21 ms·

The developer job market is insane

134 points by csomar 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
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syntaxfree 4y ago
Connections matter…
- pnutjam 4y ago
  I did 6 weeks of interviews last year and landed multiple good offers. 2 from recruiters and 4 direct hire at companies I applied to blindly. I'm still getting offers to interview daily. I've helped people land jobs, but all of mine have been posted online and applied to by me. Just another data point.
Idiot_in_Vain 4y ago
A friend of mine is currently looking for .NET developer job in Switzerland. Looks like everyone there is doing a one day of on-site interviews with HR, technical tests/pear programming and meeting managers.
- LtWorf 4y ago
  A German company had written to me to offer a (very well paid) position. They had an online test to take that I had to pass in order to actually have an interview (or more, I don't know how it worked with them). Anyway, the task they sent me was estimated to take 8 hours of work and couldn't be paused. I was on vacation, I didn't want to bother so I just declined.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    > Anyway, the task they sent me was estimated to take 8 hours of work and couldn't be paused. Once I was given a task to create some validation code for given criteria and integrate it in the given project. They then invited me to an in person interview. At one point, I had to pair program with one of their developers and what I saw kind of shocked me. They integrated my code from the interview into their production code and their developer had an issue with it and asked me to help getting it working and write a couple of extra tests. So I did and they seemed very happy. I didn't get the job though. They said I am not a "cultural fit". I asked them if they actually used my code and if so they would have to pay me for the whole day, but they never responded afterwards. I decided it wouldn't be worth to legally pursue, but since then I decided to not do any pair programming or coding tests.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - newbie578 4y ago
      I actually noticed that started happening in Europe. Last month I had a similar experience, where a mobile startup wanted to hire me as a mobile developer, but wanted to test me, and the test was to implement a new feature and screen of their existing app released on the App Store.. I aced it, they were more than pleased, yet in the end they did not hire me as they said that they are actually closing the position because of the market downturn. At least they gave me a 50€ amazon gift card..
    - lclc 4y ago
      Please name the company. They deserve public shaming.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - prettyStandard 4y ago
      So your work is good enough to use in production, but not good enough to pay for? I would contact a lawyer on principle. Minimum write a Glassdoor review.
    - cbm-vic-20 4y ago
      > not a "cultural fit". That's a codeword to cover racism, sexism, and/or ageism.
      - varispeed 4y ago
        I am a bit on the spectrum and their team was quite younger than myself, they've been talking a lot about how they like to party together after work etc. Not my cup of tea, so to speak.
      - bombolo 4y ago
        Eh dunno. We rejected a guy just because he spoke really really slowly and figured it'd be unnerving to talk to him at that speed.
  - devnullbrain 4y ago
    Welcome to the think-cell club. They solicit a huge amount of applications but very rarely hire people who make it beyond a year.
- roflyear 4y ago
  I was at a 10-hour one-day interview once. It was kind of nice, but also, crazy?
  - aix1 4y ago
    Also probably says quite a lot about their working culture.
- haspok 4y ago
  I much prefer apple programming to pear programming. (ba dumm tsss.... sorry, couldn't resist :)) Although I'm on the Java side, I've yet to see a leetcode interview in CH, maybe I got lucky so far, but most of the interviews I had before were completely reasonable, maybe even too easy. The one that I failed miserably was an architecture discussion, in which I got an empty paper with a pen, and was expected to come up with the design of their existing system (I was allowed to ask questions). But even from that I learned so much, so no hard feelings. I will know much better what to do next time :)
ubercore 4y ago
Part of OPs problem may be that it's hard to differentiate yourself in that kind of position. Full stack web development is not easy to get right, but the competition pool is huge. It helps to find even the smallest little angle to differentiate yourself. The personality tests can fuck right off, though. Agree with that.
- 0xy 4y ago
  Personality tests are IQ tests that don't want to admit to being IQ tests, at least the ones I've taken.
  - bluedino 4y ago
    What about the ones with questions like: When I see an error, it bothers me. Mostly agree Somewhat agree Neither agree or disagree Somewhat disagree Mostly disagree
    - WJW 4y ago
      That's just an emotional IQ ("EQ") test for figuring if you can detect what they want to hear.
      - drewcoo 4y ago
        Exactly. A neurodivergence filter. Because it's illegal to discriminate against that protected class directly.
    - varispeed 4y ago
      For me this is not answerable question because it is lacking context. If it was not possible to go to the next question, it would be where I would end the interview.
      - ubercore 4y ago
        Context is everything, and why these fail. When I did one, the process included the narrative version of the results. I had a question that was something like "It's important to support your organization", which I agree with. In the narrative form of the results, it concluded that I "may not tell the truth to superiors if something is wrong" from that. Of course I support the organization, and I think being honest with superiors is the best way to do that. In the end, these things are so imprecise that you have to get to know somebody to know which parts are accurate (some were) and which aren't. By †he time you know how accurate it was, you know the person well enough to not need the test.
varispeed 4y ago
My last interview was with some large US corporation. I had scheduled the first interview with their tech lead in one of the departments. Interview started on time, we managed to say hello to each other, then something bizarre happened. I think the tech lead thought he has lost the connection, but I could see him and hear him clearly. Suddenly he started shouting, swearing and then he violently swept things off his desk and that's when the interview was cut off. I got a call an hour later that they have "technical issues" and the interview will be rescheduled. Three days later I got an email that I didn't pass the interview that I didn't really have in the first place. That was quite funny actually.
- weatherlite 4y ago
  Might have been part of the test, interviewer wanted to see how you deal with uncertainty.
- champagnepapi 4y ago
  Wow looks like you dodged a bullet there!
- tonnydourado 4y ago
  When I work from home, swearing and some moderate shouting at bugs is kinda regular, but that's because I'm alone. Throwing shit around is a red flag, though.
deleted 4y ago
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danpalmer 4y ago
> r/ExperiencedDevs > Do not post here unless you have minimum 3 years experience.
- Arch-TK 4y ago
  Well they're not going to call it r/DevsWithOnlyARelativelySmallAmountOfExperienceButWhoLikeToCallThemsevesExperiencedRegardless
- devnullbrain 4y ago
  The takeaway from this is that in communities open to everyone there is an overwhelming input from people with zero experience struggling to get on the ladder.
- Latour 4y ago
  It is most likely to avoid it becoming like CS Career Questions, which is inundated with students who haven't even started their first job yet.
  - lylejantzi3rd 4y ago
    It is most likely to avoid it becoming like CS Career Questions A good attempt, but it's become cscareerquestions 2.0 anyway. https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/10b4x3e/is_this_place_becoming_a_rcscareerquestions/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/10b4x3e/is...
newbie578 4y ago
I have to agree, the current job market is truly flipped upside down and you can feel the uncertainty in the air, at least in Europe. It seems there is a mismatch currently in the market, between what companies are demanding, and what employees are offering. I am honestly thinking of creating a service, where I would create a database full of developers looking for work, and then only give access to companies seriously looking to hire, so basically like LinkedIn but minus the trash and spam.
JamesHinnek 4y ago
meanwhile, we hire managers that don't have basic decision-making or people skills... They justify their higher salaries due to their higher responsibilities, which they just assume the risks and jump jobs when shit goes south. A reminder that your pay corresponds with your expected skills, hiring a top 1% de offering market average, is a delusion. But the interview process is out of control for devs, and basically non-existent for managers. Ps: I'm a manager, so I can say that I'm overpaid for what I deliver, while devs are underpaid and the expectation on them is out of reality.
- flappyeagle 4y ago
  Same for PMs — huge variance in ability and impact but the interview process is not diagnostic most of the time and same for performance management From your POV what do you think we should do?
- vallanceroad 4y ago
  > Ps: I'm a manager, so I can say that I'm overpaid for what I deliver, while devs are underpaid and the expectation on them is out of reality. If you are able to recognise this, surely you have the power and the incentive to change this?
  - jjav 4y ago
    > If you are able to recognise this, surely you have the power and the incentive to change this? Except in the tiniest of startups, managers and even directors have just about zero say in compensation ranges.
  - Hermitian909 4y ago
    Line managers basically never have the final word on pay, at most they sometimes get discretion to move pay around within a defined band. Pay bands are handled by the C-suite in small companies and compensation departments in large companies. Both generally reference databases of "market rate" compensation. As a rule, people are not paid "what they are worth", they are either paid market rates or convince the company they have a differentiated skillset that warrants compensation beyond what is normal in the market (usually by tying their performance to some important metric). No one has yet found a way to change this from within a corporate structure.
avereveard 4y ago
I feel him, I had a true hard time changing jobs back when the only skill I brought were those of a full stack developer. That said, without a link to the resume, it's not even an anectdote, it's just venting out.
austin-cheney 4y ago
