4 ms·

Assuming the labor shortage is also there in tech - I suspect there are shortages in some areas of tech, but not all - how are tech employers adapting? Are they

Assuming the labor shortage is also there in tech - I suspect there are shortages in some areas of tech, but not all - how are tech employers adapting? Are they willing to dispense with multi-stage, multi-day Byzantine interviewing? Such as the old: phone screen -> take home exam of some sort -> all day onsite interviews (including several whiteboard technical interviews) -> sometimes extended interview days -> followed by a few weeks before a decision is made. I just don't think a lot of job seekers want to put up with that anymore.

MatteoFrigo 5y ago
The path of least resistance is to expand the labor pool by opening or growing a new office in another region or country.
cableshaft 5y ago
Mostly no, judging by my most recent job search. It seems to have been adjusted to have less contact with the company, though, at least upfront. This was pretty common for me: Recruiter Call, one of the following: 60 minute logic/psychological test, 60-120 minute website coding assessment, 90+ minute system architecture design, or a video interview where you answer questions recorded by a website, and the website might use A.I. to analyze how nervous and how good you are at eye contact and then uses your video as training data in the future. Get past that, and then you might hear back from the company finally, and have 2-5 Zoom/Teams/Webex interviews, which also might have a live coding exercise included, which you mostly have to schedule individually and during the work day, and then hopefully hear back one way or another from a recruiter. So for the most part you're doing 1.5-2 hours worth of effort before the company makes any effort on their part.
- eropple 5y ago
  This is pretty unlike what I've ever seen at a company of any kind, and not what I've seen us do at Mux (oblig: we're hiring remotely--email's in my profile!). ETA: Like a take-home test or whatever, that happens--I personally elect not to do them, but they do--but a psych test or whatnot creeps me out a lot. There are plenty of companies out there who recognize that a developer's time is valuable, and while if you're very early in your career maybe you have to bite the bullet and put up with some garbage, there's value in dumping those sorts of orgs out of your inbox once you're safe to do so.
  - gsibble 5y ago
    I'm 20+ years into my programming career and still get asked to do a lot of this stuff. My fiance is chief of staff at another startup that does take homes. Some engineers are starting to invoice them for their time. I mean, I hate these practices and the fact that my company also does not practice them is one of the reasons I work where I do. But there are a lot of companies with absolutely horrible interview processes.
    - UncleOxidant 5y ago
      > Some engineers are starting to invoice them for their time. This is good to hear. I hope that starts catching on in a big way.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    I interviewed with about 15 companies last time around, including multiple reputable non-FAANG companies and a couple of startups. Except for a handful that dropped out earlier and a couple that had a phone screen before the code assessment, this was pretty much the experience I had at all of them. The two best and quickest processes I had still had a phone screen, a coding assessment, and 2-3 30 minute zoom interviews. They were the only two companies to extend an offer actually, all the others had enough interviews they eventually found an interviewer that I answered a question slightly to their disliking and disqualify me (all but one of the coding tests I took this time around I did really well on). I know for one of them it was me saying to one of the architects I interviewed with that I got pulled off a project I was helping another department with, because my main department's business