How we interview engineers at CircleCI(circleci.com)
circleci.com
How we interview engineers at CircleCI
https://circleci.com/blog/how-we-interview-engineers-at-circleci/
93 comments
Joel Spolsky nailed it with his article on why everyone thinks they're hiring the top 1%: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/01/27/news-58/
Basically, there's a ton of completely unqualified (or even under-qualified) applicants who apply to just about every job opening out there. If you've ever been on the other end of the table, posting a job opening and sifting through applicants, the situation becomes clear very quickly.
I'm actually surprised 250 make it past their initial screen. The rest of the numbers seem reasonable to me though.
Basically, there's a ton of completely unqualified (or even under-qualified) applicants who apply to just about every job opening out there. If you've ever been on the other end of the table, posting a job opening and sifting through applicants, the situation becomes clear very quickly.
I'm actually surprised 250 make it past their initial screen. The rest of the numbers seem reasonable to me though.
No, I don't think you're underestimating their strength - I think it's more that you're vastly underestimating how expensive it can be to make a bad hire and how difficult it can be to fire someone in California, even at the individual contributor level.
A few companies do manage to do it, but as far as I can tell you have to set up your corporate culture, HR department etc. from the outset to be prepared and ready for firing people frequently, and that's not something many startups (other than maybe Netflix?) were/are really well prepared for...
A few companies do manage to do it, but as far as I can tell you have to set up your corporate culture, HR department etc. from the outset to be prepared and ready for firing people frequently, and that's not something many startups (other than maybe Netflix?) were/are really well prepared for...
Um, is it really that hard to fire someone in CA? It's an at-will state and you can get rid of someone that day for any reason under the sky (that isn't 'discriminatory').
Firing doesn't seem hard but I think your point does stand that the cost of having to do so is kind of great. Find, hire, onboard and train a new employee, one that you hope does better than the bad hire.
Firing doesn't seem hard but I think your point does stand that the cost of having to do so is kind of great. Find, hire, onboard and train a new employee, one that you hope does better than the bad hire.
Would it be possible (and legal) to reduce the salary of an employee? In SF this could be an effective means to force an employees exit without actually firing them, due to cost of living.
It's more likely that there are a lot of false negatives in CircleCI's hiring funnel. The issue isn't "there aren't enough good developers." There are plenty of good developers. It's possible that this sample of 1000 developers came from really bad sources (there's not enough information provided to determine the quality of their sourcing). For example, referrals convert at a rate of 57% to the screen (compared to 13% when sourcing). Recruiting agencies convert at 59% (although you'll be giving away 10-30% of first year salary for that). It could be that this sample is purely inbound applicants, which convert the lowest at 13%. [1]
We have benchmarks to understand how well a company is converting at each step in their funnel. CircleCI is converting well in 2 of their funnels, but the other 2 are underperforming significantly per my other comment in this thread.
[1] http://qr.ae/TU1sB2
We have benchmarks to understand how well a company is converting at each step in their funnel. CircleCI is converting well in 2 of their funnels, but the other 2 are underperforming significantly per my other comment in this thread.
[1] http://qr.ae/TU1sB2
Undoubtedly there are many more than that. But they have the luxury of having 1000 people apply when they're only looking to hire 3. There might be 100 good devs, but that doesn't mean they want to or are able to hire that many.
Past a certain level of skill, it really does come down to specific experience, priorities, communication styles, etc. There are many worthwhile devs that simply have a less ideal package for that specific role, at that specific company, at that specific time.
Past a certain level of skill, it really does come down to specific experience, priorities, communication styles, etc. There are many worthwhile devs that simply have a less ideal package for that specific role, at that specific company, at that specific time.
My tiny company got dozens of applications just from an HN posting. If you place your ad on multiple job boards, then 1000 is a conservative estimate of how many applications you will get.
What is the signal/noise ratio on those applications? I'm assuming a lot of them can be immediately passed on, so if true, what about the apps is typically out of alignment with the role?
I was operating under the assumption that they are continuously hiring, but I guess it’s possible that they aren’t quite big enough for that yet.
Keep in mind that only 1/4 of those thousand passed an initial screen, which isn't even an interview step, but rather glossing over their resume to see if it fits the position. From there, only 117 passed a quick phone screen.
It still seems high, but I can imagine these average numbers being inflated by some important 'Lead Engineer' type of position, for which the extreme vetting is reasonable.
It still seems high, but I can imagine these average numbers being inflated by some important 'Lead Engineer' type of position, for which the extreme vetting is reasonable.
I think the majority of the candidates are capable, and a lot of them are probably quite excellent. But when you have that many candidates for so few positions, you have the luxury of really trying to go for the best people.
I interviewed at CircleCI many months back. Overall I thought the process was done very well until I got to the stage before the onsite and I was simply sent an email that said that while everybody like me and thought highly of me they were not going to move forward at that time. I followed up asking for more specific information and never heard back.
This process is never perfect, but I think when you don't hire someone it is always nice to provide something solid the interviewee can go off of. Even if the response is simply that we felt we had stronger candidates for whatever reason.
