4 ms·

I must ask once again why we are having these 5+ round interview cycles and we aren't able to filter for qualities that the work requires of its talent. What ar

I must ask once again why we are having these 5+ round interview cycles and we aren't able to filter for qualities that the work requires of its talent. What are all those rounds for if we're getting engineers who aren't as valued for the team's needs at the end of the pipeline?

venturecruelty 11mo ago
It's the cargo cult kayfabe of it all. People do it because Google used to do it, now it's just spread like a folk religion. But nobody wants guilds or licensure, so we have to make everyone do a week-long take-home and then FizzBuzz in front of a very awkward committee. Might as well just read chicken bones, at least that would be less humiliating.
- johnnyanmac 11mo ago
  Yeah, I'd be more than fine with licensing if I didn't have to keep going through 5 rounds of trivia only to be ghosted. Let me do that once and show I can code my way out of a paper bag.
- nradov 11mo ago
  And who would write the guild membership or licensure criteria? How much should those focus on ReactJS versus validation criteria for cruise missile flight control software?
  - throwup238 11mo ago
    Guild members? Who else? You’re asking these rhetorical questions as if we haven’t had centuries of precedent here, both bad and good. How does the AMA balance between neurosurgeons and optometrists? Bar associations between corporate litigators and family estate lawyers? Professional engineering associations between civil engineers and chemical engineers?
    - nradov 11mo ago
      You seem to be confused. The AMA doesn't control physician licensing. That's done by state medical boards. But are you suggesting we have separate licenses for every different type of developer? We have new types coming up every few years. The whole idea of guilds for developers is just stupid and impractical. It could never work on any long term or large scale basis.
      - throwup238 11mo ago
        Good catch on the AMA. I should have said medical licensing boards. > But are you suggesting we have separate licenses for every different type of developer? We have new types coming up every few years. I didn’t suggest that at all and I honestly can’t figure out how you came to that interpretation unless you are hallucinating. > The whole idea of guilds for developers is just stupid and impractical. It could never work on any long term or large scale basis. What a convincing argument! You should get a cabinet post.
    - shagie 11mo ago
      > Professional engineering associations between civil engineers and chemical engineers? One takes the FE exam ( https://ncees.org/exams/fe-exam/ https://ncees.org/exams/fe-exam/ ). You will note at the bottom of the page "FE Chemical" and "FE Civil" which are two different exams. Then you have an apprenticeship for four years as an Engineer in Training (EIT). Following, that, you take the PE exam. https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/ https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/ You will note that the PE exams are even more specialized to the field. Depending on the state you are licensed in (states tend to have reciprocal licensing - but not necessarily and not necessarily for all fields). For example, if you were licensed in Washington, you would need to pass another exam specific to California to work for a California firm. Furthermore, there is the continuing education requirements (that are different for each state). https://www.pdhengineer.com/pe-continuing-education-requirements/ https://www.pdhengineer.com/pe-continuing-education-requirem... You have to take 30 hours of certified study in your field across every two years. This isn't a lot, but people tend to fuss about "why do CS people keep being expected to learn on our own?" ... Well, if we were Professional Engineers it wouldn't just be an expectation - it would be a requirement to maintain the license. You will again note the domain of the professional development is different - so civil and mechanical engineers aren't necessarily taking the same types of classes. These requirements are set by the state licensure and part of legislative processes.
- ThrowawayR2 11mo ago
  Guilds and licensure perform gatekeeping, by definition, and the more useful they are at providing a good hiring signal, the more people get filtered out by the gatekeeping. So there's no support for it because everyone is afraid that effective guilds or licensing would leave them out in the cold.
ponector 11mo ago
I can understand such process for freshman, but for industry veteran with 10+ years of experience, with with recommendation from multiple senior managers? And yet welcome to leetcode grind.
- johnnyanmac 11mo ago
  Yeah, I was told I'd get less of this as I got real experience. More additions to the pile of lies and misconceptions. If you need to fizzbuzz me, fine. But why am I still making word search solver project in my free time as if I'm applying for a college internship?
