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June 16, 2021 at 9:19 PM #822171June 16, 2021 at 9:56 PM #822172
CoronitaParticipant…And WTF is going on…It’s the 21st century…Despite a proliferation of Asian software engineers in the industry… Why is the c-level, so, for the lack of the better word…white..
June 16, 2021 at 10:20 PM #822173an
Participant[quote=Coronita]…And WTF is going on…It’s the 21st century…Despite a proliferation of Asian software engineers in the industry… Why is the c-level, so, for the lack of the better word…white..[/quote]
Asians are whiteJune 16, 2021 at 10:28 PM #822174utcsox
Participant[quote=Coronita]I was hoping to use my lessons in trying to buy a rental properties these days and apply it to trying to hire someone and was trying to explain with an analogy to my senior execs the concept of how a bidding war works…But they didn’t listen.
So we wanted to make an offer to a great junior engineer in the mid-west 2 years experience, remote worker. He mentioned he had a few additional interviews through the end of the week, so I’m like great, I respect that, we’ll give you an offer now to think about it, and then let us know if you are interested in pursuing it further next week. Current comp including stock grant around 95k so I figure he’ll be getting offers around $100k-118k, so I figure let’s go on the high end at $118k and see how it shakes out, figuring we’ll probably need to do a $10k signon bonus and we’ll save that once we get the other offers in.
But, no…Exec felt, well let’s go high right now, and maybe he’ll accept the offer without taking anything else. I’m like, come on…Even if we put a 48 hour time limit on the offer, what’s to prevent him from accepting our offer, continuing interviewing, and then take our offer, ask someone else to beat it, and then rescind our offer? Because that’s what I would do in this market. So no point in trying to put your highest offer in now, without waiting to see what else comes back…
See, it’s very similar to trying to buy a house right now. You want to put in a offer just high enough to make it to the short list of the selected people they will give a counter offer to. But you don’t want to go too high because otherwise your high price will end up being the floor for the counter offer that goes out, and you’re going to end up bidding against your own price you set.
Of course, they didn’t listen. Offer went out at $118k with a $10k sign on bonus… i bet it’s going to be cross shopped with the other companies he’s interviewing for, and after its’ done, we’re going to need increase the sign on bonus to $20k.
2 years of solid mobile experience….That’s how much it’s costing…
The other funny part is, there’s a bunch of people who aren’t really mobile software engineers trying to pass themselves off as one. They basically go attend some 6 month crash course at some for profit university, and claim they are a mobile engineer.
It doesn’t work with my company and my team, but I’m pretty confident they can find a job with some company that is desperate and isn’t as picky…and would pay roughly the same. Jokes on the engineers spent 4-6 years in a real college getting a BS/MS engineering degree…It’s the 2000’s all over again.[/quote]
Very interesting. Please let us know whether the junior engineer accept the offer from your company.
June 17, 2021 at 9:12 AM #822177Participant[quote=XBoxBoy]
I don’t find that surprising. I can’t say in my 35 years of working as a programmer I’ve ever had to reverse a string.While I don’t know the details of the questions an asks or the tests Coronita sends home, I’d point out that in general tests and their questions turn out to be horrible predictors of programmer ability. Personally, I try to go with interview questions like, “Tell me about the toughest bug you ever had to solve? How did you go about solving it?” or, “What was the biggest challenge you faced working at your last job?” or “Of all the people you’ve worked with who was the person you learned the most from, and what did you learn?”
If I want to know about thought processes I often simply ask, “When asked to implement a new feature, what process do you like to follow?” (And btw, that last question is a trick question. The candidate who answers with the importance of fully designing before beginning to code is someone who likes to overdesign their stuff.)
Lastly, I like to see if a candidate can tell me a story, or a step by step procedure. They might have already told me a story with my earlier questions. And the reason that I think that’s important is that despite all the people that say “programming is math” I’ve found it is more like writing a novel. You have a story (what the program does) you have characters (objects in code) that must interact (ahh, the code that binds it all together) and good code is a process of constant editing, editing and more editing.
