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an
Participant[quote=Andrew32]Anecdotal of course, but in my new construction community in 92011 around 75 of the 123 homes are built. We’ve gotten to know at least 20+ owners, I would say 50% of them relocated from out of town. On my block alone, we have SF, DC, and Denver. There’s also LA, Minnesota, goes on and on.
Could be skewed if out-of-towners overwhelming buy new construction, especially when it was sold from the priority list, which makes the purchase process easier from afar in my opinion.[/quote]
I don’t know if out-of-towners would skew to new construction, given the existence of Redfin, Zillow, Zoom, etc. I would think those out-of-towners who wants to be near city center wouldn’t be considering 92011, while those who don’t care but want new would. I think w/ new homes, it’s easier to gather data, since everyone on your street is brand new in owner in the development, while older neighborhoods, you don’t have the ability to gather that kind of data.Participant[quote=Coronita][quote=an][quote=Coronita]Those that had a problem with the take home assignment usually didnt want to do it because they werent qualified, becauses alternatively we offered an in person interview that just asked tech questions, and they didnt do very well there too.[/quote]
I hate take home. If you give me in person tech questions, I’d take that any day. If you don’t give me that option, then I would have turn down that opportunity. I’ve been fortunate to never have to do a take home. Luckily, a huge chunk of my career has been people who have worked with me in the past pulling me in, so I don’t have to interview. I hate interview, just like I hate taking tests at school.[/quote]I had to do take home a few times. I prefer that than the in person whiteboarding interviews. But we do offer both, and let the candidate pick 9/10 of the candidate takes the take home. The take home takes about 2 hours, that’s about it.
We don’t grill our candidates. Part of the team panel is also to see how they get along with the other engineers in a work setting. So even if someone doesn’t know how to do something, my engineers help guide the candidate through the question, they kinda brainstorm together in the project on different things. Some engineers jump in and write some of the code to show how to do something.
But yeah, I got a lot of flak from senior management about potential good candidates turning down the takehome interview and not being interested.
I think with most of the younger engineers, they seem to prefer the take home and working with my engineers through the interview. The feedback I got was, it was a lot less stressful and didn’t feel like it was an interview. They also like seeing some diversity on the team. My lead IOS engineer is 26-7, has been writing code since he was in high school from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Really smart kid. He’s working on his part time MBA from UCSD also. He complains that the younger “kids” these days code way too fast and he’s having a hard time keeping up with them, lol. I agree. One of my new hires is a fresh college grad and a really quick learner. She started out in a JC and then transferred to 4 year school with a top rank CS dept. She did an internship in Vietnam with a company doing IOS apps, and her take home assignment was way better than a lot of seasoned engineers.
I think the main thing is regardless of which style is your interview, just dont be an asshole interviewer. we’ve all experienced them at some point.[/quote]
I agree and to me, this is the key point I think the main thing is regardless of which style is your interview, just dont be an asshole interviewer.Participant[quote=Coronita]Those that had a problem with the take home assignment usually didnt want to do it because they werent qualified, becauses alternatively we offered an in person interview that just asked tech questions, and they didnt do very well there too.[/quote]
I hate take home. If you give me in person tech questions, I’d take that any day. If you don’t give me that option, then I would have turn down that opportunity. I’ve been fortunate to never have to do a take home. Luckily, a huge chunk of my career has been people who have worked with me in the past pulling me in, so I don’t have to interview. I hate interview, just like I hate taking tests at school.Participant[quote=sdrealtor]
You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.Wayne Gretzky[/quote]
100% agree with this and this is the exact lesson I instill in my kids. The other lesson is, own and work hard on the things you can control while let things you can’t control go. You can’t control how high your IQ is or how big and strong you are. But you have 100% control on your attitude when faced with failure and how you recover from failure. you can 100% control in how hard you work, how much personal responsibility and ownership you have on the things that you do, and how you treat other people.Participant[quote=deadzone]Hey I’m anti formal education and particularly a critic of snob schools like Ivy or UC system as being overrated so I’m not the snob here. I’m merely pointing out a pet peeve that everyone in technology likes to call themselves Engineers even if the don’t have a degree in Engineering. I think that is inappropriate and unnecessary. Bottom line you don’t have to be an “Engineer” to code smart phone apps.
But I do realize the reality of the situation is there is virtually no chance to get your foot in the door as an entry level developer at any serious technology company without a CS degree or similar. And without that foot in the door you can’t gain the industry experience needed for any higher paying job.[/quote]
Wrong on both front. Although it’s easy to write fart app, it’s a whole other story to write an app that talks to a bio-medical device and the cloud that can be a life-or-death situation. A mobile device is much more powerful than a mainframe from the 70s. You can do so much with it, so it really depends on what you need the app to do.As for getting your foot in the door, I’ve hired plenty of bootcampers. There are some diamonds in the rough there, but it’s fewer and farther in between. They also need more mentoring and training. It’s like hiring someone after they finish their sophomore year. If you need warm bodies to write code and have the processes to train and mentor, then I would not shy away from bootcampers. Like I said before, grit, communication, ownership, and humility rank much higher for me than absolute technical superiority. You can teach someone to be a better coder, but you can’t teach someone to have ownership of what they build or have grit and humility.
