Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

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> who are you to say they will be "bored" or "twiddling their thumbs all day" ?

But that's not the real reason. The reason is they are afraid because the experienced person can see through bullshit better. They are harder to fool and brainwash to work for free. With stuff like "There won't be a paycheck next month, but don't worry we are turning corner, once we exit you'll all drive Ferraris!", "We are changing the world, just need to finalize this feature by next week, so let's all work a little harder (and by all I mean you all)". Someone with experience will say something "Thanks but no thanks, I've heard this before" a new college graduate will say "Yay! Let's do it, I'll impress everyone with how little sleep I can get each night".

And I am not being too hyperbolic here. I've heard from owners before confessing that hey love hiring college grads because they can drive them hard, they are full of enthusiasm and are not "tainted" by other corporations.

Another friend from another startup, confessed that they like those take-home interview problems. Stuff like "Implement a distributed database over the weekend and show us the code on Monday during the interview". The reason is because they can get the really desperate and dedicated people willing to invest that much time into projects. As when crunch time comes, they'll need those "skills".

It may be less nefarious than that. There may be legitimate concern that the employee is just looking for a short term paycheck while they look for something more senior. Most managers are probably not thrilled with the idea of investing in someone who may not even stay a year.

Obviously it is more complicated than that. Just saying there could be legitimate concerns.

Based on what?

Based on the idea the overqualified implies the job role is beneath them, and assuming the job's requirements correlates to pay, then the person in question may find better pay, and thus leave, at any time (because they are already worth more than you're giving them, and more than what you're willing to give, given the role performed)

> Based on the idea the overqualified implies the job role is beneath them...

So offer them the job and provide a path for more responsibility and pay as they prove themselves. I don't see the downside for the company. There's probably a downside for certain middle managers, I guess.

What if the company doesn't need a role with more responsibility, at least in the short term?

I think if you can make a choice between a junior and senior engineer you'd take senior every time. Companies need senior people with experience. Lots of junior positions are the result of there not being enough experienced people to fill the roles so companies are trying to upskill junior people.

At least that's my read on the situation. If I were a manager and I could choose between hiring somebody with 10 years experience and fresh college graduate I'd hire the experienced guy for sure (or hire them both). The only reason I can see why you would only hire junior is if your budget is limited (because of course the person with 10 years industry experience will require higher compensation than fresh graduate).

Presumably if I'm looking to fulfill the role of an intern, and no open positions for senior management, then I'm probably not looking for a new senior manager.

And more particularly, Im probably not looking to pay for one, and Im probably not looking for a senior manager to do intern level work for intern level pay with the expectation of approaching senior management work and pay.

More likely than not, Im looking for an intern who I can pay intern wages, and maybe slightly more as he improves.

There are many less extreme cases than that.

Sure, but things happen. People quit their jobs. The organization grows. I suppose there are organizations that will absolutely not need a more qualified candidate in the next year or so. I haven't seen that organization yet, but I suppose it exists.

>More likely than not, Im looking for an intern who I can pay intern wages, and maybe slightly more as he improves.

The problem with this interpretation is that a lot of these so called "intern-level" jobs are not labeled as such. In fact, many of these opportunities require this so-called intern to have senior level skills based upon the job description and (no joke) seven-part interview spread over several weeks. So if these companies are just looking for interns, why not decide in one simple interview? And the other problem here is that many who apply to be older "interns" who are career changers are also rejected. There is really no way for the hiring company to explain that away as over-qualification.

What do you think about companies who use a "fire fast" approach to staffing? You cannot simultaneously support that and denigrate people as short-termers.

> There may be legitimate concern that the employee is just looking for a short term paycheck while they look for something more senior.

So set up an employment agreement that addresses those concerns. Use a vesting schedule or clawbacks on a signing bonus.

> Most managers are probably not thrilled with the idea of investing in someone who may not even stay a year.

Most managers aren't optimizing their technology for productivity, especially when new team members are concerned. This is a solvable problem. That is, "we're concerned they might quit in nine months" can be rephrased as "we're not capable of onboarding an experienced new hire in a reasonable amount of time".

What's a reasonable amount of time? Companies are often mocked and criticized for having absurd requirements in specific technologies rather than hiring smart people and training them - but that necessarily requires a significant onboarding time. And what about companies that have many in-house tooling, frameworks, etc? In another thread, a Google employee said the manager didn't expect them to make a real contribution in the first six months. Is that unreasonable?

A healthy repository allows you to make a trivial patch without fear. The surprises will all be documented in an obvious place. All of it (at least the important parts) will be tested one way or another. "How do I know if my patch worked" will be automated somehow so you don't even need to talk to them about how they broke things. It will either be obvious or clearly documented how to step through the code while it runs on a real-enough set of data, so that people can watch it work and learn about it that way.

> In another thread, a Google employee said the manager didn't expect them to make a real contribution in the first six months. Is that unreasonable?

