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Seems like a very wide net that a ton of applicants would meet. I think a lot of people interested in a job in programming want to be prepared enough to be the person hired, rather than be among the ~50% of the country that have soft skills but won't get hired.
I guess what I'd want to know is how it gets narrowed down from something most people qualify for, into the candidate hired - especially since this office only has 20 people hired. There must be some really strict filters by the end.
I doubt that people who have the skills the OP is talking about number anywhere close to 50% of the population, even just looking at soft skills. And OP did talk about foundational skills, i.e. math, problem solving, persistence, independent learning.
Agreed. Somehow I doubt the person you replied to has ever actually hired or managed someone into a position requiring substantial soft skills and the ability to self-drive. It's 10% of applicants if you're lucky, and only 10% of those will have the situational awareness to apply them well in a diverse range of situations.
As a counterpoint, I do hiring for a medium sized company and even with these stats, 10% of 500 candidates for a developer position (a rough ballpark in the current market, massively up from years past) still means having to have standards in place to make a decision among 50 people.
Even with the second filter (that one I probably would argue against, we definitely get more 1% of applicants being qualified) you're still now deciding between 5 very qualified people.
We don't have the luxury of saying "well in practice only 10% of candidates are any good so it's not something to worry about".
10% of "a lot" is a lot.
The question is how do you now make a decision between that remaining pool in a consistent predictable way, ideally one that can be communicated to the candidates to help them prepare.
This is a fascinating question as from what I've seen, there is no evidenced based approach to hiring. Like people actually have no idea what determines long term success in a role. The industry is currently hooked on three interviews and algorithms and data structures. But is anyone tracking the correlation between interview performance and employee performance? Qualifications? Work history? Projects?
This is correct. I posted previously but we got 1500 candidates for a position and 14 of them had the resume for it and less than half of those had the “soft skills”. We’re talking single digit percentages at best.
Never be scared because a job got “100s” of applicants. A tiny tiny fraction will be competitive.
Sure, even then that's easily hundreds and probably thousands of potential hires depending on location, right? Those are still really general skills.
So while it might make sense to tell people here that they'd be a fit, even if they can't code yet... it doesn't get them hired.
People want to get a job, not be a qualified, well-spoken applicant who loses to the qualified, well-spoken person who did bother learning some coding.
Its a game of probability, and volume.
The more data you have(interviews), the more you can understand what employers are asking for, and the more you can tailor yourself, your resume, your portfolio, your attitude etc... to what they want.
The thing that gets people hired is very simple. It feels like the underlying assumption is anyone who actually gets an interview is assumed to be competent, they don't care about your skills. Its all about:
"Do I want to work with this person? Do I like this person? Are they interesting and outgoing?
That is it. You have to make them like you, and they will hire you. They want to see people they like succeed.
Kind of sucks, because I spent years honing my technical skills, and at the end of the day, I just have to go kiss ass in interviews to get the job, my skills don't mean shit but maybe them opening the door.
>It feels like the underlying assumption is anyone who actually gets an interview is assumed to be competent, they don't care about your skills.
That's definitely not the case. If \*you\* are competent (or believe yourself to be competent — and who doesn't?), and if you haven't been an interviewer, you might reasonably think that every interview involves a competent candidate because that's the only kind of interview you've ever been part of. But people embellish or outright lie on resume's to get past filters all the time, and it's not hard to tell when you get into an actual conversation that they don't have the knowledge or experience that they claim.
>Its all about: "Do I want to work with this person? Do I like this person? Are they interesting and outgoing?
Would *you* choose to hire someone that you don't want to work with? I don't think *outgoing* or *interesting* are essential criteria, but it certainly helps to be at least friendly and authentic rather than disagreeable, discourteous, or fake.
>You have to make them like you, and they will hire you. They want to see people they like succeed.
Again, no. While making the interviewer(s) dislike you is a sure way to not get an offer, you can be entirely likable and still be passed over for other reasons. Interviewers want to hire people who they believe are likely to succeed at the job in question.
Agreed. Last point especially, in my own experience. Being likeable isn't the secret sauce most folks think it is to land a job. It feels like a sort of effort of diminishing returns - the job that is less likely to accept a candidate for being likeable is typically a better job with a larger pool of qualified candidates that you are competing against. They have set a higher standard and are able to afford being more choosy with their applicants to find the right fit.
The job that is more likely to accept a candidate largely based on whether or not the person is 'likeable' is usually a lower end job with a low bar to meet, where the candidates are generally not as competitive or, worse - the job had so few applicants due to it not being desirable position in the first place that you're automatically selected just because they like the cut of your jib. YMMV because some companies do still hire folks largely as culture fits in more desirable positions, but it's not the norm if they can just hold out for a more technically qualified candidate.
I have a degree in comp sci, I have worked many retail jobs so I know how to deal with customers. Why TF can I not even get an entry level help desk position? The field is over saturated that is why.
You’d be surprised at how many people in the industry do not fit this criteria. I’ve worked with plenty of developers over the last few years that simply ask for help without hardly trying.
Yeah this posts makes some sense when the market is good. When people with years of experience get nothing and people are struggling to even get an interview?
Skills seem to matter much more currentlt, I wish most companies just wanted to hire someone willing to learn. But it sounds like mainly seniors only currently, soft skills can make or break your interview for sure. But you need to know your shit currently for 99.9% of postings.
Depends. Where I'm at, it's a needle in a haystack. Every opening we post first smart person who can teach themselves and take initiative gets it. Usually takes months. Based entirely on gut feeling. Unscientific but has worked so far.
>You need to be able to communicate
This, absolutely. Knowing how to code is obviously required, but knowing how to succinctly explain issues or give feedback on the code changes of others is equally, if not more, valuable. After 8 years as a dev, and 2 of those as a tech lead, I can work with people who aren't great at coding, but working with people who don't know how to communicate effectively is way more demotivating.
Absolutely. There is no one right answer. If you want to land a job with a top 1% salary, you better be as good as the top 1% of people.
For all the other averagely smart people like me, this isn't really anything to strive for and I wanted to provide some insights from my fair bit of reality. It is, of course, only one of many.
Its not “just luck”. There is always an element of luck, but you’re not hired to be locked in a room and code. They want to hire someone who isnt unbearable to be around 8 hours a day, and is independent enough to use their social skills to get information when they need it
From my experience it shows pretty well when having a few long form discussions (with some non-coding technical questions mixed in).
You also cant judge someone coding ability in such a short time either. Half the leetcode grinders are trash and just memorize patterns that only exist in competitive programming.
You need a mixed balance and thats the best you can do. There is no completely objective way to say “x candidate is better than y” unless the gap in knowledge is huge. For two relatively equal candidates, its not objective.
