anything thrown their way, even if they'll never be able to afford a house or raise a family on it. They should be working for the lowest comp possible, just like the founders, chief executives, and the VCs. P.S. there was a NYT article posted here just a couple of days ago about how it's become incredibly easy to raise VC rounds of $100m+. There's a ton of money pouring into tech right now, and everyone is benefiting, from VCs to chief executives. Except engineers. We're not supposed to enjoy this success, I mean, all we do is build the products. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/technology/venture-capital-mega-round.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/technology/venture-capita...
- seattle_spring 8y agoThe salaries they are quoting are market for the top tier. IBM is not the top tier.
- mental1896 8y ago100k is below average for a software developer in the area: https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-jose-software-developer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,8_IM761_KO9,27.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-jose-software-develop...
- seattle_spring 8y agoAnd new grads make below average, because they're below average in experience. What's your point?
- 4lch3m1st 8y agoThough I agree that complaining like this can be a problem for people with zero experience, I don't think it is a valid argument against what OP is pointing out. Most of the process seems to be rooted on automation, which encourages candidates to find a way to bypass the selection system instead of showing actual competence. This means a direct loss on the company's staff quality. If anything, IBM might be losing good people, possibly to other companies.
- kamaal 8y agoPart of the problem with software today is bulk of the jobs are library plumbing. Sure you still have jobs where something of high quality like an OS patch, driver or some big algorithm work needs to be done- But those jobs are rare, and there are often ways to hire such people looking at their prior experience. Its always hard for freshers to break into the cream software jobs that can offer you some different experience compared to others. In general you have to take whatever comes along the way and build on that. This is unfortunate, regardless of whatever practice you might have done on leetcode, plumbing like jobs are what are common in the world today.
- crunchlibrarian 8y agoI love reading these rants. I wish more young people fresh out of college were confident and critical like this, I see too many people simply accept whatever the organization tells them without doing the research. You really have to stand up for yourself and be willing to fight in every interaction with corporations, because they will exploit you in every way possible if you let them. And there is very little recourse for wronged employees in today's rigged arbitration arena.
- jaysonelliot 8y agoFunny enough, the OP's later Reddit posts were things like "Two months into my first job, I'm still fucking up on basic tasks" and a complaint that their co-workers are too good at their jobs, and making the OP look bad by comparison.
- supercanuck 8y ago>Two months into my first job, I'm still fucking up on basic tasks" Shocking, a new hire made mistakes
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoProbably why new hires are "only" offered $100k and not $190k like this person was expecting.
- MrEfficiency 8y agoTo be fair, thats part of 'experience'. 7 years after college, I'm not a noob engineer, I'm a leader on my team. The way I talk to recruiters has changed as well, and they know what my paygrade is as a result. A grad doesnt have that industry experience and HR penalizes them greatly for it. The biggest threat is being a new grad and never changing companies. I know a kid 2 years younger than me making 50k less per year than me.
- beat 8y ago
- chuckgreenman 8y agoThis kind of process just reinforces why doing paid internships and freelance work during college is so important. I think after you go through that process your tolerance for crappy hiring practices approaches zero. Something you learn quickly in freelancing is no money == no work. It doesn't matter if it is to measure technical ability. Any amount of time you spend not doing something else carries a cost, if companies aren't willing to pay for it early on, why would they respect your time later?
- HiroshiSan 8y agoStrange world we live in where $100k is something to scoff at. I get it's silicon valley but sheesh.
- realusername 8y agoIt's probably because the rent there looks about 2k$/month, it really puts the salary in perspective.
- maccard 8y agoAfter tax and 2k a month on rent, you're left with more than most western European engineers _gross_ salaries.
- realusername 8y agoAnd so what? It does not invalidate my point, especially compared to the other salaries in the area. Also you did not include the cost of living there, which is probably very high.
