4 ms·

Not going to happen - I think the supply of software developers has started to outweigh the demand, so there's no way that companies are going to offer compensa

Not going to happen - I think the supply of software developers has started to outweigh the demand, so there's no way that companies are going to offer compensation to interviewees. If anything, the difficulty bar is just going to continue to go up. If there were a shortage there wouldn't be so many of these silly hoops to jump through. It's not really worth it to interview nowadays. Practicing leetcode for months, flying, doing all day onsites, when all the company has to do is interview you for a few hours. We've been issuing take-homes lately, and we ask that candidates spend no more than 3 hours on them. Well, it turns out almost no one spends only 4 hours on them... The most recent candidate we interviewed spent about 3 days on theirs judging from the commit logs. It was a fully fleshed out application with unit tests and everything. After all that they still have to pass the all day on-site, lol. Anyway I spend all of 2 minutes looking at each submission I really wish there were a better signal.

alasdair_ 8y ago
>Not going to happen - I think the supply of software developers has started to outweigh the demand, so there's no way that companies are going to offer compensation to interviewees. I was thinking the opposite - that no employed engineer is going to bother with a multi-day paid contract for a new position, so the only engineers you will attract are those without a job and no pending interviews.
marcell 8y ago
Your company might be inadvertently attracting poor candidates. I imagine a lot of good candidates (like myself) would just pass on a 4 hours of homework for a random programming job. And good candidates almost certainly won’t spend 3 days on it. Remember Joel Splosky’s classic observation: all the good programmers already have good jobs. The ones on the job market who apply to jobs are usually the bad ones.
- stult 8y ago
  It's more like, given a good job market and low barriers to entry, the percentage of candidates who are not qualified will greatly outnumber the good candidates. Good programmers might be looking for work for any number of legitimate reasons, even in a hot market. Doubly so if you are offering a premium on compensation or otherwise trying to make yourself more attractive to applicants (which four hours of take home is the opposite of). The signal to noise ratio is just lower the less attractive you make applying to your company.

alasdair_ 8y ago

>Not going to happen - I think the supply of software developers has started to outweigh the demand, so there's no way that companies are going to offer compensation to interviewees. I was thinking the opposite - that no employed engineer is going to bother with a multi-day paid contract for a new position, so the only engineers you will attract are those without a job and no pending interviews.

marcell 8y ago

Your company might be inadvertently attracting poor candidates. I imagine a lot of good candidates (like myself) would just pass on a 4 hours of homework for a random programming job. And good candidates almost certainly won’t spend 3 days on it. Remember Joel Splosky’s classic observation: all the good programmers already have good jobs. The ones on the job market who apply to jobs are usually the bad ones.

stult 8y ago
It's more like, given a good job market and low barriers to entry, the percentage of candidates who are not qualified will greatly outnumber the good candidates. Good programmers might be looking for work for any number of legitimate reasons, even in a hot market. Doubly so if you are offering a premium on compensation or otherwise trying to make yourself more attractive to applicants (which four hours of take home is the opposite of). The signal to noise ratio is just lower the less attractive you make applying to your company.