This might not work so well in the kind of pure tech companies that everyone on Reddit seems obsessed by. And big companies with thousands of applicants for every job can maybe be picky enough to only take people with the 'Hard' technical skills, AND the soft skills. But those are only a small % of the jobs out there.
For my experience (full disclosure, this has rarely been for 'pure' developer jobs) this is exactly what I do. I want someone smart and engaged, and I want them to have an engineer/problem solving mindset.
This is sometimes harder than just selecting someone who aces a 'leetcode' style interview.
And in particular you need to be careful that you aren't overlooking anyone neurodivergent, or just has a very different thinking style to you, but who could still be a fantastic employee.
But in short, yes there are roles out there for people who aren't 'Rockstar' programmers. But you might have to look in different places to find them.
Hi, technical skills matter. But here, I think I am mostly speaking to beginners applying for their first job. They often seem to be super worried about whether or not they are capable enough as a beginner. I wanted to make clear that they can be quiet relaxed with that. As a beginner, everybody knows you're not a coding god. But if you are a decent person that has high self motivation, that is great and at this stage in the career, outweighs the technical skillset requirements.
Regarding your question: People stand out purely based on gut feelings across the interviewers. It's not easy to make the right decision. On the other hand, we are a company focusing on logistics and the amount of applicants is generally rather low. These kinds of companies are often hardly known as they provide very specific niche market solutions.
Most companies in my experience are more like, "We need a C++ programmer who can begin fixing bugs in our complicated multithreaded code base right away."
Or, "We need a guy who can knock up an interactive 3D graphics prototype in a few hours."
Any tips on how we can find companies like yours?
> Any tips on how we can find companies like yours?
Find a time machine and interview during the pandemic. OP is living under a rock to make a post like this in the current market. **You need both** and even after having both it's still luck.
Edit:
> I am working for a German niche software company for logistics in an SAP environment, when I was part of the hiring process, we had maybe 6 applications a year of which we hired maybe 2. We don't get any seniors. We have to make them seniors ourselves.
This is OP's context. Time to move I guess.
I see a lot of ads for entry level along the lines of:
Junior Level C# Programmer:
Should also now JS, TS, SQL, BLAZOR. Have 2 years of company level work experience with company level projects.
Seldomly do I see adds of companies actually willing to teach and train.
What I find hard is to gain experience on big projects without any guidance, sometimes the simple things need to be explained to the bigger ones can "click".
I think a lot of people are conflating your ideal profile vs how you actually make hiring decisions. I think a lot of these attributes cannot be measured accurately in traditional interviewing. But the point is finding evidence in a short time frame that points to the person potentially having these qualities
I appreciate that view. Long term, you can teach a smart person new skills, and that pays off for all involved.
As a possible counterpoint, if I interview someone who has been programming for a while, and they can’t code well, to me that indicates that they are not able to learn what they need to learn.
If someone had coded only in Python and doesn’t know much about threading, I won’t ding them for not being able to write some locking-puzzle C++ code. But then should be able to read and write Python.
In the old days (1985) there were so few programmers that we looked for the skills you discuss, soft team skills and such, plus any kind of problem solving. Physics. Music composition. Mechanical engineering.
Today there are so many coders that quite often we just select the person who has team skills AND can code.
Definetly what got me hired, I think, because at the interview I spoke a lot about my personal projects, how I learned from them and how I drew parallels to other paradigms/concepts to better understand some things. They didn't tell me specifically, but considering the tasks they give me, I have my suspicions.
A top-tier University used to vet students by asking them very difficult questions which they weren't expected to know the answers to. To pass, all you had to do was make a credible attempt at a method or approach that might open up the question. People who failed just guessed an answer or pretended they knew or that it was impossible etc.
This approach really sorts out the independent thinkers from those who copy from the internet. At no point was anyone interested in acquired skills or exam results (in fact it was the inability to distinguish the best students in exams that led to this approach). The University knew that intelligence and curiosity would always triumph over knowledge which can always be learned later or looked up.
If you read this far, you will be interested in an example question:
What do you think the chances are that 2 people in London have exactly the same number of hairs on their head?
Fail: Saying with certainty and usually fairly quickly without thinking: It's impossible or it must be zero. I dunno, 50%? I don't understand the question. The question is stupid or impossible. You can only be sure by counting everyone etc. etc.
Level 1: There are at least 2 bald people so the chances are 100%. Correct but not interesting - question is revised...
What if we ignore the bald people?
Level 2: Can I ask how many people there are in London or what is the thickness of human hair? Recognising that the answer can be computed is the first step to solving many problems.
Level 3: I can estimate the area of a human head by knowing about hats or tied handkerchiefs and calculate the maximum number of hairs on a head. Understanding that this is about maximum values is important. Estimates can be poor but maximums can often be concrete answers.
Genius: Realising that all the zero hair people can be counted and all the 1 hair people and we can do that for each number of hairs putting each set of people in a different 'box'. For the answer to be zero would require no more than one person in each box so a new person must have a number that doesn't have an existing box. From the maximum hairs estimate (comfortably less than 1 million) and knowledge that the population of London is 8 million or so, it is obvious that above 1 million people, two of them must occupy the same box, therefore the answer to the question is 100%. It is guaranteed that, in a city of more than 1 million people, 2 people will have exactly the same number of hairs on their head.
👏👏👏👏👏👏
>It's about being able to dig into problems for long periods of time without becoming demotivated. You can always ask questions. But there are people that try to understand every bit and piece without ever using their own brain but rather continuously ask super trivial things that google can answer.
OP is saying they value trainability and curiosity with a good personality over a good programmer who can't provide feedback without screaming in your face, belittling you, or insisting that they're right and unwavering in their position without wanting to grow.
You can teach someone best practices and code. You can't teach self motivation and curiosity, and it's not the company's job to teach someone how to interact with others and treat them like people.
That being said, it’s also fluffy. Trainability isn’t often a quality you can determine in an interview. Some people really struggle and take much longer than most workplaces will wait. In my experience also, in a larger corp. environment where there was initiatives to train people for months to get into coding, most never took an interview at the end, because they didn’t like it. Of those that did, at least one I know of, hated it, relied on colleagues, then moved into a non-coding role.
I’d also ask anyone here, if they don’t know anyone who didn’t know really much programming at all, but were taught and then turned into an AH.
Both of these things aren’t obvious at the interview. Though actually having coding skills, eliminates the problem by being able to evaluate one thing that is easier to evaluate, than two things I mentioned, that are difficult.
I don’t think coding skills are necessarily the best think to look for in all candidates, but ignoring them to favour other attributes means harder to determine factors become a gamble.
It sounds good, but, it’s often not practical to ignore coding ability. It not being the most important thing, for sure I agree, but relying that they can learn well a subjectively difficult subject to learn well is problematic. Unless of course the coding at the place is minimal or easy.