picked back up early 2021 and they desperately needed me back, and they somehow interpreted that as I was unable to complete any project given to me (according to feedback from the recruiter afterwards). I had already met with the cofounder of the company at that point even and figured they only bother to do that once given the go ahead from all the other interviews. That one was particularly annoying. I have over 10 years of software engineering experience including some unofficial (all but the title) architect and project manager work at this point, btw. The psych test was actually for a startup, believe it or not. I hadn't taken one of those since I applied for a job at Walmart twenty years ago. Also I don't think I mentioned it, but I elected not to do the 1-sided video interviews. That legit creeped me out too much. I also never really found the motivation to dedicate a solid 2.5 hour block for the Amazon coding assessment (didn't help I read multiple negative articles about them on Hacker News around the same time). On the plus side, I had a successful job hunt without any Leetcode practice (yet somehow did well on the coding tests anyway), so there's that. I delayed pulling the trigger on the job search for at least six months because I assumed I'd have to spend a solid month doing Leetcode to have any success, eventually just said "Screw it" and flipped the LinkedIn switch, and got recruiters flooding my inbox immediately.
- gsibble 5y ago
  Yep. Just got my new job a few weeks ago and this was what the past few months of my life were like. Interestingly, we recognize there is a massive shortage of senior talent and are adjusting our recruiting strategy accordingly.
  - UncleOxidant 5y ago
    How is your company adjusting their recruiting strategy?
    - gsibble 5y ago
      I could tell you but then I'd have to hire you :)
nostromo 5y ago
The labor shortage in tech doesn't exist. I know of so many very good engineers that were rejected by massive corporations that have gone on to do great things. Google and other big employers will even brag publicly about how they reject the majority of great candidates because they are more afraid of false positives than false negatives. But then they'll turn right around and tell the government and universities that there is a tech talent shortage.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  I think for the most part you're right. When companies start hiring people who have adjacent skills (instead of exact skills) and a growth mindset then you'll know they're really facing a shortage of talent. In the 80s & 90s there was much less nit-pickiness on the part of companies trying to find people with some exact exhaustive list of skills that must be complete in order for the candidate to even be considered - there was a an acceptance of the idea that people could learn on the job and grow into it. Hiring decisions were made a lot more quickly back then in my experience. It seems like they realized that it was better to get someone on the team and get them started towards getting up-to-speed than to wait around 6+ months or more trying to find some kind of exact perfect match.
- planet-and-halo 5y ago
  This is my sense. Most companies are just bad at hiring, so they hire a bunch of bad engineers and then go "there's a shortage of good engineers!" No, you're just bad at attracting and selecting a good distribution.
  - gsibble 5y ago
    It also takes good engineers to recruit good engineers. You don't know what your missing if you don't know it exists.
    - planet-and-halo 5y ago
      Yep. And those people need to be empowered and listened to enough to affect the hiring process. No great engineer I've ever met said "put them through 20 hours of leetcode, that'll do it." But here we are.
nine_zeros 5y ago
Anecdotally my company removed take home exams for employees below senior. Seniors still need to do it. But they didn't reduce a coding round for seniors. So continue to struggle with hiring

