7 ms·

The Developer Divide: When Great Companies Can't Hire

30 points by tadruj 15y ago

tadruj 15y ago
I think that companies like Pinterest don't need lone wolf type of developers, but should look to buy whole shops of quality developers who are currently in the wrong business, but have the brain to architecture and scale.
- nireyal 15y ago
  It's a good idea but the practicalities of finding a recruiting an entire shop from overseas makes it very difficult. I think hiring local engineers is the only way. What could Pinterest do to attract more local talent?
  - tadruj 15y ago
    Talent Acquire Silicon Valley startups on their pessimistic side of startup roller-coaster, just make sure they've build scalable stuff but were unable to scale the business.
  - kls 15y ago
    What could Pinterest do to attract more local talent Please note that I am not implying that Pinterest has this problem, but one thing that cannot be discounted among some start-up technical teams is out and out arrogance on the part of the team. I cannot count the times that I have seen a really good developer (top of the 10Xers) not get a position because the interviewing technical people did not like an aspect of the individual, specifically the aspect that they wrote code differently than the companies technical people. Two different skilled technologies can implement the exact same solution in very different technical implementations. Generally the hiring technologist will fall back on excuses like well his use of X leads to an unmaintainable system when in fact X may be very maintainable for that developer and how he thinks. The point being there is a huge problem in this industry when in comes to hiring that can be summed up by two observations which are: different solutions do not equal bad solutions, and lack of knowledge on the part of the interviewer does not equal a bad solution. Far too often those are the conclusions that are drawn though out of self reinforced bias. Again I am not saying that this is the case with Pinterest, but they should check their process to ensure that they are not doing it to themselves. I have always contended that in this industry it is more expensive to have a false negative than a false positive, a false positive will surface within a week on the job, a false negative is lost forever and possible so is their social circle.
    - coffee 15y ago
      > ...different solutions do not equal bad solutions, and lack of knowledge on the part of the interviewer does not equal a bad solution. You've hit the nail on the head (generally speaking, not directing this towards any one company). There are so many scenarios that lead to an interviewer being in the position they are in, and many times they just don't have a clue (sorry, but it's true). What impresses one person, turns another off. One company could be headed by someone who just learned Python (for example) and only knows one way of doing things. Any deviation from "their way" and that interviewee sucks. While another company could be run by someone who has broad multi disciplinary experience, and loves the fact that this interviewee solves a problem in a way they currently do not. It's a crap shoot... My experience has been that the people starting companies have VC funding dumped in their laps, are pushed to scale out their engineering team, not a lot of engineering experience behind them (they've been coding in one language for a year or two) and just don't know what talent really is. They just miss a lot of talented people, and then proclaim there are no good engineers available. It's a tough spot to be in... But a theme I'm starting to see emerge more and more...
      - kls 15y ago
        My personal experience is the good/bad developer ratio is closer to 50/50 (with 10Xers on the top extreme and 10-ers on the bottom) than what is perceived in the industry. The rest is chalked up to differences of development practices because development is closer to a craft than a science, but when it comes to interviewing for many interviewers their brand of craft is the science and anything that does not, or cannot in the course of an hours interview conform to it is a bad developer. It is the reason that I have a long history of railing against the use of whiteboard tests in the interviewing process. I have seen case after case where interviewers hold applicants to a standard that they themselves do not maintain in their code. It is why delivery is the #1 indicator of a good developer, and in my opinion #2 is respect among peers, if a developer has a large network of developers that respect them, which can be verified via references, then they are a strong candidate. I have meet very few developers that can deliver a product who where not able to adapt to the way a team builds a product once they are in the door or adapt the team to their process if it is seen to be superior.
  - mahyarm 15y ago
    It doesn't have to be overseas, it can be the rest of the USA too. Canada and Mexico are also relatively close. Many good developers don't want to move to the bay area and stay where they are. And for the Canadians, health insurance costs are greatly reduced.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- DamnYuppie 15y ago
  How did this article provide great insight? He gave no data points what so ever. I can't even say he gave anecdotal evidence as all that was presented was a point of view, one that wasn't backed up by anything substantial. As a developer myself I am offended that the author thinks all developers just want to work on developer tools and sites. That is so sad it is beyond laughable. Most competent developers I know want to work on interesting problems with other quality people in an environment where they are respected. What industry they are in is of no concern. All new companies have a hard time finding top talent. Once their name gets out that they have a great culture for developers then they will be flooded with applications.
  - tadruj 15y ago
    It takes all sorts of people to make this world :) Since this is start-up news site I'd think we're more hot-blooded and non-corporate coders who might appear incompetent to you, but we make stuff happen in days instead of weeks and we like to make tools and sites. Me being a co-founder of a start-up too, any insight on hiring that gives us a better chance to get good coders is worth a post on HN :)
dsolomon 15y ago
Finding quality people is easy. Finding a quality company is the difficult part.
- qq66 15y ago
  I think both problems are equally hard.
sbierwagen 15y ago
Since Nir didn't bother telling me what Pinterest actually does, I checked for myself, and it appears to be... a Tumblr clone. A Tumblr clone with $27 million, and a bunch of users, but so what? What are they actually doing any different from Tumblr?
- danielharan 15y ago
  Your behaviour is exactly what is described in the article. There has to be something different, since users are joining Pinterest in droves. Non-techie women on my FB feed are raving about it. How about you ask passionate users of Pinterest why they find it so fun?
  - Turing_Machine 15y ago
    "Non-techie women on my FB feed are raving about it." Exactly my experience. The pins I see in my FB feed are almost exclusively from women, and are almost all non-technical (fashion and home decor seem to be very popular). I've never seen anything with this level of uptake for that audience, except maybe Facebook itself. Pinterest gets non-techie women. It's going to be huge, IMO.
- tadruj 15y ago
  Pinterest is a design oriented pin-board which focuses on curation not creation like Thumblr.
- rjd 15y ago
  But so what? very few websites are much more than CRUD + validation with some analytics thrown in to make money. If you're lucky there maybe some curly business logic to deal with, but generally not. The main difference between one company and the next is the hype/cool factor. With a comment toned like yours it leads to the point that many developers are interested in personal ego than actual software.
- hornbaker 15y ago
  If Pinterest continues their exponential growth rate, they will pass Tumblr like they're standing still in the next few months: http://i.imgur.com/bmrdx.png http://i.imgur.com/bmrdx.png I'd proffer that it doesn't really matter what they're doing different from Tumblr; whatever they're doing is working and organically engaging a very large number of users. Try their service if you want to see what state-of-the-art social onboarding feels like circa 2012.

