5 ms·

i just find it funny that theres posts about shortages of it people, and posts about a quarter of a million ppl applying to one company. who's lying. :D

hoffs 7y ago
Just because someone applied doesn't mean they are any good.
angstrom 7y ago
*Shortage of qualified people. I pity the people that have to filter that.
- hvidgaard 7y ago
  It's crazy what people think is acceptable. At least half of all the people that apply to our junior positions cannot answer simple question such as "how would you find the first "42" in an array of integers, and give me the index". If they don't have an idea of how to count with a for loop and write an if statement, they're not qualified for programming. Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me.
  - pingyong 7y ago
    How do they get that far, does their resume look good?
    - hvidgaard 7y ago
      Their resume states relevant experience, and they have some projects or spare time work in the field.
      - pingyong 7y ago
        But it doesn't list those projects? Or does nobody take a closer look at them before inviting them? I mean if they can't solve a problem like that, they couldn't have made anything remotely useful, right?
        hvidgaard 7y ago
        It's less work to spend 20 min on them for an initial interview, than verify their CV. And even if we did start to call around the only thing a previous employer can tell us is if they did indeed work there or not, no specifics.
  - vidarh 7y ago
    > Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me. The amount of cut-and-paste I've seen on "take home" assignments is just staggering. I've only ever used it for pre-screening before scheduling phone interviews, and so only a handful of very simple questions as I'd have considered it unfair to ask anyone to put much effort in that early in the process. I always cut and paste a few sentences into Google. One hiring round in particular stands out to me, as a substantial majority of candidates had cut and pasted answers. There were always some, but that was extreme. The worst thing was that many of them got the answers wrong. I'd have been open to considering them if someone honestly told me they didn't know the answer but was able to find an answer on Google, and showed me they'd been able to look up the correct answer. But we got things like someone trying to pass of a one page cut and paste from an Oracle manual to a question about MySQL that required a one sentence answer as their own. And someone who cut and pasted a reply to the same question from a forum post, but who failed to read on to where other commenters had explained at length why the answer they'd cut and pasted was wrong. I mean, I often search for solutions to things I don't know by heart. Knowing how to find the right solution by search is a skill itself and a developer that knows how to learn can be valuable, but the combination of dishonesty and apparent failure to be able to ascertain the quality of the responses they found was terrifying given that many of these applicants had believable CVs that included years of working as developers elsewhere. (Of course given their willingness to lie about their answers, I can't really trust CV's either given we never got far enough in the process to request references; I'd like to think their CVs were fake too, because the alternative is worse)
    - hvidgaard 7y ago
      If a developer can do simple programming, and then are honest with not knowing the answer to a question "but here is what I found searching for an answer and I think it's x, because y" - would get so many point in my book. That is the spirit of learning.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    Well I don't know, I recently interviewed on a phone interview and then they wanted me to do some coding during the phone call through some shared codepen solution, what they wanted was not much more complicated then what you describe and something I should be able to do with eyes closed. Really it was exactly in my wheelhouse where I do things a thousand times more complicated every day to general acclaim of the people I work with. And I had the panic/freezing thing I've read about other people having before but never experienced (at least not that extreme) and as a result I totally flopped. I mean I sort of did what was wanted but not completely. I'm not explaining exactly what it was they wanted because it is too embarrassing to even talk about. This has made me consider that maybe the number of applicants I hear about who cannot do the simplest thing has to do with some sort of personal panic/problem/not liking the particular testing method and not some actual permanent incapacity. on edit: and not just embarrassing but also distressing like a guitarist suddenly unable to play guitar. It is actually hard to describe what the experience was.
    - namibj 7y ago
      The term is stage fright, and most do not believe in it until they feel it. The trick is to reassure yourself that your judgement is way good enough, and that you can't do worse than try your best. Of course you need to be fine with presenting unclean/broken/bad code. Train with non-code situations, if you can find them. They are less rigid than code, and thus task your judgment much more, so code won't push you as hard.\
    - hvidgaard 7y ago