Participant[quote=deadzone]Anyway, I keep getting long-winded, meandering responses to the question on hiring. To be more specific to FLU and AN who are doing hiring. Do you hire, or consider for hiring, software engineers, mobile engineers or whatever you like to call them, without a College Degree? This is a yes or no answer.[/quote]
Since you don’t like long-winded answer, here’s a short one, yes… but…Participant[quote=Coronita][quote=an][quote=deadzone]I am more interested in what formal education/certs etc. are expected or mandatory for these positions. It sounds like the answer is no formal college degree is necessarily a requirement. If anything a CS degree would be a logical starting point. Any type of Engineering degree would be overkill or out of place. Which makes me wonder why do they call themselves “Engineers”? An overused term in technology in my opinion. Software Developer or Mobile developer would be more appropriate.[/quote]
Wow, the snobbery here is nauseating.[/quote]Honestly, there’s no formal education. The way I look at it is….It’s like hiring a graphic artist…You don’t care what school they went to, what sort of classes or certification certificates they have…. You just want them to show you their art portfolio and their art portfolio speaks for itself.
Same thing. Good mobile engineers (or any software engineer) is a lot like porn. It’s hard to describe, but you know it when you see it.
On a serious note. A sample of their work usually is a pretty good indicator of how good they are or are not.[/quote]
For me, it’s even more important than technical is the ability to explain your answer and thought process, the ability to know when you’re stuck and ask for help, the humility to ask for help and the communication skills to collaborate. All meaningful projects are big and require you to work as a team and the genius asshole are the worst and can greatly slow down a team’s velocity and can potentially cause people to leave.Participant[quote=deadzone]I am more interested in what formal education/certs etc. are expected or mandatory for these positions. It sounds like the answer is no formal college degree is necessarily a requirement. If anything a CS degree would be a logical starting point. Any type of Engineering degree would be overkill or out of place. Which makes me wonder why do they call themselves “Engineers”? An overused term in technology in my opinion. Software Developer or Mobile developer would be more appropriate.[/quote]
Wow, the snobbery here is nauseating.Participant.
Participant[quote=deadzone]I appreciate your unique journey/story. But was mainly curious what background you expect when you hire for those “mobile” positions. But relating to your story, yes not only is Ivy league obviously way overkill for a job in technology, I would argue UCSD degree is overkill too. Or an Engineering degree at all. I mean Engineering degree is a good filter to ensure a candidate has a proven analytical and problem solving skills. But certainly little you learn in College is directly related to developing mobile apps.[/quote]
Of course. When I went to college, there’s no such thing as Android, iOS, Kotlin, Swift, etc. But I did learn object oriented design, how to think and solve problems, how to make things work and how to prioritize implementations in order to have a fully working feature at the other end.Participant[quote=deadzone]FLU is the one who uses the term, but yes there is ios and android, I would expect someone who is capable of programming on one could easily learn the other given some time. Also it seems obvious that you don’t go to college to learn ios or android specifically so that experience must come from industry.[/quote]
Yes you can, but then you’d start back at the beginning of your career. No one will hire you in at a Sr. Software Engineer or higher if you don’t know the platform specific thingsParticipant[quote=deadzone]I’m curious what specific background and training is required to be a “mobile engineer”? I suspect big part of the challenge of recruiting is that truly qualified folks have to have significant industry experience and there is a limited pool of those folks forcing you to poach.
Is an Engineering degree really needed for most of this work? Engineering school is very math intensive, I highly doubt that solving differential equations has any relevance on the development of mobile apps for an iphone. Do you only look at folks with certain college degrees or is that not even a pre-requisite?[/quote]
“mobile engineer” is an extremely broad term. No one hire a “mobile engineer”. There’s android and iOS. There’s lower level OS apps and there are user facing apps that have a lot more UI/UX. Each of those have different needs.Participant[quote=sdrealtor][quote=Coronita][quote=an][quote=deadzone]yes Linkedin is a popular and useful service. But at the end of the day it is just a website. How many Engineers to you really need to maintain Linkedin? A negligible number compared to a real company like say Apple or Tesla.[/quote]
OMG, that’s the funniest $hit I’ve heard in a very long while.[/quote]lol… i know.. its just html…[/quote]
When you are still working with punch cards on legacy systems isnt it all html?[/quote]
Yep, Google, Facebook, etc. includedParticipant[quote=deadzone]yes Linkedin is a popular and useful service. But at the end of the day it is just a website. How many Engineers to you really need to maintain Linkedin? A negligible number compared to a real company like say Apple or Tesla.[/quote]
OMG, that’s the funniest $hit I’ve heard in a very long while. -
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