Interviews as seen by HR and the candidate
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In NL it is already mandatory for companies to post some form of an annual report (sometimes very basic) and you can buy them for like 8 euro’s or something
Same in IN, except that the "purchase" seems to be free over here.
Yeah idk why you need to purchase them, but whatever
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Ah, no concreted metrics for efficiency and delivery of results.
Explains why you prioritize employees who have fun on the job rather than efficient professionals who are there to do a job well done - you can't really like to like compare with other teams (much less the broader industry) when it comes to delivering objectives because it's all open ended and unique, so you really don't know for sure which kind of employee is more effective but you do know for sure which kind is more fun to work with, hence you prioritize what you can measure - a fun team - not what is more effective and efficient.
Most work out there in software development is not "cracking interesting problems for fun without a strict timeline", it's "integrate new functionality into an existing massive custom-made system, which has at least 3 different styles of programming and software design because different people have worked on it over the last 8 years and only not a complete mess of spaghetti code if you're lucky" - not really the kind of work were Enthusiasm lasts long, but it still has to be done and sometimes, millions, tens of millions and even hundreds of millions in yearly revenue of some company or other rides in doing that job well and in a timelly fashion.
Don't take this badly, but from where I'm standing you're in the playground sandbox of software engineering. No doubt it's fun and even an environment others would love to be able to work in, it's just not the place for professionals and doesn't really reflect most of the software development being done out there, so not exactly a representative environment for determining what kind of professionals are suitable for the wider industry.
A lot of what you’re saying is spot on and I respect your experience in this and the other comment.
I don’t hire for fun though. I hire for a diversity of perspectives, integrity and authenticity. We teach people how to constructively challenge and go after problems or objectives that may have no off the shelf solution (if they do, we may acquire it).
The problems are usually P&L quantified and prioritised before they get to us - we only have to do that legwork if it’s something we’ve generated.
It does feel like a playground to a degree and I do love the work - perhaps yes it’s less ‘professional’ and structured. We do have experienced devs and architects who I would hope aren’t reproducing problems - but it’s often our job to find a technical solution (if appropriate) to a problem, not to ‘productionise’ it or maintain it. This involves a handoff to others in the business and they ultimately determine how it is rolled out.
I get that this isn’t typical of the market and thanks for your response / take on this. One thing we have to be careful of is being ‘institutionalised’ and that will come across as naive, perhaps it is, but that has been a help.
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Yeah I'm not asking questions about the technical stuff I'm actually interested in to an HR drone
The answer to "What about us resonated with you?" would be:
"The job description you put up."
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Once I started burning companies the way they've burned me for years, employment got a lot better.
Fuck me? Nah, fuck you.
you won't get a good referral!
bitch, they won't call you anyway. I gave them my boss's personal cell number(my cousin).
You're married to your cousin? (/sarcasm, mostly)
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HOW DARE YOU ASK FOR COMFORT IN YOUR ONLY ONE LIFE???!!
Yeah its shocking we are not incredibly grateful isnt it.
"Nobody wants to work"...
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I've never understood why the HR people always see "not asking questions about the company" or "not demonstrating knowledge about the company" as such a red flag.
People are looking for a job, not a cult to join.
You would understand if you understood the mindset of HR employees. To them, you are joining a life mission, not just a job. And they have a plan for your life so it fits the company objectives. Super great. Except no.
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Jesus Christ, yes, I am a comfort hunter. You think I get up at the ass crack of dawn every day for fun? You think I want to push buttons on a computer all day because I'm just weirdly into it?
No! I do this shit because I have to!
Fucking hell. I've already accepted that I have to make your company money if I want to live in a house. For the love of all that is good in this world, PLEASE do not make me pretend to like it. I'm already weirded out that you're so into it.
You clearly are not a "team player". HR already has a plan for your life, all you have to do is follow their instructions and things are smooth.
Feeling unhappy? Deal with that outside of work, and make sure it dont affect your work.