This process is never perfect, but I think when you don't hire someone it is always nice to provide something solid the interviewee can go off of. Even if the response is simply that we felt we had stronger candidates for whatever reason.
This has been covered in previous discussions, but basically anything they say can be used against them in a lawsuit:
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-companies-give-interview-feed...
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-companies-give-interview-feed...
There's definitely legal reasons, however the main reason we don't is people tend to argue. "You don't have enough experience in ___" -> "Here, look at these 4 projects I created! You didn't give me a fair chance by asking about them!". Or "You didn't seem interested enough" -> "I was just tired!"
I've found most of the time, unfortunately there's no good in giving details. I realize people genuinely want to improve, but most of the time the reasons we don't hire someone aren't actionable.
I've found most of the time, unfortunately there's no good in giving details. I realize people genuinely want to improve, but most of the time the reasons we don't hire someone aren't actionable.
I sat in on about 100+ onsites where I was involved in collecting feedback from the onsite team. I asked each candidate if they would like to receive feedback before they left the building, and most of the time we told them on the spot we wouldn't be moving forward with the reasons why (sometimes actionable, sometimes not). The candidates appreciated the feedback since it occasionally helped them perform better in their future onsites. Some of them wrote positive Glassdoor reviews, and we even received referrals from a couple. It's uncomfortable as a hiring manager to do this, but in my experience, it's a net positive.
That's really cool of you.
And, parent had a good point to. The one time I asked for feedback and received it, I did react the same way (Them: We didn't see this; Me: But I have done that!). I figured while I had their attention to give it a shot. I was already rejected so what's the worst that could happen? Anyway, I tried to be extremely thankful and polite about getting the feedback. Should've done the Glassdoor thing since they also actually formally rejected me and did so in a timely manner.
And, parent had a good point to. The one time I asked for feedback and received it, I did react the same way (Them: We didn't see this; Me: But I have done that!). I figured while I had their attention to give it a shot. I was already rejected so what's the worst that could happen? Anyway, I tried to be extremely thankful and polite about getting the feedback. Should've done the Glassdoor thing since they also actually formally rejected me and did so in a timely manner.
I think it would be fairly simple to avoid anything that would cause a lawsuit and if this is indeed the reason...what a sad state of affairs we are in.
That top answer there leaves a lot to be desired. Suggesting that a candidate offers "no value" to a company if they are not hired is very short sighted.
That top answer there leaves a lot to be desired. Suggesting that a candidate offers "no value" to a company if they are not hired is very short sighted.
Why isn't there a waiver process so an interviewee can sign off that they won't use the feedback in a lawsuit?
Waivers aren't legally binding. The company gets nothing by providing feedback, and even if there's a small chance of a lawsuit, why take the risk?
I'd argue that the company does get something back, potentially. Many companies will say to come back after 6 or 12 months to re-apply. If they like a candidate well enough to really mean that, wouldn't it help the candidate to learn what they were otherwise weaker with so they can work that out before returning?
But that's a fair point about waivers not being legally binding.
But that's a fair point about waivers not being legally binding.
Undoubtedly because that takes more time and money, for relatively little upside for the company, and often, relatively little upside for the candidate.
I saw a horrific case the other week where an internal recruiter cut and paste the feedback from an engineer verbatim. The candidate received feedback which said and I quote “You’d have to be a madman to have used X in 2017”.
Maybe the person was looking for a new job because the bosses forced them to use X in 2017.
How would you feel about there being some sort of standardized credential certification, similar to a BAR or trade skill licensing, that proved a candidates technical chops ahead of time? Do you think this would help reduce the number of candidates that gets turned down during the initial screen?
It seems to me like if there was some standard of proving technical skills, both parties could save a ton of time and go back to regular culture-fit style interviews.
Of course, for the highest paying/most demanding jobs interviews would have to be tailored - but I don't really see why junior/mid level roles need interviews that last 4-8 hours on site plus any pre-on-site screening that needs to happen.
It seems to me like if there was some standard of proving technical skills, both parties could save a ton of time and go back to regular culture-fit style interviews.
Of course, for the highest paying/most demanding jobs interviews would have to be tailored - but I don't really see why junior/mid level roles need interviews that last 4-8 hours on site plus any pre-on-site screening that needs to happen.
This exists in the form of the NCEES Professional Engineer exam (https://ncees.org/engineering/pe/software/). The exam specifications for software are here: https://ncees.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/SWE-Apr-2013.pd....
The PE exam is traditionally taken by people in the physical engineering disciplines; mechanical, structural, civil, and the like. By passing this exam you earn the right to use the 'Professional Engineer' title. Many (all?) permitting jurisdictions require non-trivial construction projects to be reviewed and approved by licensed PE's - this is not a joke certification.
In the physical engineering world (structural, mechanical, civil) the PE exam is seen as a mark of a competent engineer, and usually comes along with a significant pay increase, even if the engineer is not using their license to review and approve projects.
Seems to me like the PE exam would be an appropriate exam filter for software hiring.