The bottom line to me isn’t whether the candidate has the ability to do some simple coding, (or more often than not, if they’ve reviewed a bunch of questions on sites that list the questions likely found on a programming exam) the question is can they contribute to a project with thousands of lines of code without creating a tangled mess. So, I try to focus my questions on figuring out how they’ll do with that.
Just my two cents though…[/quote]
That is the exact point. It’s not about actually solving the problem but being able to communicate your solution, thought process, or explain to someone what/why you’re stuck. If you’re stuck, then talk through with me what were you thinking that got you to the point where you’re stuck. I’m sure in your 35 years of working as a programmer, you’ve experienced a problem where you’re stuck, and you need help or pair with someone to solve a tough problem that you’ve never seen/experience before.The last thing I want is someone to join my team that when they’re stuck, they’ll stay stuck for days/weeks and not ask for help.
BTW, this is not the only question, but one among many others.
June 17, 2021 at 7:51 PM #822182
svelteParticipantTo me, an immediate red flag is a candidate who has 10 years of work history, 1-2 years at each company. That tells me there is a problem of some sort…I mean once or twice could be a bad fit but a half dozen times of that, it’s the employee not the companies.
I had a problem child handed over to me awhile back as a last resort. I too failed and turning this person around and they left the company. While looking through their file, I found the resume this person gave us when we interviewed them. Sure enough, 10 years and not more than 1.5 years at any place. I asked the folks who hired the employee – didn’t you notice this? Why the f did we bring this person aboard? They just shrugged and handed their mistake off to me to handle.
And I agree with conversation above. A wise mentor a long time ago said the point of an interview is not whether the person knows the exact technical skills we need…if they are worth their salt they can pick that up quickly as long as they have the basics in our technology field. What is more important is their thought process, their ability to get along with others and their ability to stick with something…that’s why a degree is important for an entry level person – shows they can stick with something for four or more years.
June 17, 2021 at 8:34 PM #822183CoronitaParticipant[quote=svelte]To me, an immediate red flag is a candidate who has 10 years of work history, 1-2 years at each company. That tells me there is a problem of some sort…I mean once or twice could be a bad fit but a half dozen times of that, it’s the employee not the companies.
I had a problem child handed over to me awhile back as a last resort. I too failed and turning this person around and they left the company. While looking through their file, I found the resume this person gave us when we interviewed them. Sure enough, 10 years and not more than 1.5 years at any place. I asked the folks who hired the employee – didn’t you notice this? Why the f did we bring this person aboard? They just shrugged and handed their mistake off to me to handle.
And I agree with conversation above. A wise mentor a long time ago said the point of an interview is not whether the person knows the exact technical skills we need…if they are worth their salt they can pick that up quickly as long as they have the basics in our technology field. What is more important is their thought process, their ability to get along with others and their ability to stick with something…that’s why a degree is important for an entry level person – shows they can stick with something for four or more years.[/quote]
i actually disagree with that. thats actually the mentality of some san diego companies but not generally how it works overall. Fact is modern day tech companies get sold, acquired, run out of money all the time. Its not the engineers fault. and often times some people, particularly asian male, get pigeon holed into a role and never have the opportunity to move up…the entire white frat boy club…so for some people the choice is simple. you could wait 5-6-7 years hoping youll get your turn by merit working hard…meanwhile watching a white fratboy who likes to talk a lot about football but nevertheless less qualified than you, bloviate his way around and move up more quicker and eventually ends up your boss keeps you as
worker bee….or you quit for the next company that offers you a better position…seems like it’s a no brainer…i see a lot of my asian colleagues still Software Engineer 3 after so many years, no surprise there.i certainly am glad I moved around enough. When Avago acquired Broadcom and chopped it up, it was a great monetary pay day of a few hundred thousand ever for worker bees… but it was sucky for a lot of engineers that were laidoff to make the stock go up, especially when maby of them were unemployed for quite some time because they did leave earlier before everyone else was looking for a job. especially when these layoffs do happen, its usually thr white frat boy c-suite that get to keep their jobs and their stock options, while they lay off the asian worker bees they never promoted because after all, they are the decision makers …..