If its one topic i really feel passionate about, its the entire anti-work thing. Because we are human beings. All of us work because we have to. And thats it.
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Let's stop mincing words here.
You want me because I have a particular set of skills that you think will be helpful to you in your pursuit of profit.
I want your job because I can leverage the skills I have for money and benefits that will provide food, and shelter.
Your main concerns are profits.
My main concerns are survival.
Employment is where these things meet in the middle. Let's not pretend that we're here because we're friends. We are not family. Fuck you, pay me.
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The part about asking what about the company resonates with you is a good interview question provided you hire for the long term. If you hire for a specific project what loyalty are you expecting?
BuT We'Re A FaMiLy HeRe!
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You can buy loyalty. Give someone a high paying 3-year contract and they'll probably work to the end of it. But of course HR doesn't want to hear that.
Shocked Pikachu
People will work FOR MONEY!??!
- every HR team ever.
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There are more things you could ask about even if the job description is good, though.
As a software engineer I like to ask questions about the team dynamic. I'm not interested in working with a bunch of bros, so having some diversity in the team is good.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I dont know. Maybe ive been unlucky but "diversity" has meant a lot of people with very different personalities, which has meant that people dont become friends. Has it meant something different to you? Maybe for you its the other way, and you dont have anything incommon with the typical worker (whatever bro means in this context, maybe males and you are female?) , so you welcome more people like yourself.
Doesnt everyone actually want collegues that are as close to yourself in personality as possible so you feel you have common ground?
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It's either a business relation on both sides or it's a personal relation on both sides.
I was in Tech in Europe through the transition from when employees were people and the company was loyal to them and expected loyalty to the company in return (the age of lifetime employment), to the world we live in now were employees are "human resources", and for a great part of that period there was this thing were most employers expected employees to stay with the company whilst the company needed them and be dedicated to the company, whilst in return they treated employees as a business relationship with (in Tech) some manipulative "fake friendship" stuff thrown in (the ultimate examples: company paid pizza dinner when people stay working on a project till late, or the yearly company party, rather than, you know, paying people better or sizing the team to fit the work that needs to be done rather than relying on unpaid overwork) - still today we see this kind of shit very obviously and very purposefully done in places like Google.
Of course the "humour" part here is that plenty of managerial and HR people in companies still expect that employees are loyal to the company even all the while they treat them as disposable cogs who it's fine to exploit without consideration for their feelings or welfare - or going back to the first paragraph of this post: they relate to employees as a business relationship whilst expecting the employees related to the company as a personal relationship (often a "second family").
If I'm working late on something, I expect to be paid for that time and the company can provide a meal.
You're not paying me? I'll see you later then.
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Let's stop mincing words here.
You want me because I have a particular set of skills that you think will be helpful to you in your pursuit of profit.
I want your job because I can leverage the skills I have for money and benefits that will provide food, and shelter.
Your main concerns are profits.
My main concerns are survival.
Employment is where these things meet in the middle. Let's not pretend that we're here because we're friends. We are not family. Fuck you, pay me.
Short version. My boss pays me enough so I don't quit, and I work hard enough so he doesn't fire me.
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I like reading the comments more than the post itself
Same. There's so much here that's just excellent.
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Once I started burning companies the way they've burned me for years, employment got a lot better.
Fuck me? Nah, fuck you.
you won't get a good referral!
bitch, they won't call you anyway. I gave them my boss's personal cell number(my cousin).
Your cousin is Art Vandaly?
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I couldn't give less of a fuck about any company or their "projects", selling a product is not a mission to empower users and help the world or some bullshit like that.
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I've never understood why the HR people always see "not asking questions about the company" or "not demonstrating knowledge about the company" as such a red flag.
People are looking for a job, not a cult to join.
Researching the company used to be a thing you did when selecting a career/lifetime position.
.... Since that doesn't happen anymore, I couldn't give any less of a shit about what your company is all about. I can do thing, you want to pay me to do thing. It's as simple as that. All the rest of this crap, I just don't have the time, effort or shits to give.