30 points by tadruj 15y ago

I think that companies like Pinterest don't need lone wolf type of developers, but should look to buy whole shops of quality developers who are currently in the wrong business, but have the brain to architecture and scale.

nireyal 15y ago
It's a good idea but the practicalities of finding a recruiting an entire shop from overseas makes it very difficult. I think hiring local engineers is the only way. What could Pinterest do to attract more local talent?
- tadruj 15y ago
  Talent Acquire Silicon Valley startups on their pessimistic side of startup roller-coaster, just make sure they've build scalable stuff but were unable to scale the business.
- kls 15y ago
  What could Pinterest do to attract more local talent Please note that I am not implying that Pinterest has this problem, but one thing that cannot be discounted among some start-up technical teams is out and out arrogance on the part of the team. I cannot count the times that I have seen a really good developer (top of the 10Xers) not get a position because the interviewing technical people did not like an aspect of the individual, specifically the aspect that they wrote code differently than the companies technical people. Two different skilled technologies can implement the exact same solution in very different technical implementations. Generally the hiring technologist will fall back on excuses like well his use of X leads to an unmaintainable system when in fact X may be very maintainable for that developer and how he thinks. The point being there is a huge problem in this industry when in comes to hiring that can be summed up by two observations which are: different solutions do not equal bad solutions, and lack of knowledge on the part of the interviewer does not equal a bad solution. Far too often those are the conclusions that are drawn though out of self reinforced bias. Again I am not saying that this is the case with Pinterest, but they should check their process to ensure that they are not doing it to themselves. I have always contended that in this industry it is more expensive to have a false negative than a false positive, a false positive will surface within a week on the job, a false negative is lost forever and possible so is their social circle.
  - coffee 15y ago
    > ...different solutions do not equal bad solutions, and lack of knowledge on the part of the interviewer does not equal a bad solution. You've hit the nail on the head (generally speaking, not directing this towards any one company). There are so many scenarios that lead to an interviewer being in the position they are in, and many times they just don't have a clue (sorry, but it's true). What impresses one person, turns another off. One company could be headed by someone who just learned Python (for example) and only knows one way of doing things. Any deviation from "their way" and that interviewee sucks. While another company could be run by someone who has broad multi disciplinary experience, and loves the fact that this interviewee solves a problem in a way they currently do not. It's a crap shoot... My experience has been that the people starting companies have VC funding dumped in their laps, are pushed to scale out their engineering team, not a lot of engineering experience behind them (they've been coding in one language for a year or two) and just don't know what talent really is. They just miss a lot of talented people, and then proclaim there are no good engineers available. It's a tough spot to be in... But a theme I'm starting to see emerge more and more...
    - kls 15y ago
      My personal experience is the good/bad developer ratio is closer to 50/50 (with 10Xers on the top extreme and 10-ers on the bottom) than what is perceived in the industry. The rest is chalked up to differences of development practices because development is closer to a craft than a science, but when it comes to interviewing for many interviewers their brand of craft is the science and anything that does not, or cannot in the course of an hours interview conform to it is a bad developer. It is the reason that I have a long history of railing against the use of whiteboard tests in the interviewing process. I have seen case after case where interviewers hold applicants to a standard that they themselves do not maintain in their code. It is why delivery is the #1 indicator of a good developer, and in my opinion #2 is respect among peers, if a developer has a large network of developers that respect them, which can be verified via references, then they are a strong candidate. I have meet very few developers that can deliver a product who where not able to adapt to the way a team builds a product once they are in the door or adapt the team to their process if it is seen to be superior.
- mahyarm 15y ago
  It doesn't have to be overseas, it can be the rest of the USA too. Canada and Mexico are also relatively close. Many good developers don't want to move to the bay area and stay where they are. And for the Canadians, health insurance costs are greatly reduced.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