and when a startup skipped a 401k contribution that was already withheld from your paycheck, you also know its time to get out of there because the company is lying and not tellng you they are running out of money…
theres the opposite problem.. a lot of Qualcomm lifers stayed st the company for like 20+years… and when they got laidoff they were unemployable elsewhere because they never kept current with the rest of the industry.
i think one thing for certain, this industry is large enough that if company X doesnt like you for some subjective random reason, thats fine.. theres company y z a b c that doesnt care and have some other subjective reason not to like someone else as long as you are good.
June 17, 2021 at 9:31 PM #822184Anonymous
GuestNo, that is a huge red flag anyone with like 5-10 different positions within 10 year period. In most cases it points to a problem employee. And on top of that, if you only spend a year at a tech job you’re not there long enough to become an expert at anything or to really accomplish much.
Also, why all the white hatred? For tech industry engineering jobs, Asian males are the dominant majority in my experience. I’m not feeling any sympathy for that demographic.
June 17, 2021 at 10:04 PM #822185ParticipantSo glad I never had to deal with people like svelte and deadzone earlier in my career while interviewing.
June 18, 2021 at 12:58 AM #822186CoronitaParticipant[quote=deadzone]No, that is a huge red flag anyone with like 5-10 different positions within 10 year period. In most cases it points to a problem employee. And on top of that, if you only spend a year at a tech job you’re not there long enough to become an expert at anything or to really accomplish much.
Also, why all the white hatred? For tech industry engineering jobs, Asian males are the dominant majority in my experience. I’m not feeling any sympathy for that demographic.[/quote]
You misunderstood what I was saying. There’s no “white hatred”.Don’t know Why you would say that.
I’m just pointing out the “unconscious biases” that regularly occupies C-level mindsets at US companies. It’s not as big a problem at engineer/technical levels since at the pure technical levels, most engineers could care less about race, gender, etc etc…everyone is a geek, everyone is equal.
I’m talking about management positions, like Directors and above. Because like I said, once you step slightly out of the realm of pure technical levels, things get a lot more subjective, and it becomes a lot more like a frat house. Take my current company. I’m the only asian that’s director or higher. We have about 18 directors and VP, and about 500 employees, maybe 350 of them engineers, a lot asian,latino,indian, african american. Besides me, there’s maybe 1 director that is african american. Why is that? “unconscious bias”.
You see often times, especially in leadership positions, whether you are “qualified” to do that job has a lot less to do with whether you can actually do the job, but more to do with “how well you fit in with the good ole boys” in the most subjective ways that has no relevance to the job function.
Take a manager position. In many situations people get rejected on the grounds of a “not fit” test..For example a predominantly white “frattish” leadership team that all think the same and always talks about say football, make their hiring decisions based on the subjective biases of liking people who are like them and like football and conversations about football….this sort of bias happens all the time, and leads to a disproportionate hiring disadvantage for people that dont fit with this frattish persona who otherwise would qualify for that position on skill. People who often dont “fit” into this model are minorities and women…I also like to specifically call out asian men too, because a lot of people don’t consider asian men as minorities by the number of engineers there are, and therefore erroneously conclude that there is no discrimination and unconscious biases that occurs because “just look at how asian engineers there are”… But that is simply not true..The fact is that while there are many Asians that are engineers IE “grunt workers”, there are disproportionately very few Asian managers or c-level leaders despite the fact that there are a large number of Asian engineers. And that is the crux of why some of us more vocal Asians are pointing out. In a pool of a large number of Asian engineers why are there so few leaders versus say whites?