The PE exam is traditionally taken by people in the physical engineering disciplines; mechanical, structural, civil, and the like. By passing this exam you earn the right to use the 'Professional Engineer' title. Many (all?) permitting jurisdictions require non-trivial construction projects to be reviewed and approved by licensed PE's - this is not a joke certification.
In the physical engineering world (structural, mechanical, civil) the PE exam is seen as a mark of a competent engineer, and usually comes along with a significant pay increase, even if the engineer is not using their license to review and approve projects.
Seems to me like the PE exam would be an appropriate exam filter for software hiring.
The trouble with this is that to have an exam to be an fooist, you have to have an agreed canonical body knowledge that constitutes the craft of fooing.
Mechanical engineering has that because it's been going on for a very long time, and has had time to converge on such a canon, as have many other professional disciplines. But programming hasn't.
This is why the few successful certifications in our industry are issued by a body which controls a specific canon - Cisco can certify you as a network associate on its switches, Microsoft can certify you as a solutions expert on its development platform, etc.
Mechanical engineering has that because it's been going on for a very long time, and has had time to converge on such a canon, as have many other professional disciplines. But programming hasn't.
This is why the few successful certifications in our industry are issued by a body which controls a specific canon - Cisco can certify you as a network associate on its switches, Microsoft can certify you as a solutions expert on its development platform, etc.
Per the announcement on the linked page, NCEES will no longer be offering the Software Engineering exam after the final run in April 2019. It's been available for 5 years and looks like only 100 or so people are ever going to take it.
https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...
https://ncees.org/ncees-discontinuing-pe-software-engineerin...
It's an 80 q multiple choice exam FFS id expect more rigor and a viva for getting your CE as well as several years documented experience.
Unfortunately, there are only two more chances to take this exam: next month or April of 2019.
I think the Computer Science degree was supposed to basically be that, in theory. It obviously isn't in practice.
I've overheard some other fields and the rigueur they go through is laughable in comparison. Heard a Marketing guy brought in for an interview in the next room go "I'm the right guy for the job!" basically, his only credentials being one previous job in the field and a Marketing degree, and my boss comes back and goes "Hmm, he seems very confident! Maybe we should hire him!"
Meanwhile in our field, having 15+ years of direct experience means basically nothing other than they will set up a phone screen. The inevitable technical interview seems to be designed to rob us of our confidence as soon as possible, putting us on the defensive when we dare to get one question wrong because we couldn't remember or study for 100% of everything that exists throughout all of computer science and technology and our domain specialty, etc.
Even my S.O., who's in proposal writing, only has to make sure she has her existing portfolio of past work updated and printed, but otherwise does very little to prepare for interviews. She doesn't try to study every possible question in that could possibly be asked about technical writing, marketing, graphic design, RFPs, sales, and whatever else her field touches. She generally only gets background and personality questions, that's about it. Yet she's directly responsible for her companies winning millions of dollars in business in her job, per proposal.
The default of distrust in programmer abilities amongst companies is so bad I've been very tempted to leave the field at times, because I'm sick to death of going through the endless hoops and basically having to refresh my entire degree when I want to start looking for a new job (which I'm overdue to start doing again and I've been dragging my feet partly because I don't have the time right now to refresh the skills that haven't been needed at my job the past few years).
I've overheard some other fields and the rigueur they go through is laughable in comparison. Heard a Marketing guy brought in for an interview in the next room go "I'm the right guy for the job!" basically, his only credentials being one previous job in the field and a Marketing degree, and my boss comes back and goes "Hmm, he seems very confident! Maybe we should hire him!"
Meanwhile in our field, having 15+ years of direct experience means basically nothing other than they will set up a phone screen. The inevitable technical interview seems to be designed to rob us of our confidence as soon as possible, putting us on the defensive when we dare to get one question wrong because we couldn't remember or study for 100% of everything that exists throughout all of computer science and technology and our domain specialty, etc.
Even my S.O., who's in proposal writing, only has to make sure she has her existing portfolio of past work updated and printed, but otherwise does very little to prepare for interviews. She doesn't try to study every possible question in that could possibly be asked about technical writing, marketing, graphic design, RFPs, sales, and whatever else her field touches. She generally only gets background and personality questions, that's about it. Yet she's directly responsible for her companies winning millions of dollars in business in her job, per proposal.
The default of distrust in programmer abilities amongst companies is so bad I've been very tempted to leave the field at times, because I'm sick to death of going through the endless hoops and basically having to refresh my entire degree when I want to start looking for a new job (which I'm overdue to start doing again and I've been dragging my feet partly because I don't have the time right now to refresh the skills that haven't been needed at my job the past few years).
I agree really CS is at its heart a maths degree you would not expect some on with a degree in music theory to be able to work as pro musician with just that qualification.
If some one had done an "engineering" degree an done a year working in industry you could expect some level of competency.
If some one had done an "engineering" degree an done a year working in industry you could expect some level of competency.
> Candidates pair with members of the engineering team, and work together on problems/projects in the actual CircleCI codebase.
Are they compensated for this work?
Are they compensated for this work?
