I'm a freelancer/run-my-own small dev consultancy and I pretty much never jump through hoops. The level of demand doesn't create the hoops. Some combination of needing to create the appearance of "only hiring the best of the best of the best just like everyone else" & fear of a bad hire creates the hoops.

I don't have trouble finding work and often need to bring on additional help. The hoops are cultural.

Bad hires are totally worth the hoops to avoid. The problem I have seen is no one knows which hoops are useful and which are harmful and they do all the superstitions they have read about. I don't know if anyone has figured out a methodology for solving that.

Yeah, Im tired of working with poor or unmotivated coworkers. You just dont really know until you start working with em.

The interviews for the big five (Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, FB) are disguised iq tests. It's like taking the SATs to get into college.

Yep and when my company gets contracts they don't jump through hoops either. Our sales team doesn't do white-board exercises for clients and neither do our engineers.

So what's your point? You are not a traditional employee. You are a company...it would be weird for them to make you jump through so many hoops.

Companies are treated better than employees in the market.

I don't know what market you're in, but it's definitely hard to find good people in Silicon Valley. Most of the time my company finds one, they have multiple offers.

It's also difficult to believe in an oversaturation of developers when their salaries are at record highs -- that only happens when demand increases relative to supply. There is no union, and minimum wage is nowhere near what developers are paid, so supply and demand is the only explanation for the increase in developer salaries over the past few years. In an oversaturated market, salaries would decrease, not increase.

I dunno, SV startups tend to measure programmers quality in a lot of superficial ways. There are many cultural fit, age and other random expectation that limit the pool. It is a bit like herd - you get to be in demand because you have the thing everyone wants now and a year later no one wants you because herd changed opinion. Your ability meanwhile did not changed.

If there would be actual shortage, companies would find a way to work with people who want to work from home (I know it is less effective and not for everything, but if you are really desperate you find a way) or part time or with people who are not quite cool at beer but will work. Companies being picky about things that are not strictly speaking ability suggest there is no shortage. It means companies are in position to be picky.

> I don't know what market you're in, but it's definitely hard to find good people in Silicon Valley.

Depending on how you define "good", I would dispute the assumption that every company deserves good people. Information about what a company is like to work at spreads fast enough for good people to avoid them. There are plenty of such companies.

>minimum wage is nowhere near what developers are paid

Why would you compare developer salaries to minimum wage? You should be comparing them to the wages of doctors, lawyers, and CEO's.

Nurse is licensed though. That's instant credibility.

Exactly. Also, the supply of nurses is highly constrained in the Bay Area due to a very small number of people able to graduate. There's actually a lottery to enter a registered nurse program and last time I checked the odds were less than 30% to win the ticket. Besides that, hospitals lose state subsidies if their nurse/patient ratio drops below a certain threshold. It's really apples-to-oranges.

Not to mention "useful". Imagine nurses going on strike. Now compare that to lawyers, programmers or investment bankers going on strike ... no one cares.

What happens when IT for a hospital goes on strike?

Not to mention an airline. The recent British Airways debacle was caused by a technical problem, but if the IT workers had gone on strike, similar problems could have resulted.

Same thing that you do when nurses go on strike. You hire a bunch of scabs and muddle through.

The difference is that IT usually sucks so much that nobody notices.

If it's infrequent enough, reliability may go up as there's a moratorium on production environment changes.

It's just as much credibility as any college degree in computer science. There are still lots of crappy nurses that are licensed.

Those practices also speak to the general openness of opportunity of being a developer - your actual skills matter most, so they screen to assess your skills. Other industries focus more on degrees or names of past employers, etc., and I prefer it this way in software.

But yes, due to its openness, that you don't need the relevant degree to find employment as a SWE or ML engineer or data scientist (lol - data scientists today, such a bastardization of 'scientist'), it is I agree very competitive, especially if you're just starting out.

If interviews measure your actual skills, why do working practitioners study for them?

Interviews measure a shibboleth with a glancing relationship to relevant skills, which is more based on expedient and clever solving of the toy algorithms problems you'll find in college than the actual quality of a developer's output. Different companies' interviews attempt to measure the same skills in different and subjective ways, yielding different results.

Centralization on an evidence-based standardized test for the "prove your skills" part of the interview process is one of the best outcomes we can hope for. Ideally it would be open to non-degree-holders. Include per-component scores so companies can choose which areas they care about more, avoid grade inflation so similar candidates are distinguishable, etc.

People always claim this but it's not true for the majority of companies. Yes some, including a small number of big brands, ask leetcode algorithm whiteboard questions, but most interviews I've ever had are more practical, prove you can build things.

That said, I have no problem with leetcode algo questions, as long as the interviewer is only checking for your ability to think, communicate, and hands on experience with a few basic programming approaches (using hashes, recursion, structuring code etc.), which they are in fact excellent gauges for. If balanced with other types of interview challenges, it's not a bad way to assess. (but yes, it crosses the line if they care about the perfection of your leetcode algo; again, most do not)

That seems to contradict the whole "there aren't enough devs" argument that seems to keep getting brought out to enact visa "reform"...

If anything, there aren't enough C-level folk. Low supply is why their wages are so inflated, we should be allowing H1B for CXO's.

I've never had to "jump through hoops" in order to get an engineering position.

I usually get a fairly straightforward phone screen/on-site interview.

A nurse has a professional body underwriting her or his qualifications. A developer has no such thing. That's why all the hoops.

I have a CS degree from a small liberal arts school.

I've only had to do a handful of interviews, but they've always been extremely mellow (my last one took place on a chairlift) and I've been practically begged to take each job. Then again, I'm in Wyoming, not Silicon Valley so that may have something to do with it.

I think it's very much based on supply.

In Michigan with 10 years experience, I don't usually have trouble landing work. In some cases, they're practically begging people not to relocate away for the much higher wages.

But when I've applied to positions in Seattle, even lower-end ones, I've always been rejected. Across a dozen companies in coastal markets, everyone seems looking for any reason or excuse, no matter how trivial, to reject any candidate they meet.

Maybe since the salary expectations are so much higher in SV/NY and Seattle* HR folks feel they have to be seen to be much more "rigorous" whether that is the case or not ("we had 100 applicants and hired the top 2")?

* = I picked the three big pricey "coastal" US places that came to mind, it's entirely possible we're talking about different places :-)

>In some cases, they're practically begging people not to relocate away for the much higher wages.

This sounds like a funny line, because the best form of begging would include money.

Interesting. Do you have tons of side projects/other work you have available for potential employers to view? My sister only shows her degree and that she's been licensed in whichever state.

I'm in bioinformatics, so not pure tech, though I did interview for several straight tech-companies last year and my experience was very poor. Multiple phone-screens, having to work on side projects, on-site multi-hour interviews, white board exercises, etc.

My sister the travel nurse literally spends 2-5 hours on the phone every time she wants a new position. That generally includes 2-4 phone screens with potential employers. Then she gets offers and picks which job she wants. Are your interviews really that simple, it takes less than 5 hours to find a new job? You spend a few hours on the phone and then get immediate offers with relocation if needed?