I can't comment without more details. In particular "real contribution" can mean a lot of things. I think a trivial bug patch (forgot to validate an input) or implementing an already designed feature (we have five of these, implement the sixth) should be possible in the first couple weeks.

I am surprised that Google has code bases like that. I was under the impression that Google has engineers from completely different parts of the company transforming each others' code all the time so they can make breaking changes to libraries.

I was actually overstating the case :) the quote is "My manager has told me that I should not feel pressured to contribute at all for my first 6 months and I should feel free to just focus on learning as much as I can." (emphasis mine)

I once worked at a place that also said this, I hired on with a cadre of 5 other senior developers and two of them really took that to heart, and didn't do anything for six months. They were both PIP'ed (performance improvement plan) and out (left volentarily) at 8 months. A savy employee ought to take the "6 months to get acclimated" with a large dose of salt.

In the end, a truly "senior" developer doesn't need training on anything, just point them at the code, build and deployment scripts, and that's all they need.

I had a completely opposite experience one time. Was also told to take it easy for the first year, wasn't really given any real work to do, etc.

I did not want to waste time and lose my skills, so I talked to a few people here and there, found a few sharp corners in the product that many wanted to improve and started working on them.

Turned out, the reason behind the "relax for 1 year" rule was stack ranking. In order to promote the right people and award them bonuses, the management needed a steady flow of newcomers that would perform poorly and get abysmal review scores.

Here's my thought about that. If they take your offer because they're having a hard time finding a more senior job, it won't suddenly get easier for them to find a more senior job after you hire them. So I think this risk may be overblown.

Sure, but the 'overqualified' person is going to be job searching from day one. The alternative might say a year or two to grow and then look for something better.

> it won't suddenly get easier for them to find a more senior job

My experience tells me otherwise. As soon as you have a job, everyone wants to hire you. If you have no job, nobody wants to touch you. It's kind of like dating, where scarcity makes you attractive.

Most managers are probably not thrilled with the idea of investing in someone who may not even stay a year.

Most managers can't see past next quarter's numbers. A year is long term planning that is well beyond them!

So why is that a harder to screen for that potential problem than any of the other ones? I can see why it's a concern, but it's also a concern that they are lying/deluded about their actual skills or are going to show up to work hungover and useless or slack off too much.

If you said those other ones were a legitimate concern for avoiding hiring young people I would say "... I guess, so learn to interview properly and lower your risk of that". The scale of that risk doesn't fit the scale of the issue at all.

Isn't that what contracts are for? That's how it works in sports. You stay with the team for X years, and after that you're a free agent. Why can't it work the same way in technology? The way I see it, employers are trying to have it both ways: they want you to stay, but they also want the ability to fire you as they please.

It is why i like contracting and find it so more honest on my and companies side of things. They say "work here for 6 months", I say "ok" after that they can ask me to stay and I can agree or not or they can not renew me - either is fine.

Being an employee, generally (not always but it must be 99% of places) you need to:

1. love the company you are working for. 2. be willing to receive emails constantly. 3. not be attracted to other companies. 4. accept begin laid-off as and when the company desires.

Contracting on a fixed length contract, I am almost guaranteed to have work until the end of that contract - working for a company, 0 guarantee i will have a job in 1,2,6,12,18 whatever months.

(how the hell do you get lists on multiple lines here ha ha)

> how the hell do you get lists on multiple lines here

Leave a blank line between each item.

1. Foo

2. Bar

Yeah, but then how long will you be out of work until the next contract comes along?

Years ago, I tried running my own consulting company. I found that I was fine at the technical side, but I really and truly sucked on the business side. I just couldn’t keep the contracts rolling in, and I couldn’t do the marketing and PR, etc....

More importantly, by trying so hard to do those things that I was really horribly bad at, I ended up hurting myself on the technical side.

So, how long can you afford to not have any income? How long until you go hungry and get kicked out into the cold?

I agree. With the exception of all but the fewest scenarios, a hiring decision is not to going to come down solely to one-dimension like this. It's also painting with a very broad stroke that all hiring managers think and/or behave this way. They don't.

Sure, there may be legitimate concerns. But ask me about them. Talk to me. If you’re willing to hire someone, then you’re presumably willing to trust them enough to believe something of what they might tell you.

Don’t tell me that I’ve got a great resume and that you’re looking for someone who is just exactly like me but five years younger, and then ask if I know anyone who is looking.

Interesting, as a candidate I prefer the take home project because then I don't have to cram largely irrelevant knowledge.

Well apparently you have expendable weekends :)

So do you - it's just that your priorities are different. Which is totally fine, but let's not pretend there is a class of people who cannot possibly take 2-3 hours out of the next 48 to do something. With rare exception, they're just making the (completely reasonable, completely okay) choice not to.