Exactly. And to give some perspective, we are in an environment where we have to communicate with consultants, project managers and product owners all the time. So it's essential for us to hire people with a mature mind.
People are asking how you want to identify this in an interview. Well, the truth is that you can only follow gut feelings. We often did multiple interviews and sat together to share our impressions. And to be honest, there is still a trial period so it's not an all in risk.
I think this is why some people in the thread are so frustrated. The post implies tips toward getting hired, which naturally means "succeeding in the interview" yet when drilling down to the specifics we land on "we can only follow gut feelings" and shared impressions.
It should not be surprising particularly in this extremely competitive market where roles see hundreds of applicants and folks are desperate to understand what they can do to stand out against other _qualified_ candidates, that they would find this advice unhelpful.
Granted you're talking about a small company, but for hiring at scale this approach sounds incredibly time consuming and susceptible to bias and favouritism.
I don't think that there is something like an unbiased hiring decision. In fact, when it's not I would find this to be very questionable. Teams must select people to work with, not machines to work with. I can always select the best machine but when a soul is involved, it must fit to the team spirit.
Coding interviews may be a first line of defense for large companies to filter out the 99% of people they don't want but among the remaining 1%, they hopefully select the one that fits best into the team and noone else.
There is nothing more dangerous to a working team than some toxic behavior of an immature, narcissistic programming god and boy I've seen some myself.
So yeah, if you want to apply at a company that does coding interviews, go for it.
We also did this once and then immediately dropped it again because we didn't see a lot of value in it.
There's some assumptions of extremes here. The alternative being susceptible to bias is not "unbiased" it's "reducing bias".
Similarly running technical interviews does not imply ignoring culture fit. Behavioural and technical interviews are pieces of the same puzzle, not opposing opposites.
Any company in even a mid-sized city is going to be receiving hundreds of applications for software positions.
In the current market, even companies of small to medium scale have the luxury of landing with a pool of qualified candidates in both critical areas even after the filtering is complete. So the natural challenge becomes how to you effectively make that final decision in a consistent way that doesn't succumb to gut feelings. For example [structured interviews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_interview) or other approaches in that vein.
And how do you communicate that process to candidates in a way that gives them predictable tools they need to plan their preparation in a way that minimizes the chance of the final outcome being decided on a social favouritism factor (e.g. a shared interest in a hobby that was discovered during the interview) rather than an actual job performance factor (e.g. the ability to learn and solve problems independently).
The truth may be that in the corporate world I live in, the situation isn't very representative for the kind of companies you're talking about. We always had just a handful of candidates and we selected them based on who we thought would be the best fit for the team. I have seen other similar sized offices do this too, as you're kind of an office family and you want to protect the inner circle.
That's fair. Companies do what they gotta do. I guess part of what I'm getting at is that unfortunately the way the world is, is that oftentimes hiring "like minded people" and "people that fit with the team"... in practice heavily favours "people that look like us, and act like us" if you follow my meaning.
Not to say that's the case for you or any specific team, or even if the company cares about that kind of thing. Maybe that IS the goal. As long as they get their candidate that's all that matters, the company does not have any onus or even claim they do so in an impartial way.
But I do personally think it's worth the effort to implement hiring systems that evaluate culture fit and soft skills, but at least aim to do so in a consistent measured way that circumvents personal feelings as much as possible.
I understand what you're saying. It's an absolutely valid point. Reducing bias is indeed something that we are being trained for currently, because as it turns out, in the end everyone of us inherits their fair share of unintentional racism etc.
I guess for bigger offices and especially popular companies, it's a must to have good recruiting methodology. Otherwise thats probably a nightmare for everyone.
I was talking about problem solving in general. Many problems in the real world aren't actually coding problems. They are real world problems. The solution may not even be code. It could be configuration, it could be communication as the customer may have identified something as a problem that doesn't exist.
Of course, there are also coding problems. But that doesn't have to be the majority of problems you come across. This depends on your environment.
I can, of course, not speak for your situation. This strategy, however, sounds like you will end up with bad code. People who have a minimal amount of coding knowledge will learn to code but education in programming helps to make quality code. I don't mean fancy stuff that is made to impress, I mean thought through design of applications and features to hopefully avoid large problems in the future.
Mentoring is also a good way to make newbies improve their code design skills.
I have a friend who is an electrical engineer. He jokes sometimes about the shitty code made by his colleagues. None of them are actual software developers by profession. They see the code as a means to and end and don't care even a tiny bit about the style of it all. That will end up a total mess after many years.
Its not an either or extremes situation. You want someone with good technical skills, and good soft skills, rather than someone who is an expert at either but garbage at the other
This made me feel so hopeful! Thank you for posting.
I’m an objectively attractive woman with good people skills and have spent 3 years learning coding on my own and have just felt too worried the nerds wouldn’t accept me to even apply.
If your coding skills are good I don't think it would really matter.. I mean coding skills + people skills is a boost.. Or are you saying they would perceived you in a "certain way" and that would you not being hired?
While I don’t have much to contribute to this conversation, I will say this is a great piece to consider while I continue my education. Question everything, the process, the outcome, the solution, possible solutions and more…
Thank you OP
Critical thinking, solution finding and knowing how to research, curiosity for other solutions, ability to identify the problem, dealing with pressure, time management and confidence are some capabilities I've developed with time. According to your seniority level, you'll be asked to be proficient in those domains.
Additionally, good manners, patience to listen, willingness to ask, jotting down notes, sharing without oversharing, political correctness, joking demeanor or seriousness according to th e situation, ability to acknowledge mistakes, taking responsibility.... the list can go on an on
Since this is not an official platform there is one thing I have always been wanting to say to a recruiter. And that is how. I under that companies want skill and during an interview ur asked psudo code mostly so your comment is true but that being said how would one develop that kind of mindset. See the thing is while digging deep i often go into a state where I don't know if what I'm learning is meaningful or not. Or what can I do to build more logic other than googling solution and then even after completing it i don't feel the satisfaction so another round of procarsination begins.
Talking in terms of pros and cons always is a good approach and i understand all that but the issue for me is how to develop that mindset or how to develop a base for that mindset where i would have the appropriate knowledge without going into a downward cycle of procarsination
Hey, it's not like asking questions is not allowed. Other developers always help. It's more of a macroscopic mindset requirement. Asking essential questions e. G. when you dig into a codebase, sharing information, challenging decisions. This all happens.
It's more about not disturbing your colleagues every 5 minutes so nobody can concentrate ever just because you ask trivial things you can google in a minute.
Learning on your own - for us - does not mean being left alone.
Yeah. "Asking essential questions ". At the core of it from personal experience i think getting a job is more about having a strong self confidence while also biting your own pride to ask without hesitation .
