6 ms·

> The issue is that, sadly, unfortunately, a lot of candidates simply can't do the job. And, tragically, they don't even understand how bad they are and they ap

> The issue is that, sadly, unfortunately, a lot of candidates simply can't do the job. And, tragically, they don't even understand how bad they are and they apply to tens if not hundreds of places making them overrepresented in the candidates' pool. How did it come to this? You don't see this in other engineering industries. There's not a ton of incapable civil engineers bouncing from interview to interview. You don't hear about how bad aerospace hiring processes are. Are these candidates truly incapable of doing the job, or are the understanding of what the job entails misunderstood by everyone involved? On the other hand, is something wrong in how software engineers are educated to cause this surplus of incompetents? Does there need to be better training in this industry? Saying "a lot of people are just bad" without investigation the situation seems rather unscientific. > The length of the process is supposed to discourage these people from even trying. The amount of effort invested into the Leetcode prep industry would suggest otherwise. A lot of people are playing the game even if they are under-qualified. Maybe that process will make them better coders. Or maybe, they will just appear to be better coders to you the interviewer. > Believe or not, I just changed jobs and I only "applied" to one company and I spent over 24 hours total talking to representatives of the company over multiple sessions. Sounds like an extreme outlier. Even companies like Google who are notorious for having long drawn out interview processes mostly just have long wait times in between rounds and recruiter calls. They don't involve 24 hours of talking to Googlers.

3np 5y ago
> Are these candidates truly incapable of doing the job, or are the understanding of what the job entails misunderstood by everyone involved? On the other hand, is something wrong in how software engineers are educated to cause this surplus of incompetents? Does there need to be better training in this industry? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Pretty confident that the lack of in-house training has been mostly facilitated by that highly skilled computer people tend to take care of that on their own accord (since that’s how most got there in the first place).
- Aeolos 5y ago
  I wanted to say that this echoes my experience perfectly. After interviewing several hundreds of people, two surprising things stood out: - a large percentage of technical applicants cannot program even in languages where they claim multiple years of work experience - this holds true for non-technical applicants too I think this is a combination of poor applicants being overrepresented in the applicant pool (good ones get hired), the fact that modern job complexity has grown compared to previous generations, and the desire for people to "hit the ground running". I don't know what's the solution. Fields that require certification don't seem to be suffering as much, but that has significant side effects too. What I know is the times where people would work for the same company for 30+ year, where they'd get taught what they needed on the job, are not coming back.
  - exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
    But then how do these applicants manage to amass experience they claim to have? Massive lying and resume inflation? Performance anxiety leading to bombing interviews? Maybe the roles they were in didn’t actually require as much programming, or deep understanding of programming as people would expect? It could just be that a massive amount of work in the software industry is really code monkey work. “Gluing together APIs.” Refactoring existing code. All things that can be accomplished by referring to Stack Overflow copypasta or the existing codebase itself without requiring the coder to have any deep independent understanding of the code or the language they claim to know. And, if that gets the job done- how high should engineering standards even be if so much of the work is menial? Either able to be outsourced, or one day Autopiloted away?
    - lmilcin 5y ago
      In almost every industry the bottom is subject to shifts while the top with most ability and experience tends to be secure in their jobs. If the industry shifts needing less developers (for whatever reason), companies will just set higher expectations when hiring meaning a lot of people will not be able to find a job. But I don't think this happens. Copilot is not going to solve development problems same way stack exchange and google did not. We got google and se and number of developers only grew.
lmilcin 5y ago
I have interviewed hundreds of candidates and worked for many projects over past 20 years. > Are these candidates truly incapable of doing the job, or are the understanding of what the job entails misunderstood by everyone involved? Yes. There is a lot of candidates who utterly incapable of doing their job. Let me share a story. I remember one day I wanted to pass driver's licence exam here in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is known for having one of the most difficult exams in the world. There was a group of people standing there that seemed to be already knowing each other. One new person came, greeted them and said they just blew the exam. So they ask him "Where did the guy fail you?". It is difficult to translate, but the assumption in the question was that it was the examiner's decision rather than examinee's fault. Then I learned that he made some stupid mistake and that this is 25th attempt at the exam. Then they started discussion about how unfair entire process is and how impossible it is to pass it. I went and passed on the first try because I have honestly prepared. It is the same with software development. A lot of people just keep complaining and complaining about unfairness of it while they are doing absolutely nothing to get better and effectively have the same level of competence as the people in the story. And all the while they also earn a comparatively very good salary (at least here in Poland if you are software developer for a foreign company you are already getting more than average salary that most non-developers need many years to achieve). My every other interview is a person that cannot answer any of the questions I give and then, can't write a simple piece of code I ask them to. It is possible that a small percentage of these people are truly stressed and I try to employ stress relief tactics to help this on an interview. But I honestly believe most of these people simply can't program. What is even more interesting is that these people come mainly for senior development jobs (I don't interview junior developers) and that they come through agencies that supposedly screen them and some even hire them and bring them forward as contractors. > Sounds like an extreme outlier. Even companies like Google who are notorious for having long drawn out interview processes mostly just have long wait times in between rounds and recruiter calls. They don't involve 24 hours of talking to Googlers. I summed up the actual length of zoom meetings I had and it added to more than 24 hours. Yes, I am an outlier. But it still does not change the fact that I was looking to change jobs and was willing to go through a lengthy process (actually it was fun talking to intelligent people and I wouldn't mind even if I did not get the job). For me, personally, I am happy to have more time to convince the interviewers that I am the right guy for the job and my good first impression is not just a fluke. The more time I spend on the discussion the better starting point for negotiation I have. I assume that if they spent a lot of time talking to me and are very happy with my answers they would be willing to pay more than if I was just random person off the street that just lucked out giving couple good answers on a very short interview.