  - zmgsabst 11mo ago
    I’ve started using ChatGPT for their take home projects, with only minor edits or refactors myself. If they’re upset I saved a couple hours of tedium, they’re the wrong employer for me. And I’m being an accelerationist hoping the whole thing collapses under its own ridiculousness.
    - ponector 11mo ago
      Also they explicitly say to not use AI assistance for such assignments. Recruitment is broken even more than before chatgpt.
getnormality 11mo ago
There's no fix for this problem in hiring upfront. Anyone can cram and fake if they expect a gravy train on the other end. If you want people to work after they're hired, you have to be able to give direct negative feedback, and if that doesn't work, fire quickly and easily.
- johnnyanmac 11mo ago
  >Anyone can cram and fake if they expect a gravy train on the other end. If you're still asking trvia, yes. Maybe it's time to shift from the old filter and update the process? If you can see in the job that a 30 minute PR is the problem, then maybe replace that 3rd leetcode round with 30 minutes of pair programming. Hard to chatGPT in real time without sounding suspicion.
  - nradov 11mo ago
    That approach to interviewing will cause a lot of false negatives. Many developers, especially juniors, get anxious when thrown into a pair programming task with someone they don't know and will perform badly regardless of their actual skills.
    - johnnyanmac 11mo ago
      I understand that and had some hard anxiety myself back then. Even these days I may be a bit shakey when love coding in an interview setting? But is the false negative for a nervous pair programmer worse than a false positive for a leetcode question? Ideally a good interviewer would be able to separate the anxiety from the actual thinking and see that this person can actually think, but that's another undervalued skill among industry.
      - koolba 11mo ago
        I don’t know why people are so hesitant to just fire bad people. It’s pretty obvious when someone starts actually working if they’re going to a net positive. On the order of weeks, not months. Given how much these orgs pay, both direct to head hunters and indirect in interview time, might as well probationally hire the whoever passes the initial sniff test. That also lets you evaluate longer term habits like punctuality, irritability, and overall not-being-a-jerkness.
locknitpicker 11mo ago
> I must ask once again why we are having these 5+ round interview cycles and we aren't able to filter for qualities that the work requires of its talent. Hiring well is hard, specially if compensation isn't competitive enough to attract talented individuals who have a choice. It's also hard to change institutional hiring practices. People don't get fired by buying IBM, and they also don't get fired if they follow the same hiring practices in place in 2016. > What are all those rounds for if we're getting engineers who aren't as valued for the team's needs at the end of the pipeline? Software development is a multidiscinary field. It involves multiple non-overlapping skill sets, bot hard skills and soft skills. Also, you need multiple people vetting a candidate to eliminate corruption and help weed out candidates who outright clash with company culture. You need to understand that hiring someone is a disruptive activity, that impacts not only what skill sets are available in your organization but also how the current team dynamics. If you read around, you'll stumble upon stories of people who switch roles in reaction to new arrivals. It's important to get this sort of stuff right.
- johnnyanmac 11mo ago
  >It's important to get this sort of stuff right. Well I'm still waiting. Your second paragraph seems to contradict the first. Which perfectly encapsulates the issue with hiring. Too afraid to try new things, so instead add beuracracy to leases accountability.
  - locknitpicker 11mo ago
    > Well I'm still waiting. Your second paragraph seems to contradict the first. Which perfectly encapsulates the issue with hiring. Too afraid to try new things, so instead add beuracracy to leases accountability. I think you haven't spend much time thinking about the issue. Changing hiring practices does not mean they are improve. It only means they changed. You are still faced with the task of hiring adequate talent, but if you change processes them now you don't have baselines and past experiences to guide you. You keep those baselines if you keep your hiring practices then you stick with something that is proven to work albeit with debatable optimality, and mitigate risks because your experience with the process helps you be aware of some red flags. The worst case scenario is that you repeat old errors, but those will be systematic errors which are downplayed by the fact that your whole organization is proof that your hiring practices are effective.