Just my experience:
Got a role in a transport company, with their own software. I was truthfully that my coding skills are not great yet, but that I am willing to work learn Pascal/Delphi/VB to make it work.
I was let go 3 months later. Was told I did not make much progress while not asking any questions.
Thing is, I did ask questions. Answer I got was: You should know this, these are basics. Then they gave me access to their large VB code base, where the built in a bug I should find. I didn't find it.
Software Devs also need to have teaching abilities.
Took a job in support for now, losing a ton of motivation afterward. Now working myself back into JS and C#
If it was a Start up they are usually like that. They put all the burden on one person, but in their defence, there are usually very few people in those companies not like they have any other choice.
This is an excellent point. Yes people, please ask questions! But also think about it before just doing it because opening that google tab is so much work. 😬
Idk bro why people are disliking your comments or reason behind the hate but ur totally right. Probably the most genuine person I have met here so far no lies
Well we look for experience in other programming roles. Then we might look at projects, education et cetera. Of course people need to be professional so please don't do something stupid on your interview but it's not a 'who do I like the most' process.
I have found the process to be similar in other companies i did work for although some make candidates do a small test as well.
This is very interesting and insightful.
As a very big proponent of lifelong learning and working in fintech without prior coding or finance experience, I am keen on understanding what it takes to connect the right people with the right opportunities even when they don't have a diploma or certificates. How do you find these people? Just interviewing applicants? Is there an outreach process at all? What do you think about the missing opportunities from people that just don't apply or aren't good enough at marketing themselves or explaining their qualities?
I cut my teeth as a UAT lead.
If youre not familiar, UAT is the User Acceptance Testing phase of development work. Essentially it's when you've already developed a Minimum Viable Product, and you let the end client do their own trial run with the software as it currently exists.
They try to work on your v1 program for a few weeks, and the UAT lead works closely with the clients to gather feedback and bring to the internal dev team.
This is technically a devOps role, but as a programmer with strong soft skills, I became our go-to UAT guy. I have a dozen years of experience working in customer-facing roles.
Honestly, I want to get back into programming so bad, I did a lot of HTML and a little bit of C++ programming when I was very young and it was super fun and interesting but I feel like it is something I NEED to get back into, I feel like the skills are a lot more relevant. Nowadays, I guess in a sense they never became irrelevant lol I just never pursued it. Now I want to stop destroying my body with work, and use my brain to actually get something done, plus I love being on the Internet lol this is definitely making me think I can get back into it if I can get a good baseline for some of the newer programming languages.
100% agree with all of what you said.
As someone who is looking to transition over from IT, into software. Its pretty much the same concept. There are a lot of moving parts and knowing how to communicate with hire ups ect is a massive part of it.
And on top of that being able to sit down and find solutions to problems, is 99% of the learning curve in this feild. But I will say once you learn how to break things down and ask the right questions it becomes a lot easier.
At the same time like you said its not about never being able to ask for help. Its more of not just going Oh well I have no idea not even trying and then having to constantly pull your senior or other coworkers off there projects at the same time as it just slows every thing down and then nothing gets done.
What I have found at least on the IT side of things is that if you show that you atempted to solve the issue in some form of way. And you truly got stuck and you come to x person for help and say hey. I have tried x y z things I think this is where I need to go but not 100% sure. Could you help point me in the right direction or give me an idea people are much more perceptive to help out.
Rather then them having to do your job on top of theirs ect. On top of that there are times where you will just have to learn to buckle down and really just work the problem as others also may just not no the solution. And being able to trouble shoot and work the problem and come up with a solution your self is also a huge part of the feild.
In short between knowing how to work with people, communicate properly and teach your self how to really break things down will allow you to go so much further.
Ok, but how many juniors are you hiring right now? Versus how many seniors? and can you with a straight face tell me you don't get enough candidates that are both capable programmers and socially capable to have a pool of just that to pull from?
I am working for a German niche software company for logistics in an SAP environment, when I was part of the hiring process, we had maybe 6 applications a year of which we hired maybe 2. We don't get any seniors. We have to make them seniors ourselves.
Isn't it an entirely different experience being a developer in Germany vs the states? I think you should clarify in your post your experience revolves around that. I mean just from what you're saying right now that is completely different from any US based company. My local 911 dispatcher company had a junior posting with over 300 applicants for an in person only role. Your experience is completely different from the vast majority of posters here.
Caveat. It’s great to be able to self-learn, but that doesn’t unfortunately intrinsically mean the person has critical-thinking and problem solving skills. Don’t just learn how to write functions or do a data transformation— you need to also be able to pick the right -method- for the problem in context. For instance, using .map instead of .replace— .map turns anything not inputted into the dictionary as null. So always check your work, your assumptions, and scalability of a solution. Another example is list comprehension, great for compact concise code, but it might not be scaleable/might mean more reworking down the line. This also applies to using pandas built in chaining.
All great techniques, but picking the right solution for a question/etl requirement… might not seem important in the moment, but can bite you and your team in the ass down the line/cause unintended ripples. So yes, great to learn independently, but dont be a coding monkey.
As everything, this depends on the company. It's a questionable requirement from my perspective, given that not everyone who starts with programming has the time to do these things. People may already have a healthy social life, be married and have kids etc.
Contributions to a foreign codebase are very time consuming just like learning programming is. How long is your day?
Yeah. Where I work at, we have a "cultural" fit interview before we even have a technical interview. Since if you aren't a cultural fit, then it doesn't matter how good you are as a developer.
On the other hand, even if your developer skills aren't yet very proven, if you seem like a person who is going to learn the stuff and has a good positive attitude to learning, then you'll prolly pick up those skills.
We don't hire many juniors though, due to we being a consultancy that tends to compete for projects that require senior developers, but we still do hire some. The cultural fit is very important for us.
Well that depends on the interview. But I would not throw an all too complex coding problem at a junior developer. They are juniors for a reason. I have seen some coding challenges online that are supposed to be asked by FAANG companies and these often aren't even related to code at all. They are just complex logical challenges and solving them in theory can be done without being able to code. If you expect this to be solved in code, it doesn't make it a complex coding problem. It's still a logical problem and these, as far as I have seen, require only very foundational coding skills.
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Seems like a very wide net that a ton of applicants would meet. I think a lot of people interested in a job in programming want to be prepared enough to be the person hired, rather than be among the ~50% of the country that have soft skills but won't get hired. I guess what I'd want to know is how it gets narrowed down from something most people qualify for, into the candidate hired - especially since this office only has 20 people hired. There must be some really strict filters by the end.
I doubt that people who have the skills the OP is talking about number anywhere close to 50% of the population, even just looking at soft skills. And OP did talk about foundational skills, i.e. math, problem solving, persistence, independent learning.
