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Perhaps companies over-list requirements because everyone knows requirements are not ANDed together. There is a scoring scheme that combines all of these, and t

• electricslpnsld 8y ago
  > And let’s be honest “5 years of Python” at a Google is a different story from “5 years of Python” at an Infosys. I don't think I've ever seen an ad from Google that spells out years of experience in any given technology. Their requirements are incredibly terse, usually along the lines of 'BS/BA in Computer Science or equivalent, experience in some programming language'.
  • tazard 8y ago
    I read that a different way. I understood it as an ad from Company X which lists '5 years of Python' as the requirement. Candidate 1 has 5 years of Python at Google, and Candidate 2 has 5 years Python at InfoSys.
    • scarejunba 8y ago
      That's precisely what I meant. Thanks! Edited to hopefully clarify.
    • Double_a_92 8y ago
      Does the Google experience really teach one that much better? Or is it just perception? I mean, at the end you are just a little cogwheel in some big corporation anyway. The python tasks you need to solve there are probably just as mundane as everywhere else.
      • mpeg 8y ago
        It's the perception, I've personally been passed on for jobs I would have been amazing at because I don't have any FAANG experience. Startup founders looking for VC money want to be able to add "Team of ex-Google, ..." to their pitch.
  • CSMastermind 8y ago
    Google doesn't list years of experience per technology but they do have hard tiers for years of experience and their salary bands. So they don't care that you have 5 years-of-experience with Python but you're not allowed to be an L5 without 5 years of industry experience.
  • eitally 8y ago
    Google is extremely strict about the number and wording of job requirements (5) and nice-to-haves (either 4 or 5) allowed in job descriptions. This is a good thing, but it does sometimes lead to confusion on the candidate's end because JDs can be so general as to be useless.
    • throwawaymath 8y ago
      Hah. That's an understatement. It's even worse for research roles. Try finding a research scientist position at Google which is substantially different from any other research scientist position. That and the fact that by applying your CV is typically sent to 4 - 6 other offices around the country and world, each for identical roles.
• Topolomancer 8y ago
  It's also partially caused by the fact that most of the time, HR people write those ads (maybe with some input by the division). A lot can get 'lost in translation' here.
• ianai 8y ago
  Some of it is from asking the people already in or leaving that position (say, promotion to management) to write up the requirements.
• crispyambulance 8y ago
  Experienced recruiters (and employees) can see through the BS of job descriptions. Once the right candidate gets an interview it often becomes very clear there's a "match" to everyone involved and folks don't even bother to look at how closely they've "checked the boxes" in the job descriptions. Sadly, many talented tech candidates early in their careers tend to interpret job descriptions far too literally and self-select themselves out of good opportunities. These same candidates also rely too much on responding to impersonal web-based job-postings rather than working through their networks of contacts, or just putting themselves out there and reaching out to real people.
• sureaboutthis 8y ago
  I love the "looking for experts in X" followed by "with one to two years experience". And then I see my neighbor who is an expert in X, can code rings around anybody, but can't find a job after his company shut down. His only fault is he's 60.
  • itronitron 8y ago
    I think there is an assumption that if a candidate doesn't have experience in 'Y' but they have ten years of 'X' (which is similar to, or a precursor of Y) then the candidate is somehow biased against Y or unwilling to work with it. Two decades of OpenGL experience?, sorry we are looking for someone with Vulkan experience. Two years of OpenGL experience? when can you come in?
    • was_boring 8y ago
      As someone who does hiring, I have a different interpretation. Let's say I'm a rails shop and I'm looking for mid to sr. level candidates and someone has 10 years of experience working on Java 1.4 spring based application. I think to myself "this is great, they are willing to do some grunt work but I need to know they haven't stagnated". It's the stagnation that leads to lower job offers. You need to convince me that you were a dedicated employee for 10 years (which you are), but you also need to show that you're willing to learn something completely different. This can be a side project (doesn't have to be crazy, but slightly more then just going through the tutorial), certification of some sort, or _something_ that tells me you're not just going to write java-esque rails. I would even go so far as I prefer people with diverse backgrounds, who are really willing to learn, so that we benefit from mistakes they made at previous employers.
      • JustSomeNobody 8y ago
        Really? You can't just talk to the person and gauge their enthusiasm? I talk to devs all the time and they typically wear their tech bias on their sleeves. You know who is hard core C# and wouldn't touch java w/ a ten foot usb cord after just a few moments.