3np 5y ago

> Are these candidates truly incapable of doing the job, or are the understanding of what the job entails misunderstood by everyone involved? On the other hand, is something wrong in how software engineers are educated to cause this surplus of incompetents? Does there need to be better training in this industry? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Pretty confident that the lack of in-house training has been mostly facilitated by that highly skilled computer people tend to take care of that on their own accord (since that’s how most got there in the first place).

Aeolos 5y ago
I wanted to say that this echoes my experience perfectly. After interviewing several hundreds of people, two surprising things stood out: - a large percentage of technical applicants cannot program even in languages where they claim multiple years of work experience - this holds true for non-technical applicants too I think this is a combination of poor applicants being overrepresented in the applicant pool (good ones get hired), the fact that modern job complexity has grown compared to previous generations, and the desire for people to "hit the ground running". I don't know what's the solution. Fields that require certification don't seem to be suffering as much, but that has significant side effects too. What I know is the times where people would work for the same company for 30+ year, where they'd get taught what they needed on the job, are not coming back.
- exBarrelSpoiler 5y ago
  But then how do these applicants manage to amass experience they claim to have? Massive lying and resume inflation? Performance anxiety leading to bombing interviews? Maybe the roles they were in didn’t actually require as much programming, or deep understanding of programming as people would expect? It could just be that a massive amount of work in the software industry is really code monkey work. “Gluing together APIs.” Refactoring existing code. All things that can be accomplished by referring to Stack Overflow copypasta or the existing codebase itself without requiring the coder to have any deep independent understanding of the code or the language they claim to know. And, if that gets the job done- how high should engineering standards even be if so much of the work is menial? Either able to be outsourced, or one day Autopiloted away?
  - lmilcin 5y ago
    In almost every industry the bottom is subject to shifts while the top with most ability and experience tends to be secure in their jobs. If the industry shifts needing less developers (for whatever reason), companies will just set higher expectations when hiring meaning a lot of people will not be able to find a job. But I don't think this happens. Copilot is not going to solve development problems same way stack exchange and google did not. We got google and se and number of developers only grew.

lmilcin 5y ago

I have interviewed hundreds of candidates and worked for many projects over past 20 years. > Are these candidates truly incapable of doing the job, or are the understanding of what the job entails misunderstood by everyone involved? Yes. There is a lot of candidates who utterly incapable of doing their job. Let me share a story. I remember one day I wanted to pass driver's licence exam here in Warsaw, Poland. Poland is known for having one of the most difficult exams in the world. There was a group of people standing there that seemed to be already knowing each other. One new person came, greeted them and said they just blew the exam. So they ask him "Where did the guy fail you?". It is difficult to translate, but the assumption in the question was that it was the examiner's decision rather than examinee's fault. Then I learned that he made some stupid mistake and that this is 25th attempt at the exam. Then they started discussion about how unfair entire process is and how impossible it is to pass it. I went and passed on the first try because I have honestly prepared. It is the same with software development. A lot of people just keep complaining and complaining about unfairness of it while they are doing absolutely nothing to get better and effectively have the same level of competence as the people in the story. And all the while they also earn a comparatively very good salary (at least here in Poland if you are software developer for a foreign company you are already getting more than average salary that most non-developers need many years to achieve). My every other interview is a person that cannot answer any of the questions I give and then, can't write a simple piece of code I ask them to. It is possible that a small percentage of these people are truly stressed and I try to employ stress relief tactics to help this on an interview. But I honestly believe most of these people simply can't program. What is even more interesting is that these people come mainly for senior development jobs (I don't interview junior developers) and that they come through agencies that supposedly screen them and some even hire them and bring them forward as contractors. > Sounds like an extreme outlier. Even companies like Google who are notorious for having long drawn out interview processes mostly just have long wait times in between rounds and recruiter calls. They don't involve 24 hours of talking to Googlers. I summed up the actual length of zoom meetings I had and it added to more than 24 hours. Yes, I am an outlier. But it still does not change the fact that I was looking to change jobs and was willing to go through a lengthy process (actually it was fun talking to intelligent people and I wouldn't mind even if I did not get the job). For me, personally, I am happy to have more time to convince the interviewers that I am the right guy for the job and my good first impression is not just a fluke. The more time I spend on the discussion the better starting point for negotiation I have. I assume that if they spent a lot of time talking to me and are very happy with my answers they would be willing to pay more than if I was just random person off the street that just lucked out giving couple good answers on a very short interview.