I feel like this is a disingenuous question. Are you asking if they should be? Do you believe that CircleCI has some nefarious plot to increase engineering team productivity by mining spare workcycles out of interview candidates?
If I were betting on this I would wager that something like 95% of the time, the existing employee would be able to solve the project or problem much faster without the candidate's input at all, but the point is to try and approximate a more realistic work experience and environment.
I think that's a reasonable goal and I don't think CircleCI should be vilified for it.
If I were betting on this I would wager that something like 95% of the time, the existing employee would be able to solve the project or problem much faster without the candidate's input at all, but the point is to try and approximate a more realistic work experience and environment.
I think that's a reasonable goal and I don't think CircleCI should be vilified for it.
> I feel like this is a disingenuous question.
Not at all.
> Do you believe that CircleCI has some nefarious plot to increase engineering team productivity by mining spare workcycles out of interview candidates?
Your tone suggests that you think this is impossible, but it happens all the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661338 That was on the front page three days ago.
The GP's concern is legitimate; job interviews should not be an excuse for unpaid labor.
Not at all.
> Do you believe that CircleCI has some nefarious plot to increase engineering team productivity by mining spare workcycles out of interview candidates?
Your tone suggests that you think this is impossible, but it happens all the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16661338 That was on the front page three days ago.
The GP's concern is legitimate; job interviews should not be an excuse for unpaid labor.
> Your tone suggests that you think this is impossible, but it happens all the time
That's fair. To be clear, I don't think it's impossible, and especially given what I've heard from friends who've worked in freelance web development there's a huge long tail of scummy opportunities out there.
I more meant to suggest that it was unlikely this was CircleCI's motivation.
Also an important distinction between these two situations is that in the example you point out, someone is being assigned a specific task to produce some new IP which the company can then simply steal, whereas in the CircleCI case I am assuming the "problem/projects" they have you pair on are something in the neighborhood of e.g. "let's go analyze some page load performance data together and see if we can fix some low hanging fruit" or "let's figure out how to set up an alert in our Slack channel for this signal we have in some logs".
Yes it's still true that a candidate could come up with some brilliant insight that saves CircleCI real money in this scenario, but it just seems unlikely and not something they could profitably build a development strategy around.
That's fair. To be clear, I don't think it's impossible, and especially given what I've heard from friends who've worked in freelance web development there's a huge long tail of scummy opportunities out there.
I more meant to suggest that it was unlikely this was CircleCI's motivation.
Also an important distinction between these two situations is that in the example you point out, someone is being assigned a specific task to produce some new IP which the company can then simply steal, whereas in the CircleCI case I am assuming the "problem/projects" they have you pair on are something in the neighborhood of e.g. "let's go analyze some page load performance data together and see if we can fix some low hanging fruit" or "let's figure out how to set up an alert in our Slack channel for this signal we have in some logs".
Yes it's still true that a candidate could come up with some brilliant insight that saves CircleCI real money in this scenario, but it just seems unlikely and not something they could profitably build a development strategy around.
I don't see any vilification in that question.
The same could be said about many junior positions. Should they pay for privilege to work for this respectable company?
I find this attitude frustrating. It seems like a constant on sites like reddit and HN is a strong disdain for the algorithmic question style technical interview. Some companies take note and switch up the interview process and ask real world questions (like CircleCI using a current bug or problem) rather than how to invert a binary tree and people get upset about not being compensated.
How should companies interview people in a manner that assesses their technical skills but doesn't "exploit" them? Personally I think the algorithm based interviews are great but also see value in these modified approaches of a short take-home assignment.
How should companies interview people in a manner that assesses their technical skills but doesn't "exploit" them? Personally I think the algorithm based interviews are great but also see value in these modified approaches of a short take-home assignment.
By paying them for their work if you are asking them to do anything outside of an interview.
Sure if the company gives a long assignment that takes several hours or more, that is reasonable. But I do not expect to be compensated for an hour long assessment/assignment - that seems ridiculous. If a candidate asked for compensation for an hour long assessment I gave them that would be a _major_ red flag.
In this specific case, that is not what is happening. Rather than assessing candidates on some arbitrary algorithms question (which people are constantly complaining about), they are giving them a real problem the team is currently tackling. It's your time to shine and show how well you work as an engineer on real problems. I'm baffled that companies have finally heard the non-stop complaints about algorithms questions and are treated to new complaints about not being compensated for time spent interviewing. What an amazing time to be alive
In this specific case, that is not what is happening. Rather than assessing candidates on some arbitrary algorithms question (which people are constantly complaining about), they are giving them a real problem the team is currently tackling. It's your time to shine and show how well you work as an engineer on real problems. I'm baffled that companies have finally heard the non-stop complaints about algorithms questions and are treated to new complaints about not being compensated for time spent interviewing. What an amazing time to be alive
You keep bringing this false dichotomy up, that because some companies have given up white board algo questions they can then as you to do whatever they want outside of the interview. Yeah, if something was only going to take an hour I wouldn't complain. But I have been extended multiple 8+ hour take home work from companies. That's not okay. That being said, I don't know what an hour take home problem could be past an open book white board problem anyways. You're not learning anything new about the candidate letting them take it home than you are doing it in room.