I am obviously only referring to programmers, knowledge workers etc.

Hah. that sounds like my dad telling me I should get more out of my day!

yes it’s entirely possible to be at a stage where you can’t pull more hours out of your sleep or other obligations to fulfill X task you truly want to. I really have a lot invested in believing it.

Could you burn the candle at both ends ? Sure! But I the case that you already are, what more can you do?

If you are a knowledge worker - and on HN, perhaps you do have the spare time.

But if you are older - Do you need to take care of your family? Help around the house, sleep? Maybe not! But usually the older you are, the more likely it is that you don’t have those hours lying around to just burn a weekend at your convenience.

Which supports the idea that this is going to be a request (take home exercises) that will favor one type of person. The person with the freedom to burn that time.

Really ?

A very competent friend had to cram for months in order to pass the whiteboard interviews at one of the tech giants.

I had to spend a Saturday on this test (it was scoped to be a 6 hours project, I spent the day on it with frequent and long pauses).

My time investment is orders of magnitude lower what it would have been for a whiteboard.

I do, too, when it's a substitute for on the spot grilling. I think the idea in the example is that is a massively over scoped project.

A distributed database is ok as long you can assume reliable network and no partitions :P

I do think that "homework" interview problems are better than pointless algo.

Homework problems should be doable in the same time, just at home. If you present your results afterwards they can also be good to judge presentation skills.

Distributed database seems like a quite complex project. Let's say I could do a minimal version of etcd using raft or paxos over the weekend but it would probably take most of my weekend's time, I think 10-20 hours work at least. That is not reasonable as a home work for job interview.

Something which takes 2-3 hours is much more reasonable and I am willing to do that because it leaves me with enough time for family / life over the weekend or to do homework for few different companies to not put all my eggs into single basket when interviewing.

If you are looking for a job you would rarely only concentrate on one opportunity. For sure you would try to compare at least 2-3 comparable jobs to choose the one which fits you best. So these sort of tests / home work assignments should be quite simple, probably algorithmic questions which can be completed in 50-100 lines of code.

I think it depends on the applicant, I'm willing to do such a project but the prices I will demand if hired will be markedly higher than a firm that offered me a simpler project that consumed less time. The way I see it is you have limited the risk you have undertaken in hiring me thus I can see more of the fruits of my labor.

Raft or Paxos are used for partition tolerance and there are implementations that you can use. Maybe you will spend more time but you will learn something useful.

You will easily spend 10-20h for "normal" coding interview.

  5h to refresh basic algorithms BFS, DFS, sorts, Trees.
  2h for hackerrank challenge from clueless HR person
  3h for another preparation before whiteboarding on site
  1h whiteboarding before any design question is asked

A benefit of "normal" interview process is that you chase multiple opportunities and your prep time will compound for better results.

Have 3 kids. Take home interviews won't be happening for a while in my case.

There is nothing wrong with that as long as you're aware of what that selection does.

Just like the topic at hand, that kind of requirement is correlated with other characteristics, think young, fresh grad, not married probably, no kids, really wants the job, maybe a bit desperate, doesn't mind expending their free time etc.

In some cases the companies are aware of what they are doing. They know it is not about the take-home test but about picking those types of candidates most of all, and they are ok not selecting the rest. This was my friend's company.

In other cases, companies are not aware of it, they just copy what others are doing or say believe that this testing method is better, so use it strictly for that reason. Which is fine too, it might work for them better. However, they'll still end up selecting certain candidates and not others, but they just don't do it explicitly.

Last interview I had contained a take home test, it was for a senior position.

The test was designed to be a 6 hours task. I spent a Saturday on it (with regular pauses to go out a bit, play games, watch tv, etc)

I got the job. I have started there very recently so I can't really speak about the amount of work / week in that place.

Again, compared to a very skilled friend who had to cram for 2 hours each evening for a couple of months (and speaking with other people I know having gone through that, it seems pretty standard), I really see my time investment as ridiculously less than an on-site whiteboard.

I think you're wrong. Sure, I won't buy the hype, and I won't pull the all-nighter, but I'll still get more stuff done than the people who do stay all night. I may tell you your schedule is unrealistic, but it was unrealistic whether I told you or not, and you won't make it realistic by sleep-depriving your new grads.

Any owner who thinks they can get more real work done by driving a college grad hard than they can by hiring me is an owner who's short-changing their bottom line.

> but I'll still get more stuff done than the people who do stay all night.

I agree you. Was just presenting someone else's perspective. Don't think such things are usually shared or discussed so I found it interesting. I personally advocated for a more diverse team - more women, more age ranges, more cultural backgrounds, rather than just young college guys.

I'm not sure of that. A senior with ~15 years of experience (typically in his late 30s) doesn't accept this kind of bullshit but is still highly employable.

Age discrimination probably starts close to 50 I think.

This says more about those hiring than those being hired.

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