      • 8y ago
• lettergram 8y ago
  We actually tried to be fairly explicit in what you will be doing for our team: https://www.themuse.com/jobs/capitalone/machine-learning-software-engineer-6c7338 https://www.themuse.com/jobs/capitalone/machine-learning-sof... We even set the requirements to match what we felt could do the job. The roll has actually been fairly difficult to fill though. Recruiting decks I have seen actually suggest creating more requirements and being vague in an attempt to lure more applicants. After this experience, they are probably correct. Lure them in then explain more after they meet the team (i.e. get them excited)
  • dsr_ 8y ago
    No, the problem is that you are looking for a unicorn in the first half of the requirements, then subverting it by asking for someone with only one year of experience in three things, then double-subverting it by suggesting that you want an academic who has nonetheless designed microservices and done machine learning. And it doesn't really help that you're in a large stodgy bank. Let me rewrite this into two different job openings: 1. Junior Machine Learning Software Engineer Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience / At least 1 year working with statistics, mathematics or engineering programming / At least 1 year programming in Python and one or more of Ruby, R, Matlab, C++, Scala or Java / At least 1 year of experience working on full stack solutions 2. Machine Learning Software Architect Master's Degree or PhD / At least 2 years of experience with cloud software design using microservices / At least 2 years of experience with machine learning libraries such as TensorFlow, Pytorch or Keras / Demonstrated original research in this or related area Do you see how different those two are? But you set up the ad to switch between them.
• watwut 8y ago
  Not everyone knows. Especially on junior positions they often don't know. What it does is that it biases hiring process against self-aware or humble without right network to tell them to exaggerate.
• Spooky23 8y ago
  Always blame laziness and bureaucracy. People need legal reasons to say no. In a bureaucracy, that means that administrative types come up with objective measures to identify the perfect candidate, or to defend against less than honorable or completely fake people who simply lie about their skills. I have seen every level of bullshit, from a guy who told me he dealt with conflict at his last job by taking a swing at his boss to situation where three different people impersonated a candidate. Sometimes institutions come up with unique ways to handle that. In reality, the meaning varies depending on the bureaucracy and how stringent oversight is. If someone is going to get an audit finding for hiring someone with 4 years, 11 months of experience, they care. Usually people choose to see what they see. Another reason for the laundry list is that editing is impossible. In a big company, the recruiter in Timbuktu has a phalanx of bureaucrats between the job req and the hiring manager. It's easier to have a mandatory requirement for 15 years of Windows 95 experience and add Python as an optional skill than to re-write.
• kamaal 8y ago
  >>And let’s be honest having spent “5 years of Python” at a Google is a different story from having spent “5 years of Python” at an Infosys. Unless Infosys employees code on computers bought to earth by aliens, for their business software requirements, I can't even imagine what the difference between code written at Google and Infosys could be. Its code, at the end of the day. The differences are in productivity and quality of projects at hand. You would also be a little surprised to learn given the narrow profit margins at places like Infosys, the productivity demands are way higher compared to any web company you will ever work at. That includes Google. There are places at Infosys, where your average joe is doing 3x - 5x more work, both volume and quality wise than Google. Google is a classic example of Gate keeping through leet code style interview proxy. People getting in feel they are indulging in some highly intellectual activity and are a part of some special club. So they are above homo sapiens.
  • camjohnson26 8y ago
    As a consultant I've seen the code quality produced by developers at several companies, and there is absolutely a difference. I've worked with experienced 3rd party developers on offshore teams who seemed unfamiliar with basic architecture patterns such as reusing code. Their productivity was incredible but they were incurring a lot of tech debt.
  • Matthias247 8y ago
    The typical differences between one implementation and another is: Both implementations might work for the original use-case in the happy-path case. However as soon as the first unexpected error occurs, the bad implementation might break down. It might be a lot bigger in size than the better one and contain a lot of duplication. And it might not be extensible or maintainable, and have not (regression) tests. And of course the time it took to produce the codebases might have been very different. Those are typical differences one sees between code that had been written at more professional software shops, and code that had been written elsewhere (e.g. by electrical engineers, students, non-engineers, etc.). However I have no idea how things look like at Google or Infosys, so I can't speak for those.
• neongreen 8y ago
  > I've never seen I did that for the company I work at (Wire) and it worked really well! We got 50 Haskellers, some extremely qualified. A lot of them had commented in how they specifically liked the job ad, so I'll post it here: https://medium.com/@neongreen/wire-is-hiring-a-haskell-developer-and-an-operations-engineer-berlin-51e7f3ed3050 https://medium.com/@neongreen/wire-is-hiring-a-haskell-devel...
• dingaling 8y ago
  > “5 years of Python” at a Google is a different story from having spent “5 years of Python” at an Infosys. Yep the Infosys guy has experience of being airdropped into unfamiliar companies in foreign countries, getting up to speed with business requirements and technical constraints and producing something reasonable in three months. The Google guy probably spent five years writing Yet Another Messager App.