- maccard 8y agoIMO, it does invalidate your point. You said: "It really puts the salary in perspective." It doesn't. To take the cost of living into consideration: $100k after tax in SF is ~70k. With 2k in rent, you have ~$46,000 p/a. An "average" grad in London is probably grossing at most $40k (£31k) After tax, that's ~£25k, and in London, you can easily be set back £800/month on rent. So you're left with less than £14,000 which is about $18k. Are you really telling me that to maintain the same standard of living in SF will cost you 2 and a half times more after rent?
- AllegedAlec 8y agoIndeed. I get roughly 38K gross and pay nearly 1K for an apartment at the moment. Silicon valley is a horrible place and I wouldn't want to be found dead over there, but the salaries are really fucking amazing, even the ones people scoff at.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoThis sounds weird: > You had to ask me for help on what for loops and import statements are. We're talking about the "best" people here who already completed the coding interviews. I find it hard to believe she didn't know what a for loop is.
- peterwwillis 8y agoSometimes after a candidate does a technical interview, a completely different person walks in for the in-person. Or it's possible the coding interview was with a different language.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoThis is unlikely as the candidates needed to record the videos with their faces fully visible.
- pjc50 8y agoThe most likely answers are: - she knew what one was, but had forgotten details of the syntax - she was panicking (pressure makes people say ridiculous things) - she knew perfectly well what it was but didn't interrupt his unsolicited explanation
- NotQuantum 8y agoI thought this exactly, I'm guessing OP was just steamrolling her because she was asking a basic question
- CSEThrowaway 8y agoDisclaimer: not an IBM employee here; I have only interacted with current/past employees and these examples are anecdotal: One fresh-out-of-college software engineer spent the first year or so working on nothing but PowerPoints and watching "agile training" videos to improve his score on some kind of IBM social/point system. He moved to actual programming when he relocated to a different office. Then, one Friday, a manager came to him and said his project was shut down, and that he was starting on a new team that following Monday. When I interviewed at Google, the woman I talked to at lunch (CS PhD) had nothing nice to say either, and she worked on Watson which seems to be their saving grace. She made a lot of the same critiques of the work environment there, also adding that Watson is mostly just a marketing stunt for non-technical customers.
- codingdave 8y agoThere are certainly problems in that process, but it also sounds like the author doesn't understand the difference between IBM and a startup. Anyone who expected stock options from a company that is over 100 years old with hundreds of thousands of employees just doesn't understand with whom they were interviewing.
- dunpeal 8y ago> sounds like the author doesn't understand the difference between IBM and a startup. Anyone who expected stock options from a company that is over 100 years old with hundreds of thousands of employees just doesn't understand with whom they were interviewing. You don't have to be a startup to offer RSUs. FAANG have just as many engineers as IBM, and offer them.
- kamaal 8y agoOften those are not like million dollar RSUs. Most of the big money goes to top management, and technical people who manage other technical people. The other technical people to get them are generally who are well connected up with the bosses and have some political leverage, to help them negotiate well. The ordinary people get little to get by. And often the vesting schedule is long, and taxes eat into bulk of it. This is true even in FAANG. In fact your best bet to get any meaningful RSU grant is to be something like employee number 300 as a Manager at Facebook. You also need to understand one thing. Promotions are hard to come by in FAANG companies, because generally every one is at least as awesome as you are. So you also stagnate quite a lot in those companies.
- dunpeal 8y agoI don't want to embark on the millionth discussion of FAANG compensation, but there are enough known facts about FAANG engineers making millions of dollars on their RSUs over 4-5 years, especially at the more senior levels. FAANGs are obviously not totally equitable, and you won't make a CEO's comp as an engineer, but you will make more than most other places. Also, I completely disagree with the notion that promotions are the cure against "stagnation". Stagnation has to do with the nature of your work, not your fancy title, height on the corporate hierarchy tree, or for that matter - your pay.
- tomp 8y agoActually I like the "automated video interview" idea. Sure, the grading part shouldn't be automated (i.e. there's no reason why they wouldn't accept an answer where the interviewee made a small mistake then corrected it), but if it saves (human) time, it's probably a good idea!