I interviewed a bazillion times last year. What most places are looking for is a replaceable commodity they don’t have to train. If you want to be employable against that focus only upon what’s currently trendy/popular. If want to appear as a rockstar in that context spend about an hour each with up to 30 different popular tools. The goal here is do not differentiate yourself, but just be extremely proficient in the most common technical requirements building a CRUD tool with the flavor of the moment. I held out for something better.
switch007 4y ago
Echoing a comment from that thread, IT does have a huge superiority complex. I feel these long interview processes are related to the hiring managers’ need to feel superior due to feelings of inadequacy. Perhaps because huge sums of cheap money has allowed many departments which produce very little to exist for a long time, so they look for meaning and value in the hiring process
nickjj 4y ago
I think it's super dependent. The place I'm currently at is hiring a principle engineer. I've performed a few tech interviews so far. We just started the process less than a month ago. We have (2) interviews. The first is more of a soft skill analysis (casual conversation) that the engineering manager does and the second is a tech interview. Each are 1 hour long and are usually scheduled on different days. There's no algorithms, whiteboarding, puzzles, take home tests or desktop sharing. We just video chat about a range of tech topics for an hour and ~20% of the time is left to ask us questions. In the past I've mentioned that if I were ever in a position to hire someone I think it's possible to accurately identify someone's skill sets with a casual conversation and I still believe that[0]. No matter how good of a speaker you are you can't BS your way through certain kinds of practical tech questions. You either know them and can explain them in detail or you can't. There's a million little things to pick up on through out the conversation which weigh in on being a hire or not-hire in the end. [0]: There's exception of course, my specific case applies to fairly standard web apps (something comparable to GitHub or Shopify in scope). Exceptions would be hardcore low level programming.
- brightball 4y ago
  This is similar to what I do and IMO it works. 90% of a good developer can be found in their desire to learn / desire to problem solve as long. You can get most of what you need from an interview just by getting somebody talking enough to geek out on you.
- Arch-TK 4y ago
  A principle engineer : An engineer who is tasked with creating new principles.
dxxvi 4y ago
IMO, the rates are very bad after a lot of layoffs from big companies and a few big bank collapses. The interview processes frustrated me before. It's not good (mentally and physically too) for you if you get frustrated. So, forget all the failed interviews and move on.
danjac 4y ago
The multiple rounds, take home test + online examination, followed by 3 interviews etc nonsense has been a part of tech interviews for the past few years. Perhaps more people are exposed to it now because they haven't been seriously job hunting until the recent bloodbath of layoffs, but it's certainly not a new thing. I think there's many reasons: 1. There's a lot of risk aversion in corporate culture these days, the cost of a bad hire can be very high and nobody wants to be held responsible. By having multiple rounds - which in turn requires a lot of people involved - responsibility is diluted so if there's a bad hire you can blame the process rather than one manager. 2. It's an endurance test. Someone who can power their way through round after round of interviews, home projects, online tests and so on shows good "work ethic" or at least a genuine interest in the job. 3. Cargo-culting FAANG. If Google or Meta do this, then we should too (even though we're a tiny startup). It's a bit like picking microservices or Kubernetes: there's good use cases, but for a lot of projects they are overkill. 4. Concern about discrimination: companies are scared of showing bias (whether against or for certain ethnic groups, genders etc) and a formal process should in theory be meritocratic than the old days of "let's just have a quick chat and hire based on gut feeling". There's good reasons here, but it's probably gone to extremes, particularly for positions at smaller companies with corresponding smaller salaries and benefits.
- bilekas 4y ago
  These are actually all great reasons. Speaking from experience a bad hire can be extremely detrimental. While all valid points i do dislike how often those tests and interviews focus a lot on areas that you will not be doing in the role. This is where I see the biggest frustrations. When we hire we do try to tailer the interview process in a related to the work involved as possible. It adds confidence that we have hired the right candidate for the job.
  - gymbeaux 4y ago
    But usually there’s a 90 or 120-day probation period for new hires. How about letting them “interview” for the job, on the job. Screen them obviously, but after that… I mean the best way to see if they’re a good hire is to actually hire them. There’s no interview question or interview process that can perfectly duplicate that.
snide 4y ago
Have been hiring designers and developers for nearly 15 years. The easiest way around this is to just make a website that shows your work. Put up a small project on Github (even if it's a small hobby). A resume tells me nearly nothing and the logos on it only get you past the recruiter. It is absolutely mind boggling to me that people looking for Internet-related jobs do not own the story of their own career on a website of their making. If I need to have a conversation with you to figure out if you know what you're doing, I'm wasting your and my time. I'd rather have a conversation about whether you're a good fit.
- orf 4y ago
  A lot of people don’t look at your portfolio, or even with considerable verifiable open source work still ask you to do a test. I interviewed at one place that used my work and ran my code in production. Still had to do a take home test. Which is fine, I quite enjoy them.
  - bradlys 4y ago
    I've experienced the exact same thing. People would go, "After seeing your resume and noticing you made X software by yourself, I immediately installed it and it worked great. I just wanted to say thanks!" Proceeds to ask me to solve random leetcode questions anyway.
- newbie578 4y ago
  What would you expect if it the person interviewing was a mobile developer, or backend developer? What should they put on the website? A mobile developer perhaps some screenshots of app screens? What about backend logic?
  - RamblingCTO 4y ago
    I'll give my two cents as someone who's in the same position. I look for code style, commit messages (both proxies of quality of work), following standards, good code orga and tests. Show me that you understand why clean code is important basically
synergy20 4y ago
in my opinion, all job postings shall state their pay ranges in the title, to avoid wasting everyone's time. followed with key requirements, locations(and if remote is OK) followed by your interview process steps. that's all I need, I don't need schedule a 20-30 minutes call for each recruiter for info I can filter in a 2-minute read, in fact a twitter-size job post can cover all the essentials before any meaningful talk, why making a lengthy process longer than necessary. and, if you're asking for many years experience for a junior position, or you're asking a senior developer to be great at leetcode challenges, you might be doing something wrong.
TradingPlaces 4y ago
Nobody gets a CS degree dreaming of working for Walmart, but they have 1315 openings with the word “software” in the title. Many jobs are in CA, TX or WA https://careers.walmart.com/results?q=software&page=1&sort=rank&expand=department,brand,type,rate&jobCareerArea=all https://careers.walmart.com/results?q=software&page=1&sort=r... CVS has 492 https://jobs.cvshealth.com/job-search-results/?keyword=software https://jobs.cvshealth.com/job-search-results/?keyword=softw... The non-tech Fortune 500 companies are still hiring. Go down the list https://fortune.com/ranking/fortune500/ https://fortune.com/ranking/fortune500/
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  My brother has been a software engineer since 1996. After working exclusively at mid-to-large tech companies, he started working at a very large national retailer in 2019, mostly because he wanted to move closer to family and that was one of the few good employers around. He now says that this has been the most fulfilling job he's had. This retailer was working on ancient systems that, while old, were exceptionally well-designed. Moving these systems over to a modern tech stack was challenging but also incredibly rewarding.
  - tfandango 4y ago
    I work in finance and a lot of my job is getting the right numbers to come out of the system in the desired timeframe. To my son that sounds boring, and he asked me if I'd switch to work on VR or something flashier. I told him that there's a lot of challenge in solving the problems that I do, and I wasn't sure that optimizing rendering or something in VR would be more rewarding or not (not to mention I'd have probably been laid off by now anyway). I suspect the challenge and reward is the same but using different tech stacks.
  - Ancalagon 4y ago
    Conversely, after having worked for WMT as a software eng myself, that was the least fulfilling dev job I've ever had.
- tjansen 4y ago
CalRobert 4y ago
This reminds me a bit of what it was like to graduate in 2008. (Horrible, it turns out). What's insane is the hiring market during the longest bull run in history, which has now ended.
lucidguppy 4y ago
I am still floored that pair programming hasn't become the standard for interviews. Get a simple kata or problem - that the interviewer AND interviewee haven't seen before. Set up a "code with me" session. Pair program. See what happens in two pomodoro - have a chat in-between. Swap roles. 1) Do you see tests? 2) Do the tests pass? 3) Did anyone lose their cool? 4) Does the code look good? Have a score - keep the scores of all interviews (anonymize them of course) - and as you go along see where a candidate fits on the curve. The problems have to fit into two pomodoros - you have to try this against one of your junior devs and a lead to verify.
- arp242 4y ago
  I can't pair program, especially not in an interview setting. Being watched makes me so nervous that I can't think straight, unless it's someone I know well. I also can't think and talk at the same time, and someone talking to me makes me lose my entire train of thought. I don't think I'm the only one.
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    You're not the only one. I will say that comfort often comes with practice. I do pair programming sessions with people as part of my job. This has made me a substantially better at pair programming as part of interviewing (on both sides). Perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to time to work with some colleagues to build some of these muscles. I do agree that alternatives should be offered if someone is uncomfortable.
  - edgyquant 4y ago
