5 ms·

I'm mixed on this, I can definitely appreciate the 10x TC boost but it makes hiring unbearable: I need hackers and now the market's flooded with very academical

I'm mixed on this, I can definitely appreciate the 10x TC boost but it makes hiring unbearable: I need hackers and now the market's flooded with very academically strong, much smarter than me and easily more talented PMCs. None of the existing methods e.g. leetcode work well, so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend. Something you'd likely have been exposed to in CS102 type stuff.

yamtaddle 3y ago
> I need hackers and now the market's flooded with very academically strong, much smarter than me and easily more talented PMCs. > so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend There are too many good candidates so you're having to... flog them harder? God, tech hiring is weird. People in other sectors of the economy look at me like I've just announced that I have cancer, when I explain what the tech interview world looks like.
- tcmart14 3y ago
  Yup. My wife finds it extremely odd that my interviews go more rounds and more hours for a job to write a simple CRUD app than for her interviewing for an ICU job as an RN.
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    Oh well you see writing a CRUD app is so much more important and serious and difficult than saving human lives. And bad programmer hires are uniquely damaging in a way that bad hires aren't in any industry with normal interview processes (which is nearly all of them) and there's just no way to mitigate those effects until they're nearly gone by applying common-sense best-practices to your processes, that you ought to be doing anyway. Nope, only solution's to put every candidate through the wringer, at enormous time & monetary expense to all concerned! Programmers catch a lot of shit for being immature or unprofessional, but I think tech management deserves a harder look, when it comes to those things.
    - intelVISA 3y ago
      Medicine and adjacent has pretty well-defined schooling pathways, afaik a nurse cannot claim to have picked up their skills 'extracurricularly' in the same manner that a future 10x SWE can - as a result we have a diverse pool that contains both CS grads from top schools who may be unsuitable, (plenty of incredible ones too, of course), alongside random 'uneducated' hackers who may be a good fit. Thus, in lieu of a standardized framework we have to invent our own. I very much agree though, the avg. CRUD shop could probably just ask Fizzbuzz and have the same outcome as these gauntlets.
      - yamtaddle 3y ago
        > Thus, in lieu of a standardized framework we have to invent our own. The FAANGs and similar could easily have created such a thing, and driven wide adoption of it. They find some other value in their very-expensive process, or they'd have gotten rid of it with the snap of their fingers, if that were the only reason. I suspect it's mainly to do with reducing turnover and, therefore, suppressing wages among their workers. Yes, despite those wages already being quite high. Wouldn't be the first time they've done it. "Solving" the problem would be trivial and relatively cheap, compared to the current processes, but it'd come at the cost of making it easier for employees to jump ship for more $$$, and none of them want that. Why do the rest do it? Cargo-culting, mostly.
        FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
        Also the typical hazing dynamics common to all cults.
    - tcmart14 3y ago
      For sure, its a management problem. I feel pretty confident, as just another engineer, I could sit down and shoot the wind about programming with someone for 30-45 minutes and know if they are worth their salt. No crazy assessments, no multiple rounds, just a conversation about the software industry and the process and tech.
mountainofdeath 3y ago
One of the side-effects of the technology crowd becoming saturated with the straight-laced, standardized-test oriented, topper types is that LeetCode aligns neatly with how you prepare. Right secondary school grades + near perfect exams -> Right Undergraduate Right undergraduate + LeetCode (basically an exam) -> Big Tech job " + Case interview prep -> High paying entry level management consulting job " + Right connections -> High paying entry level wall-st job " + High LSAT -> Right Law School -> High-paying BigLaw job " + High MCAT -> Right Med School -> Right Residency -> High Paying Physician Job If you notice, tech (Googles of the World and elite startups) have now fallen inline with the path for other white-shoe industries. FWIW, I know at least a few people from memory that had non-technical undergraduates (usually economics) but are excellent at studying for exams. Sure enough, they did enough LeetCode they could get a job at Meta or similar. Ask them what actually happens in a CPU or similar technical question and you get a blank stare.
commandlinefan 3y ago
> write a simple device driver from scratch ... exposed to in CS102 Where the hell did you go to school? When I did CS102, they were talking about linked lists and recursion. I would love to have seen device drivers, but when I was in school, everything was way more academic and impractical than that.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  Mine was even more basic. There were students struggling to understand what a variable is.
  - p_j_w 3y ago
    Were you an Electrical Engineering major, too?
    - sidewndr46 3y ago
      Computer Science.
nradov 3y ago
That is not an effective or realistic approach to hiring. Introductory CS courses seldom cover low-level device drivers. And you don't really need a particular type of "hacker" (whatever that means). Just hire someone with the right aptitude and send them to a technical training course. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1142662.1142667 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1142662.1142667
Abby0 3y ago
> so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend. Something you'd likely have been exposed to in CS102 type stuff. I am really curious to know what school has a cs 102 level class that teaches you writing a device driver? I could perhaps see this as part of Operating systems class, where you just learned about how kernels works using a minimal OS (like xv6). but that example you gave based on the expectation you mentioned are very extreme. This is why its hard to find talnet to hire.

