Out Of Scope - #4
The solution to all our hiring problems
Hi all!
I’ve had a busy week 🙃
Mostly a joke but let’s just say I did write a post mortem.
In other news, marathon training is going well! Worked up to 15 this week with 4 weeks to go!
The solution to our current hiring problems?
It’s no secret. Tech hiring is a mess right now.
But we all know it’s not a new trend! I’ve talked and joked extensively about how broken tech hiring is, and that was before the “Great Resignation” which has led to backed up empty roles, competitive senior markets, recruiting team turnover, and interviewing burn out.
Even with so many issues, I haven’t heard much chatter about reforming the hiring process mentioned as a possible solution.
I would like to see:
Tightened interview loops
More realistic interviews to the work
Removed impersonal async challenges (especially for senior roles)
And I don’t think I’m asking for too much! Most of these are common sense changes that we should have made years ago.
It’s hard to change alone, but it can be possible to change. I was recently able to bring attention to async programming challenge for senior roles at Uber. I passed along the feedback to my team and Ty then helped advocate to the other important people™️ for removing these challenges, which hopefully help to shorten hiring loops for candidates and get more candidates on site.
Could now be the the time we could finally advocate for reforming our processes?
ICYMI
Wow, not even an emoji to go along with that LGTM?? ⛴
After sharing my raise information publicly, I heard from many peers at other companies and let’s just say I don’t think the Great Resignation is ending any time soon in tech…
If anyone is looking for their first job I echo what Chloe is saying and am sending you good vibes!! I do think if we all discussed our challenges and failures people wouldn’t feel so alone when they’re going through it. When I was first switching careers I received many rejections and felt hopeless for months. It’s cliche but it’s true that all you need is one.
As someone with a surprising amount of stage fright I think these past 2 years have put me into a bubble (in more ways than one). I do hope that Zoom presentations haven’t coddled us all too much, but it’s a good reminder to get out there and do some real life presentations to practice those dormant skills.
I don’t quite agree with this and think a good manager/team will consider remote teammates for career advancement on the same scale as colocated ones. In my previous hybrid company, this is what I observed, but I would believe that some teams/managers would be worse to work for as a remotee than others. A good idea for questions to ask your possible new team during interviews!
Stay safe and healthy and see ya’ll next week!
Hey Emily, I agree with your takes on interviewing! Have you seen good examples of interviews being realistic to the work? What I've tried in the past is: extract a slice of the app we're working on into a separate repo and then ask candidates to add or tweak a feature.
That generally worked well but: a) setup sucked (I tried repl.it but downloading a zip file worked better for most candidates), and b) this just straight up didn't work for solid engineers who were not familiar with the tech stack (some some creative attempts were made, like running the interview as a pairing session, with candidates verbalizing what they would do if they knew the stack).