MatteoFrigo 5y ago

The path of least resistance is to expand the labor pool by opening or growing a new office in another region or country.

cableshaft 5y ago

Mostly no, judging by my most recent job search. It seems to have been adjusted to have less contact with the company, though, at least upfront. This was pretty common for me: Recruiter Call, one of the following: 60 minute logic/psychological test, 60-120 minute website coding assessment, 90+ minute system architecture design, or a video interview where you answer questions recorded by a website, and the website might use A.I. to analyze how nervous and how good you are at eye contact and then uses your video as training data in the future. Get past that, and then you might hear back from the company finally, and have 2-5 Zoom/Teams/Webex interviews, which also might have a live coding exercise included, which you mostly have to schedule individually and during the work day, and then hopefully hear back one way or another from a recruiter. So for the most part you're doing 1.5-2 hours worth of effort before the company makes any effort on their part.

eropple 5y ago
This is pretty unlike what I've ever seen at a company of any kind, and not what I've seen us do at Mux (oblig: we're hiring remotely--email's in my profile!). ETA: Like a take-home test or whatever, that happens--I personally elect not to do them, but they do--but a psych test or whatnot creeps me out a lot. There are plenty of companies out there who recognize that a developer's time is valuable, and while if you're very early in your career maybe you have to bite the bullet and put up with some garbage, there's value in dumping those sorts of orgs out of your inbox once you're safe to do so.
- gsibble 5y ago
  I'm 20+ years into my programming career and still get asked to do a lot of this stuff. My fiance is chief of staff at another startup that does take homes. Some engineers are starting to invoice them for their time. I mean, I hate these practices and the fact that my company also does not practice them is one of the reasons I work where I do. But there are a lot of companies with absolutely horrible interview processes.
  - UncleOxidant 5y ago
    > Some engineers are starting to invoice them for their time. This is good to hear. I hope that starts catching on in a big way.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  I interviewed with about 15 companies last time around, including multiple reputable non-FAANG companies and a couple of startups. Except for a handful that dropped out earlier and a couple that had a phone screen before the code assessment, this was pretty much the experience I had at all of them. The two best and quickest processes I had still had a phone screen, a coding assessment, and 2-3 30 minute zoom interviews. They were the only two companies to extend an offer actually, all the others had enough interviews they eventually found an interviewer that I answered a question slightly to their disliking and disqualify me (all but one of the coding tests I took this time around I did really well on). I know for one of them it was me saying to one of the architects I interviewed with that I got pulled off a project I was helping another department with, because my main department's business picked back up early 2021 and they desperately needed me back, and they somehow interpreted that as I was unable to complete any project given to me (according to feedback from the recruiter afterwards). I had already met with the cofounder of the company at that point even and figured they only bother to do that once given the go ahead from all the other interviews. That one was particularly annoying. I have over 10 years of software engineering experience including some unofficial (all but the title) architect and project manager work at this point, btw. The psych test was actually for a startup, believe it or not. I hadn't taken one of those since I applied for a job at Walmart twenty years ago. Also I don't think I mentioned it, but I elected not to do the 1-sided video interviews. That legit creeped me out too much. I also never really found the motivation to dedicate a solid 2.5 hour block for the Amazon coding assessment (didn't help I read multiple negative articles about them on Hacker News around the same time). On the plus side, I had a successful job hunt without any Leetcode practice (yet somehow did well on the coding tests anyway), so there's that. I delayed pulling the trigger on the job search for at least six months because I assumed I'd have to spend a solid month doing Leetcode to have any success, eventually just said "Screw it" and flipped the LinkedIn switch, and got recruiters flooding my inbox immediately.
gsibble 5y ago
Yep. Just got my new job a few weeks ago and this was what the past few months of my life were like. Interestingly, we recognize there is a massive shortage of senior talent and are adjusting our recruiting strategy accordingly.
- UncleOxidant 5y ago
  How is your company adjusting their recruiting strategy?
  - gsibble 5y ago
    I could tell you but then I'd have to hire you :)

nostromo 5y ago

The labor shortage in tech doesn't exist. I know of so many very good engineers that were rejected by massive corporations that have gone on to do great things. Google and other big employers will even brag publicly about how they reject the majority of great candidates because they are more afraid of false positives than false negatives. But then they'll turn right around and tell the government and universities that there is a tech talent shortage.

UncleOxidant 5y ago
I think for the most part you're right. When companies start hiring people who have adjacent skills (instead of exact skills) and a growth mindset then you'll know they're really facing a shortage of talent. In the 80s & 90s there was much less nit-pickiness on the part of companies trying to find people with some exact exhaustive list of skills that must be complete in order for the candidate to even be considered - there was a an acceptance of the idea that people could learn on the job and grow into it. Hiring decisions were made a lot more quickly back then in my experience. It seems like they realized that it was better to get someone on the team and get them started towards getting up-to-speed than to wait around 6+ months or more trying to find some kind of exact perfect match.
planet-and-halo 5y ago
This is my sense. Most companies are just bad at hiring, so they hire a bunch of bad engineers and then go "there's a shortage of good engineers!" No, you're just bad at attracting and selecting a good distribution.
- gsibble 5y ago
  It also takes good engineers to recruit good engineers. You don't know what your missing if you don't know it exists.
  - planet-and-halo 5y ago
    Yep. And those people need to be empowered and listened to enough to affect the hiring process. No great engineer I've ever met said "put them through 20 hours of leetcode, that'll do it." But here we are.

nine_zeros 5y ago

Anecdotally my company removed take home exams for employees below senior. Seniors still need to do it. But they didn't reduce a coding round for seniors. So continue to struggle with hiring