venturecruelty 11mo ago

It's the cargo cult kayfabe of it all. People do it because Google used to do it, now it's just spread like a folk religion. But nobody wants guilds or licensure, so we have to make everyone do a week-long take-home and then FizzBuzz in front of a very awkward committee. Might as well just read chicken bones, at least that would be less humiliating.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago
Yeah, I'd be more than fine with licensing if I didn't have to keep going through 5 rounds of trivia only to be ghosted. Let me do that once and show I can code my way out of a paper bag.
nradov 11mo ago
And who would write the guild membership or licensure criteria? How much should those focus on ReactJS versus validation criteria for cruise missile flight control software?
- throwup238 11mo ago
  Guild members? Who else? You’re asking these rhetorical questions as if we haven’t had centuries of precedent here, both bad and good. How does the AMA balance between neurosurgeons and optometrists? Bar associations between corporate litigators and family estate lawyers? Professional engineering associations between civil engineers and chemical engineers?
  - nradov 11mo ago
    You seem to be confused. The AMA doesn't control physician licensing. That's done by state medical boards. But are you suggesting we have separate licenses for every different type of developer? We have new types coming up every few years. The whole idea of guilds for developers is just stupid and impractical. It could never work on any long term or large scale basis.
    - throwup238 11mo ago
      Good catch on the AMA. I should have said medical licensing boards. > But are you suggesting we have separate licenses for every different type of developer? We have new types coming up every few years. I didn’t suggest that at all and I honestly can’t figure out how you came to that interpretation unless you are hallucinating. > The whole idea of guilds for developers is just stupid and impractical. It could never work on any long term or large scale basis. What a convincing argument! You should get a cabinet post.
  - shagie 11mo ago
    > Professional engineering associations between civil engineers and chemical engineers? One takes the FE exam ( https://ncees.org/exams/fe-exam/ https://ncees.org/exams/fe-exam/ ). You will note at the bottom of the page "FE Chemical" and "FE Civil" which are two different exams. Then you have an apprenticeship for four years as an Engineer in Training (EIT). Following, that, you take the PE exam. https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/ https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/ You will note that the PE exams are even more specialized to the field. Depending on the state you are licensed in (states tend to have reciprocal licensing - but not necessarily and not necessarily for all fields). For example, if you were licensed in Washington, you would need to pass another exam specific to California to work for a California firm. Furthermore, there is the continuing education requirements (that are different for each state). https://www.pdhengineer.com/pe-continuing-education-requirements/ https://www.pdhengineer.com/pe-continuing-education-requirem... You have to take 30 hours of certified study in your field across every two years. This isn't a lot, but people tend to fuss about "why do CS people keep being expected to learn on our own?" ... Well, if we were Professional Engineers it wouldn't just be an expectation - it would be a requirement to maintain the license. You will again note the domain of the professional development is different - so civil and mechanical engineers aren't necessarily taking the same types of classes. These requirements are set by the state licensure and part of legislative processes.
ThrowawayR2 11mo ago
Guilds and licensure perform gatekeeping, by definition, and the more useful they are at providing a good hiring signal, the more people get filtered out by the gatekeeping. So there's no support for it because everyone is afraid that effective guilds or licensing would leave them out in the cold.

ponector 11mo ago

I can understand such process for freshman, but for industry veteran with 10+ years of experience, with with recommendation from multiple senior managers? And yet welcome to leetcode grind.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago
Yeah, I was told I'd get less of this as I got real experience. More additions to the pile of lies and misconceptions. If you need to fizzbuzz me, fine. But why am I still making word search solver project in my free time as if I'm applying for a college internship?
- zmgsabst 11mo ago
  I’ve started using ChatGPT for their take home projects, with only minor edits or refactors myself. If they’re upset I saved a couple hours of tedium, they’re the wrong employer for me. And I’m being an accelerationist hoping the whole thing collapses under its own ridiculousness.
  - ponector 11mo ago
    Also they explicitly say to not use AI assistance for such assignments. Recruitment is broken even more than before chatgpt.

