Comment by dpeck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpeck | Hacker News Reader

Developers are allergic to career advancement for a few reasons. They tend to be a fairly risk averse lot, with many unwilling to trade the devil they know for the devil they don't.

They also tend to have a low bullshit tolerance and get worn down quickly with the hassle that recruiting/employment has become. Multiple phone interviews, HR people, code tests, and then the "used car salesman" process of salary negotiation. Its draining, especially when you're an introvert by nature.

I went through this once with a semi-established startup when I was looking for my 2nd job. 3 interviews in they wouldn't discuss salary over the phone, wanted me to come in to meet with the CTO again to discuss. I burned the bridge at that point, and became fairly jaded to the whole process. Get salary info up from, if what you want is near the top of any range they give drop it and move on theres no oppertunity for advancement. If they won't give salary range, drop it and move on. More than 2 interviews after the inital HR screening, move on. And realistically if you're a somewhat proven commodity you should be able to hammer out all the details off-site over coffee/beer and finish up the formalities in a few hours at the office.

We're fortunate enough to have a high demand skillset at the moment, and thankfully most of us can approach these situations from a position of "power", but sadly most of us don't.

"with many unwilling to trade the devil they know for the devil they don't"

This is a big reason for me - I will only work in jobs where Im working for someone or with someone (whos already with the employer) that I already have a previous relationship with. (This would obviously change if I found myself on street.) The problem is that Ive found that it is extremely rare to find an employer that isn't a schyster ready to milk you, "the resource", for all your worth while paying as little as they can (which these days is admittedly pretty high). In fact in tech this is the normal "good business" practice behind the curtain - get as much as you can out of your employees for as little as you can. And its an extremely small minded perspective that usually over the long term leads to high turnover and horrifying codebases and half assed products that impact the bottom line.

If you find a pretty good employer that your happy with it will cause you to pause when the next opportunity comes along because you might be expected to work 50% more time on CRUD stuff for that extra 20% raise. Its usually somewhat hard to tell from the exterior what your really stepping into.

Agreed. The variance in work conditions as a developer is higher than most jobs. And these differences are often quite opaque from the outside.

>extremely rare to find an employer that isn't a schyster ready to milk you, "the resource", for all your worth while paying as little as they can

Isn't that the definition of business? Get as much as you can for as little as you can?

It is a very specific definition of business - the problem is that the equation in most employers head is as little pay for the most amount of work done and Ive found that this typically is a poor way to think when producing software that really thrives on creativity and quality. In otherwords, treating it like a factory line with cost spreadsheets typically leads to bad things for the business

What's the definition of 'taking advantage' or 'exploiting'?

If that's 'business', can we assume that some people just don't play along these 'business rules'? Arguments like these are the reason that I've a hard time getting along with the sales/marketing (and sometimes management) people around me.

Isn't that the definition of business? Get as much as you can for as little as you can?

A common misconception, I figure. More correct would be: Get more for less. That is, add value. Perhaps you're expected to maximise the stock price, but as long as the company doesn't go bankrupt, you have a lot of leeway in how you want to work towards that in the long run.

Also for me it's the threat of potential downtime. Switching organizations is a hugely expensive process and to create anything of consequence (e.g. not some stupid rails crud app) takes a lot of domain knowledge and experience with the existing code base. When I think about switching organizations I dread the inevitable "setting up the enviornment" slog as it's required but not useful to anybody. At my current job I have my pick of hugely complex and difficult problems ready and waiting. And of course there is also tons of open source projects a click away

And sometimes, acquiring some of the knowledge can be like pulling teeth (very difficult and perhaps political).

I want to see the work environment. First hand, during the day. If you're going to insist on interviewing me elsewhere (even in meeting rooms in the "guests" part of the building), this doesn't cut it.

I've endured enough crap physical environments (loud, no privacy, etc.) that I'm not interested in "rolling the dice" with respect to where physically I'll be working.

I think this hits the nail on the head.

Stop putting up with bullshit, guys.

I'm looking for something right now, I have a very strong resume, and am willing to relocate anywhere so I'm getting 15-20 e-mails a day. This is part rant part so you might want to stop reading:

- I send a recruiter my resume, they call me 20 seconds later and want to discuss it. I took hours to write a damn good resume. Read it, contact me with questions that ARE NOT answered by what I just sent you. It's all laid out in front of you, stop wasting my time.

