> 1. For the first 6 months you're paying a sr. engineers salary to get jr. engineer productivity.
Ouch. While I myself have been guilty of that 2-3 times during my sadly way too rich on customers and employers career, this is definitely the exception and something with your hiring filters is very wrong.
Combined with your disclosure that you pay about $200K but still have problems with good programmers then I'd think you are letting people in either way too easily or you don't aim well. Which brings me to...
> 2. While great devs are great, it's a lot easier to figure out if someone is a framework/language expert than if they are an intrinsically great dev in an interview. i.e. ("Do you know C# well?" is easier to determine than "Are you a good problem solver?")
I will respectfully disagree with the last assertion. You or the people who interview devs must reach outside of the usual leetcode / whiteboard tests and do some research on more general interviews and learn techniques through which you will get a very good idea if the interviewee is a good problem solver.
Trouble is, most tech interviewers view gaining those extra evaluation skills as a waste of time.
Piece of advice: give the candidate 10-15 minute and an easy coding problem they could solve in front of you, or give them a really small homework (not this "you'll need 1-2 days at home to solve this homework" nonsense) -- but don't make the tech aspect of the interview the dominant part. Talk with the candidate. Give them a few examples of tough situations from the past. Chat with them about how would they approach the problem(s). Ask them what they know about CI/CD, about best practices in framework X or Y, what project or task that they did makes them proud of themselves. Many other such great interview questions exist.
Not meaning any disrespect to you, you seem to be trying hard to get good devs. But from what I read here it does seem like the aim of your company isn't good and it's mis-firing the hiring gun.
$200K will tempt a lot of people to lie and "wing it" when they get hired. But you should leave the high remuneration in place. That way when you get a good professional they'll have one extra -- and very fat -- reason not to leave. :)
Ouch. While I myself have been guilty of that 2-3 times during my sadly way too rich on customers and employers career, this is definitely the exception and something with your hiring filters is very wrong.
Combined with your disclosure that you pay about $200K but still have problems with good programmers then I'd think you are letting people in either way too easily or you don't aim well. Which brings me to...
> 2. While great devs are great, it's a lot easier to figure out if someone is a framework/language expert than if they are an intrinsically great dev in an interview. i.e. ("Do you know C# well?" is easier to determine than "Are you a good problem solver?")
I will respectfully disagree with the last assertion. You or the people who interview devs must reach outside of the usual leetcode / whiteboard tests and do some research on more general interviews and learn techniques through which you will get a very good idea if the interviewee is a good problem solver.
Trouble is, most tech interviewers view gaining those extra evaluation skills as a waste of time.
Piece of advice: give the candidate 10-15 minute and an easy coding problem they could solve in front of you, or give them a really small homework (not this "you'll need 1-2 days at home to solve this homework" nonsense) -- but don't make the tech aspect of the interview the dominant part. Talk with the candidate. Give them a few examples of tough situations from the past. Chat with them about how would they approach the problem(s). Ask them what they know about CI/CD, about best practices in framework X or Y, what project or task that they did makes them proud of themselves. Many other such great interview questions exist.
Not meaning any disrespect to you, you seem to be trying hard to get good devs. But from what I read here it does seem like the aim of your company isn't good and it's mis-firing the hiring gun.
$200K will tempt a lot of people to lie and "wing it" when they get hired. But you should leave the high remuneration in place. That way when you get a good professional they'll have one extra -- and very fat -- reason not to leave. :)