    Then you are not gonna do well in any interview or team setting; which basically disqualifies you from working in this field unless it’s open source or something.
    - cloverich 4y ago
      Pair programming is quite rare in most orgs. Most code is discussed async after its been written. A take home test where you modify some existing code based on new business requirements would be far more similar to the real job. LIVE Discussion about the requirements before or code after would also be similar.
ergonaught 4y ago
Not only for developers. My current "favorite", which I hope is never surpassed, was a 3+ months long process involving nearly a dozen different interviews, essays, tests, an interview with the CEO who actually approved hiring me, a direct statement that I was the only person who had made it through all of that and that it was probably impossible to find someone better suited for the specific role, and, then, nope. Developer hiring is exceptionally awful for lots of reasons, but there are wider problems now.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Why would you allow them to put you through that? Obviously after the 4th date they weren't serious.
trentnix 4y ago
No doubt, the number of interviewing antipatterns out there is nuts. Leetcode games, hiring by committee, and a market flooded with candidates with resumes that look and read the same. On the flip side, I’m interviewing candidates with a decade of experience (per their resume) that can’t discern the difference between basic data types and how they are stored with the very language they claim expertise. Once upon a time the stereotype was that hiring developers is hard because they can’t communicate. Now candidate after candidate is able to communicate like they are a professional podcaster but they can’t seem to solve problems well. If you’re skilled, don’t despair. Most companies are terrible at hiring and terrible at business as well. Those rejections from the gauntlet of flaming hoops they make your jump through are doing you a favor. Rejection is God’s protection and all that. And I like to think that’s right.
- gymbeaux 4y ago
  I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that someone can be a software developer for 5, 10, 20 years and bomb in interviews, and I’ve always wondered if they really don’t know these things, or if it’s just the environment- like in my experience I can wax and wax and wax in a non-interview setting, but in an interview setting, even from the comfort of my home office, I seem to block out- not forget, because in the moment I know I know something- parts of my knowledge. You might say “well you should practice interview more” or something to that effect, but I have to wonder, if so many developers seem to “know nothing” despite their supposed experience, perhaps it’s not that they “know nothing”. On my LinkedIn I have the following: what I currently get paid by my current employer (!!!), what I am looking for in my next role, both regularly ignored by recruiters of course, and then I have links to my StackOverflow, Medium and Github profiles, any of which ought to demonstrate my “expertise” as well or better than an interview ever could. Heck if you just read some of my answers to StackOverflow questions, I think you’d see I am capable of writing code for your company…
  - chasd00 4y ago
    > I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that someone can be a software developer for 5, 10, 20 years and bomb in interviews i cant remember who said it but many people with 10 years experience really have 1 year of experience and 9 years performing tasks doing the same thing over and over.
qthrowayq0909 4y ago
" I've been in the market for a couple of months, and I have no idea what employers are looking for" IMO that's because they (employers) too have no idea what they are looking for. It's a mess and only getting worse. My 2 cents is just say yes to that rare proposal that comes after one or 2 interviews. And yes, they do exist but almost everyone passes them because "if it was so easy the role must suck". Well, the possibility of role sucking is exactly the same if you went through 10 hoops to get the job.
- actsasbuffoon 4y ago
  I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and I’ve had good results from companies with humane interview practices. Places that treat candidates poorly tend to treat employees badly, and companies that drag out the interview process tend to miss out on in-demand talent. As a result, places that respect your time and well-being have been more likely to have good engineers who have stuck around. Places that are toxic and/or bureaucratic tend to combine bad hiring with high turnover and create a terrible environment.
  - CadmiumYellow 4y ago
    My current company has the most humane interview process I have ever experienced. When I started I was shocked by how many good engineers had stuck around for 5+ years, a few for more than 10. That's crazy for a non-FAANG non-legacy software company. It turned out to be a great sign that the company respects one's time and well-being!
Eumenes 4y ago
I don't think this anecdotal reddit post says much of anything. We don't know the persons resume/background/experience, nor the position. $65/hr with 10 years of experience is uber low. That rate is comparable to FANG intern pay. You could find a contract job 15 years ago paying that, working for some insurance company or large boring bank. It just sounds like a shit job at a shit company. Probably located in a small market/geo. OP also says "actual client" - so this job is likely via a third party (either a staffing firm or some MSP); AKA that $65/hr rate is even lower than it should be, because the third party needs to take its 20-40% cut. There are still 1000s of open developer jobs.
olavgg 4y ago
Hey everyone, if you're frustrated with interviewing processes I high recommend build your own company. You do not have to aim for 1 billion USD valuation after 5 years. Just aim for happiness and make your customers happy too. It is not as hard nor scary as many of you think it is. It requires you to take responsibility though. The world is still mostly running on spreadsheets and we all know software developer skills can transform spreadsheets into better business value.
- gymbeaux 4y ago
  It’s true, and partially why I pivoted away from web development. Web development is so repetitive. It can be oversimplified to “make me a GUI for this database”. Yawn. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life correcting my CSS and JS for subtle changes to browser engines. When IE died, Safari took over as the “problem browser”. I think there will always be a “problem browser”.
- jongjong 4y ago
  It's very difficult to pull off though. Especially outside the US. My advice is: - Don't aim too big (there will be way more competition if you're trying to build a world-changing product). - Don't go into any sector where big tech corporations are already offering products (no matter how bad those products are, you will not be able to compete on marketing; nobody will find out that your product exists). - Find a niche. The more boring and tedious the niche, the more likely you are to succeed. Basically, base your entire strategy around minimizing competition at all costs. Do not underestimate competition. Do not underestimate the power of a great big pile of capital in the hands of your competitors; no matter how terrible they are. This is not capitalism. This is crony-capitalism. NEVER FORGET THAT. As you rise up the ranks, prepare for less ass kicking and more ass kissing.
Mizoguchi 4y ago
The hiring process has been like this for a long time. I had a hiatus from work in 2016 and when I tried to get back to the job market it was impossible to find anything, even when I was over qualified for many of the positions I applied to and was even willing to take a considerable pay cut just because I was switching business domains (although the stack and many of the required soft skills to do the job remain the same) The vast majority of the interviewers I faced had no idea what they were doing or trying to measure. Loop interviews were the worst because it generally takes just one guy out out five to dislike you even if you had a great time with the other four. I mean I bet most of these guys in loop interviews would not even hire themselves It became so dreadful and time consuming that I had to tell recruiters right away I would not be doing any whiteboarding or solving puzzles. Pair programming and short take home projects were fine. That helped filtering companies but my leads dropped by 90%.
- rickstanley 4y ago
  I can relate to the hiatus situation and "one dislike". I'm employed right now, for about 1 and half years, but there was a time that I tried to switch path from Web/Mobile developer to full backend developer, and in this attempt I got a job interview for a digital bank; I had everything checked out and expected to continue to step 2, even a friend of mine who works there thought I'd pass the process easily, but to our surprise, I didn't make it to the next step, and when I asked the interviewer for feedback they gave me a bullet list with just one bullet saying that I didn't "explore business logic much"! It didn't make any sense! I found it preposterous and insulting, to say the least. When I ask for feedback, I want to know what are you looking for and why I wasn't compatible with your position.
  - yuuho 4y ago
    That's standard. Honest feedback can get them in legal trouble. Making up a BS reason is expected if somebody's personality was really off-putting. Nobody is ever going to give you honest feedback about that.
  - arp242 4y ago
    It's more or less impossible to review non-trivial code without feedback from the author (i.e. have a conversation) outside of cases where it's just truly obviously awful. Often stuff just gets rejected for "I wouldn't have written it like this". Okay, fine; but that doesn't mean I can't write it like that. But if I don't know what you want... The reason people don't give concrete feedback is because there often just isn't a clear one beyond "I don't like it".
bitwize 4y ago
This is happening because it's drilled into managers' heads that one bad hire is disastrous for the team/company. So the cost of a bad hire exceeds the cost (to the company) of implementing arbitrary amounts of screening to make sure bad hires are caught -- even when you take into account the effect of a very high false positive rate prolonging the interview process.
- bick_nyers 4y ago
  No one gets fired for hiring someone from MIT, after all, if the candidate were crazy or incompetent, they wouldn't have gotten a degree from MIT!
majikaja 4y ago
To think people said highly paid developer positions would be plentiful forever... What happens to HN when software engineering is just viewed as a typical job no longer associated with startup culture?
- mech422 4y ago
  LOL - Heh, COBOL didn't work out to well for making 'developers' entry level personnel. :-D IBM had dreams of minimum wage programmers what - 50 years ago now ?
  - majikaja 4y ago
    I never said entry level. Just 'IT guy' status. No real seat at the decision making table.
    - mech422 4y ago