- How many years of experience do you have with product X? Again, you can read the resume and add it up, not hard.

- Don't ask me to put other opportunities on hold or somehow make your opportunity exclusive. If this was a perfect world where companies and recruiters got back to me with a yes/no in a day I would be fine with that, but expecting me to ignore 20 other e-mails when you never get back to me or take two weeks to schedule an interview is laughable. If you want me, step up or step off.

- You contacted me about a position that's W2 and offers NO benefits? Seriously?

- If you only send a location and job title it's going in the trash.

- If I don't respond to the initial or 2nd e-mail, I won't respond the 5th time you spam at me.

- I can tell that some recruiters are using me to simply fill their daily quota of sending e-mails. All of my past job titles are related to Linux / UNIX and I mention EMC once so you're going to send me storage admin jobs? Stop it.

- No need to tell me positions are "urgent" or have an "immediate need". When it comes to hiring the need is always immediate, and when I see the word "urgent" it means OH GOD I HOPE I GET TO HIM FIRST I NEED MY COMMISSION.

- Oh, working with Product X is required and you only mention that after I send you the exact same resume you saw on a job site? If it's not on my resume I haven't worked it it, stop wasting my time to fill your daily e-mail quotas.

- Stop creating hoops. Bob gets my resume who sends it to his account manager Jane who sends it to Bill in HR who sends it to the supervisor John who sends it to the hiring manager Rick. By the time my resume gets to Rick it's been 3 weeks and someone has already scooped me up.

- Stop with this subcontractor -> subcontractor -> outsourcing company -> outsourcing company -> actual client bullshit. After all of these worthless middlemen get their cut the actual company ends up paying way way more than they would hiring directly. My former (and very good natured) boss and I had a good laugh when we realized the company was paying almost twice as much for me as he made.

- Just because you have a branch office near me doesn't mean I want to drive down, fill out a bunch of paperwork, and waste an afternoon.

- Stop leaving me in the dark if you don't want me. I can tell some contract houses are doing this intentionally because they don't want to submit me but also don't want me to try again with a competing contract house that WILL submit me. Naughty, naughty.

- You expect me to spend a few hundred dollars to travel to your location for the 2nd, in-person interview? Riiiiight.

- I've only talked with three recruiters that I actually like as people. I resent the other 95% because they might be getting $10-20 for each hour I work just because they are keyword monkeys.

- Inefficient recruiting practices are driving away potential talent, period. Your company needs talent? Start by getting talented HR and in-house recruiters.

Ahh, I feel a bit better. What a shitty day.

dpeck is completely right about the hassle it's become. I'm only on week #2, I'm already fucking sick of it, and will take almost anything just to make it all stop.

Rails developer here, I am thinking of changing jobs right now but am put off by the thoughts of going to bullshit technical interviews where I need to implement / modify some obscure algorithms or concepts which I last saw 12+ years ago in a computer science class.

I would be much happier if the interviewer gave me a small app to create from home (which was relevant to the work they actually do) & then discuss my implementation choices in person with them.

What is the point of having me spend most of an interview doing things with dijkstra's algorithm if never, in the history of your company has this been used nor do you plan to use it & then spend the last 5 minutes asking a few vague questions about what I like about Ruby / hate about Rails.

Technical tests, in my experience, are mostly (90%+ of the time) composed of challenges which have no relevancy to the work I would be doing for that company, its pointless ceremony over common sense.

Do you, in fact, have small apps that you send to companies you apply to? Because I personally will spend time asking that flavor of "bullshit" questions if and only if the candidate can't show me any significant code they've written. I have to gather some kind of direct evidence that you are good at actually writing programs.

I have a few small apps, personal projects, that I have offered to show to an interviewer & discuss, while this offer is normally received positively, it is always viewed as an addition to some sort of cryptic test, never a replacement.

I am also happy to work on a small take-home project for them (within reason) & provided its relevant to the work they do.

But how does the company recruiting you know that you are actually doing the work, and not having someone else do it.

The purpose of data structures and algorithms questions is to demonstrate some abstract thinking and coding ability in a short space of time - if you can do that you can probably code in whatever language / framework they use.