- haasted 8y agoCan't really call it an "interview", though, when there is only one participant. For what it's worth, I find that approach humiliating to the interviewee. It's a subtle way to tell him that they do not value his time as highly as their own.
- tomp 8y agoHuh? Do you also think that the bank "doesn't value your time as highly as their employees'" if they let you use banking services over a phone app? How about online courses, are teachers to be blamed for "not valuing students' time as much as their own"? Personally, I find this attitude against automation (where possible, reasonable and useful) to be almost Luddite-like. In addition, if you can automate the process, you might even be able to extend your candidate pool (i.e. interview a lot more people, and not rely on weakly-correlated-but-almost-arbitrary signals such as premium university name on the candidates' CVs, but instead select the actually good people).
- pmiller2 8y agoYour bank app example is a convenience for the customer. The video interview is just dehumanizing.
- throwawayaway12 8y agoI think it is more that candidates (especially well qualified ones) view the interview process as a two way street. The company is probing you for competence/fit for the position and the candidate is probing the company for things like culture fit.
- wccrawford 8y ago>You had to ask me for help on what for loops and import statements are. I had to give her a crash course on running Python code and using Git. This girl was fast-tracked to an offer on the Watson team. None of the IBM employees understood what she was doing because there were literally zero technical people in the loop - it just sounded/looked cool so her plagiarism went unnoticed. It's going to be brutal when she has moved out there, spent a ton of time and money to relocate herself, and then gets fired for being unable to do the job she was hired for. And it'll be all her own fault.
- monort 8y agoSomeone, who can learn enough Python in an hour, won't have a lot of problems in life.
- pjc50 8y agoI'm always a little skeptical of someone's report on their competition under high-pressure circumstances.
- throwaway080383 8y agoYeah if she learned Python and for-loops that day, and was able to ship the desired project to the satisfaction of the judges, that's pretty impressive, right? Even if she used some existing code for facial recognition, isn't gluing together libraries the bulk of most software engineers' work?
- merlincorey 8y agoI teach an intro to Python class for people with no programming experience whatsoever that definitely goes through for-loops within the first few hours. If someone has basic proficiency in any other programming language at all, then learning how to do a for-loop in Python is a trivial matter of minutes to maybe half an hour, in my experience.
- throwaway080383 8y ago
- pjc50 8y ago"The screening interview requires: A webcam with a clear view of you and your room Granting a tool (admin) access to your computer to make sure you don't cheat which alone constitute a massive breach of privacy, in my opinion." This is the sort of thing that might be alright when IBM does it, but absolutely should not be normalised because you can't trust what people are going to do with that admin access and how it might feed into the hiring process. > "If you need literally any [disability] accommodation, You won't be getting it" Again, if this isn't actually discriminatory it's certainly something that shouldn't be normalised.
- rwmj 8y agoI wonder if setting up a fresh, secure virtual machine and working out the incantations to forward your webcam and microphone devices to it are part of the test?
- TremendousJudge 8y agoin IBM? no way under the heavens
- rplnt 8y agoIt should be noted that while IBM is a global company that shares a lot of processes across globe, this might not be something that is identical everywhere. It kind of shows valley-centrism of OP, or I guess of everyone working there.
- gilbetron 8y agohttps://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-developer-salary-SRCH_IL.0,13_IM759_KO14,32.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-de... $100k is fine for a new grad.
- compsciphd 8y agoIn context of offer as described in the article. 8 years ago at IBM, my post doc at IBM Research was around $120K (2010). 10 Years prior to that (while still an undergrad) I was offered a job at the LTC in Austin at around 70K a year (i.e. 2000), turned it down to go to grad school. (yes, I took my time)
- laythea 8y agoI can understand that companies have so many degree qualified people to sift through nowadays that this is necessary but from the candidates point of view, I have no idea why anybody, desperate grad or not, would subject themselves to such a process. Walk away and find reasonable alternative employment!