But regardless, what does this mean for Asians who are highly motivated, career focused, who want to attain some larger career aspirations instead of remaining at a cushy job, collect a 2-3% raise each year, keep doing the same thing over and over again….Well, it means you’re really at a disadvantage and you really have to be a lot more proactive about seeking better opportunities. In general, leadership opportunities aren’t simple things you sit around on your ass and wait for someone to give it to you. And in a lot of companies if you’re minority, it will be a long time before you have that opportunity. A good indication is how diverse is the executive leadership team and how long has it been that way? If the c-suite is all white or close to all white. Forget it… you could be waiting until hell freezes over. For the benefit of your career aspirations, you’re better of using your current experience and knowledge to find a company willing to look past the “frat boy” fit test and hire you into a position based on your qualifications versus some arbitrary biases. There are companies that aren’t run with a frat boy mentality, so you’re be better aligned to those opportunities there.
So again, I didnt say i hate white people, or even think EVERY company is run like a frat house. But there are plenty that are, and while that might not matter when you’re just engineer, but anything beyond that, you’re gonna have to do something about it to break this glass ceiling created by unconscious biases.
Also, I think you misunderstood that I’m not lookingf or sympathy or complaining this happens..I look forward to breaking the glass ceilings each and every time. Im just merely pointing out from a career management perspective there are a lot of reasons why people move around. Some of us arent content just sitting around collecting a paycheck, complacent at a routine job, want to be challenged to do more, or to lead, or to do something bigger..and we arent afraid to take on new challenges and new opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have been given to us if we just stayed at the same job expecting it to be handed to us, which is even less likely if we happen to be working at a company with a frat boy leadership structure…And given that despite whatever obstacles unconscious biases that might exist, it hasnt precluded me for going where i wanted to go.
As far as the shorter work experience being an obstacle to employment. Not really. Remember, I mentioned this in another thread. Usually it’s the recruiters of the company that are reaching out on LinkedIn trying to poach employees. And when I do interview with the VP or director, it’s seldom that my work history ever comes up as an issue. In fact, most of them have a jumpy resume too, if not worse.
June 18, 2021 at 6:37 AM #822188svelteParticipant[quote=an]So glad I never had to deal with people like svelte and deadzone earlier in my career while interviewing.[/quote]
Sounds as if you’re a jumper. I wouldn’t want to train you up just to have you jump to another position a year later. That would be frustrating!
I get that there are exceptions, those who worked for companies that folded, etc. If there are good reasons for the jumps, I would certainly listen – and then I would verify those reasons were true. But the truth is, I would probably never even arrange the interview once I glanced at the resume…so the probability you would have had to deal with folks like me is low to begin with.
June 18, 2021 at 8:35 AM #822190CoronitaParticipantUpdate. Counter offers came in. I was right. Had to add on top of what we originally offered by about $5k. Oh well, not my problem.
Offer was accepted as of this morning.
Don’t mess with Texas.
June 18, 2021 at 8:55 AM #822191CoronitaParticipant[quote=svelte][quote=an]So glad I never had to deal with people like svelte and deadzone earlier in my career while interviewing.[/quote]
Sounds as if you’re a jumper. I wouldn’t want to train you up just to have you jump to another position a year later. That would be frustrating!
I get that there are exceptions, those who worked for companies that folded, etc. If there are good reasons for the jumps, I would certainly listen – and then I would verify those reasons were true. But the truth is, I would probably never even arrange the interview once I glanced at the resume…so the probability you would have had to deal with folks like me is low to begin with.[/quote]
I really don’t think it matters. Just like the real estate market, there’s a buyer for every house at various price points. And a competitive market where there’s a tight supply, those difference are even of less concern. So yes, while you and other companies might not be interested in hiring AN. That’s ok. There’s plenty of other companies that would hire AN and not hire candidates that might be a better fit for your company’s philosophy or style.