yamtaddle 3y ago

> I need hackers and now the market's flooded with very academically strong, much smarter than me and easily more talented PMCs. > so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend There are too many good candidates so you're having to... flog them harder? God, tech hiring is weird. People in other sectors of the economy look at me like I've just announced that I have cancer, when I explain what the tech interview world looks like.

tcmart14 3y ago
Yup. My wife finds it extremely odd that my interviews go more rounds and more hours for a job to write a simple CRUD app than for her interviewing for an ICU job as an RN.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  Oh well you see writing a CRUD app is so much more important and serious and difficult than saving human lives. And bad programmer hires are uniquely damaging in a way that bad hires aren't in any industry with normal interview processes (which is nearly all of them) and there's just no way to mitigate those effects until they're nearly gone by applying common-sense best-practices to your processes, that you ought to be doing anyway. Nope, only solution's to put every candidate through the wringer, at enormous time & monetary expense to all concerned! Programmers catch a lot of shit for being immature or unprofessional, but I think tech management deserves a harder look, when it comes to those things.
  - intelVISA 3y ago
    Medicine and adjacent has pretty well-defined schooling pathways, afaik a nurse cannot claim to have picked up their skills 'extracurricularly' in the same manner that a future 10x SWE can - as a result we have a diverse pool that contains both CS grads from top schools who may be unsuitable, (plenty of incredible ones too, of course), alongside random 'uneducated' hackers who may be a good fit. Thus, in lieu of a standardized framework we have to invent our own. I very much agree though, the avg. CRUD shop could probably just ask Fizzbuzz and have the same outcome as these gauntlets.
    - yamtaddle 3y ago
      > Thus, in lieu of a standardized framework we have to invent our own. The FAANGs and similar could easily have created such a thing, and driven wide adoption of it. They find some other value in their very-expensive process, or they'd have gotten rid of it with the snap of their fingers, if that were the only reason. I suspect it's mainly to do with reducing turnover and, therefore, suppressing wages among their workers. Yes, despite those wages already being quite high. Wouldn't be the first time they've done it. "Solving" the problem would be trivial and relatively cheap, compared to the current processes, but it'd come at the cost of making it easier for employees to jump ship for more $$$, and none of them want that. Why do the rest do it? Cargo-culting, mostly.
      - FooBarBizBazz 3y ago
        Also the typical hazing dynamics common to all cults.
  - tcmart14 3y ago
    For sure, its a management problem. I feel pretty confident, as just another engineer, I could sit down and shoot the wind about programming with someone for 30-45 minutes and know if they are worth their salt. No crazy assessments, no multiple rounds, just a conversation about the software industry and the process and tech.

mountainofdeath 3y ago

One of the side-effects of the technology crowd becoming saturated with the straight-laced, standardized-test oriented, topper types is that LeetCode aligns neatly with how you prepare. Right secondary school grades + near perfect exams -> Right Undergraduate Right undergraduate + LeetCode (basically an exam) -> Big Tech job " + Case interview prep -> High paying entry level management consulting job " + Right connections -> High paying entry level wall-st job " + High LSAT -> Right Law School -> High-paying BigLaw job " + High MCAT -> Right Med School -> Right Residency -> High Paying Physician Job If you notice, tech (Googles of the World and elite startups) have now fallen inline with the path for other white-shoe industries. FWIW, I know at least a few people from memory that had non-technical undergraduates (usually economics) but are excellent at studying for exams. Sure enough, they did enough LeetCode they could get a job at Meta or similar. Ask them what actually happens in a CPU or similar technical question and you get a blank stare.

commandlinefan 3y ago

> write a simple device driver from scratch ... exposed to in CS102 Where the hell did you go to school? When I did CS102, they were talking about linked lists and recursion. I would love to have seen device drivers, but when I was in school, everything was way more academic and impractical than that.

sidewndr46 3y ago
Mine was even more basic. There were students struggling to understand what a variable is.
- p_j_w 3y ago
  Were you an Electrical Engineering major, too?
  - sidewndr46 3y ago
    Computer Science.

nradov 3y ago

That is not an effective or realistic approach to hiring. Introductory CS courses seldom cover low-level device drivers. And you don't really need a particular type of "hacker" (whatever that means). Just hire someone with the right aptitude and send them to a technical training course. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1142662.1142667 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/1142662.1142667

Abby0 3y ago

> so now we may resort to paid novel take homes e.g. write a simple device driver from scratch for the Intel E1000 in C99 over the weekend. Something you'd likely have been exposed to in CS102 type stuff. I am really curious to know what school has a cs 102 level class that teaches you writing a device driver? I could perhaps see this as part of Operating systems class, where you just learned about how kernels works using a minimal OS (like xv6). but that example you gave based on the expectation you mentioned are very extreme. This is why its hard to find talnet to hire.