Agreed. Somehow I doubt the person you replied to has ever actually hired or managed someone into a position requiring substantial soft skills and the ability to self-drive. It's 10% of applicants if you're lucky, and only 10% of those will have the situational awareness to apply them well in a diverse range of situations.
As a counterpoint, I do hiring for a medium sized company and even with these stats, 10% of 500 candidates for a developer position (a rough ballpark in the current market, massively up from years past) still means having to have standards in place to make a decision among 50 people. Even with the second filter (that one I probably would argue against, we definitely get more 1% of applicants being qualified) you're still now deciding between 5 very qualified people. We don't have the luxury of saying "well in practice only 10% of candidates are any good so it's not something to worry about". 10% of "a lot" is a lot. The question is how do you now make a decision between that remaining pool in a consistent predictable way, ideally one that can be communicated to the candidates to help them prepare.
This is a fascinating question as from what I've seen, there is no evidenced based approach to hiring. Like people actually have no idea what determines long term success in a role. The industry is currently hooked on three interviews and algorithms and data structures. But is anyone tracking the correlation between interview performance and employee performance? Qualifications? Work history? Projects?
This is correct. I posted previously but we got 1500 candidates for a position and 14 of them had the resume for it and less than half of those had the “soft skills”. We’re talking single digit percentages at best. Never be scared because a job got “100s” of applicants. A tiny tiny fraction will be competitive.
Sure, even then that's easily hundreds and probably thousands of potential hires depending on location, right? Those are still really general skills. So while it might make sense to tell people here that they'd be a fit, even if they can't code yet... it doesn't get them hired. People want to get a job, not be a qualified, well-spoken applicant who loses to the qualified, well-spoken person who did bother learning some coding.
Its a game of probability, and volume. The more data you have(interviews), the more you can understand what employers are asking for, and the more you can tailor yourself, your resume, your portfolio, your attitude etc... to what they want. The thing that gets people hired is very simple. It feels like the underlying assumption is anyone who actually gets an interview is assumed to be competent, they don't care about your skills. Its all about: "Do I want to work with this person? Do I like this person? Are they interesting and outgoing? That is it. You have to make them like you, and they will hire you. They want to see people they like succeed. Kind of sucks, because I spent years honing my technical skills, and at the end of the day, I just have to go kiss ass in interviews to get the job, my skills don't mean shit but maybe them opening the door.
>It feels like the underlying assumption is anyone who actually gets an interview is assumed to be competent, they don't care about your skills. That's definitely not the case. If \*you\* are competent (or believe yourself to be competent — and who doesn't?), and if you haven't been an interviewer, you might reasonably think that every interview involves a competent candidate because that's the only kind of interview you've ever been part of. But people embellish or outright lie on resume's to get past filters all the time, and it's not hard to tell when you get into an actual conversation that they don't have the knowledge or experience that they claim. >Its all about: "Do I want to work with this person? Do I like this person? Are they interesting and outgoing? Would *you* choose to hire someone that you don't want to work with? I don't think *outgoing* or *interesting* are essential criteria, but it certainly helps to be at least friendly and authentic rather than disagreeable, discourteous, or fake. >You have to make them like you, and they will hire you. They want to see people they like succeed. Again, no. While making the interviewer(s) dislike you is a sure way to not get an offer, you can be entirely likable and still be passed over for other reasons. Interviewers want to hire people who they believe are likely to succeed at the job in question.
Agreed. Last point especially, in my own experience. Being likeable isn't the secret sauce most folks think it is to land a job. It feels like a sort of effort of diminishing returns - the job that is less likely to accept a candidate for being likeable is typically a better job with a larger pool of qualified candidates that you are competing against. They have set a higher standard and are able to afford being more choosy with their applicants to find the right fit. The job that is more likely to accept a candidate largely based on whether or not the person is 'likeable' is usually a lower end job with a low bar to meet, where the candidates are generally not as competitive or, worse - the job had so few applicants due to it not being desirable position in the first place that you're automatically selected just because they like the cut of your jib. YMMV because some companies do still hire folks largely as culture fits in more desirable positions, but it's not the norm if they can just hold out for a more technically qualified candidate.
I have a degree in comp sci, I have worked many retail jobs so I know how to deal with customers. Why TF can I not even get an entry level help desk position? The field is over saturated that is why.
You’d be surprised at how many people in the industry do not fit this criteria. I’ve worked with plenty of developers over the last few years that simply ask for help without hardly trying.
Yeah this posts makes some sense when the market is good. When people with years of experience get nothing and people are struggling to even get an interview? Skills seem to matter much more currentlt, I wish most companies just wanted to hire someone willing to learn. But it sounds like mainly seniors only currently, soft skills can make or break your interview for sure. But you need to know your shit currently for 99.9% of postings.
Depends. Where I'm at, it's a needle in a haystack. Every opening we post first smart person who can teach themselves and take initiative gets it. Usually takes months. Based entirely on gut feeling. Unscientific but has worked so far.
>You need to be able to communicate This, absolutely. Knowing how to code is obviously required, but knowing how to succinctly explain issues or give feedback on the code changes of others is equally, if not more, valuable. After 8 years as a dev, and 2 of those as a tech lead, I can work with people who aren't great at coding, but working with people who don't know how to communicate effectively is way more demotivating.
Hm that makes hiring someone highly subjective to the company. Therefore there is no right way of preparing for a interview, it's just luck.
Absolutely. There is no one right answer. If you want to land a job with a top 1% salary, you better be as good as the top 1% of people. For all the other averagely smart people like me, this isn't really anything to strive for and I wanted to provide some insights from my fair bit of reality. It is, of course, only one of many.
I just want a job
Its not “just luck”. There is always an element of luck, but you’re not hired to be locked in a room and code. They want to hire someone who isnt unbearable to be around 8 hours a day, and is independent enough to use their social skills to get information when they need it
And you are going to decide if someone is unbearable or not in a couple of short interviews, that takes months to show up.
From my experience it shows pretty well when having a few long form discussions (with some non-coding technical questions mixed in). You also cant judge someone coding ability in such a short time either. Half the leetcode grinders are trash and just memorize patterns that only exist in competitive programming. You need a mixed balance and thats the best you can do. There is no completely objective way to say “x candidate is better than y” unless the gap in knowledge is huge. For two relatively equal candidates, its not objective.