      Oh, sorry - guess I mis-interpreted your "highly paid" comment.. As for decision making - like every other field, I think that has more to do with the individual then anything else. Some people are good at it sorta naturally gravitate that way, others have no interest or skill in it. I know I'm much happier as an IC/team lead/etc. Sitting in meetings and paperwork really aren't my thing :-/
mech422 4y ago
Thanks for linking straight to old reddit :-)
- avinassh 4y ago
  iirc, HN also adds old to reddit links
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
I found it strange that at the height of the hiring frenzy when everybody was complaining about not being able to find people... is precisely when this stuff seemed to hit peak.
RamblingCTO 4y ago
I think we should start hiring in the US :D that's horrible. We do 30 mins of chit chat (general fit) and then meet the team + quick deep-dive on tech without flip charts or any tests (the German market doesn't work like that). And that's it. The second meeting on site including pizza with the team.
- konschubert 4y ago
  I've had interviews like this and it was weird. Like... don't you want to see my skills?
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    You can chitchat and learn someone's skills. It takes practice, but it's the same skill set for solving problems. Ask what they did, what problems they encountered, and dig in three levels on the interesting topics.
  - RamblingCTO 4y ago
    I would prefer to see actual code you've written, GitHub or something. I don't care about fantasy logic tests on a whiteboard, I feel they are non-predictive. I also always talk about values (clean code, writing tests etc.) and you get a feel about aligned values. And most importantly, in a small company the team fit is the biggest thing of all.
- mathverse 4y ago
  I work for a german scaleup and I had a full day interview. It was not a horrible leet code stuff but it was definitely a time killer. Can you share the name of your company or a way to contact you?
  - RamblingCTO 4y ago
    Sure: cs@do24.eu
- em500 4y ago
  German (and most other non-US) companies offer much lower compensations for devs than US companies. This is an aspect that I find most often overlooked in the complaints about tough US dev interviews. The compensation for US devs is extremely high, both compared to other US jobs, and to non-US dev jobs. The FAANG get literally millions of applications per year, so the interviews must be setup to fail the vast majority of applicants.
ianpurton 4y ago
Contrast this with raising a pull request for an open source project. There's no interview, just turn up, fix something, hope it gets accepted.
- hexis 4y ago
  The bar is a lot lower when they're not obligated to pay you.
jppope 4y ago
Related: https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/funny-interviews/ https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/funny-interviews/
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
It was all over the place in terms of interview practices last year when I was looking -- which I found odd given that that was kind of the height of demand; start of last year people were complaining about not being able to find people, but then the interviews would often be quite crazy. But I think it's only going to get worse now that the market is getting flooded with people coming from rounds of lay-offs, and the VC market tightening, etc.
GuB-42 4y ago
How much does it cost the company? The process described is 4-5 hours taking time from people who have jobs to do, and they don't look like the cheapest employees. With rejections and applicants who finally turn off the offer, it must be quite significant, especially for a 6 month contract.
gregjor 4y ago
These stories make me glad I don’t go through the interview nonsense. I’ve worked in software for 40 years, had exactly one of these ridiculous interviews. Despite years of relevant experience I bombed it because I couldn’t guess something stupid like how many tennis balls fit into Chicago. Recruiter told me they hired a more qualified candidate. Then two months later I got a desperate call asking me to start tomorrow. The person who aced the interview couldn’t actually do anything. I told them to stuff it, I had already found a better gig. I have refused garbage personality tests by saying those violate the ADA. Think about what position that puts the company in. And I’ve had offers even after flatly refusing Myers-Brigg or similar nonsense. This shit keeps happening because people put up with it and play along.
- freejazz 4y ago
  Do you claim a disability when applying for those jobs? Just curious - it sounds like a good idea to pushback.
  - the_last_human 4y ago
    Not OP, but just want to make it clear to other readers that you can claim disability at any point, or never, it’s up to the individual.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      I understand that but they have to be on notice that you have a disability in order to either accommodate it or not
  - gregjor 4y ago
    You don't have to discuss any disability. I leave that to the interviewer's imagination. The point is to let them know they are already on thin ice. They would have to show how they administer their tests fairly, how those tests have some scientific basis and predictive value, are necessary for the job, and don't discriminate against protected groups. Of course they can't show those things so they have always just dropped the issue. I've had recruiters try to haul out their personality tests too, just say no. Companies fear one thing even more than making a bad hire, and that's getting sued for their shoddy interviewing/HR practices. A complaint can trigger investigations and lawsuits from the state, not from the candidate. The ADA is sufficiently vague and comprehensive at the same time that it's a bogey-man for HR people.
askonomm 4y ago
Ever since I stopped doing mainstream stuff, and went niche[1], I've had zero problems finding a job and I'm not that special. There's a lot of people on the planet, more every day, so if you expect your life in the gray mass to get easier over time, well, it probably will only get harder. [1]: https://repl.ee/blog/the-niche-programmer https://repl.ee/blog/the-niche-programmer
lucidone 4y ago
The comment about healthcare (life-altering health outcomes at play) interviewing being less of a rigorous process than screening the devs for icanhazcheeseburger is spot on. What the fuck is wrong with us?
- w10-1 4y ago
  Nothing. You hire a responsible experts when you want to trust them with full decision authority. You can only do this if there's no real risk of failure. But when you're producing software with real risks, you have a QA-first process that details, validates, and verifies all requirements. You have a large team, cross-checking (and helping) each other. The key virtue of a developer in this context is diligence and honesty. It's a great gig. In FAANG and software-only products, you're always on the critical path. For medical devices, it's typically the chemistry or device that sets the schedule, so software can proceed at an even pace. Plus, you're building something meaningful!
the_only_law 4y ago
I have my first interview in 4 months tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'm going to completely fail. I'm not sure what I'm going to do if I don't find something soon though, the few recruiters trickling in have started suspiciously asking how long I've been on the market. I've kinda expected I would end up here for years, I've just completely to prepare for it.
didgetmaster 4y ago
Even more infuriating are interviews that expect you to complete a complicated 'homework assignment' that is essentially the company trying to get free coding work from its applicants. I once interviewed where they gave me a big assignment to complete. I must have spent about 8 hours on it. Since I wanted them to see my thought process along with code examples; I gave them something that was about half pseudo-code and half real working code. The hiring manager said they couldn't accept it until I had converted all the pseudo code into working code as well, along with a set of tests that exercised the code. I estimated that the assignment would take me an additional 20 hours or so to complete. I told them that I had spent enough time working for free and if they wanted to pay me for the work I was doing, I would be happy to complete it. They declined, which told me all I needed to know about the company.
1970-01-01 4y ago
One of the first questions you need to ask is "what is your hiring process" followed-up with "what is the hiring timeline" This single question can save you hours of your life and weeks of waiting to hear back.
antibasilisk 4y ago
Honestly I'm at the point now where I'm considering moving on from software as a career. I've kinda got what I wanted out of it anyway and most of it is snakeoil anyway. I just need to find a way to meet my basic living expenses with minimal work.
devnullbrain 4y ago
It's not all hellfire. I accepted a job offer earlier this month. There is distinctly less opportunity at tier 1 public companies (FAANG etc., and even those are still hiring) but I still had plenty of interviews and got a reasonable payrise.
pythonbase 4y ago
This is the main reason I opt for freelance work rather than going full time. I don't want to spend so much time preparing for an interview / test / what-not only to be stalled or excused for some unmentionable reason. Freelance market is awesome these days with more businesses reducing in-house staff and outsource whatever they can to cut operational costs.
DamnInteresting 4y ago
I have been unable to find work for so long that I am on the cusp of exiting the industry. I need a paycheck. I've been in full stack web dev for over 20 years, and I've never once had trouble finding a job before now. For months it's been hard to get any response to an application, let alone an interview. And when I do get responses, they are often strange. One company where I would have been a perfect fit claimed that my code sample had "scary" SQL injection vulnerabilities. It did not, I have been doing this for decades, and I know how to sanitize my inputs. I asked for specific file name and line number, and they sent back a vague non-response on how to identify vulnerabilities, so I stopped pursuing it. It was a lost cause, even if I showed them how they were mistaken, it wouldn't work out. I suspect they were using some kind of automated scanner that flagged some false positives. I don't want to stop making software professionally, but that decision may not be in my hands.
glonq 4y ago
I've been hiring and managing developers and engineers for almost 20 years, and I don't/won't do any of this nonsense. During the course of a single interview I describe what we are building and how we are building it, and invite the candidate to explain if/how they could participate in that. One or two senior guys from the team will ask them some smart questions about real-world problems and complexities to get a sense that they know their stuff. No quizzes or puzzles or abstract questions. No homework. No second or third or fourth interview.