"What an amazing time to be alive"
"What an amazing time to be alive"
It's only a problem if the candidate in the candidate-employee pair produce code that ends up in master and that candidate doesn't get hired.
My assumption would be that if a candidate's code is good enough to get released, then the candidate is, by definition, good enough for the company.
I also assume that most of the time spent in this "interview" in a live codebase is the employee asking about how the candidate thinks and decides on things, not for the pair to actually produce working code.
I also assume that the code used within the codebase is non-business-critical stuff like an internal tool.
My assumption would be that if a candidate's code is good enough to get released, then the candidate is, by definition, good enough for the company.
I also assume that most of the time spent in this "interview" in a live codebase is the employee asking about how the candidate thinks and decides on things, not for the pair to actually produce working code.
I also assume that the code used within the codebase is non-business-critical stuff like an internal tool.
If you are interviewing X number of people for 1 job, you also have to expect a candidate is applying at ~X number of jobs. Asking them to work on your codebase without compensation, or do any take home work without compensation, is exploitative.
This question is a red herring. I hate this question because the only acceptable answer is to ask candidates about their experience and make a gut feel on that. Which only works if your gut feel is properly calibrated. Which often looks like unconscious bias.
Anything else is "too much work" on the candidate.
A take-home? "I don't have time to work on unpaid stuff!"
A pairing session? "I don't have time to work on unpaid stuff!"
Software engineering trivia? "Why are they asking me to build a linked list when I'd just use stdlib in real life?"
Asking about stuff on the resume? "They've never worked on ${thing}; how could they judge me on it?"
Anything else is "too much work" on the candidate.
A take-home? "I don't have time to work on unpaid stuff!"
A pairing session? "I don't have time to work on unpaid stuff!"
Software engineering trivia? "Why are they asking me to build a linked list when I'd just use stdlib in real life?"
Asking about stuff on the resume? "They've never worked on ${thing}; how could they judge me on it?"
Or hire them provisionally, and decide 90 days later. For instance. There are lots of ways to compensate Engineering hires without asking them to do unpaid work.
That is problematic for a number of reasons:
1. Hiring a new employee into an existing team permanently affects the team's dynamic and morale. Bringing in a bad fit can have undesired cascade effects. Bad team members can cause other good team members to leave earlier than intended, for example. You can counteract this by having the entire team interview the candidate, but this doesn't scale for teams larger than, say, three candidates, doesn't work at all for distributed teams and takes their time away from work that needs to get done.
2. Hiring an employee is also a legal risk. Firing people in "protected" classes is touchy and can take a while, for example: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/62846. You're also opening yourself up to unnecessary lawsuits that just add more of a headache for Legal to deal with...if you have legal. (Early-stage startups typically don't have legal teams.)
3. Hiring engineers is expensive beyond their base salaries. Firing bad engineers can be a huge waste of money.
If you're an early stage startup, you're better off hiring contractors for point work and taking time to find the best hires that you can. Later-stage or profitable companies can afford to not hire "false positives". At worst, a potentially-good candidate you're on the fence about can come back in six or twelve months and try again.
1. Hiring a new employee into an existing team permanently affects the team's dynamic and morale. Bringing in a bad fit can have undesired cascade effects. Bad team members can cause other good team members to leave earlier than intended, for example. You can counteract this by having the entire team interview the candidate, but this doesn't scale for teams larger than, say, three candidates, doesn't work at all for distributed teams and takes their time away from work that needs to get done.
2. Hiring an employee is also a legal risk. Firing people in "protected" classes is touchy and can take a while, for example: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/62846. You're also opening yourself up to unnecessary lawsuits that just add more of a headache for Legal to deal with...if you have legal. (Early-stage startups typically don't have legal teams.)
3. Hiring engineers is expensive beyond their base salaries. Firing bad engineers can be a huge waste of money.
If you're an early stage startup, you're better off hiring contractors for point work and taking time to find the best hires that you can. Later-stage or profitable companies can afford to not hire "false positives". At worst, a potentially-good candidate you're on the fence about can come back in six or twelve months and try again.
Contracting is a good idea - I was contracted for a week at a startup to see if it would be a good fit. We were both happy with the arrangement. The team found out if they could work with me; I could see their prototype at work and help sort out the issues.
> Our ultimate goal is to have the best people here, doing their best work.
Yet you have to tailor your ad language so more women apply because they get scared by words like "objectives"?
I don't even know where to start here.
Yet you have to tailor your ad language so more women apply because they get scared by words like "objectives"?
I don't even know where to start here.
Did you read the full article? Or are you cherry-picking to tailor your criticism?
> Studies have shown that that women are less likely to respond to an ad that has overly masculine or aggressive language (despite being qualified), whereas men will apply regardless.
Having a job description more gender friendly encourages more women to apply and men will apply regardless.
You should read the article liked to this article - https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless...
Women apply to jobs only if they are 100% qualified whereas men doesn't get deterred by lack of qualification.