Also, quite honestly, in these day and age of mobile software. There’s very little that a company needs to do to “train” someone on the basic principles and architectures of doing a good app..All that information is already available out there on the internet in an open way, and it’s just a matter of spending the time to do a challenge project, whether it’s within the structures of a corporation or yourself… (with the exception of maybe apple, which you need to pay $99/year for a developer account, but still the financial bar is pretty low to join that program) So it’s quite common that a fresh college grad already has the basic tools he/she/they need to be a decent mobile engineer. Mobile phone for development + $99/year developer membership + computer to run IDE (for IOS/XCode, that means a Mac which you can do on a Mac Mini if you’re cheap).. OR…if you’re really cheap, do it on a Hacintosh, if you don’t plan on actually submitting the app to the app store (because your Hacintosh would violate all Apple EULA agreements..)
A lot of the “training” that a company needs to provide is about the specific business logic specific to the company’s business/IP… That knowledge doesn’t exactly carry over to the next job because depending on what that next job could be, the app he/she is working on might have nothing to do with the previous one and is only useful from within the boundaries of the previous company. My engineers ding candidates who know nothing about coroutines and other prominent async programming methodologies, for instance, because they don’t want to bother spending time teaching them about it. It’s all documented and all out there in the open and anyone worth their salt can learn about it themselves. They expect anyone coming in to already know that. And that usually also comes out in the take home assignment whether they get it or not. that’s what separates from the ones that really get it from, the fakers that take a 6 month crash course at a for-profit college like “Full Sail University” or “DeVry” or “University of Phoenix” to pad their resume, but have no idea what they are doing.
Case in point. The product I was in charge of at my last company has very little to do with the products I’m in charge of now. There was no carryover of knowledge I learned about search tech at my previous company to what my current company is working on.
June 18, 2021 at 9:08 AM #822193Guest[quote=Coronita][quote=deadzone]No, that is a huge red flag anyone with like 5-10 different positions within 10 year period. In most cases it points to a problem employee. And on top of that, if you only spend a year at a tech job you’re not there long enough to become an expert at anything or to really accomplish much.
Also, why all the white hatred? For tech industry engineering jobs, Asian males are the dominant majority in my experience. I’m not feeling any sympathy for that demographic.[/quote]
You misunderstood what I was saying. There’s no “white hatred”.Don’t know Why you would say that.
I’m just pointing out the “unconscious biases” that regularly occupies C-level mindsets at US companies. It’s not as big a problem at engineer/technical levels since at the pure technical levels, most engineers could care less about race, gender, etc etc…everyone is a geek, everyone is equal.
I’m talking about management positions, like Directors and above. Because like I said, once you step slightly out of the realm of pure technical levels, things get a lot more subjective, and it becomes a lot more like a frat house. Take my current company. I’m the only asian that’s director or higher. We have about 18 directors and VP, and about 500 employees, maybe 350 of them engineers, a lot asian,latino,indian, african american. Besides me, there’s maybe 1 director that is african american. Why is that? “unconscious bias”.
You see often times, especially in leadership positions, whether you are “qualified” to do that job has a lot less to do with whether you can actually do the job, but more to do with “how well you fit in with the good ole boys” in the most subjective ways that has no relevance to the job function.
Take a manager position. In many situations people get rejected on the grounds of a “not fit” test..For example a predominantly white “frattish” leadership team that all think the same and always talks about say football, make their hiring decisions based on the subjective biases of liking people who are like them and like football and conversations about football….this sort of bias happens all the time, and leads to a disproportionate hiring disadvantage for people that dont fit with this frattish persona who otherwise would qualify for that position on skill. People who often dont “fit” into this model are minorities and women…I also like to specifically call out asian men too, because a lot of people don’t consider asian men as minorities by the number of engineers there are, and therefore erroneously conclude that there is no discrimination and unconscious biases that occurs because “just look at how asian engineers there are”… But that is simply not true..The fact is that while there are many Asians that are engineers IE “grunt workers”, there are disproportionately very few Asian managers or c-level leaders despite the fact that there are a large number of Asian engineers. And that is the crux of why some of us more vocal Asians are pointing out. In a pool of a large number of Asian engineers why are there so few leaders versus say whites?
