5 ms·

> obviously silly No. You've drifted into believing your opinions are facts. Reasonable people can disagree. Having hired many people, I understand that every

> obviously silly No. You've drifted into believing your opinions are facts. Reasonable people can disagree. Having hired many people, I understand that everything in the hiring process, no matter how well calibrated and tightly looped, are rough heuristics for how well a person will do in a role. So years of experience in the relevant activity gets at least equal weight to responses to relevant technical questions, coding challenges, etc. Yes, FAANG experience carries extra weight in opening the door because FAANGs are known to set high bars and have (overly) intense filtering. Etc. Etc.

dijit 5y ago
> No. You've drifted into believing your opinions are facts. Fair enough. I've also hired "many" people (many in my case being about 12, so that may not be "many" by other definitions). I think it's fine to disagree, maybe my overall sentiment was much too strict, but let me just say that in my experience years != years, even people in the same roles at the same company can have wildly different experience levels from the same years of being there. This isn't really accidental either, a good example was.. me.. actually, I had a colleague who had the same number of years experience and for all intents and purposes we actually matched super well in our abilities and mentalities. However, we worked together for 7 years, on the same projects, same deadlines, same tech, same responsibility. That man knows far more about influxdb than I possibly can: despite both of us having "7 years influxdb" on our resumes. I know more about postgresql than he likely ever will, but we both have "7 years postgresql" on our resumes. Aptitude is one thing, attitude is another, and at the end of the day: the only thing that works is to set your standard and see if people hit it. For me, senior means that you're able to teach, are self motivated, can speak at a high level to leads or directors and understand business need, regardless of technical competence in specific technologies or years experience. If you hit that bar, you get the title, if you don't, you don't.
Consultant32452 5y ago
I feel like it's reasonable to hire someone at a lower level due to lack of years of experience. Down-leveling after the fact is a punitive act. My guess is the years of experience thing was just an excuse for some business initiative to cut costs or was a personal attack on the OP.
- ewidar 5y ago
  Except it was not "after the fact"? He got interviewed for a senior position, got offered a mid-level position. Seems to fit exactly the case that you find reasonable.
- krob 5y ago
  Years of experience is relative to the company, and software type. Companies like Google, production products are likely on a totally different level than almost any other product in existence. So 10yrs at none google company is not equal to Google engineering. What plays into all of this is the complexity of the problems they solve at scale, and level of academic sophistication. Map software, search engines, Google app suite gui products are not simple or easy to build.

dijit 5y ago

> No. You've drifted into believing your opinions are facts. Fair enough. I've also hired "many" people (many in my case being about 12, so that may not be "many" by other definitions). I think it's fine to disagree, maybe my overall sentiment was much too strict, but let me just say that in my experience years != years, even people in the same roles at the same company can have wildly different experience levels from the same years of being there. This isn't really accidental either, a good example was.. me.. actually, I had a colleague who had the same number of years experience and for all intents and purposes we actually matched super well in our abilities and mentalities. However, we worked together for 7 years, on the same projects, same deadlines, same tech, same responsibility. That man knows far more about influxdb than I possibly can: despite both of us having "7 years influxdb" on our resumes. I know more about postgresql than he likely ever will, but we both have "7 years postgresql" on our resumes. Aptitude is one thing, attitude is another, and at the end of the day: the only thing that works is to set your standard and see if people hit it. For me, senior means that you're able to teach, are self motivated, can speak at a high level to leads or directors and understand business need, regardless of technical competence in specific technologies or years experience. If you hit that bar, you get the title, if you don't, you don't.

Consultant32452 5y ago

I feel like it's reasonable to hire someone at a lower level due to lack of years of experience. Down-leveling after the fact is a punitive act. My guess is the years of experience thing was just an excuse for some business initiative to cut costs or was a personal attack on the OP.

ewidar 5y ago
Except it was not "after the fact"? He got interviewed for a senior position, got offered a mid-level position. Seems to fit exactly the case that you find reasonable.
krob 5y ago
Years of experience is relative to the company, and software type. Companies like Google, production products are likely on a totally different level than almost any other product in existence. So 10yrs at none google company is not equal to Google engineering. What plays into all of this is the complexity of the problems they solve at scale, and level of academic sophistication. Map software, search engines, Google app suite gui products are not simple or easy to build.