> Studies have shown that that women are less likely to respond to an ad that has overly masculine or aggressive language (despite being qualified), whereas men will apply regardless.
Having a job description more gender friendly encourages more women to apply and men will apply regardless.
You should read the article liked to this article - https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless...
Women apply to jobs only if they are 100% qualified whereas men doesn't get deterred by lack of qualification.
> overly masculine or aggressive language
You mean:
- leading
- competitive
- objectives
- driven
- independently
And this is what is considered "masculine". Not only that sounds incredibly sexist and stereotypical, it is demeaning for women who would consider themselves possessing one or more of the above traits.
You mean:
- leading
- competitive
- objectives
- driven
- independently
And this is what is considered "masculine". Not only that sounds incredibly sexist and stereotypical, it is demeaning for women who would consider themselves possessing one or more of the above traits.
For more women to be confident to have these traits, society need to start encouraging girls to be leaders, competitors, driven and independent individuals.
For reference, I am a woman but I am often discouraged to show leadership skills or be competitive with others, especially with guys at work. I can feel the air change when I exhibit these traits. People start to distant themselves from me because I don't fit the culture norm. I feel I can do a much better job if I showed more feminine traits like listening more and being empathetic and showing I'm a team player.
So yeah, it is easy for a guy to be critical because he has no experience in the matter!
If you want to know more about how women are treated differently here's an article - https://www.fastcompany.com/40456604/these-women-entrepreneu...
For reference, I am a woman but I am often discouraged to show leadership skills or be competitive with others, especially with guys at work. I can feel the air change when I exhibit these traits. People start to distant themselves from me because I don't fit the culture norm. I feel I can do a much better job if I showed more feminine traits like listening more and being empathetic and showing I'm a team player.
So yeah, it is easy for a guy to be critical because he has no experience in the matter!
If you want to know more about how women are treated differently here's an article - https://www.fastcompany.com/40456604/these-women-entrepreneu...
> I am often discouraged to show leadership skills or be competitive with others, especially with guys at work.
Men are not immune to this either. I have been successful in many work endeavors in the past and drew praise from management, to discover soon after that half the team would subtly dislike me because I'd make their work look bad.
Also, competitive people with leadership skills are an asset to any company. I'd advise you and anyone else move on if you are not fairly valued, regardless of gender.
Men are not immune to this either. I have been successful in many work endeavors in the past and drew praise from management, to discover soon after that half the team would subtly dislike me because I'd make their work look bad.
Also, competitive people with leadership skills are an asset to any company. I'd advise you and anyone else move on if you are not fairly valued, regardless of gender.
Won't less aggressive language result in more applications from those who are less than 100% qualified, whether male or female?
I don't see where the article shows that men will apply at the same rate regardless of aggressive language.
I don't see where the article shows that men will apply at the same rate regardless of aggressive language.
What's wrong with having more applications from less qualified candidates? The point of the interview process is to filter them out. The goal of having inclusive language is to encourage qualified candidates, who otherwise wouldn't have, to apply.
As cited in the study, a common reason to not apply if under-qualified is 'to avoid wasting the time of the interviewer', and I think this is a likely reason.
The trade-off of less aggressive language resulting in both more applicants but also a higher percentage of under-qualified applicants will eventually reach some inflection point where it becomes unproductive, as you're almost certain to already have a well-qualified fit in the batch of interviewees.
The trade-off of less aggressive language resulting in both more applicants but also a higher percentage of under-qualified applicants will eventually reach some inflection point where it becomes unproductive, as you're almost certain to already have a well-qualified fit in the batch of interviewees.
Men apply if they are 60% qualified and most women apply if they feel they are 100% qualified. Making the application description more female-friendly does not bring more under-qualified candidates. It brings those who doesn't feel as confident in their own ability but ARE qualified.
What you miss here is that men are often overconfident and women are under-confident. It has nothing to do with qualification. It has everything to do with confidence.
And yes, women are often less confident because tech is an industry often marketed for men.
What you miss here is that men are often overconfident and women are under-confident. It has nothing to do with qualification. It has everything to do with confidence.
And yes, women are often less confident because tech is an industry often marketed for men.
I do worry that this is deeply circular logic. Words like "challenging" are considered strongly masculine by the Gender Decoder they linked to. I don't see how calling that word masculine is doing anything other than entrenching gender stereotypes even further.
I'll take a company trying to be cognizant of such things, and over adjusting, over not at all.
I think it's great that Circle is trying to do their part in being as inclusive-minded as the can be from the research they've collected.
If at the end of the day that is somewhat misguided, I'm sure they'll readjust, given that they have already proven they will, where many others have either explicitly not cared, or never even thought to.
I think it's great that Circle is trying to do their part in being as inclusive-minded as the can be from the research they've collected.
If at the end of the day that is somewhat misguided, I'm sure they'll readjust, given that they have already proven they will, where many others have either explicitly not cared, or never even thought to.
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I think you're right about treating language this way can further entrench those stereotypes. But I think if we want to change that, we do have to recognize that people respond differently to different language, and adjust our messaging accordingly. Then maybe some of the damage can be undone.
