from Hacker News

Ask HN: Any startups solving for software engineering hiring?

by allanmacgregor on 2/23/21, 1:28 PM with 40 comments

I'm curious if anyone on the Ycombinator community is working or knows of any startups working to try to improve the software engineer hiring process.

  • by bobbydallas on 2/23/21, 3:49 PM

    so many its not even funny. AI this and that. Personality and behavior assessments. Automate everything. chatbots to save recruiting. BLAH BLAH Fucking blah. Some have certainly made sourcing and outreach better but as iwang mentioned very few of these address the personal side of hiring engineers.

    The idea that you can assess an engineers ability to code AND collaborate with your team in a 3-5 hour window is just a losing battle. Hackerrank and triplebyte are good for the very large corps to rule people out and slim down the funnel. Not a real reflection of the work, code, or problems you will be solving in the job if hired.

    15yrs tech recruiting corporate and agency. I have seen almost every tool out there and I will say very few have stood the test of time. Hiring is really hard and the fact remains there just isnt a one size fits all solution. Find the tools that suit your goals.

    Personally I think small companies would be far better served investing in sourcing tools to attract and located the right talent. Have your leadership pitch these people directly hunt talent versus tools to automate volume (95% of which are not the people you are seeking any way).

  • by iwangulenko on 2/23/21, 3:01 PM

    Tech recruiter from Switzerland here.

    YCombinator funds startups, and startups need scale.

    Hiring is very personal, very hard to automate and scale.

    Often, tech hiring startups start in a creative way but later become a database of profiles where recruiters can source, similar to Linkedin. Aline Lerner, founder of https://interviewing.io, wrote about this problem here: https://blog.alinelerner.com/ive-been-an-engineer-and-a-recr...

  • by pjfin123 on 2/23/21, 3:55 PM

    Not having to go through dozens of companies crummy web apps to enter the same information that's on your resume would be a start.

  • by jlizzle30 on 2/23/21, 4:13 PM

    Someone close to me was recently hired as a new grad at Amazon. He only had one 30 minute conversation with a human to verify he was real before they extended the offer! The rest of the process was automated (virtually proctored coding sessions, multiple choice behavioral assessments, etc.).

    Value judgments aside, you have to respect Amazon's efficiency.

  • by muzani on 2/24/21, 2:46 AM

    I find the current process quite strange. My wife works in civil engineering and they don't do technical interviews. If you have a degree, you're technically certified. If you need professional experience, there's a professional engineer certification that works too.

    For some reason, degrees and certifications in software are not reliable. You could have a PhD in math and they'll still make you do algorithms on whiteboards. It sounds like the proper solution isn't to improve the interviewing process, but to improve education, or rather have a better certification process that makes these things unnecessary.

  • by snarf21 on 2/23/21, 2:17 PM

    It seems like a near impossible problem to solve. Who is to say what any random company/manager is looking for in an engineer? I don't see how that could be abstracted. I think the best hope in this area would be an organization that had certifications. If you need an iOS developer, they provide whether they are class I, II, III, IV or V and you go from there. It is the only way to get rid of managers wanting live red/black tree implementations on a whiteboard for a CRUD website for insurance.

  • by rafael86 on 2/24/21, 6:40 AM

    Hi,

    We are a startup trying to improve the software engineering hiring process. What we are doing?

    - We are standardizing the way of evaluate the engineering tech skills - Our tech Mentors Community design cool and real world challenges - We analyze the code and give feedback to all the candidates and as a company you get access to the code and a tech report like this--> https://bit.ly/2ZLzNKY - If you are a candidate looking for a new project just with one code challenge you can apply to multiple companies --> https://bit.ly/vetteddevs

    https://rviewer.io/

    We just launch our MVP, if you have any doubts I will be happy to answer any question.

  • by dualthro on 2/23/21, 8:11 PM

    https://devscreen.io/

    found from / more info here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25790355

    "a system that will automatically sin up a github project with a pull-request to review, or an issue to fix. Further test-types are planned but I will launch with these two. No matter the skill level of an IC engineer, they will need to carry out effective code reviews and fix bugs. I think that the PR test will be good for senior candidates while the bug fix test will be good for junior - mid-level engineers."

  • by zug_zug on 2/23/21, 3:43 PM

    interviewing.io, hackerrank, triplebyte are all trying.

    However, afaik none of them have even broached the personality aspect, which is imo is their biggest failing and quite solvable.

    Imo triplebyte/interviewing.io don't have any special objectivity, but are trying to reduce the number of interviews and barriers-to-entry.

    Also none of these platforms seems to have any critical mass, or made too much progress toward a critical mass recently (afiak).

  • by anilgulecha on 2/23/21, 2:49 PM

    Hackerrank has been focused on this (beyond competitive programming)- across various technical roles and verticals. (disclosure: ex-employee).

  • by newman8r on 2/24/21, 2:45 AM

    One of the projects I've been working on is sookiestack.com for managing take-home challenges- if there's any biz-dev types who think they'd be good at marketing it I'd be open to a partnership (email in profile).

  • by quantumsequoia on 2/23/21, 6:45 PM

    Triplebyte went through the S15 batch of Ycombinator, and Paul Graham is an investor

  • by the_arun on 2/23/21, 3:41 PM

    I often struggled as a jobseeker.

    1. Why there is no consistency for hiring?

    2. Why companies have to be so different in assessing values ?

    3. Why standardized leetcode kind of problems? instead focus on creativity & unconventional thinking?

    etc.,

  • by lame88 on 2/23/21, 2:48 PM

    I originally read this as question of whether any startups are hiring that are "solving for software engineering" and was very confused.

  • by i0n1 on 2/23/21, 4:31 PM

  • by thebigspacefuck on 2/23/21, 3:13 PM

    Hired.com Hackerrank Triplebyte

  • by zx321 on 2/23/21, 2:56 PM

    Triplebyte.