      I am sorry you had to go through that, it sound truly awful. I however get so many applicants that I need to reject the majority, and that is about the simplest initial litmus test I can think of. I am rather confident that the majority are not panicking, and those that are get significant slack - I'd rather spend 10 minutes more establishing some trust and comfort if they express the need to me, than outright dismiss them. I'm too emphatic for anything less. If it's any comfort, stage fright is something you can overcome. It's not easy, but it's doable.
      - 7y ago
csydas 7y ago
Neither :) You're missing an adjective from your observation: qualified. For any given position, even when you're pretty specific on the requirements, you will get an onslaught of applicants who have absolutely no business trying to apply for said position, but they do it anyways just because it vaguely matches a skillset they have and they need a job. This isn't a criticism of such persons; it's foolish for people to think that a word for word perfect job exists just for them, and kudos to those willing to be a bit flexible on what they previously felt were non-negotiable aspects of jobs (I am referring to things I personally consider trivial, in this case, but I feel that when it comes time to start negotiating, said items are thrown out first as bargaining chips) We have many employers seeking a specific type of qualified person; we have qualified and unqualified people all looking for jobs; it can be a bit messy to sort the two. This is why the interview process exists.
- dx034 7y ago
  I believe it's also due to unspecific job ads. Ads for "experienced developers" could require anything from 2-20 years of job experience. Sometimes job titles give it away but quite often, candidates won't really be able to judge if they're actually qualified.
  - lexapro 7y ago
    To be fair, you can be a fairly experienced developer with just two years of job experience, especially if it's a niche.
- growlist 7y ago
  qualified* (*and will accept what we're paying)
  - meuk 7y ago
    This seems to be very relevant. I have double BSc and MSc degrees in STEM fields and am still struggling to find a proper job. On my first job I made less than 2k (for 4 days a week, but still). I've had offers which were even lower as well. I've seen people in other fields with a lot less education do a lot better. It really makes me sceptic about the shortage of developers in Europe. If there really would be a shortage, surely developers would get paid more.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
austincheney 7y ago
Applicants are not necessarily qualified. There could be thousands of unqualified people applying for a job and at the same time a shortage of qualified applicants. There are two reasons for that wide distribution: 1. Lack of preparation/expectation management. I have seen people apply for development jobs with no skills or experience thinking the job is there to train them. It is no surprise (except maybe to the applicant) that they are quickly disqualified. It is absurd how commonly this occurs. I have also seen college educated computer science graduates get a job and completely struggle. There is some expectation among some of these guys that they deserve an awesome job, because they went to an awesome school, and everybody has always showered them with praise. The worst is when one of these guys get a job writing JavaScript only to discover it isn't anything like the Java they were taught at school. Instead of accepting reality it is simply easier to blame the language and do everything possible to make it behave and look like Java. epic fail. 2. Selective bias. How do you define competent or qualified? This is completely subjective and varies by organization. I have encountered several organizations where the developers cannot read code. They compensate with assertion testing, frameworks, external packages, layers of tooling and so forth. The unwillingness of a candidate to accept that stupidity is certainly an incompatibility and can be seen as a lack of competence. If the interviewing party likely struggles with literacy it is not something they are likely to test for, for example. In my experience under-confident hiring teams always want super competent applicants until they see what super competence actually is. It sounds absolutely fantastic in theory until they see it in practice. Then the insecurity sets in. What is really tragic about that is not that incompatibilities happen, but that insecure teams often don't see it until far after they have wasted people's time or after they have hired the applicant only to wish they hadn't. My recommendation for experienced developers is to always identify these incompatibilities as early as possible. Unless equity is attached this is so much more important than compensation. --- In a perfect world people would learn to read and write code before applying for jobs, which implies literally reading and writing (not tooling or dicking around with layers of abstractions). We don't live in a perfect world as evident by many applicants and employers.
inoop 7y ago
Serious question, have you ever interviewed people for software engineering positions? It's quantity over quality.
- LandR 7y ago
  This is so true. Expect to reject 95%+ of applicants.
lunchables 7y ago
They announced they were hiring 30,000 people. Having even 10 people apple for 1 job isn't highly unusual. So having 200k apply for 30k jobs doesn't seem odd. Plus because its a big announcement from a huge company, it will draw in far more than the usual random job ad on monster.com. I don't see anything surprising about this. One of the largest companies on earth had a huge hiring blitz and it brought in applicants from all over the country (and world, probably).

