What are we doing wrong?

I work for a very large, not exactly exciting company, and we are having a helluva time finding good candidates to fill a J2EE webservice senior software engineer role. I just staggered through an interview with someone that the hiring manager screened for 1/2 hour who has "10 years experience" and turned out he basically couldn't program, at all. He failed fizzbuzz at such a velocity I'm surprised I still had clothes on - i.e. didn't know what modulus was, and when told, couldn't even correctly format a for loop. And the rest didn't go much better - a web service role and he couldn't think of the correct response when asked "other than XML, what's the most common way that data is transferred via http?".

Anyways, really frustrating experience the last couple weeks where we seem to just not be able to get "programmers" in the room. I don't think the hiring manager is doing it quite right but after this waste of an hour for us I guess we move to phone screens where we share a google docs and we watch them code (and frankly, should start with 'show an example of a ternary' or 'write a function that returns the sum of 2 arguments')? This is ****ing ridiculous. I guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're not a sexy place to work so we can't get decent talent?

Why don't you guys go through a 3rd party recruiter who can bring in candidates for you?

That sounds pretty bad for someone with 10 years of experience.

Why do websites automatically log users out who have been inactive for a certain length of time? Is is really that draining on their servers to keep track of many users' current state? I guess I understand it from a security perspective for banks, etc., but even then it would be far better from a UX standpoint to simply leave users logged in and reprompt for password/one-time-code when carrying out security critical actions (like gmail does).

Just one more annoyance that shows how broken the current account authentication paradigm is - hopefully Apple Watch or something similar will fix it.

What you described Gmail doing is logging people out.

I have heard this from several people trying to hire for developer positions. Are you sure you're advertising enough pay? Many times, this is the fundamental problem. Recruiters call me all the time offering below market rates for some pretty advanced skill requirements.

That's never worked well in my experience. Insure there are good companies out there but there's a lot more ****ty ones.

I like collabedit.com better than google docs. Hiring is hard in a lot of places right now.

Dave, I was on my phone so don't read my words too carefully since I didn't put a lot of thought into them.

I was just trying to show its complicated and you need to read anything you signed / employee handbook type stuff carefully to see what applies to you. Although I certainly think it's worth talking to someone where you work if you're worried about it.

No, it's not. You're prompted for your password, but you're still logged in. Hint: Try opening gmail in another tab or just go back to the inbox.

And yes, you have to re-type your password, but then it takes you right back to the page you were on and all of your work is saved. And it's only when you're trying to do something like change your password, so you can still read/write emails, add contacts, etc. without ever getting logged out due to inactivity. So it's really not the same at all.

I don't think that is correct. Are you sure the new tab isn't auto logging you in?

Looks like I am going to end up with multiple offers.

IBM written offer came in today and they want an answer within a couple days, so I contacted the other place I interviewed letting them know I need a decision ASAP and they emailed me back saying to expect an offer in the morning.

This is a very nice position to be in considering just a month ago I was worried about getting a job at all, with seemingly nobody in town hiring.

I finally realized this is going to be a "grown up" job after having to sign NDA forms.

Thanks for the thoughts, guys.

To clarify, there is nothing contractual about my current job and nothing to worry about there.

It seems like it can get complicated while looking for work and interviewing, but I suppose it'll work out. The best I can figure is be honest about what I'm working on and what I plan to do, which isn't particularly difficult since the subject comes up anyways.

If it's something important to you it might be prudent to have an attorney look over any sort of employment agreement you end up signing.

Congrats! Correct me if I am wrong but you didn't have any internships during college?

Correct. I guess 4.0 GPA and interviewing very well helps. Internships have been pretty sparse around here the last few years and I think employers here understand that.

The other offer is from the company that I was supposed to intern with this summer but then had a hiring freeze.

Hey guys, you really should get into DBA so you can panic over emails with subject lines like this:

Sexy!

Proud of myself today. I forced myself to take it slowly, read the exam assignment, understand the problem and do some psuedocode for the first 7-8 mins of my C++ test today.

It paid off since I was able to just spend around 15 minutes programming to solve the problem and aced it!

Great job. That is something that many students (including me) don't learn for a long time. Plan, then code.

I could still use that sentiment at work. I tend to just start hacking a prototype immediately and it probably wastes a ton of time

Human-friendly error messages are for sissies. Now go study a JAVA stacktrace and stop your whining.

So I was temp to hire through a recruiter last year and my company brought me on. Today 6 months after conversion I get an email from some gal at same recruiter: "how's it going at xxx company, I have a bunch of great opportunities I'd love to place you at!". My play?

You're free to look for other opportunities, I'd be surprised if a better one came out of this particular recruiter though.

yea i did the same thing this time. aced it and the retest before anyone in my class even finished the original exam. he really broke down the logic of the program in the PDF, though, at least for mine.

i wish my calc class was like this one. I have a calc teacher that can't do her own problems, and fear i am going to be woefully unprepared for the hell that is calc 2 (or so i hear).

I love this thread. one of the best on 2p2 for me

If this recruiter is good then they can probably tell a very good story about you based on your history.

Chances are they are really just going through a down time and since you closed for them before they see you as a potentially high % to close again. It is especially likely since what they are doing might be great for short-term revenue for them, but could hurt their relationship with your company long-term.

Doesn't hurt to ask what they have