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Comment by georgeburdell | Hacker News Reader

I look at that resume and I wonder if it didn't hurt more than it helped; it's form over function, and a bit corny. The fact that he got multiple offers in two months shows how strong the software job market is.

I'm several years younger, but a staff-level hardware engineer at a second tier company (top tier being FAANG). I've had an incredibly difficult time jumping companies --- 2 years and counting. Despite being twice promoted since graduating with my PhD, most recently this past review cycle, I have yet to get past the first interview stage* with a top tier company, even with close friends at those companies referring me. It's quite frustrating and I wish I knew what the successful candidates had that I didn't.

* Note that for hardware engineering, the initial interview is a meet-and-greet with a technical question or two, so more laid back

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It sounds like something about how you come off in interviews throws off red flags to the person interviewing you. Maybe you're too arrogant, not arrogant enough, not driven enough, etc. Most top tier companies will give you a list of personality qualities they are looking for that they expect you to show in the initial interview. I'd recommend doing a mock interview with someone you trust who has hired people to see what they can discern.

> Maybe you're too arrogant, not arrogant enough

For all the criticism hacker news gives whiteboard algorithm interviews, those at least are testing performance under pressure for a skill related to the job. Arrogance is a bigger problem in interviews. What comes off as confidence in an interview might come off as asshole at work.

But you know? Do you ask a plumber to show you how to connect tubes, before hiring him?

Whiteboard interviews aren't even real life situations.

> Do you ask a plumber to show you how to connect tubes, before hiring him?

If the previous two plumbers I'd hired had turned out not to know how to connect tubes... yeah, I might.

This seems a bit unfair, as I don’t ask the plumber likely because of trade skills being centrally licensed and regulated. Presumably if they are licensed to do the job someone else has already done the vetting - which makes sense especially for consumer-focused skills where the consumer might not be able to perform an adequate vetting.

I understand the core idea of your comment, regarding the utility of whiteboard interviews to assess skill. Irrespective, vetting is a part of many skilled jobs. The difference in the analogy and software being whether a centralised institution (Licensing body) or each company does that vetting.

Presumably if they are licensed to do the job someone else has already done the vetting

That’s true but it’s also true that a candidate may have had previous jobs at a string of reputable companies, and yet that “vetting” is completely ignored and it’s back to square one.

Not to mention that a degree from a reputable university also doesn’t count. Maybe it gets them past the HR screen but no interviewers seem to believe that a degree let’s you skip the whiteboard.

A degree from a reputable university doesn't count in _any_ profession (ok, that's hyperbolic - it certainly counts for something in run-of-the-mill office jobs). Even doctors, lawyers, actuaries, accountants, etc. have to prove they are capable to a central authority before they can work.

Your first paragraph is all too true from personal experience. Last week I was phone interviewing a candidate who, by resume and our first 5 minutes of conversation, I knew would pass the standard coding problem we had prepared.

Felt like a waste to “vet” then, as the signal that they were a good candidate was already there.

On the other hand, getting a CS degree showed the need for additional vetting, in my experience. I saw many students who hadn’t really learned to code, and only a handful of students learned to write industry-level code.

I wasn't trying to have another instance of the whiteboard interview debate. My point was about arrogance and how we should give it more attention as a bad signal than we do.

definitively. Arrogance is a major red flag

"testing performance under pressure"

What kind of companies are these that their engineers need to write perfect code under severe (i.e. on the order of minutes) time constraints? Are they constantly opening sockets for Jack Bauer?

The only whiteboard questions I find useful as an interviewer are the super-easy ones that weed out the bozos who have somehow slipped through the initial filter. Things like "can you write a SQL join".

What I find most predictive are conversations with candidates about how they evaluate tradeoffs, approach system design, what do you do when you get stuck? Typically if they can pass the bozo filters and talk cluefully about these things, they will likely be a productive coder on straightforward applications. Which is most applications; many companies vastly overestimate the inherent complexity of their products.

>What kind of companies are these that their engineers need to write perfect code under severe (i.e. on the order of minutes) time constraints?

I, oddly, had to do that once in my career although I had an hour or so. Retail advertising, Cyber Monday, data pipeline is backing up severely, advertising budgets aren't updating, only other data person I can reach is drunk. Bottlenecking code is written in perl. I don't know perl. And no real testing environment. Very stressful hour of my life.

edit: Of course, such things happening often enough to note are generally a symptom of bad process and management, probably a lot of technical debt as well. So generally a workplace to avoid.

You should ask your interviewers after-the-denial, explaining that you would like to understand what they would like to have seen so you can continue to prep/grow. At worst, it'll be slightly awkward (doing this via email can help mitigate that) and/or they may ignore your request. At best, they may be impressed by your grace and interest in growth (never know how things will play out--you may be their second choice and hear from them again some day).

But, really you just want honest answers and most would understand that (as most can relate to your situation). As an interviewer, I'd be more than happy to explain if anyone asked me. But, now that I think of it, I don't believe anyone ever has.

> It's quite frustrating and I wish I knew what the successful candidates had that I didn't.

Have you asked your close friends or your coworkers about this?

As a hiring manager, I liked that his cover letter spoke to the job and his qualifications for it. A "form" cover letter is worse than none, IMHO. For the resume itself, I didn't like that 1/3 of it was the corny sentence, especially since it was on the cover letter, too.

That said, he did a pretty good job highlighting his experience, which is far more important than a fancy resume. In my most recent job search, I had 4 interviews, and for three of them, the interviewers were holding printouts of my LinkedIn profile, not my meticulously edited and formatted PDF resume. Good thing I gave my LinkedIn profile the same treatment!