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Jesus Christ, yes, I am a comfort hunter. You think I get up at the ass crack of dawn every day for fun? You think I want to push buttons on a computer all day because I'm just weirdly into it?
No! I do this shit because I have to!
Fucking hell. I've already accepted that I have to make your company money if I want to live in a house. For the love of all that is good in this world, PLEASE do not make me pretend to like it. I'm already weirded out that you're so into it.
Making you pretend to like it is HR's kink.
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A lot of what you’re saying is spot on and I respect your experience in this and the other comment.
I don’t hire for fun though. I hire for a diversity of perspectives, integrity and authenticity. We teach people how to constructively challenge and go after problems or objectives that may have no off the shelf solution (if they do, we may acquire it).
The problems are usually P&L quantified and prioritised before they get to us - we only have to do that legwork if it’s something we’ve generated.
It does feel like a playground to a degree and I do love the work - perhaps yes it’s less ‘professional’ and structured. We do have experienced devs and architects who I would hope aren’t reproducing problems - but it’s often our job to find a technical solution (if appropriate) to a problem, not to ‘productionise’ it or maintain it. This involves a handoff to others in the business and they ultimately determine how it is rolled out.
I get that this isn’t typical of the market and thanks for your response / take on this. One thing we have to be careful of is being ‘institutionalised’ and that will come across as naive, perhaps it is, but that has been a help.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]Sounds to me like you're doing the fun part of the job - "solving challenging problems" - without having to do the vast majority of the work (which is seldom as much fun), such as making it suitable for actual end users, integration with existing systems and/or migration, maintaining it during its entire life-cycle, supporting it (which for devs generally means 3rd level support) and so on.
So not exactly a typical environment from which to derive general conclusions about what are the best characteristics for a professional in software engineering in general.
Mind you, I don't disagree that if what you're doing is basically skunworks, you want enthusiastic people who aren't frozen into a certain set of habits and technologies: try shit out to see if it works kind of people rather than the kind that asks themselves "how do I make this maintainable and safe to extend for the innevitable extra requirements in the future".
Having been on both sides of the fence, in my experience the software that comes from such skunkworks teams tends to be horribly designed, not suitable for production and often requires a total rewrite and similarly looking back at when I had that spirit, the software I made was shit for anything beyond the immediacy of "solving the problem at hand".
(Personally when I had to hire mid-level and above devs, one of my criteria was if they had already been through the full life cycle for a project of theirs - having to maintain and support your own work really is the only way to undrestand and even burn into one's brain the point and importance of otherwise "unexplained" good practices in software development and design).
Mind you, I can get your problem with people who indeed are just jobsworths - I've had to deal with my share of people who should've chosen a different professional occupation - but you might often confuse the demands and concerns of people from the production side as "covering their asses bullshit" when they're in fact just the product of them working on short, mid and long term perspectives in terms of the software life-cycle and in a broader context hence caring about things like extensability, maintenability and systems integration, whilst your team's concerns end up pretty much at the point were you're delivering stuff that "works, now, in laboratory conditions". Certainly, I've seen this dynamic of misunderstandings between "exploratory" and "production" teams, especially the skunkworks team because they tend to be younger people who never did anything else, whilst the production team (if they're any good) is much more likely to have at least a few people who, when they were junior, did the same kind of work as the skunkworks guys.
Then again, sometimes it really is "jobsworths who should never have gone into software development" covering their asses and minimizing their own hassle.
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Let's stop mincing words here.
You want me because I have a particular set of skills that you think will be helpful to you in your pursuit of profit.
I want your job because I can leverage the skills I have for money and benefits that will provide food, and shelter.
Your main concerns are profits.
My main concerns are survival.
Employment is where these things meet in the middle. Let's not pretend that we're here because we're friends. We are not family. Fuck you, pay me.
Unfortunately, many companies don't care about PR anymore. In the past, some would try to appear "we are family" to retain employees. Now it is everyone for themselves.