hoffs 7y ago

Just because someone applied doesn't mean they are any good.

angstrom 7y ago

*Shortage of qualified people. I pity the people that have to filter that.

hvidgaard 7y ago
It's crazy what people think is acceptable. At least half of all the people that apply to our junior positions cannot answer simple question such as "how would you find the first "42" in an array of integers, and give me the index". If they don't have an idea of how to count with a for loop and write an if statement, they're not qualified for programming. Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me.
- pingyong 7y ago
  How do they get that far, does their resume look good?
  - hvidgaard 7y ago
    Their resume states relevant experience, and they have some projects or spare time work in the field.
    - pingyong 7y ago
      But it doesn't list those projects? Or does nobody take a closer look at them before inviting them? I mean if they can't solve a problem like that, they couldn't have made anything remotely useful, right?
      - hvidgaard 7y ago
        It's less work to spend 20 min on them for an initial interview, than verify their CV. And even if we did start to call around the only thing a previous employer can tell us is if they did indeed work there or not, no specifics.
- vidarh 7y ago
  > Some even ask if they can take the "assignment" home and get back to me. The amount of cut-and-paste I've seen on "take home" assignments is just staggering. I've only ever used it for pre-screening before scheduling phone interviews, and so only a handful of very simple questions as I'd have considered it unfair to ask anyone to put much effort in that early in the process. I always cut and paste a few sentences into Google. One hiring round in particular stands out to me, as a substantial majority of candidates had cut and pasted answers. There were always some, but that was extreme. The worst thing was that many of them got the answers wrong. I'd have been open to considering them if someone honestly told me they didn't know the answer but was able to find an answer on Google, and showed me they'd been able to look up the correct answer. But we got things like someone trying to pass of a one page cut and paste from an Oracle manual to a question about MySQL that required a one sentence answer as their own. And someone who cut and pasted a reply to the same question from a forum post, but who failed to read on to where other commenters had explained at length why the answer they'd cut and pasted was wrong. I mean, I often search for solutions to things I don't know by heart. Knowing how to find the right solution by search is a skill itself and a developer that knows how to learn can be valuable, but the combination of dishonesty and apparent failure to be able to ascertain the quality of the responses they found was terrifying given that many of these applicants had believable CVs that included years of working as developers elsewhere. (Of course given their willingness to lie about their answers, I can't really trust CV's either given we never got far enough in the process to request references; I'd like to think their CVs were fake too, because the alternative is worse)
  - hvidgaard 7y ago
    If a developer can do simple programming, and then are honest with not knowing the answer to a question "but here is what I found searching for an answer and I think it's x, because y" - would get so many point in my book. That is the spirit of learning.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  Well I don't know, I recently interviewed on a phone interview and then they wanted me to do some coding during the phone call through some shared codepen solution, what they wanted was not much more complicated then what you describe and something I should be able to do with eyes closed. Really it was exactly in my wheelhouse where I do things a thousand times more complicated every day to general acclaim of the people I work with. And I had the panic/freezing thing I've read about other people having before but never experienced (at least not that extreme) and as a result I totally flopped. I mean I sort of did what was wanted but not completely. I'm not explaining exactly what it was they wanted because it is too embarrassing to even talk about. This has made me consider that maybe the number of applicants I hear about who cannot do the simplest thing has to do with some sort of personal panic/problem/not liking the particular testing method and not some actual permanent incapacity. on edit: and not just embarrassing but also distressing like a guitarist suddenly unable to play guitar. It is actually hard to describe what the experience was.
  - namibj 7y ago
    The term is stage fright, and most do not believe in it until they feel it. The trick is to reassure yourself that your judgement is way good enough, and that you can't do worse than try your best. Of course you need to be fine with presenting unclean/broken/bad code. Train with non-code situations, if you can find them. They are less rigid than code, and thus task your judgment much more, so code won't push you as hard.\
  - hvidgaard 7y ago
    I am sorry you had to go through that, it sound truly awful. I however get so many applicants that I need to reject the majority, and that is about the simplest initial litmus test I can think of. I am rather confident that the majority are not panicking, and those that are get significant slack - I'd rather spend 10 minutes more establishing some trust and comfort if they express the need to me, than outright dismiss them. I'm too emphatic for anything less. If it's any comfort, stage fright is something you can overcome. It's not easy, but it's doable.
    - 7y ago