DamnYuppie 15y ago
How did this article provide great insight? He gave no data points what so ever. I can't even say he gave anecdotal evidence as all that was presented was a point of view, one that wasn't backed up by anything substantial. As a developer myself I am offended that the author thinks all developers just want to work on developer tools and sites. That is so sad it is beyond laughable. Most competent developers I know want to work on interesting problems with other quality people in an environment where they are respected. What industry they are in is of no concern. All new companies have a hard time finding top talent. Once their name gets out that they have a great culture for developers then they will be flooded with applications.
- tadruj 15y ago
  It takes all sorts of people to make this world :) Since this is start-up news site I'd think we're more hot-blooded and non-corporate coders who might appear incompetent to you, but we make stuff happen in days instead of weeks and we like to make tools and sites. Me being a co-founder of a start-up too, any insight on hiring that gives us a better chance to get good coders is worth a post on HN :)

dsolomon 15y ago

Finding quality people is easy. Finding a quality company is the difficult part.

qq66 15y ago
I think both problems are equally hard.

sbierwagen 15y ago

Since Nir didn't bother telling me what Pinterest actually does, I checked for myself, and it appears to be... a Tumblr clone. A Tumblr clone with $27 million, and a bunch of users, but so what? What are they actually doing any different from Tumblr?

danielharan 15y ago
Your behaviour is exactly what is described in the article. There has to be something different, since users are joining Pinterest in droves. Non-techie women on my FB feed are raving about it. How about you ask passionate users of Pinterest why they find it so fun?
- Turing_Machine 15y ago
  "Non-techie women on my FB feed are raving about it." Exactly my experience. The pins I see in my FB feed are almost exclusively from women, and are almost all non-technical (fashion and home decor seem to be very popular). I've never seen anything with this level of uptake for that audience, except maybe Facebook itself. Pinterest gets non-techie women. It's going to be huge, IMO.
tadruj 15y ago
Pinterest is a design oriented pin-board which focuses on curation not creation like Thumblr.
rjd 15y ago
But so what? very few websites are much more than CRUD + validation with some analytics thrown in to make money. If you're lucky there maybe some curly business logic to deal with, but generally not. The main difference between one company and the next is the hype/cool factor. With a comment toned like yours it leads to the point that many developers are interested in personal ego than actual software.
hornbaker 15y ago
If Pinterest continues their exponential growth rate, they will pass Tumblr like they're standing still in the next few months: http://i.imgur.com/bmrdx.png http://i.imgur.com/bmrdx.png I'd proffer that it doesn't really matter what they're doing different from Tumblr; whatever they're doing is working and organically engaging a very large number of users. Try their service if you want to see what state-of-the-art social onboarding feels like circa 2012.