134 points by csomar 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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syntaxfree 4y ago

Connections matter…

pnutjam 4y ago
I did 6 weeks of interviews last year and landed multiple good offers. 2 from recruiters and 4 direct hire at companies I applied to blindly. I'm still getting offers to interview daily. I've helped people land jobs, but all of mine have been posted online and applied to by me. Just another data point.

Idiot_in_Vain 4y ago

A friend of mine is currently looking for .NET developer job in Switzerland. Looks like everyone there is doing a one day of on-site interviews with HR, technical tests/pear programming and meeting managers.

LtWorf 4y ago
A German company had written to me to offer a (very well paid) position. They had an online test to take that I had to pass in order to actually have an interview (or more, I don't know how it worked with them). Anyway, the task they sent me was estimated to take 8 hours of work and couldn't be paused. I was on vacation, I didn't want to bother so I just declined.
- varispeed 4y ago
  > Anyway, the task they sent me was estimated to take 8 hours of work and couldn't be paused. Once I was given a task to create some validation code for given criteria and integrate it in the given project. They then invited me to an in person interview. At one point, I had to pair program with one of their developers and what I saw kind of shocked me. They integrated my code from the interview into their production code and their developer had an issue with it and asked me to help getting it working and write a couple of extra tests. So I did and they seemed very happy. I didn't get the job though. They said I am not a "cultural fit". I asked them if they actually used my code and if so they would have to pay me for the whole day, but they never responded afterwards. I decided it wouldn't be worth to legally pursue, but since then I decided to not do any pair programming or coding tests.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - newbie578 4y ago
    I actually noticed that started happening in Europe. Last month I had a similar experience, where a mobile startup wanted to hire me as a mobile developer, but wanted to test me, and the test was to implement a new feature and screen of their existing app released on the App Store.. I aced it, they were more than pleased, yet in the end they did not hire me as they said that they are actually closing the position because of the market downturn. At least they gave me a 50€ amazon gift card..
  - lclc 4y ago
    Please name the company. They deserve public shaming.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - prettyStandard 4y ago
    So your work is good enough to use in production, but not good enough to pay for? I would contact a lawyer on principle. Minimum write a Glassdoor review.
  - cbm-vic-20 4y ago
    > not a "cultural fit". That's a codeword to cover racism, sexism, and/or ageism.
    - varispeed 4y ago
      I am a bit on the spectrum and their team was quite younger than myself, they've been talking a lot about how they like to party together after work etc. Not my cup of tea, so to speak.
    - bombolo 4y ago
      Eh dunno. We rejected a guy just because he spoke really really slowly and figured it'd be unnerving to talk to him at that speed.
- devnullbrain 4y ago
  Welcome to the think-cell club. They solicit a huge amount of applications but very rarely hire people who make it beyond a year.
roflyear 4y ago
I was at a 10-hour one-day interview once. It was kind of nice, but also, crazy?
- aix1 4y ago
  Also probably says quite a lot about their working culture.
haspok 4y ago
I much prefer apple programming to pear programming. (ba dumm tsss.... sorry, couldn't resist :)) Although I'm on the Java side, I've yet to see a leetcode interview in CH, maybe I got lucky so far, but most of the interviews I had before were completely reasonable, maybe even too easy. The one that I failed miserably was an architecture discussion, in which I got an empty paper with a pen, and was expected to come up with the design of their existing system (I was allowed to ask questions). But even from that I learned so much, so no hard feelings. I will know much better what to do next time :)

ubercore 4y ago

Part of OPs problem may be that it's hard to differentiate yourself in that kind of position. Full stack web development is not easy to get right, but the competition pool is huge. It helps to find even the smallest little angle to differentiate yourself. The personality tests can fuck right off, though. Agree with that.

0xy 4y ago
Personality tests are IQ tests that don't want to admit to being IQ tests, at least the ones I've taken.
- bluedino 4y ago
  What about the ones with questions like: When I see an error, it bothers me. Mostly agree Somewhat agree Neither agree or disagree Somewhat disagree Mostly disagree
  - WJW 4y ago
    That's just an emotional IQ ("EQ") test for figuring if you can detect what they want to hear.
    - drewcoo 4y ago
      Exactly. A neurodivergence filter. Because it's illegal to discriminate against that protected class directly.
  - varispeed 4y ago
    For me this is not answerable question because it is lacking context. If it was not possible to go to the next question, it would be where I would end the interview.
    - ubercore 4y ago
      Context is everything, and why these fail. When I did one, the process included the narrative version of the results. I had a question that was something like "It's important to support your organization", which I agree with. In the narrative form of the results, it concluded that I "may not tell the truth to superiors if something is wrong" from that. Of course I support the organization, and I think being honest with superiors is the best way to do that. In the end, these things are so imprecise that you have to get to know somebody to know which parts are accurate (some were) and which aren't. By †he time you know how accurate it was, you know the person well enough to not need the test.

varispeed 4y ago

My last interview was with some large US corporation. I had scheduled the first interview with their tech lead in one of the departments. Interview started on time, we managed to say hello to each other, then something bizarre happened. I think the tech lead thought he has lost the connection, but I could see him and hear him clearly. Suddenly he started shouting, swearing and then he violently swept things off his desk and that's when the interview was cut off. I got a call an hour later that they have "technical issues" and the interview will be rescheduled. Three days later I got an email that I didn't pass the interview that I didn't really have in the first place. That was quite funny actually.

weatherlite 4y ago
Might have been part of the test, interviewer wanted to see how you deal with uncertainty.
champagnepapi 4y ago
Wow looks like you dodged a bullet there!
tonnydourado 4y ago
When I work from home, swearing and some moderate shouting at bugs is kinda regular, but that's because I'm alone. Throwing shit around is a red flag, though.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

danpalmer 4y ago

> r/ExperiencedDevs > Do not post here unless you have minimum 3 years experience.

Arch-TK 4y ago
Well they're not going to call it r/DevsWithOnlyARelativelySmallAmountOfExperienceButWhoLikeToCallThemsevesExperiencedRegardless
devnullbrain 4y ago
The takeaway from this is that in communities open to everyone there is an overwhelming input from people with zero experience struggling to get on the ladder.
Latour 4y ago
It is most likely to avoid it becoming like CS Career Questions, which is inundated with students who haven't even started their first job yet.
- lylejantzi3rd 4y ago
  It is most likely to avoid it becoming like CS Career Questions A good attempt, but it's become cscareerquestions 2.0 anyway. https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/10b4x3e/is_this_place_becoming_a_rcscareerquestions/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/10b4x3e/is...

newbie578 4y ago

I have to agree, the current job market is truly flipped upside down and you can feel the uncertainty in the air, at least in Europe. It seems there is a mismatch currently in the market, between what companies are demanding, and what employees are offering. I am honestly thinking of creating a service, where I would create a database full of developers looking for work, and then only give access to companies seriously looking to hire, so basically like LinkedIn but minus the trash and spam.

JamesHinnek 4y ago

meanwhile, we hire managers that don't have basic decision-making or people skills... They justify their higher salaries due to their higher responsibilities, which they just assume the risks and jump jobs when shit goes south. A reminder that your pay corresponds with your expected skills, hiring a top 1% de offering market average, is a delusion. But the interview process is out of control for devs, and basically non-existent for managers. Ps: I'm a manager, so I can say that I'm overpaid for what I deliver, while devs are underpaid and the expectation on them is out of reality.

flappyeagle 4y ago
Same for PMs — huge variance in ability and impact but the interview process is not diagnostic most of the time and same for performance management From your POV what do you think we should do?
vallanceroad 4y ago
> Ps: I'm a manager, so I can say that I'm overpaid for what I deliver, while devs are underpaid and the expectation on them is out of reality. If you are able to recognise this, surely you have the power and the incentive to change this?
- jjav 4y ago
  > If you are able to recognise this, surely you have the power and the incentive to change this? Except in the tiniest of startups, managers and even directors have just about zero say in compensation ranges.
- Hermitian909 4y ago
  Line managers basically never have the final word on pay, at most they sometimes get discretion to move pay around within a defined band. Pay bands are handled by the C-suite in small companies and compensation departments in large companies. Both generally reference databases of "market rate" compensation. As a rule, people are not paid "what they are worth", they are either paid market rates or convince the company they have a differentiated skillset that warrants compensation beyond what is normal in the market (usually by tying their performance to some important metric). No one has yet found a way to change this from within a corporate structure.

avereveard 4y ago

I feel him, I had a true hard time changing jobs back when the only skill I brought were those of a full stack developer. That said, without a link to the resume, it's not even an anectdote, it's just venting out.