But regardless, what does this mean for Asians who are highly motivated, career focused, who want to attain some larger career aspirations instead of remaining at a cushy job, collect a 2-3% raise each year, keep doing the same thing over and over again….Well, it means you’re really at a disadvantage and you really have to be a lot more proactive about seeking better opportunities. In general, leadership opportunities aren’t simple things you sit around on your ass and wait for someone to give it to you. And in a lot of companies if you’re minority, it will be a long time before you have that opportunity. A good indication is how diverse is the executive leadership team and how long has it been that way? If the c-suite is all white or close to all white. Forget it… you could be waiting until hell freezes over. For the benefit of your career aspirations, you’re better of using your current experience and knowledge to find a company willing to look past the “frat boy” fit test and hire you into a position based on your qualifications versus some arbitrary biases. There are companies that aren’t run with a frat boy mentality, so you’re be better aligned to those opportunities there.
So again, I didnt say i hate white people, or even think EVERY company is run like a frat house. But there are plenty that are, and while that might not matter when you’re just engineer, but anything beyond that, you’re gonna have to do something about it to break this glass ceiling created by unconscious biases.
Also, I think you misunderstood that I’m not lookingf or sympathy or complaining this happens..I look forward to breaking the glass ceilings each and every time. Im just merely pointing out from a career management perspective there are a lot of reasons why people move around. Some of us arent content just sitting around collecting a paycheck, complacent at a routine job, want to be challenged to do more, or to lead, or to do something bigger..and we arent afraid to take on new challenges and new opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have been given to us if we just stayed at the same job expecting it to be handed to us, which is even less likely if we happen to be working at a company with a frat boy leadership structure…And given that despite whatever obstacles unconscious biases that might exist, it hasnt precluded me for going where i wanted to go.
As far as the shorter work experience being an obstacle to employment. Not really. Remember, I mentioned this in another thread. Usually it’s the recruiters of the company that are reaching out on LinkedIn trying to poach employees. And when I do interview with the VP or director, it’s seldom that my work history ever comes up as an issue. In fact, most of them have a jumpy resume too, if not worse.[/quote]
For sure there is somewhat of an old boy network in corporate America. The most obvious example would be Jews running the banking industry. But for Hi-tech, I don’t think it is as bad. Particularly for Silicon Valley I’m pretty sure there is a good representation of Asian/Indian at Executive level. But complaining about only 1 African American in a Hi Tech company is not genuine. African Americans make up a very small percentage of Engineering and Computer Science graduates and thus are not well represented at Tech companies for that reason. The underrepresentation of Asians at Executive level for Tech companies is for a variety of reasons. Unconscious bias may be one factor.
June 18, 2021 at 9:22 AM #822194CoronitaParticipant[quote=deadzone]…But for Hi-tech, I don’t think it is as bad. Particularly for Silicon Valley I’m pretty sure there is a good representation of Asian/Indian at Executive level. But complaining about only 1 African American in a Hi Tech company is not genuine. African Americans make up a very small percentage of Engineering and Computer Science graduates and thus are not well represented at Tech companies for that reason. The underrepresentation of Asians at Executive level for Tech companies is for a variety of reasons. Unconscious bias may be one factor.[/quote]
True for Silicon Valley tech companies, because Silicon Valley companies tend to be much more at the cutting edge of the industry, and as such, much more open minded about qualifications, background, etc. And like I said, Bay Area companies tend not to care about someone that been around a few places if the motivation to move was ever increasing responsibilities… Again, back to my original point.
I was specifically referring to old school companies that have an old school style of management, old school style of hiring, and old school style of judging people’s credentials…..and those companies tend to be the older, larger companies here in San Diego…I would also venture to say, those companies tend all to have much lower total compensation packages that the rest of the industry…Defense contractors and government tech jobs and tech jobs in the public sector come to mind… I guess because they found their ideal employees who are comfortable staying there for a long and don’t mind that 2-3% annual raises and don’t mind working on projects that aren’t at the edge of of what is new and hot. again, nothing wrong with that. Just different strokes for different folks.
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