getnormality 11mo ago

There's no fix for this problem in hiring upfront. Anyone can cram and fake if they expect a gravy train on the other end. If you want people to work after they're hired, you have to be able to give direct negative feedback, and if that doesn't work, fire quickly and easily.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago
>Anyone can cram and fake if they expect a gravy train on the other end. If you're still asking trvia, yes. Maybe it's time to shift from the old filter and update the process? If you can see in the job that a 30 minute PR is the problem, then maybe replace that 3rd leetcode round with 30 minutes of pair programming. Hard to chatGPT in real time without sounding suspicion.
- nradov 11mo ago
  That approach to interviewing will cause a lot of false negatives. Many developers, especially juniors, get anxious when thrown into a pair programming task with someone they don't know and will perform badly regardless of their actual skills.
  - johnnyanmac 11mo ago
    I understand that and had some hard anxiety myself back then. Even these days I may be a bit shakey when love coding in an interview setting? But is the false negative for a nervous pair programmer worse than a false positive for a leetcode question? Ideally a good interviewer would be able to separate the anxiety from the actual thinking and see that this person can actually think, but that's another undervalued skill among industry.
    - koolba 11mo ago
      I don’t know why people are so hesitant to just fire bad people. It’s pretty obvious when someone starts actually working if they’re going to a net positive. On the order of weeks, not months. Given how much these orgs pay, both direct to head hunters and indirect in interview time, might as well probationally hire the whoever passes the initial sniff test. That also lets you evaluate longer term habits like punctuality, irritability, and overall not-being-a-jerkness.

locknitpicker 11mo ago

> I must ask once again why we are having these 5+ round interview cycles and we aren't able to filter for qualities that the work requires of its talent. Hiring well is hard, specially if compensation isn't competitive enough to attract talented individuals who have a choice. It's also hard to change institutional hiring practices. People don't get fired by buying IBM, and they also don't get fired if they follow the same hiring practices in place in 2016. > What are all those rounds for if we're getting engineers who aren't as valued for the team's needs at the end of the pipeline? Software development is a multidiscinary field. It involves multiple non-overlapping skill sets, bot hard skills and soft skills. Also, you need multiple people vetting a candidate to eliminate corruption and help weed out candidates who outright clash with company culture. You need to understand that hiring someone is a disruptive activity, that impacts not only what skill sets are available in your organization but also how the current team dynamics. If you read around, you'll stumble upon stories of people who switch roles in reaction to new arrivals. It's important to get this sort of stuff right.

johnnyanmac 11mo ago
>It's important to get this sort of stuff right. Well I'm still waiting. Your second paragraph seems to contradict the first. Which perfectly encapsulates the issue with hiring. Too afraid to try new things, so instead add beuracracy to leases accountability.
- locknitpicker 11mo ago
  > Well I'm still waiting. Your second paragraph seems to contradict the first. Which perfectly encapsulates the issue with hiring. Too afraid to try new things, so instead add beuracracy to leases accountability. I think you haven't spend much time thinking about the issue. Changing hiring practices does not mean they are improve. It only means they changed. You are still faced with the task of hiring adequate talent, but if you change processes them now you don't have baselines and past experiences to guide you. You keep those baselines if you keep your hiring practices then you stick with something that is proven to work albeit with debatable optimality, and mitigate risks because your experience with the process helps you be aware of some red flags. The worst case scenario is that you repeat old errors, but those will be systematic errors which are downplayed by the fact that your whole organization is proof that your hiring practices are effective.