csydas 7y ago

Neither :) You're missing an adjective from your observation: qualified. For any given position, even when you're pretty specific on the requirements, you will get an onslaught of applicants who have absolutely no business trying to apply for said position, but they do it anyways just because it vaguely matches a skillset they have and they need a job. This isn't a criticism of such persons; it's foolish for people to think that a word for word perfect job exists just for them, and kudos to those willing to be a bit flexible on what they previously felt were non-negotiable aspects of jobs (I am referring to things I personally consider trivial, in this case, but I feel that when it comes time to start negotiating, said items are thrown out first as bargaining chips) We have many employers seeking a specific type of qualified person; we have qualified and unqualified people all looking for jobs; it can be a bit messy to sort the two. This is why the interview process exists.

dx034 7y ago
I believe it's also due to unspecific job ads. Ads for "experienced developers" could require anything from 2-20 years of job experience. Sometimes job titles give it away but quite often, candidates won't really be able to judge if they're actually qualified.
- lexapro 7y ago
  To be fair, you can be a fairly experienced developer with just two years of job experience, especially if it's a niche.
growlist 7y ago
qualified* (*and will accept what we're paying)
- meuk 7y ago
  This seems to be very relevant. I have double BSc and MSc degrees in STEM fields and am still struggling to find a proper job. On my first job I made less than 2k (for 4 days a week, but still). I've had offers which were even lower as well. I've seen people in other fields with a lot less education do a lot better. It really makes me sceptic about the shortage of developers in Europe. If there really would be a shortage, surely developers would get paid more.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

austincheney 7y ago

Applicants are not necessarily qualified. There could be thousands of unqualified people applying for a job and at the same time a shortage of qualified applicants. There are two reasons for that wide distribution: 1. Lack of preparation/expectation management. I have seen people apply for development jobs with no skills or experience thinking the job is there to train them. It is no surprise (except maybe to the applicant) that they are quickly disqualified. It is absurd how commonly this occurs. I have also seen college educated computer science graduates get a job and completely struggle. There is some expectation among some of these guys that they deserve an awesome job, because they went to an awesome school, and everybody has always showered them with praise. The worst is when one of these guys get a job writing JavaScript only to discover it isn't anything like the Java they were taught at school. Instead of accepting reality it is simply easier to blame the language and do everything possible to make it behave and look like Java. epic fail. 2. Selective bias. How do you define competent or qualified? This is completely subjective and varies by organization. I have encountered several organizations where the developers cannot read code. They compensate with assertion testing, frameworks, external packages, layers of tooling and so forth. The unwillingness of a candidate to accept that stupidity is certainly an incompatibility and can be seen as a lack of competence. If the interviewing party likely struggles with literacy it is not something they are likely to test for, for example. In my experience under-confident hiring teams always want super competent applicants until they see what super competence actually is. It sounds absolutely fantastic in theory until they see it in practice. Then the insecurity sets in. What is really tragic about that is not that incompatibilities happen, but that insecure teams often don't see it until far after they have wasted people's time or after they have hired the applicant only to wish they hadn't. My recommendation for experienced developers is to always identify these incompatibilities as early as possible. Unless equity is attached this is so much more important than compensation. --- In a perfect world people would learn to read and write code before applying for jobs, which implies literally reading and writing (not tooling or dicking around with layers of abstractions). We don't live in a perfect world as evident by many applicants and employers.

inoop 7y ago

Serious question, have you ever interviewed people for software engineering positions? It's quantity over quality.

LandR 7y ago
This is so true. Expect to reject 95%+ of applicants.

lunchables 7y ago

They announced they were hiring 30,000 people. Having even 10 people apple for 1 job isn't highly unusual. So having 200k apply for 30k jobs doesn't seem odd. Plus because its a big announcement from a huge company, it will draw in far more than the usual random job ad on monster.com. I don't see anything surprising about this. One of the largest companies on earth had a huge hiring blitz and it brought in applicants from all over the country (and world, probably).