Software should have some universal competency baseline, like a license. If AI resume spamming is that straw that breaks the camel’s back then so be it.
The best defense against AI would be a license number that identifies a person uniquely, provides their relevant job history from a database, proves some minimal common competency baseline, and confirms conformance to some ethical norm against known liabilities.
Come to think of it, this might be a good way for software unions to get a hold in the US. The Union will have a process to validate the competency if its members, and validate their careers, meanwhile hiring managers who are looking for guaranteed engineering quality will be able to find them, and unemployed engineers will be able to find work quickly, only bye the may benefit from the power of collective bargaining.
Kinda like a recruiting agency, but without for-profit motives and the shareholders will be the union members.
I don't see any downsides, except dkr the usual "corrupt men on top" problem which plagues any hunan organization, though mandating that leaders have extencive industry experience could slightly mitigate that.
It's called a PE in the US. But, for software, it was discontinued because it wasn't really used. And, indeed, it's pretty uncommon for most engineering disciplines except those interacting with regulators--civil engineers in particular.
But it comes with requirements like 4-year degrees, having worked under a PE, etc.
1) They didn't waste my or their time. Interviews rounds clearly progressed towards a hiring decision.
2) Their version of an AWS-style "loop" was a half day with people I'd be working with directly in various capacities. Questions were directly relevant to work culture and function.
3) After the first couple of rounds (recruiter screen, then first tier) all interviews were in person at their office. Interviews were conversational, open, and honest on both sides.
4) The final interview round with the hiring manager was structured as a round of questions to find possible match among the choices of equivalent openings I was likely qualified for.
5) At offer time, I told them what I'd work for and they told me what they couldn't exceed. We discussed total package and wiggle-room. The final offer they made had both no surprises and was also better than other incoming offers.
The position is not specifically rare in my industry, but I am specifically well qualified for it. None of us had worked together before, but we did have some shared clients so they were able to check my bona fides.
In comparison:
- AWS's process, while highly structured and tries for impartiality, is a massive time suck for all involved and as a result is kind of a mindless assembly line. However, it's kind of a good first interview among many companies since it preps you well for everybody else.
- There's more to this story, but briefly, I had two prior near interviews through a strong internal referral and another recruiter who put me into the wrong funnel then disappeared along with the position.
- There's also more here involving friends and former colleagues but to put it short, Google's process is stupid, disconnected, and broken while being far too self-congratulatory. It's a surprisingly good match for what they appear to be as a company externally, and from what I hear, how they are these days internally.
All of you are being fed nonsense. During my 10 years of being a salaried employee I interviewed for only the first one.
All of the rest including Faang companies I went in without any interviews by knowing people and pulling strings. You shouldn't have to "apply" for anything.
You can get away without applying, yes, if your network is strong enough to get referred wherever you want to work. FAANG and similar companies absolutely will not hire software engineers without interviewing them, since the cost of a bad hire is too high.
What I have seen on occasion, especially for more senior people, is a carefully constructed charade. We're not interviewing you, that would be so uncouth, we're just having a chat!
At a bigger company, they need to more or less go through the motions even if the top person has basically made a decision after a chat and they're writing a job description for you.
At a small company, a chat over lunch that you didn't even go into thinking of it as interview may be enough.
You start looking at industries you are interested in, then look at companies which are on an upward trajectory in those industries, look at people who recently joined those companies, find their github / blogs / emails. Start talking to them about some common ground.
I don't want to retype my recent experiences, but I have a thread from about 6 weeks ago that goes into my specific details here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42137229
I was in a good position so I could take my time, but I honestly don't know what I would have done if I had needed a position quickly.