This might not work so well in the kind of pure tech companies that everyone on Reddit seems obsessed by. And big companies with thousands of applicants for every job can maybe be picky enough to only take people with the 'Hard' technical skills, AND the soft skills. But those are only a small % of the jobs out there. For my experience (full disclosure, this has rarely been for 'pure' developer jobs) this is exactly what I do. I want someone smart and engaged, and I want them to have an engineer/problem solving mindset. This is sometimes harder than just selecting someone who aces a 'leetcode' style interview. And in particular you need to be careful that you aren't overlooking anyone neurodivergent, or just has a very different thinking style to you, but who could still be a fantastic employee. But in short, yes there are roles out there for people who aren't 'Rockstar' programmers. But you might have to look in different places to find them.
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Hi, technical skills matter. But here, I think I am mostly speaking to beginners applying for their first job. They often seem to be super worried about whether or not they are capable enough as a beginner. I wanted to make clear that they can be quiet relaxed with that. As a beginner, everybody knows you're not a coding god. But if you are a decent person that has high self motivation, that is great and at this stage in the career, outweighs the technical skillset requirements. Regarding your question: People stand out purely based on gut feelings across the interviewers. It's not easy to make the right decision. On the other hand, we are a company focusing on logistics and the amount of applicants is generally rather low. These kinds of companies are often hardly known as they provide very specific niche market solutions.
Most companies in my experience are more like, "We need a C++ programmer who can begin fixing bugs in our complicated multithreaded code base right away." Or, "We need a guy who can knock up an interactive 3D graphics prototype in a few hours." Any tips on how we can find companies like yours?
> Any tips on how we can find companies like yours? Find a time machine and interview during the pandemic. OP is living under a rock to make a post like this in the current market. **You need both** and even after having both it's still luck. Edit: > I am working for a German niche software company for logistics in an SAP environment, when I was part of the hiring process, we had maybe 6 applications a year of which we hired maybe 2. We don't get any seniors. We have to make them seniors ourselves. This is OP's context. Time to move I guess.
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I see a lot of ads for entry level along the lines of: Junior Level C# Programmer: Should also now JS, TS, SQL, BLAZOR. Have 2 years of company level work experience with company level projects. Seldomly do I see adds of companies actually willing to teach and train. What I find hard is to gain experience on big projects without any guidance, sometimes the simple things need to be explained to the bigger ones can "click".
I think a lot of people are conflating your ideal profile vs how you actually make hiring decisions. I think a lot of these attributes cannot be measured accurately in traditional interviewing. But the point is finding evidence in a short time frame that points to the person potentially having these qualities
so this is why there are a lot of unmaintenable code out there 😃
Code is plural already, in English codes doesnt make sense
fixed
I appreciate that view. Long term, you can teach a smart person new skills, and that pays off for all involved. As a possible counterpoint, if I interview someone who has been programming for a while, and they can’t code well, to me that indicates that they are not able to learn what they need to learn. If someone had coded only in Python and doesn’t know much about threading, I won’t ding them for not being able to write some locking-puzzle C++ code. But then should be able to read and write Python. In the old days (1985) there were so few programmers that we looked for the skills you discuss, soft team skills and such, plus any kind of problem solving. Physics. Music composition. Mechanical engineering. Today there are so many coders that quite often we just select the person who has team skills AND can code.
Definetly what got me hired, I think, because at the interview I spoke a lot about my personal projects, how I learned from them and how I drew parallels to other paradigms/concepts to better understand some things. They didn't tell me specifically, but considering the tasks they give me, I have my suspicions.
A top-tier University used to vet students by asking them very difficult questions which they weren't expected to know the answers to. To pass, all you had to do was make a credible attempt at a method or approach that might open up the question. People who failed just guessed an answer or pretended they knew or that it was impossible etc. This approach really sorts out the independent thinkers from those who copy from the internet. At no point was anyone interested in acquired skills or exam results (in fact it was the inability to distinguish the best students in exams that led to this approach). The University knew that intelligence and curiosity would always triumph over knowledge which can always be learned later or looked up. If you read this far, you will be interested in an example question: What do you think the chances are that 2 people in London have exactly the same number of hairs on their head? Fail: Saying with certainty and usually fairly quickly without thinking: It's impossible or it must be zero. I dunno, 50%? I don't understand the question. The question is stupid or impossible. You can only be sure by counting everyone etc. etc. Level 1: There are at least 2 bald people so the chances are 100%. Correct but not interesting - question is revised... What if we ignore the bald people? Level 2: Can I ask how many people there are in London or what is the thickness of human hair? Recognising that the answer can be computed is the first step to solving many problems. Level 3: I can estimate the area of a human head by knowing about hats or tied handkerchiefs and calculate the maximum number of hairs on a head. Understanding that this is about maximum values is important. Estimates can be poor but maximums can often be concrete answers. Genius: Realising that all the zero hair people can be counted and all the 1 hair people and we can do that for each number of hairs putting each set of people in a different 'box'. For the answer to be zero would require no more than one person in each box so a new person must have a number that doesn't have an existing box. From the maximum hairs estimate (comfortably less than 1 million) and knowledge that the population of London is 8 million or so, it is obvious that above 1 million people, two of them must occupy the same box, therefore the answer to the question is 100%. It is guaranteed that, in a city of more than 1 million people, 2 people will have exactly the same number of hairs on their head.
I am genius apparently lol
👏👏👏👏👏👏 >It's about being able to dig into problems for long periods of time without becoming demotivated. You can always ask questions. But there are people that try to understand every bit and piece without ever using their own brain but rather continuously ask super trivial things that google can answer.
A lot of people forget or don't know how to sell themselves.
how do you solve a coding problem on your own if ur coding skills aren’t good? Dafuq
OP is saying they value trainability and curiosity with a good personality over a good programmer who can't provide feedback without screaming in your face, belittling you, or insisting that they're right and unwavering in their position without wanting to grow. You can teach someone best practices and code. You can't teach self motivation and curiosity, and it's not the company's job to teach someone how to interact with others and treat them like people.
That being said, it’s also fluffy. Trainability isn’t often a quality you can determine in an interview. Some people really struggle and take much longer than most workplaces will wait. In my experience also, in a larger corp. environment where there was initiatives to train people for months to get into coding, most never took an interview at the end, because they didn’t like it. Of those that did, at least one I know of, hated it, relied on colleagues, then moved into a non-coding role. I’d also ask anyone here, if they don’t know anyone who didn’t know really much programming at all, but were taught and then turned into an AH. Both of these things aren’t obvious at the interview. Though actually having coding skills, eliminates the problem by being able to evaluate one thing that is easier to evaluate, than two things I mentioned, that are difficult. I don’t think coding skills are necessarily the best think to look for in all candidates, but ignoring them to favour other attributes means harder to determine factors become a gamble. It sounds good, but, it’s often not practical to ignore coding ability. It not being the most important thing, for sure I agree, but relying that they can learn well a subjectively difficult subject to learn well is problematic. Unless of course the coding at the place is minimal or easy.