Or, they could just make sure to figure out what they really want and say that directly, instead of having a bag of positive attributes they like then picking the ones that give the right amount of a certain demographic that they want to hire.
There are multiple ways to say the same thing. Why do you think they aren't saying what they want directly if they aren't using language that deters women?
And what if feminine-coded job descriptions are a turn-off for men of under-represented backgrounds? Or non gender binary persons?
By trying this hard to become "inclusive" for women they are potentially discriminating against others.
By trying this hard to become "inclusive" for women they are potentially discriminating against others.
Maybe at the beginning? I'm not sure I see a problem.
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> 2. Micro-skills take-home problem. The candidate completes a coding problem and reviews it with the interviewer. Talking through the problem with the candidate helps us assess ability as well as the candidate’s thought process, and how their priorities and values in writing software line up with ours.
This is generally a lousy experience. I've been places that want me to build a 'simple' (single entity) fullstack CRUD app (angular w/ASP.NET core backend.)
So what is it that they want prioritized? UI skills? Backend dev skills? I can do both, but I'm not going to spend a week making it enterprise-production-ready. The hiring engineers all have things they are looking for and these things are never well defined for you up-front, so no matter what you do (unless you spend way too much time on it,) someone may use it to disqualify you (without you ever knowing it was important.)
This is generally a lousy experience. I've been places that want me to build a 'simple' (single entity) fullstack CRUD app (angular w/ASP.NET core backend.)
So what is it that they want prioritized? UI skills? Backend dev skills? I can do both, but I'm not going to spend a week making it enterprise-production-ready. The hiring engineers all have things they are looking for and these things are never well defined for you up-front, so no matter what you do (unless you spend way too much time on it,) someone may use it to disqualify you (without you ever knowing it was important.)
The fact that they use a pseudo scientific "Gender Decoder" is a red flag. It leads me to think Circle CI has unfair prejudices against men and masculinity in general.
By the way, "Objectives" and "driven" are neither feminine or masculine, they're just words. Can you imagine if every word in the Oxford English Dictionary had a gender classification?
By the way, "Objectives" and "driven" are neither feminine or masculine, they're just words. Can you imagine if every word in the Oxford English Dictionary had a gender classification?
If it's true that using "female-coded language" results in more applications from women, without reducing the number of men who apply, what's the harm?
If it's not true, then I would agree that this is probably a waste of time.
There's at least one peer-reviewed study (Gaucher et al, 2011) which supports the idea that these words make jobs sound less appealing to women. Do you know of a study which challenges these findings?
If it's not true, then I would agree that this is probably a waste of time.
There's at least one peer-reviewed study (Gaucher et al, 2011) which supports the idea that these words make jobs sound less appealing to women. Do you know of a study which challenges these findings?
In this post you propose that Circle CI has unfair prejudices towards men.
How did you come up upon this conclusion?
How did you come up upon this conclusion?
CricleCI has 100-250 Employees, which at 1000 applicants per 3 employees means over 30,000 interviewed applicant? Seems high.
Seems like bullshit, to be frank. It smells like a culture that has progressively thought more highly of itself over time than it should.
Or more likely, it's just a process that was born out of necessity due to them getting more and more applicants for a limited handful of positions. How else could any company handle that situation other than making their process more and more selective?
And it would seem self-evident to me that not all of their 100-250 employees were hired at that 3/1000 rate, as number of applicants will grow over time due to increased brand recognition, increased spending on sourcing/outreach, etc.
And it would seem self-evident to me that not all of their 100-250 employees were hired at that 3/1000 rate, as number of applicants will grow over time due to increased brand recognition, increased spending on sourcing/outreach, etc.
Wouldn't be surprised if it is a newer policy, that they didn't have before. I've worked in departments that had programming tests they give applicants that their early employees never took, and freely admit they probably wouldn't have been able to complete if it was in place when they applied.
Policies tend to just get stricter and stricter over time, especially with every bad experience they have (only takes one or two usually before these people go off the deep end trying to correct for it).
Policies tend to just get stricter and stricter over time, especially with every bad experience they have (only takes one or two usually before these people go off the deep end trying to correct for it).
Only a fraction of those 1000 get interviewed, if I am reading it correctly, and not every employee at CircleCI is an engineer.
>Candidates pair with members of the engineering team, and work together on problems/projects in the actual CircleCI codebase.
This seems like it'll bias to those who can quickly ramp up on a new code base in an unfamiliar environment. Which, in my mind, is a distinct skill from being able to contribute quality code to a code base you already know. I wonder if this is known and acknowledged bias or not at CircleCI.
This seems like it'll bias to those who can quickly ramp up on a new code base in an unfamiliar environment. Which, in my mind, is a distinct skill from being able to contribute quality code to a code base you already know. I wonder if this is known and acknowledged bias or not at CircleCI.
While this is true, one could come up with similar arguments for any task put to the interviewee. Not to demean your point, but the interview process _is_ one of elimination after all, and biasing the task to favour certain traits and skills is but one of the ways you can go about it.