Brainteaser questions on the other hand, those are worthless.

That is a genuine concern, however what would be the point, within hours of me starting my first project with them it would become obvious that I could not do my job & end up being fired. Lose Lose for everyone.

Also, having been on the interviewers side of the table - I think as soon as a candidate & I begin discussing his code & technical choices, it becomes obvious if he did the work himself i.e. can he talk in depth about the stack he used, any algorithms, schema decisions etc... or does he just give short "I'm hiding from your question" type answers.

- Stop creating hoops. ... By the time my resume gets to Rick it's been 3 weeks and someone has already scooped me up.

I agree completely. My current place is a large bureaucracy, and they've had more than one candidate slip through their fingers just because they couldn't get the guys through the Process before they were picked off by other companies.

All of your problems can be solved with one simple step:

Stop using recruiters. They provide you with net negative value.

Why not apply directly to the top 3 companies you'd like to work for and where your expertise will be a good match? This might save you a lot of time and efforts.

1. Stop using recruiters.

2. Network. The best jobs I've found have been through people I meet and recommendations of friends and other entrepreneurs. Bypass the entire system and everyone is happier.

> 1. Stop using recruiters.

If that were possible that would be fantastic, but I've found more often than not, you are forced to go through a recruiter to meet the real company. If you ruled out jobs that aren't advertised directly by the employer, you would miss out on a large portion of opportunities.

For dev jobs, there will be a lot of opportunities left over -- and they will probably be saner, on average, than the ones you'll be missing.

Unfortunately, I don't think for a company that is not a fresh startup it is possible not to use recruiters. Somebody has to screen resumes, organize the process, etc. And it takes a lot of time, but somebody has to do it. So recruiters do it. In order to make them do it well, there are incentives. As often happens, incentives are linked to something measurable - people called, people interviewed, people hired. Then Goodhart's law comes in and measured quantity starts to detach from the goal - hiring best people possible - and here we are.

I highly doubt that an ordinary recruiter will do a better job of screening resumes than a hiring manager / member of a hiring group. It is entirely possible for someone in your team to spend 1 hour a day screening resumes and you will have a decent short list of candidates by the end of 1 week.

For big companies, in-house recruiters do the same.

In any case, however you distribute it, it becomes a full-time job. You can part-time assign highly qualified coders (you don't hire any other, right?) to do it, which would only mean you'd have to reallocate their tasks, i.e. hire additional highly qualified coder, for example. Which would cost you, probably, way more than hiring a recruiter - and your highly qualified coders would be very unhappy to spend time on reading crappy resumes (and since they are unfiltered, there will be all kinds of crappy ones, outright liars, scammers and what not). And then you also need to get on the phone with people, arrange schedules, keep documentation and keep track of interview progress and results, etc. etc. It seems to me you seriously underestimate how much of a time sink it can be.

People invented separation of labor for a reason, you know. Recruiting can benefit from specialization too.

If you are in the Boston area or interested in relocating to Cambridge, my company, HubSpot, is hiring. We're a late stage startup building an all-in-one marketing platform. You can watch our recruiting video here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXOtTvb5OFE (yeah it's a bit corny, but it really is a cool place to work). Shoot me an email with your resume if you are interested (address in my profile). I'm one of engineering team leads, not a recruiter, so I will look at it directly, no hoops to jump through.

Hi bokonist, I am relatively new to web development, but am interested in HubSpot. Would you mind if I send you an email with a few questions?

All of my past job titles are related to Linux / UNIX and I mention EMC once so you're going to send me storage admin jobs? Stop it.

This is why I started putting zero width spaces (U+200B, press Alt+8203 to type one) in my CV in the middle of words I want people to read but not computers searching for keywords to spam me.

While I think nobody should take less than they're worth, basing your decision simply on what the job pays is doing yourself a disservice.

Agreed, and not saying that at all, but to me thats the biggest tip off that its a bad fit. If they're secretive with salary, or try to hard sell me on the position, or they're unwilling to make a decision and be confident in it without many many meetings then those same things are likely to be reflected in day to day situations after coming onboard.

Interviewing should give you a fairly clear picture of how functional or disfuntional an organization is. You just have to be sure that its a function/disfunction mix that you can thrive in.

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