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If you can't calculate the optimal design (for hiring, in this case) from first principles, what option do you have but empirical observation? And when steady-s

by orzig 5y ago

If you can't calculate the optimal design (for hiring, in this case) from first principles, what option do you have but empirical observation? And when steady-state performance takes at least 2 years to obtain, is it unreasonable to have fads at roughly that frequency? Resumes suck, take-homes suck, interviews suck, nepotism sucks; yet people still need to invest $x00,000 based on something. I don't have the answer, but let's not pretend it's not a hard question.

ipaddr 5y ago
If you are hiring someone with 10 years experience it becomes a lot easier. Just try them out, 9/10 will succeed.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I believe there is at least a factor of 2* in performance among qualified/not-outright-failing software engineers. If that's the case, anything you can spend less than 100 hours on to increase your chance of hiring someone whose performance at your company will be on the right half of that distribution is worth it. * I think the actual factor is higher, but I think most people would agree to a factor of 2 without much debate.
  - scarmig 5y ago
    There are just different skills, and a balance of different individuals is often the most effective. There are definitely 10x (and even 100x) engineers, but throw five 10x engineers together and you will get substantially less than 50x results. There's always mundane but time consuming shit that can best be handled by a 1x. And a bigger issue is that no company can hire a team of 10x engineers, because it's very expensive, 10x engineers are relatively rare, and dedicating more resources to the interview process gets diminishing returns in terms of identifying and hiring them. Not even companies with effectively infinitely deep pocketbooks manage to succeed at that. It's best to design systems optimized for the 1x case, focus a lot on avoiding the -1x candidates, and grab the exceptional candidates opportunistically when you get the chance, usually by working outside the process. Which seems to be what the industry has defaulted to.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      I agree they’re rare, but my experience is they almost never make even 2x the norm for their level, so if you’re able to find them, hiring a small team of them is one of the best financial deals you can get as an employer.
- hamandcheese 5y ago
  I’ve seen way too many “experienced devs” who are terrible coders.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    In the end prioritize for the position. If you want good coders look for resumes with startup experience. You don't survive as a senior developer at a startup without being being able to write code under pressure. If you want someone who can glue various systems while cross communicating to various stakeholders look for someone at a larger company. If you want both, look for both sets of experience on the resume. People with 10+ will filter out positions that won't succeed at better than you can filter them out.
    - greenyoda 5y ago
      > If you want good coders look for resumes with startup experience. You don't survive as a senior developer at a startup without being being able to write code under pressure. Lots of code that's written under pressure isn't good code. It's code that barely works and is hard to maintain. For a startup that's trying to get an MVP out quickly (and may not be around in a couple of years), that may be just what they need. But a huge company like Google needs developers who can write software that's reliable, performs well and is maintainable for years after the original developer is gone.
  - ripper1138 5y ago
    I’ve seen way too many people show up after a 12 week “SWE interview bootcamp”, pass interviews, and not know how to read an API doc and write code against it. I’ll take the experienced dev.
    - greggman3 5y ago
      That an interesting experience. I've never seen someone that can take a 12 week bootcamp and pass leetcode style questions. Bootcamps teach short term facts, not problem solving or at least that's my experience. I'm not saying leetcode questions are the best (no idea) but in general, someone who can generally answer them has a higher chance of being a productive developer than someone who can't and bootcamp students rarely can in my experience.
- sahila 5y ago
  Succeed at what though? Yeah most could probably code, but can they all design and run a team? Have they all worked on the same problems, scale, and should be principal engineers? You also interview to level as well as to get them into the door.
- TulliusCicero 5y ago
  This simply isn't true. Some people can coast/hide within big companies, especially non-tech companies, with mediocre or poor skills. Some people can lie; they can be very good at storytelling. Hell, even for the interviews, some people cheat one way or another. But it's at least harder to do that than to make up stuff on your resume.

by orzig 5y ago

ipaddr 5y ago

If you are hiring someone with 10 years experience it becomes a lot easier. Just try them out, 9/10 will succeed.

sokoloff 5y ago
I believe there is at least a factor of 2* in performance among qualified/not-outright-failing software engineers. If that's the case, anything you can spend less than 100 hours on to increase your chance of hiring someone whose performance at your company will be on the right half of that distribution is worth it. * I think the actual factor is higher, but I think most people would agree to a factor of 2 without much debate.
- scarmig 5y ago
  There are just different skills, and a balance of different individuals is often the most effective. There are definitely 10x (and even 100x) engineers, but throw five 10x engineers together and you will get substantially less than 50x results. There's always mundane but time consuming shit that can best be handled by a 1x. And a bigger issue is that no company can hire a team of 10x engineers, because it's very expensive, 10x engineers are relatively rare, and dedicating more resources to the interview process gets diminishing returns in terms of identifying and hiring them. Not even companies with effectively infinitely deep pocketbooks manage to succeed at that. It's best to design systems optimized for the 1x case, focus a lot on avoiding the -1x candidates, and grab the exceptional candidates opportunistically when you get the chance, usually by working outside the process. Which seems to be what the industry has defaulted to.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I agree they’re rare, but my experience is they almost never make even 2x the norm for their level, so if you’re able to find them, hiring a small team of them is one of the best financial deals you can get as an employer.
hamandcheese 5y ago
I’ve seen way too many “experienced devs” who are terrible coders.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  In the end prioritize for the position. If you want good coders look for resumes with startup experience. You don't survive as a senior developer at a startup without being being able to write code under pressure. If you want someone who can glue various systems while cross communicating to various stakeholders look for someone at a larger company. If you want both, look for both sets of experience on the resume. People with 10+ will filter out positions that won't succeed at better than you can filter them out.
  - greenyoda 5y ago
    > If you want good coders look for resumes with startup experience. You don't survive as a senior developer at a startup without being being able to write code under pressure. Lots of code that's written under pressure isn't good code. It's code that barely works and is hard to maintain. For a startup that's trying to get an MVP out quickly (and may not be around in a couple of years), that may be just what they need. But a huge company like Google needs developers who can write software that's reliable, performs well and is maintainable for years after the original developer is gone.
- ripper1138 5y ago
  I’ve seen way too many people show up after a 12 week “SWE interview bootcamp”, pass interviews, and not know how to read an API doc and write code against it. I’ll take the experienced dev.
  - greggman3 5y ago
    That an interesting experience. I've never seen someone that can take a 12 week bootcamp and pass leetcode style questions. Bootcamps teach short term facts, not problem solving or at least that's my experience. I'm not saying leetcode questions are the best (no idea) but in general, someone who can generally answer them has a higher chance of being a productive developer than someone who can't and bootcamp students rarely can in my experience.
sahila 5y ago
Succeed at what though? Yeah most could probably code, but can they all design and run a team? Have they all worked on the same problems, scale, and should be principal engineers? You also interview to level as well as to get them into the door.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
This simply isn't true. Some people can coast/hide within big companies, especially non-tech companies, with mediocre or poor skills. Some people can lie; they can be very good at storytelling. Hell, even for the interviews, some people cheat one way or another. But it's at least harder to do that than to make up stuff on your resume.