austin-cheney 4y ago

I interviewed a bazillion times last year. What most places are looking for is a replaceable commodity they don’t have to train. If you want to be employable against that focus only upon what’s currently trendy/popular. If want to appear as a rockstar in that context spend about an hour each with up to 30 different popular tools. The goal here is do not differentiate yourself, but just be extremely proficient in the most common technical requirements building a CRUD tool with the flavor of the moment. I held out for something better.

switch007 4y ago

Echoing a comment from that thread, IT does have a huge superiority complex. I feel these long interview processes are related to the hiring managers’ need to feel superior due to feelings of inadequacy. Perhaps because huge sums of cheap money has allowed many departments which produce very little to exist for a long time, so they look for meaning and value in the hiring process

nickjj 4y ago

I think it's super dependent. The place I'm currently at is hiring a principle engineer. I've performed a few tech interviews so far. We just started the process less than a month ago. We have (2) interviews. The first is more of a soft skill analysis (casual conversation) that the engineering manager does and the second is a tech interview. Each are 1 hour long and are usually scheduled on different days. There's no algorithms, whiteboarding, puzzles, take home tests or desktop sharing. We just video chat about a range of tech topics for an hour and ~20% of the time is left to ask us questions. In the past I've mentioned that if I were ever in a position to hire someone I think it's possible to accurately identify someone's skill sets with a casual conversation and I still believe that[0]. No matter how good of a speaker you are you can't BS your way through certain kinds of practical tech questions. You either know them and can explain them in detail or you can't. There's a million little things to pick up on through out the conversation which weigh in on being a hire or not-hire in the end. [0]: There's exception of course, my specific case applies to fairly standard web apps (something comparable to GitHub or Shopify in scope). Exceptions would be hardcore low level programming.

brightball 4y ago
This is similar to what I do and IMO it works. 90% of a good developer can be found in their desire to learn / desire to problem solve as long. You can get most of what you need from an interview just by getting somebody talking enough to geek out on you.
Arch-TK 4y ago
A principle engineer : An engineer who is tasked with creating new principles.

dxxvi 4y ago

IMO, the rates are very bad after a lot of layoffs from big companies and a few big bank collapses. The interview processes frustrated me before. It's not good (mentally and physically too) for you if you get frustrated. So, forget all the failed interviews and move on.

danjac 4y ago

The multiple rounds, take home test + online examination, followed by 3 interviews etc nonsense has been a part of tech interviews for the past few years. Perhaps more people are exposed to it now because they haven't been seriously job hunting until the recent bloodbath of layoffs, but it's certainly not a new thing. I think there's many reasons: 1. There's a lot of risk aversion in corporate culture these days, the cost of a bad hire can be very high and nobody wants to be held responsible. By having multiple rounds - which in turn requires a lot of people involved - responsibility is diluted so if there's a bad hire you can blame the process rather than one manager. 2. It's an endurance test. Someone who can power their way through round after round of interviews, home projects, online tests and so on shows good "work ethic" or at least a genuine interest in the job. 3. Cargo-culting FAANG. If Google or Meta do this, then we should too (even though we're a tiny startup). It's a bit like picking microservices or Kubernetes: there's good use cases, but for a lot of projects they are overkill. 4. Concern about discrimination: companies are scared of showing bias (whether against or for certain ethnic groups, genders etc) and a formal process should in theory be meritocratic than the old days of "let's just have a quick chat and hire based on gut feeling". There's good reasons here, but it's probably gone to extremes, particularly for positions at smaller companies with corresponding smaller salaries and benefits.

bilekas 4y ago
These are actually all great reasons. Speaking from experience a bad hire can be extremely detrimental. While all valid points i do dislike how often those tests and interviews focus a lot on areas that you will not be doing in the role. This is where I see the biggest frustrations. When we hire we do try to tailer the interview process in a related to the work involved as possible. It adds confidence that we have hired the right candidate for the job.
- gymbeaux 4y ago
  But usually there’s a 90 or 120-day probation period for new hires. How about letting them “interview” for the job, on the job. Screen them obviously, but after that… I mean the best way to see if they’re a good hire is to actually hire them. There’s no interview question or interview process that can perfectly duplicate that.

snide 4y ago

Have been hiring designers and developers for nearly 15 years. The easiest way around this is to just make a website that shows your work. Put up a small project on Github (even if it's a small hobby). A resume tells me nearly nothing and the logos on it only get you past the recruiter. It is absolutely mind boggling to me that people looking for Internet-related jobs do not own the story of their own career on a website of their making. If I need to have a conversation with you to figure out if you know what you're doing, I'm wasting your and my time. I'd rather have a conversation about whether you're a good fit.

orf 4y ago
A lot of people don’t look at your portfolio, or even with considerable verifiable open source work still ask you to do a test. I interviewed at one place that used my work and ran my code in production. Still had to do a take home test. Which is fine, I quite enjoy them.
- bradlys 4y ago
  I've experienced the exact same thing. People would go, "After seeing your resume and noticing you made X software by yourself, I immediately installed it and it worked great. I just wanted to say thanks!" Proceeds to ask me to solve random leetcode questions anyway.
newbie578 4y ago
What would you expect if it the person interviewing was a mobile developer, or backend developer? What should they put on the website? A mobile developer perhaps some screenshots of app screens? What about backend logic?
- RamblingCTO 4y ago
  I'll give my two cents as someone who's in the same position. I look for code style, commit messages (both proxies of quality of work), following standards, good code orga and tests. Show me that you understand why clean code is important basically

synergy20 4y ago

in my opinion, all job postings shall state their pay ranges in the title, to avoid wasting everyone's time. followed with key requirements, locations(and if remote is OK) followed by your interview process steps. that's all I need, I don't need schedule a 20-30 minutes call for each recruiter for info I can filter in a 2-minute read, in fact a twitter-size job post can cover all the essentials before any meaningful talk, why making a lengthy process longer than necessary. and, if you're asking for many years experience for a junior position, or you're asking a senior developer to be great at leetcode challenges, you might be doing something wrong.

TradingPlaces 4y ago

Nobody gets a CS degree dreaming of working for Walmart, but they have 1315 openings with the word “software” in the title. Many jobs are in CA, TX or WA https://careers.walmart.com/results?q=software&page=1&sort=rank&expand=department,brand,type,rate&jobCareerArea=all https://careers.walmart.com/results?q=software&page=1&sort=r... CVS has 492 https://jobs.cvshealth.com/job-search-results/?keyword=software https://jobs.cvshealth.com/job-search-results/?keyword=softw... The non-tech Fortune 500 companies are still hiring. Go down the list https://fortune.com/ranking/fortune500/ https://fortune.com/ranking/fortune500/

spaceman_2020 4y ago
My brother has been a software engineer since 1996. After working exclusively at mid-to-large tech companies, he started working at a very large national retailer in 2019, mostly because he wanted to move closer to family and that was one of the few good employers around. He now says that this has been the most fulfilling job he's had. This retailer was working on ancient systems that, while old, were exceptionally well-designed. Moving these systems over to a modern tech stack was challenging but also incredibly rewarding.
- tfandango 4y ago
  I work in finance and a lot of my job is getting the right numbers to come out of the system in the desired timeframe. To my son that sounds boring, and he asked me if I'd switch to work on VR or something flashier. I told him that there's a lot of challenge in solving the problems that I do, and I wasn't sure that optimizing rendering or something in VR would be more rewarding or not (not to mention I'd have probably been laid off by now anyway). I suspect the challenge and reward is the same but using different tech stacks.
- Ancalagon 4y ago
  Conversely, after having worked for WMT as a software eng myself, that was the least fulfilling dev job I've ever had.
tjansen 4y ago

CalRobert 4y ago

This reminds me a bit of what it was like to graduate in 2008. (Horrible, it turns out). What's insane is the hiring market during the longest bull run in history, which has now ended.

lucidguppy 4y ago

I am still floored that pair programming hasn't become the standard for interviews. Get a simple kata or problem - that the interviewer AND interviewee haven't seen before. Set up a "code with me" session. Pair program. See what happens in two pomodoro - have a chat in-between. Swap roles. 1) Do you see tests? 2) Do the tests pass? 3) Did anyone lose their cool? 4) Does the code look good? Have a score - keep the scores of all interviews (anonymize them of course) - and as you go along see where a candidate fits on the curve. The problems have to fit into two pomodoros - you have to try this against one of your junior devs and a lead to verify.

arp242 4y ago
I can't pair program, especially not in an interview setting. Being watched makes me so nervous that I can't think straight, unless it's someone I know well. I also can't think and talk at the same time, and someone talking to me makes me lose my entire train of thought. I don't think I'm the only one.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  You're not the only one. I will say that comfort often comes with practice. I do pair programming sessions with people as part of my job. This has made me a substantially better at pair programming as part of interviewing (on both sides). Perhaps it would be worthwhile for you to time to work with some colleagues to build some of these muscles. I do agree that alternatives should be offered if someone is uncomfortable.
- edgyquant 4y ago
  Then you are not gonna do well in any interview or team setting; which basically disqualifies you from working in this field unless it’s open source or something.
  - cloverich 4y ago
    Pair programming is quite rare in most orgs. Most code is discussed async after its been written. A take home test where you modify some existing code based on new business requirements would be far more similar to the real job. LIVE Discussion about the requirements before or code after would also be similar.

ergonaught 4y ago

Not only for developers. My current "favorite", which I hope is never surpassed, was a 3+ months long process involving nearly a dozen different interviews, essays, tests, an interview with the CEO who actually approved hiring me, a direct statement that I was the only person who had made it through all of that and that it was probably impossible to find someone better suited for the specific role, and, then, nope. Developer hiring is exceptionally awful for lots of reasons, but there are wider problems now.