Regarding your own opportunities, there's nothing like experience, though hardware seems to generally require more years than software.

The market is very strong, but at the same time every single company insists on the hazing and crazy algorithm grilling. We should start accepting that not every company is FAANG, not every company is solving FAANG hard problems, and not every programmer belongs to the 0.001% best

Except even at those companies, the actual day to day work is pretty straight forward. What we really need are engineers who can produce well thought out designs, and write quality code that is easy to maintain. Unfortunately, the emphasis on tech interviews is on algorithmic questions, possibly due to desire to reduce candidate pool size, and the fact that design output are somewhat harder to quantify.

When I was looking for opportunities in Europe (specifically tech hubs - Berlin, Munich, Dublin, Amsterdam but not London) few months back, I had cold-applied on the respective Company portals to about 100-120 different Software Dev roles.

My resume was definitely good enough to be pass the HR screening at Google/Amazon/Microsoft (as they did get selected locally), and yet the ones that I heard back from and agreed to give me a phone screen numbered in single digits (about 8 - Uber, Stripe and a few more). I was also in the high-skilled category and wouldn't have a problem getting the respective visas. And I did not clear for even 1 onsite. It's just that the competition is just greater these days.

Is Europe different than the US /UK I would not normally consider applying direct to a tech company in the UK as almost 100 % of roles are via a recruiter.

Could it be that you are overqualified?

How was your PhD experience, do you think it has helped your career considering the opportunity cost?

Not over-qualified (see other posts). At this point in my career, a PhD has been a net financial loss even though I managed to graduate in four years. The jobs are more interesting though. I wouldn't recommend it, honestly.

Do you have more terminal career optionality though? It feels like a PhD should be at least relatively valuable as a promotion signal, or are you arguing the 4 years of lost work experience outweigh any positives (ignoring debt and foregone income).

For most programming jobs, the salary for "no industry experience, PhD" is lower than the salary for "4 years industry experience, college degree"

So it's not a big moneymaker. But it's certainly not the biggest financial hit you can take in life; having children will cost you a lot more and loads of people do that.

If you look at lifetime salary surveys, you'll find people with doctoral degrees earn more - and some people will say even if a PhD doesn't boost your salary on the day of graduation, your salary will rise faster and higher than your peers. But that could easily be confounded by the fact you've got to have good grades, or ambition towards fancy titles, in order to get a PhD.

There are exceptions, of course; if you want to become a professional academic, if you target a job at a company's research division and choose your research accordingly, or if moves you into a new immigration status. There's no doubt the likes of Chris Urmson and Anthony Levandowski made a lot of money on the back of their PhDs.

I had a recruiter specifically ask me to use a similar style CV with very long descriptions. I guess when companies brag about having non-technical managers (and other gate-keepers) this is the key to getting the job. I did get an offer, only to later be canceled due to too many contractors in the company (above legal limit).

> It's quite frustrating and I wish I knew what the successful candidates had that I didn't.

If you can ask your friends in top tier companies to give you a practice interview and give you feedback, I highly recommend it.

>I'm several years younger

The author looks 20 years old.

> I wish I knew what the successful candidates had that I didn't

It's not what they had, it's what they didn't... unless you're going heavy into research, I would recommend NOT getting the PhD until you hit 45+.

Hardware development jobs are PhD-only in my field (some older people get grandfathered in with an MS, but this is rare). These are not research-y jobs

Out of curiosity, what field is that?

MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems). Examples include the accelerometers in your smartphone

Much lower opportunity cost to a PhD if you're foregoing 4 years of a 20-year-old's wages, and you're used to the student lifestyle, than when you're foregoing a 45-year-old's wages and you've got a house and family.

> hardware engineer

Software's different because you can hire-fast & fire-fast. Unless you have broken processes and incompetent people surrounding the new hire, you can easily determine if they're good enough. Hack, it's even worth it to hire 2 devs for everyone you need and fire the worst performing one in a few months (flip a coin if they're pretty equal and can't afford them both).

Easier to get fired, easier to get hired. Churn and less from your employer giving a f about your career development. Every industry has its patterns.

Actually, imo the worst thing you can do as a software tech-lead is to structure your processes and projects so that hire-fast-fire-fast is no longer viable, do things so that your software is more like hardware - this is a sure way to inevitably kill the company/department you work for while "doing good work"...

> Hack, it's even worth it to hire 2 devs for everyone you need and fire the worst performing one in a few months (flip a coin if they're pretty equal and can't afford them both).

That is awful. Don't mess with other people's lives just because you can't make a decision.

> it's even worth it to hire 2 devs for everyone you need and fire the worst performing one in a few months (flip a coin if they're pretty equal and can't afford them both).

You're a bit of a piece of shit, aren't you? Playing with people's lives like you're a god.

And no one says that about Netflix:

https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

If they don't then they certainly should, it sounds like a toxic workplace.

What annoyed me about that slide was the comparison to a pro sports team, which shows how the "ultra-elite" Netflix lacks the critical thinking to see that this comparison doesn't hold.

For one, performance in a pro sports team is quantifiable. So-and-so player scored so many points vs so many tries, whereas the average is so and so. It's relatively easy to plot a normal distribution.

Not quite so easy for software developers. Companies like to say they can measure performance but we all know they can't. Not easy to compare someone who got lucky and worked on greenfield projects with someone who drew the short straw to maintain some legacy code. If the latter struggles, does this say anything about the former? Can you predict the performance had the roles been reversed? No.

So it always falls back to a mix of "how much does your manager likes you" and "how well you can argue you performed". Or if you're at Google then you can add "how well you chose and optimized metrics", regardless of whether you're measuring the right thing.

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