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> We've had a massive influx of new tech talent over the last few years Very true, colleges have been seeing double-digit growth in applicants of CS majors eve

> We've had a massive influx of new tech talent over the last few years Very true, colleges have been seeing double-digit growth in applicants of CS majors every year in the past 10+ years, and this year the number of applicants is at least 2x more than last year. That said, I'm not sure about the growth rate of qualified talent. At least 8 out 10 senior engineers who I interviewed could only throw some terms around and draw a few boxes. "Experts" of Apache Beam can't write a simple word count using even pseudo code of Beam's APIs. The team leads from FAANG could talk only about team coordination but not specifics of the tech stacks of their systems. ML experts could throw terms like BERT around but could not explain simple things like the difference between layer normalization and batch normalization, let alone coming up with models to solve specific problems. Experts of distribute system couldn't design a simple stateful system or articulate any distributed algorithm. The list can go on and on. Given such shortage of true talent, I'd rather worry about whether there will be growth in IT the industry. Without growth opportunities, investment will drop, so will the demand of talent.

TechnicolorByte 4y ago
I’m curious what you think your observations say about the qualifications of engineers today. Is it that most of your applicants are liars with what they put on their resume? Or that those specific skills you mentioned aren’t applicable to their day-to-day work? Or is that your expectations are out of line with the reality of their work or is there something amiss with your interview style?
- coredog64 4y ago
  Not OP, but I think there’s a tendency to put a lot of things on your resume where you were in the room where it happened. You get past the stupid automated resume screen and you know enough during the initial phone screen. If it comes up on the job, well, that’s what Google is for.
- hintymad 4y ago
  I don't think people lied about their expertise. Instead, they likely believed that what they knew was sufficient for their work. Another possibility is that the big tech hired so many people in the past few years that many people ended up doing bike-shedding work. They could be excellent engineers in the past, but as time went by, their skills got rusty yet they were too busy to be aware of it.
ShroudedNight 4y ago
Out of curiosity, for this > Experts of distribute system couldn't design a simple stateful system or articulate any distributed algorithm. What do you picture as an acceptable answer? Leader election via broadcast? Simple link-state routing? Something more complex? It almost sounds like part of the problem is convincing competent people that the bar is lower than they perceive it to be.
- hintymad 4y ago
  I actually don't expect the candidate to know any particular algorithm or design. Instead, I'd ask the candidate to dive deep into their most familiar project or design something that's closely related to what they have done. During the discussion, I'd ask the candidate to explain the algorithm(s) they used or the algorithm they propose.

TechnicolorByte 4y ago

I’m curious what you think your observations say about the qualifications of engineers today. Is it that most of your applicants are liars with what they put on their resume? Or that those specific skills you mentioned aren’t applicable to their day-to-day work? Or is that your expectations are out of line with the reality of their work or is there something amiss with your interview style?

coredog64 4y ago
Not OP, but I think there’s a tendency to put a lot of things on your resume where you were in the room where it happened. You get past the stupid automated resume screen and you know enough during the initial phone screen. If it comes up on the job, well, that’s what Google is for.
hintymad 4y ago
I don't think people lied about their expertise. Instead, they likely believed that what they knew was sufficient for their work. Another possibility is that the big tech hired so many people in the past few years that many people ended up doing bike-shedding work. They could be excellent engineers in the past, but as time went by, their skills got rusty yet they were too busy to be aware of it.

ShroudedNight 4y ago

Out of curiosity, for this > Experts of distribute system couldn't design a simple stateful system or articulate any distributed algorithm. What do you picture as an acceptable answer? Leader election via broadcast? Simple link-state routing? Something more complex? It almost sounds like part of the problem is convincing competent people that the bar is lower than they perceive it to be.

hintymad 4y ago
I actually don't expect the candidate to know any particular algorithm or design. Instead, I'd ask the candidate to dive deep into their most familiar project or design something that's closely related to what they have done. During the discussion, I'd ask the candidate to explain the algorithm(s) they used or the algorithm they propose.