I totally agree that everything introduces bias, I was more wondering if this was intentional/understood bias or accidental bias.
Most startups I know would consider this the primary requirement for new hires.
There's a basic problem with posts like this. Finding the right people to associate with is a hard problem.
Finding friends is hard. Finding a significant other is (ideally, anyway) a once-in-a-lifetime challenge. Finding people to hire is even harder: you're still trying to establish chemistry, only now there's a lot of money involved and the actors are big groups of people with complicated internal dynamics.
So I think what's wrong with this post is that CircleCI seem so self-satisfied. They seem to think they have a handle on this problem, when anyone who's been through a job interview in the last year or so will tell you it's a shitty, capricious, random experience even when they take you.
Finding friends is hard. Finding a significant other is (ideally, anyway) a once-in-a-lifetime challenge. Finding people to hire is even harder: you're still trying to establish chemistry, only now there's a lot of money involved and the actors are big groups of people with complicated internal dynamics.
So I think what's wrong with this post is that CircleCI seem so self-satisfied. They seem to think they have a handle on this problem, when anyone who's been through a job interview in the last year or so will tell you it's a shitty, capricious, random experience even when they take you.
CircleCI’s hiring process had 1000 people enter their funnel as new candidates and 3 emerge as employees. Others have tabulated the rate of candidate->screen, screen->onsite, and onsite->offer. If we make a conservative estimate of 1 hour of company time per considered resume (averaged across all steps, higher for those who get far into the process, lower for those pruned earlier), they burned at least half a head of employee time to hire 3 heads. That’s way too high an interview cost per hired head.
Only 3/1000 will receive offers. Does this strike anyone else as an extremely flawed and stringent filter? They claim to only want to hire the best, but in my opinion, they will end up hiring the lucky, with similar opinions and skillsets to the interviewers.
Reminds me of the joke about throwing away half the candidates arbitrarily because you wouldn't want to hire someone that has bad luck.
It does seem pretty strict, but without some sort of baseline this might be rather normal. I've never worked in recruiting or seen hard numbers on this sort of thing before so I have nothing to compare it to.
It does seem pretty strict, but without some sort of baseline this might be rather normal. I've never worked in recruiting or seen hard numbers on this sort of thing before so I have nothing to compare it to.
After reading this, it sounds like applying to CircleCi would be a waste of one's time.
That seems a bit harsh, even if CircleCI scores below average on some steps in their funnel. You know going into any company's hiring process that they're going to extend an offer about 1-2% of the time from the very top of their funnel. That doesn't mean you'll go around talking to 100 companies before you get an offer, but the numbers on the company's side will almost always look grim to a candidate.
The typical stages of a hiring funnel look like this: new candidate to screen, screen to onsite, onsite to offer, offer to acceptance. The respective ratios for each stage are: 17%, 32%, 31%, and 69%. On average, you'll look at about 88 candidates to make 1 hire. [1]
For CircleCI, their new candidate to screen is 25%. This is higher than the 17% average. Their screen stage looks considerably larger than I've seen at most companies: it's 4 different steps. From the 250 candidates, it looks like 7 go into an onsite. That's about 3% which is significantly below the 32% benchmark. Of those 7, 3 will receive offers (it's not mentioned how many accept those offers). So the onsite to offer is 42%, which is higher than the 31% average. We can't determine the offer acceptance from the data.
I think it's great they're looking at the funnel and conversion rates. Most recruiters aren't able to tell you these figures which is a red flag. The only way to improve those metrics is to know them first and then measure how changes impact each stage.
[1] https://medium.com/@jmtame/surprising-insights-from-talking-...
For CircleCI, their new candidate to screen is 25%. This is higher than the 17% average. Their screen stage looks considerably larger than I've seen at most companies: it's 4 different steps. From the 250 candidates, it looks like 7 go into an onsite. That's about 3% which is significantly below the 32% benchmark. Of those 7, 3 will receive offers (it's not mentioned how many accept those offers). So the onsite to offer is 42%, which is higher than the 31% average. We can't determine the offer acceptance from the data.
I think it's great they're looking at the funnel and conversion rates. Most recruiters aren't able to tell you these figures which is a red flag. The only way to improve those metrics is to know them first and then measure how changes impact each stage.
[1] https://medium.com/@jmtame/surprising-insights-from-talking-...
No, it sounds like they were hiring for 3 positions, so they only chose 3.
Isn't it just a product of many people applying to few positions? CircleCI is a strong brand, not all companies can afford to be so choosy.
If you get 1000 applicants and only make 3 of them offers, those better be some very good offers.
How many positions were you actually hiring for though?
> Our ultimate goal is to have the best people here, doing their best work.
I feel like everyone is so afraid of hiring a 0x or -1x programmer that they don’t want to take a chance on a mere 1x programmer.
If I ran a company (I don’t!) on the scale of hundreds or thousands of developers I’d be very choosy about who I let into senior/leadership type roles, but be rather accepting of individual contributors, the hope being that many of them would grow and develop their skills.
Am I just vastly underestimating the overal strength of a random sample of 1000 candidates? Are there really only 3 worthwhile developers?