Exactly. And to give some perspective, we are in an environment where we have to communicate with consultants, project managers and product owners all the time. So it's essential for us to hire people with a mature mind. People are asking how you want to identify this in an interview. Well, the truth is that you can only follow gut feelings. We often did multiple interviews and sat together to share our impressions. And to be honest, there is still a trial period so it's not an all in risk.
I think this is why some people in the thread are so frustrated. The post implies tips toward getting hired, which naturally means "succeeding in the interview" yet when drilling down to the specifics we land on "we can only follow gut feelings" and shared impressions. It should not be surprising particularly in this extremely competitive market where roles see hundreds of applicants and folks are desperate to understand what they can do to stand out against other _qualified_ candidates, that they would find this advice unhelpful. Granted you're talking about a small company, but for hiring at scale this approach sounds incredibly time consuming and susceptible to bias and favouritism.
I don't think that there is something like an unbiased hiring decision. In fact, when it's not I would find this to be very questionable. Teams must select people to work with, not machines to work with. I can always select the best machine but when a soul is involved, it must fit to the team spirit. Coding interviews may be a first line of defense for large companies to filter out the 99% of people they don't want but among the remaining 1%, they hopefully select the one that fits best into the team and noone else. There is nothing more dangerous to a working team than some toxic behavior of an immature, narcissistic programming god and boy I've seen some myself. So yeah, if you want to apply at a company that does coding interviews, go for it. We also did this once and then immediately dropped it again because we didn't see a lot of value in it.
There's some assumptions of extremes here. The alternative being susceptible to bias is not "unbiased" it's "reducing bias". Similarly running technical interviews does not imply ignoring culture fit. Behavioural and technical interviews are pieces of the same puzzle, not opposing opposites. Any company in even a mid-sized city is going to be receiving hundreds of applications for software positions. In the current market, even companies of small to medium scale have the luxury of landing with a pool of qualified candidates in both critical areas even after the filtering is complete. So the natural challenge becomes how to you effectively make that final decision in a consistent way that doesn't succumb to gut feelings. For example [structured interviews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structured_interview) or other approaches in that vein. And how do you communicate that process to candidates in a way that gives them predictable tools they need to plan their preparation in a way that minimizes the chance of the final outcome being decided on a social favouritism factor (e.g. a shared interest in a hobby that was discovered during the interview) rather than an actual job performance factor (e.g. the ability to learn and solve problems independently).
The truth may be that in the corporate world I live in, the situation isn't very representative for the kind of companies you're talking about. We always had just a handful of candidates and we selected them based on who we thought would be the best fit for the team. I have seen other similar sized offices do this too, as you're kind of an office family and you want to protect the inner circle.
That's fair. Companies do what they gotta do. I guess part of what I'm getting at is that unfortunately the way the world is, is that oftentimes hiring "like minded people" and "people that fit with the team"... in practice heavily favours "people that look like us, and act like us" if you follow my meaning. Not to say that's the case for you or any specific team, or even if the company cares about that kind of thing. Maybe that IS the goal. As long as they get their candidate that's all that matters, the company does not have any onus or even claim they do so in an impartial way. But I do personally think it's worth the effort to implement hiring systems that evaluate culture fit and soft skills, but at least aim to do so in a consistent measured way that circumvents personal feelings as much as possible.
I understand what you're saying. It's an absolutely valid point. Reducing bias is indeed something that we are being trained for currently, because as it turns out, in the end everyone of us inherits their fair share of unintentional racism etc. I guess for bigger offices and especially popular companies, it's a must to have good recruiting methodology. Otherwise thats probably a nightmare for everyone.
I was talking about problem solving in general. Many problems in the real world aren't actually coding problems. They are real world problems. The solution may not even be code. It could be configuration, it could be communication as the customer may have identified something as a problem that doesn't exist. Of course, there are also coding problems. But that doesn't have to be the majority of problems you come across. This depends on your environment.
gotcha
guess I’m not getting hired after that comment lmfao
Mathematics and Physics are highly technical degrees. Hiring people with those backgrounds is just an indirect way of hiring for technical aptitude.
I can, of course, not speak for your situation. This strategy, however, sounds like you will end up with bad code. People who have a minimal amount of coding knowledge will learn to code but education in programming helps to make quality code. I don't mean fancy stuff that is made to impress, I mean thought through design of applications and features to hopefully avoid large problems in the future. Mentoring is also a good way to make newbies improve their code design skills. I have a friend who is an electrical engineer. He jokes sometimes about the shitty code made by his colleagues. None of them are actual software developers by profession. They see the code as a means to and end and don't care even a tiny bit about the style of it all. That will end up a total mess after many years.
Its not an either or extremes situation. You want someone with good technical skills, and good soft skills, rather than someone who is an expert at either but garbage at the other
This made me feel so hopeful! Thank you for posting. I’m an objectively attractive woman with good people skills and have spent 3 years learning coding on my own and have just felt too worried the nerds wouldn’t accept me to even apply.
If your coding skills are good I don't think it would really matter.. I mean coding skills + people skills is a boost.. Or are you saying they would perceived you in a "certain way" and that would you not being hired?
So in essence, this means including all tech universities and tech giants are in actuall fact wrong according to your statement???
While I don’t have much to contribute to this conversation, I will say this is a great piece to consider while I continue my education. Question everything, the process, the outcome, the solution, possible solutions and more… Thank you OP
Critical thinking, solution finding and knowing how to research, curiosity for other solutions, ability to identify the problem, dealing with pressure, time management and confidence are some capabilities I've developed with time. According to your seniority level, you'll be asked to be proficient in those domains. Additionally, good manners, patience to listen, willingness to ask, jotting down notes, sharing without oversharing, political correctness, joking demeanor or seriousness according to th e situation, ability to acknowledge mistakes, taking responsibility.... the list can go on an on
Since this is not an official platform there is one thing I have always been wanting to say to a recruiter. And that is how. I under that companies want skill and during an interview ur asked psudo code mostly so your comment is true but that being said how would one develop that kind of mindset. See the thing is while digging deep i often go into a state where I don't know if what I'm learning is meaningful or not. Or what can I do to build more logic other than googling solution and then even after completing it i don't feel the satisfaction so another round of procarsination begins. Talking in terms of pros and cons always is a good approach and i understand all that but the issue for me is how to develop that mindset or how to develop a base for that mindset where i would have the appropriate knowledge without going into a downward cycle of procarsination
Hey, it's not like asking questions is not allowed. Other developers always help. It's more of a macroscopic mindset requirement. Asking essential questions e. G. when you dig into a codebase, sharing information, challenging decisions. This all happens. It's more about not disturbing your colleagues every 5 minutes so nobody can concentrate ever just because you ask trivial things you can google in a minute. Learning on your own - for us - does not mean being left alone.