Ancalagon 4y ago
Why would you allow them to put you through that? Obviously after the 4th date they weren't serious.

trentnix 4y ago

No doubt, the number of interviewing antipatterns out there is nuts. Leetcode games, hiring by committee, and a market flooded with candidates with resumes that look and read the same. On the flip side, I’m interviewing candidates with a decade of experience (per their resume) that can’t discern the difference between basic data types and how they are stored with the very language they claim expertise. Once upon a time the stereotype was that hiring developers is hard because they can’t communicate. Now candidate after candidate is able to communicate like they are a professional podcaster but they can’t seem to solve problems well. If you’re skilled, don’t despair. Most companies are terrible at hiring and terrible at business as well. Those rejections from the gauntlet of flaming hoops they make your jump through are doing you a favor. Rejection is God’s protection and all that. And I like to think that’s right.

gymbeaux 4y ago
I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that someone can be a software developer for 5, 10, 20 years and bomb in interviews, and I’ve always wondered if they really don’t know these things, or if it’s just the environment- like in my experience I can wax and wax and wax in a non-interview setting, but in an interview setting, even from the comfort of my home office, I seem to block out- not forget, because in the moment I know I know something- parts of my knowledge. You might say “well you should practice interview more” or something to that effect, but I have to wonder, if so many developers seem to “know nothing” despite their supposed experience, perhaps it’s not that they “know nothing”. On my LinkedIn I have the following: what I currently get paid by my current employer (!!!), what I am looking for in my next role, both regularly ignored by recruiters of course, and then I have links to my StackOverflow, Medium and Github profiles, any of which ought to demonstrate my “expertise” as well or better than an interview ever could. Heck if you just read some of my answers to StackOverflow questions, I think you’d see I am capable of writing code for your company…
- chasd00 4y ago
  > I’ve always been fascinated with the idea that someone can be a software developer for 5, 10, 20 years and bomb in interviews i cant remember who said it but many people with 10 years experience really have 1 year of experience and 9 years performing tasks doing the same thing over and over.

qthrowayq0909 4y ago

" I've been in the market for a couple of months, and I have no idea what employers are looking for" IMO that's because they (employers) too have no idea what they are looking for. It's a mess and only getting worse. My 2 cents is just say yes to that rare proposal that comes after one or 2 interviews. And yes, they do exist but almost everyone passes them because "if it was so easy the role must suck". Well, the possibility of role sucking is exactly the same if you went through 10 hoops to get the job.

actsasbuffoon 4y ago
I’ve been doing this for a long time now, and I’ve had good results from companies with humane interview practices. Places that treat candidates poorly tend to treat employees badly, and companies that drag out the interview process tend to miss out on in-demand talent. As a result, places that respect your time and well-being have been more likely to have good engineers who have stuck around. Places that are toxic and/or bureaucratic tend to combine bad hiring with high turnover and create a terrible environment.
- CadmiumYellow 4y ago
  My current company has the most humane interview process I have ever experienced. When I started I was shocked by how many good engineers had stuck around for 5+ years, a few for more than 10. That's crazy for a non-FAANG non-legacy software company. It turned out to be a great sign that the company respects one's time and well-being!

Eumenes 4y ago

I don't think this anecdotal reddit post says much of anything. We don't know the persons resume/background/experience, nor the position. $65/hr with 10 years of experience is uber low. That rate is comparable to FANG intern pay. You could find a contract job 15 years ago paying that, working for some insurance company or large boring bank. It just sounds like a shit job at a shit company. Probably located in a small market/geo. OP also says "actual client" - so this job is likely via a third party (either a staffing firm or some MSP); AKA that $65/hr rate is even lower than it should be, because the third party needs to take its 20-40% cut. There are still 1000s of open developer jobs.

olavgg 4y ago

Hey everyone, if you're frustrated with interviewing processes I high recommend build your own company. You do not have to aim for 1 billion USD valuation after 5 years. Just aim for happiness and make your customers happy too. It is not as hard nor scary as many of you think it is. It requires you to take responsibility though. The world is still mostly running on spreadsheets and we all know software developer skills can transform spreadsheets into better business value.

gymbeaux 4y ago
It’s true, and partially why I pivoted away from web development. Web development is so repetitive. It can be oversimplified to “make me a GUI for this database”. Yawn. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life correcting my CSS and JS for subtle changes to browser engines. When IE died, Safari took over as the “problem browser”. I think there will always be a “problem browser”.
jongjong 4y ago
It's very difficult to pull off though. Especially outside the US. My advice is: - Don't aim too big (there will be way more competition if you're trying to build a world-changing product). - Don't go into any sector where big tech corporations are already offering products (no matter how bad those products are, you will not be able to compete on marketing; nobody will find out that your product exists). - Find a niche. The more boring and tedious the niche, the more likely you are to succeed. Basically, base your entire strategy around minimizing competition at all costs. Do not underestimate competition. Do not underestimate the power of a great big pile of capital in the hands of your competitors; no matter how terrible they are. This is not capitalism. This is crony-capitalism. NEVER FORGET THAT. As you rise up the ranks, prepare for less ass kicking and more ass kissing.

Mizoguchi 4y ago

The hiring process has been like this for a long time. I had a hiatus from work in 2016 and when I tried to get back to the job market it was impossible to find anything, even when I was over qualified for many of the positions I applied to and was even willing to take a considerable pay cut just because I was switching business domains (although the stack and many of the required soft skills to do the job remain the same) The vast majority of the interviewers I faced had no idea what they were doing or trying to measure. Loop interviews were the worst because it generally takes just one guy out out five to dislike you even if you had a great time with the other four. I mean I bet most of these guys in loop interviews would not even hire themselves It became so dreadful and time consuming that I had to tell recruiters right away I would not be doing any whiteboarding or solving puzzles. Pair programming and short take home projects were fine. That helped filtering companies but my leads dropped by 90%.

rickstanley 4y ago
I can relate to the hiatus situation and "one dislike". I'm employed right now, for about 1 and half years, but there was a time that I tried to switch path from Web/Mobile developer to full backend developer, and in this attempt I got a job interview for a digital bank; I had everything checked out and expected to continue to step 2, even a friend of mine who works there thought I'd pass the process easily, but to our surprise, I didn't make it to the next step, and when I asked the interviewer for feedback they gave me a bullet list with just one bullet saying that I didn't "explore business logic much"! It didn't make any sense! I found it preposterous and insulting, to say the least. When I ask for feedback, I want to know what are you looking for and why I wasn't compatible with your position.
- yuuho 4y ago
  That's standard. Honest feedback can get them in legal trouble. Making up a BS reason is expected if somebody's personality was really off-putting. Nobody is ever going to give you honest feedback about that.
- arp242 4y ago
  It's more or less impossible to review non-trivial code without feedback from the author (i.e. have a conversation) outside of cases where it's just truly obviously awful. Often stuff just gets rejected for "I wouldn't have written it like this". Okay, fine; but that doesn't mean I can't write it like that. But if I don't know what you want... The reason people don't give concrete feedback is because there often just isn't a clear one beyond "I don't like it".

bitwize 4y ago

This is happening because it's drilled into managers' heads that one bad hire is disastrous for the team/company. So the cost of a bad hire exceeds the cost (to the company) of implementing arbitrary amounts of screening to make sure bad hires are caught -- even when you take into account the effect of a very high false positive rate prolonging the interview process.

bick_nyers 4y ago
No one gets fired for hiring someone from MIT, after all, if the candidate were crazy or incompetent, they wouldn't have gotten a degree from MIT!

majikaja 4y ago

To think people said highly paid developer positions would be plentiful forever... What happens to HN when software engineering is just viewed as a typical job no longer associated with startup culture?

mech422 4y ago
LOL - Heh, COBOL didn't work out to well for making 'developers' entry level personnel. :-D IBM had dreams of minimum wage programmers what - 50 years ago now ?
- majikaja 4y ago
  I never said entry level. Just 'IT guy' status. No real seat at the decision making table.
  - mech422 4y ago
    Oh, sorry - guess I mis-interpreted your "highly paid" comment.. As for decision making - like every other field, I think that has more to do with the individual then anything else. Some people are good at it sorta naturally gravitate that way, others have no interest or skill in it. I know I'm much happier as an IC/team lead/etc. Sitting in meetings and paperwork really aren't my thing :-/

mech422 4y ago

Thanks for linking straight to old reddit :-)

avinassh 4y ago
iirc, HN also adds old to reddit links

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

I found it strange that at the height of the hiring frenzy when everybody was complaining about not being able to find people... is precisely when this stuff seemed to hit peak.

