Tech Companies Face a Fresh Crisis: Hiring | Hacker News Reader

Tech Companies Face a Fresh Crisis: Hiring

nytimes.com

18 pointssizzle12 comments

Yes, hiring is hard when you reject every candidate who can't breeze through leetcode hards in 20 mins.

I wonder how much tech companies paid nytimes to write this bs article. Most of my friends have a masters in CS from a top 50 uni, and plenty had work ex, and STILL had a ridiculously hard time getting hired.

Being international might have played a role, but fuck this perception that hiring is hard. If you are only targeting the tippy top candidates, yes it's hard, and that's by design.

Yes, masters and 5 years generally requires at least a few dozen applications...even if there’s proficiency in the tech at hand. I think having years of experience at a tier 1 company is one of the few shortcuts.

I doubt the really top companies -- top 10, say -- have any trouble finding staff, at least for low-level positions. These companies are mobbed by applicants, and can afford to pay top rates. But I can believe things are rather different farther down the totem-pole of prestige. How far down do you have to go before hiring becomes really difficult, and you can't just pick the top of the crop, but rather have to make do with questionable workers?

Netflix is the #6 internet company by market cap. Probably no problems there.

eBay is #30.

Digital Ocean is #91.

Several years ago, my friend interviewed for a software position at one not so hot company. He gave 13 rounds and then was told no.

> I doubt the really top companies -- top 10, say -- have any trouble finding staff

Amazon’s recruiters have been particularly aggressively lately. Especially since their culture causes them to churn through people so quickly, they must have trouble finding staff at this point.

Masters, 10 years diverse experience, currently in a DevSecOps role. It is tough to get hired. My current comp is low, so I'm not even going for FAANG level companies. I still have a hard time finding anything outside of my current company. Mostly due to being slow in code screens.

Internal positions are the inverse. They can't find anyone, so I'm almost guaranteed the role if I want it. I've even been told I could get promoted even though I got a further development need for my current role (makes no sense to me).

Hiring isn't that hard unless you make it hard.

We're currently hiring senior developers for a variety of roles. We have a steady stream of qualified applicants (and a few that are not so qualified), and the hardest part right now is following-up with everyone. We don't use recruiters, we don't leetcode, we don't do take home tests, interviews are a total of "talk to these four principal engineers and the CEO." Done. We're a start-up, so obviously there is more work to do than there are warm bodies to do it, pay isn't FANG level, but it is very competitive. At Christmas, we shut down on the 10th of December and came back to work on the 3rd of January. Technically the 3rd should have been a holiday in any reasonable company, but we had just got three weeks of paid vacation so nobody was complaining.

Companies need to get out of their own way when it comes to hiring, unfortunately most won't, which is why those that can will reap the benefits. Hiring is only hard when a company won't stop screwing around. I am also not liking the narrative that the popular press is spinning about the current hiring climates. There's definitely an agenda there, I am just not sure what it is right now, other than the usual "screw the workers over, maximize the profits."

I think there’s a bit of “kids these days, amirite?” from the older folks who manage & own companies. As they look back with nostalgia on their own early careers, puritan work ethic, etc, they maybe don’t see that life doesn’t have to be like that…and certainly not when the rewards they got (cheap college, career stability, nice house, two cars) aren’t there any more.

It’s a little ironic that this older generation is denigrating young adults, since they were the hippies and gen X whose parents fought in WW II and Korea and had similar thoughts about THEIR lack of purpose and drive. Oh well, ‘twas ever thus.

BTW, I’m nearly Boomer age so that’s where I get off making suppositions about what the old folks might be thinking.

The article treats unlimited paid vacation as some amazing perk instead of an awful trap. Feels very shill-y

Yeah. I've got it and so far I've taken less than I had at my previous job. And this is at a company that says they want you to take it (as long as you're keeping up with your work). But if you're consistently slammed with work there's not really any time to take it.

I'll still probably end up taking at least 3 weeks this year, so it's not like I'm being super robbed or anything, just that it doesn't really feel like a significantly better perk than the 4 weeks and some change PTO I had at my previous company.

For whatever reason, I've always had a "conserve things that are limited in quantity" mentality. As a kid, I'd never use stickers because they could only be used once. I'll keep them in their sheets and never-used. As an adult, when I have limited vacation time, I feel compelled to save it for when it really counts and am reluctant to spend it. As a result, I end up taking the minimum amount required to avoid losing anything due to exceeding rollover limits.

When I had a role with unlimited PTO, it was so amazingly liberating. Whenever I wanted to take a week or a day, I took it. Keeping up with work was no problem and I planned for longer absences. In the two years at that job, I took 5-6 weeks per year, split evenly between week-long vacations and random days off.

It's a great perk with two very important caveats: a) the company actually believes in it and b) you take advantage of it

“Crisis”? Everything doesn’t have to be turned up to 11. How about “inconvenience”?

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