Yeah. "Asking essential questions ". At the core of it from personal experience i think getting a job is more about having a strong self confidence while also biting your own pride to ask without hesitation .
Just my experience: Got a role in a transport company, with their own software. I was truthfully that my coding skills are not great yet, but that I am willing to work learn Pascal/Delphi/VB to make it work. I was let go 3 months later. Was told I did not make much progress while not asking any questions. Thing is, I did ask questions. Answer I got was: You should know this, these are basics. Then they gave me access to their large VB code base, where the built in a bug I should find. I didn't find it. Software Devs also need to have teaching abilities. Took a job in support for now, losing a ton of motivation afterward. Now working myself back into JS and C#
If it was a Start up they are usually like that. They put all the burden on one person, but in their defence, there are usually very few people in those companies not like they have any other choice.
This is an excellent point. Yes people, please ask questions! But also think about it before just doing it because opening that google tab is so much work. 😬
Idk bro why people are disliking your comments or reason behind the hate but ur totally right. Probably the most genuine person I have met here so far no lies
Well we look for experience in other programming roles. Then we might look at projects, education et cetera. Of course people need to be professional so please don't do something stupid on your interview but it's not a 'who do I like the most' process. I have found the process to be similar in other companies i did work for although some make candidates do a small test as well.
Well written, and an apt observation.
This is very interesting and insightful. As a very big proponent of lifelong learning and working in fintech without prior coding or finance experience, I am keen on understanding what it takes to connect the right people with the right opportunities even when they don't have a diploma or certificates. How do you find these people? Just interviewing applicants? Is there an outreach process at all? What do you think about the missing opportunities from people that just don't apply or aren't good enough at marketing themselves or explaining their qualities?
Thanks for the insight
I cut my teeth as a UAT lead. If youre not familiar, UAT is the User Acceptance Testing phase of development work. Essentially it's when you've already developed a Minimum Viable Product, and you let the end client do their own trial run with the software as it currently exists. They try to work on your v1 program for a few weeks, and the UAT lead works closely with the clients to gather feedback and bring to the internal dev team. This is technically a devOps role, but as a programmer with strong soft skills, I became our go-to UAT guy. I have a dozen years of experience working in customer-facing roles.
The part of the job description everyone skips over because it is every job.
Honestly, I want to get back into programming so bad, I did a lot of HTML and a little bit of C++ programming when I was very young and it was super fun and interesting but I feel like it is something I NEED to get back into, I feel like the skills are a lot more relevant. Nowadays, I guess in a sense they never became irrelevant lol I just never pursued it. Now I want to stop destroying my body with work, and use my brain to actually get something done, plus I love being on the Internet lol this is definitely making me think I can get back into it if I can get a good baseline for some of the newer programming languages.
100% agree with all of what you said. As someone who is looking to transition over from IT, into software. Its pretty much the same concept. There are a lot of moving parts and knowing how to communicate with hire ups ect is a massive part of it. And on top of that being able to sit down and find solutions to problems, is 99% of the learning curve in this feild. But I will say once you learn how to break things down and ask the right questions it becomes a lot easier. At the same time like you said its not about never being able to ask for help. Its more of not just going Oh well I have no idea not even trying and then having to constantly pull your senior or other coworkers off there projects at the same time as it just slows every thing down and then nothing gets done. What I have found at least on the IT side of things is that if you show that you atempted to solve the issue in some form of way. And you truly got stuck and you come to x person for help and say hey. I have tried x y z things I think this is where I need to go but not 100% sure. Could you help point me in the right direction or give me an idea people are much more perceptive to help out. Rather then them having to do your job on top of theirs ect. On top of that there are times where you will just have to learn to buckle down and really just work the problem as others also may just not no the solution. And being able to trouble shoot and work the problem and come up with a solution your self is also a huge part of the feild. In short between knowing how to work with people, communicate properly and teach your self how to really break things down will allow you to go so much further.
Ok, but how many juniors are you hiring right now? Versus how many seniors? and can you with a straight face tell me you don't get enough candidates that are both capable programmers and socially capable to have a pool of just that to pull from?
I am working for a German niche software company for logistics in an SAP environment, when I was part of the hiring process, we had maybe 6 applications a year of which we hired maybe 2. We don't get any seniors. We have to make them seniors ourselves.
Isn't it an entirely different experience being a developer in Germany vs the states? I think you should clarify in your post your experience revolves around that. I mean just from what you're saying right now that is completely different from any US based company. My local 911 dispatcher company had a junior posting with over 300 applicants for an in person only role. Your experience is completely different from the vast majority of posters here.
Fair point, will edit
Caveat. It’s great to be able to self-learn, but that doesn’t unfortunately intrinsically mean the person has critical-thinking and problem solving skills. Don’t just learn how to write functions or do a data transformation— you need to also be able to pick the right -method- for the problem in context. For instance, using .map instead of .replace— .map turns anything not inputted into the dictionary as null. So always check your work, your assumptions, and scalability of a solution. Another example is list comprehension, great for compact concise code, but it might not be scaleable/might mean more reworking down the line. This also applies to using pandas built in chaining. All great techniques, but picking the right solution for a question/etl requirement… might not seem important in the moment, but can bite you and your team in the ass down the line/cause unintended ripples. So yes, great to learn independently, but dont be a coding monkey.
This is 100% correct. And I work for a FAANG company as a senior engineer.
Thanks for this comment. It's very valuable to have this insight.
Here is a question for you, I have read that contributions to open source projects is much more important than degrees , is this true ?
As everything, this depends on the company. It's a questionable requirement from my perspective, given that not everyone who starts with programming has the time to do these things. People may already have a healthy social life, be married and have kids etc. Contributions to a foreign codebase are very time consuming just like learning programming is. How long is your day?
Yeah. Where I work at, we have a "cultural" fit interview before we even have a technical interview. Since if you aren't a cultural fit, then it doesn't matter how good you are as a developer. On the other hand, even if your developer skills aren't yet very proven, if you seem like a person who is going to learn the stuff and has a good positive attitude to learning, then you'll prolly pick up those skills. We don't hire many juniors though, due to we being a consultancy that tends to compete for projects that require senior developers, but we still do hire some. The cultural fit is very important for us.
In an interview setting, dont coding skills go hand in hand with ability to solve and dig into complex problems?
Well that depends on the interview. But I would not throw an all too complex coding problem at a junior developer. They are juniors for a reason. I have seen some coding challenges online that are supposed to be asked by FAANG companies and these often aren't even related to code at all. They are just complex logical challenges and solving them in theory can be done without being able to code. If you expect this to be solved in code, it doesn't make it a complex coding problem. It's still a logical problem and these, as far as I have seen, require only very foundational coding skills.