RamblingCTO 4y ago

I think we should start hiring in the US :D that's horrible. We do 30 mins of chit chat (general fit) and then meet the team + quick deep-dive on tech without flip charts or any tests (the German market doesn't work like that). And that's it. The second meeting on site including pizza with the team.

konschubert 4y ago
I've had interviews like this and it was weird. Like... don't you want to see my skills?
- mywittyname 4y ago
  You can chitchat and learn someone's skills. It takes practice, but it's the same skill set for solving problems. Ask what they did, what problems they encountered, and dig in three levels on the interesting topics.
- RamblingCTO 4y ago
  I would prefer to see actual code you've written, GitHub or something. I don't care about fantasy logic tests on a whiteboard, I feel they are non-predictive. I also always talk about values (clean code, writing tests etc.) and you get a feel about aligned values. And most importantly, in a small company the team fit is the biggest thing of all.
mathverse 4y ago
I work for a german scaleup and I had a full day interview. It was not a horrible leet code stuff but it was definitely a time killer. Can you share the name of your company or a way to contact you?
- RamblingCTO 4y ago
  Sure: cs@do24.eu
em500 4y ago
German (and most other non-US) companies offer much lower compensations for devs than US companies. This is an aspect that I find most often overlooked in the complaints about tough US dev interviews. The compensation for US devs is extremely high, both compared to other US jobs, and to non-US dev jobs. The FAANG get literally millions of applications per year, so the interviews must be setup to fail the vast majority of applicants.

ianpurton 4y ago

Contrast this with raising a pull request for an open source project. There's no interview, just turn up, fix something, hope it gets accepted.

hexis 4y ago
The bar is a lot lower when they're not obligated to pay you.

jppope 4y ago

Related: https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/funny-interviews/ https://jonpauluritis.com/articles/funny-interviews/

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

It was all over the place in terms of interview practices last year when I was looking -- which I found odd given that that was kind of the height of demand; start of last year people were complaining about not being able to find people, but then the interviews would often be quite crazy. But I think it's only going to get worse now that the market is getting flooded with people coming from rounds of lay-offs, and the VC market tightening, etc.

GuB-42 4y ago

How much does it cost the company? The process described is 4-5 hours taking time from people who have jobs to do, and they don't look like the cheapest employees. With rejections and applicants who finally turn off the offer, it must be quite significant, especially for a 6 month contract.

gregjor 4y ago

These stories make me glad I don’t go through the interview nonsense. I’ve worked in software for 40 years, had exactly one of these ridiculous interviews. Despite years of relevant experience I bombed it because I couldn’t guess something stupid like how many tennis balls fit into Chicago. Recruiter told me they hired a more qualified candidate. Then two months later I got a desperate call asking me to start tomorrow. The person who aced the interview couldn’t actually do anything. I told them to stuff it, I had already found a better gig. I have refused garbage personality tests by saying those violate the ADA. Think about what position that puts the company in. And I’ve had offers even after flatly refusing Myers-Brigg or similar nonsense. This shit keeps happening because people put up with it and play along.

freejazz 4y ago
Do you claim a disability when applying for those jobs? Just curious - it sounds like a good idea to pushback.
- the_last_human 4y ago
  Not OP, but just want to make it clear to other readers that you can claim disability at any point, or never, it’s up to the individual.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    I understand that but they have to be on notice that you have a disability in order to either accommodate it or not
- gregjor 4y ago
  You don't have to discuss any disability. I leave that to the interviewer's imagination. The point is to let them know they are already on thin ice. They would have to show how they administer their tests fairly, how those tests have some scientific basis and predictive value, are necessary for the job, and don't discriminate against protected groups. Of course they can't show those things so they have always just dropped the issue. I've had recruiters try to haul out their personality tests too, just say no. Companies fear one thing even more than making a bad hire, and that's getting sued for their shoddy interviewing/HR practices. A complaint can trigger investigations and lawsuits from the state, not from the candidate. The ADA is sufficiently vague and comprehensive at the same time that it's a bogey-man for HR people.

askonomm 4y ago

Ever since I stopped doing mainstream stuff, and went niche[1], I've had zero problems finding a job and I'm not that special. There's a lot of people on the planet, more every day, so if you expect your life in the gray mass to get easier over time, well, it probably will only get harder. [1]: https://repl.ee/blog/the-niche-programmer https://repl.ee/blog/the-niche-programmer

lucidone 4y ago

The comment about healthcare (life-altering health outcomes at play) interviewing being less of a rigorous process than screening the devs for icanhazcheeseburger is spot on. What the fuck is wrong with us?

w10-1 4y ago
Nothing. You hire a responsible experts when you want to trust them with full decision authority. You can only do this if there's no real risk of failure. But when you're producing software with real risks, you have a QA-first process that details, validates, and verifies all requirements. You have a large team, cross-checking (and helping) each other. The key virtue of a developer in this context is diligence and honesty. It's a great gig. In FAANG and software-only products, you're always on the critical path. For medical devices, it's typically the chemistry or device that sets the schedule, so software can proceed at an even pace. Plus, you're building something meaningful!

the_only_law 4y ago

I have my first interview in 4 months tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'm going to completely fail. I'm not sure what I'm going to do if I don't find something soon though, the few recruiters trickling in have started suspiciously asking how long I've been on the market. I've kinda expected I would end up here for years, I've just completely to prepare for it.

didgetmaster 4y ago

Even more infuriating are interviews that expect you to complete a complicated 'homework assignment' that is essentially the company trying to get free coding work from its applicants. I once interviewed where they gave me a big assignment to complete. I must have spent about 8 hours on it. Since I wanted them to see my thought process along with code examples; I gave them something that was about half pseudo-code and half real working code. The hiring manager said they couldn't accept it until I had converted all the pseudo code into working code as well, along with a set of tests that exercised the code. I estimated that the assignment would take me an additional 20 hours or so to complete. I told them that I had spent enough time working for free and if they wanted to pay me for the work I was doing, I would be happy to complete it. They declined, which told me all I needed to know about the company.

1970-01-01 4y ago

One of the first questions you need to ask is "what is your hiring process" followed-up with "what is the hiring timeline" This single question can save you hours of your life and weeks of waiting to hear back.

antibasilisk 4y ago

Honestly I'm at the point now where I'm considering moving on from software as a career. I've kinda got what I wanted out of it anyway and most of it is snakeoil anyway. I just need to find a way to meet my basic living expenses with minimal work.

devnullbrain 4y ago

It's not all hellfire. I accepted a job offer earlier this month. There is distinctly less opportunity at tier 1 public companies (FAANG etc., and even those are still hiring) but I still had plenty of interviews and got a reasonable payrise.

pythonbase 4y ago

This is the main reason I opt for freelance work rather than going full time. I don't want to spend so much time preparing for an interview / test / what-not only to be stalled or excused for some unmentionable reason. Freelance market is awesome these days with more businesses reducing in-house staff and outsource whatever they can to cut operational costs.

DamnInteresting 4y ago

I have been unable to find work for so long that I am on the cusp of exiting the industry. I need a paycheck. I've been in full stack web dev for over 20 years, and I've never once had trouble finding a job before now. For months it's been hard to get any response to an application, let alone an interview. And when I do get responses, they are often strange. One company where I would have been a perfect fit claimed that my code sample had "scary" SQL injection vulnerabilities. It did not, I have been doing this for decades, and I know how to sanitize my inputs. I asked for specific file name and line number, and they sent back a vague non-response on how to identify vulnerabilities, so I stopped pursuing it. It was a lost cause, even if I showed them how they were mistaken, it wouldn't work out. I suspect they were using some kind of automated scanner that flagged some false positives. I don't want to stop making software professionally, but that decision may not be in my hands.

glonq 4y ago

I've been hiring and managing developers and engineers for almost 20 years, and I don't/won't do any of this nonsense. During the course of a single interview I describe what we are building and how we are building it, and invite the candidate to explain if/how they could participate in that. One or two senior guys from the team will ask them some smart questions about real-world problems and complexities to get a sense that they know their stuff. No quizzes or puzzles or abstract questions. No homework. No second or third or fourth interview.