One reason tech companies may not stick with remote interviews after COVID
You are reading Compiler, a software engineering newsletter by Triplebyte editor Daniel Bean that delivers regular reportings and rantings on the industry's top news, trends and interesting players.
Hello again! As the tech world sinks deeper into its new remote-only existence, remote technical interviews are becoming the norm. But that doesn’t mean the tech companies are crazy about them. And if you’re trying to imagine why that is, the answer is not that interviewers are missing out on their markers and whiteboards. Video conferencing and online code collaboration tools to assess skills have proven suitable there by most accounts. Instead, the problem seen by hiring teams is that remote interviews offer candidates less of a “connection” to their company.
Ben Stein, general manager of developer experience at cloud communications company Twilio, recently talked to Business Insider about this. His company has actually seen some success in “de-emphasizing” the whiteboard portion of its remote technical interviewing of software engineers, but since Stein feels it’s harder for a candidate to evaluate whether they want to work for his company through a remote interview, he isn’t committing to sticking to the format after the COVID crisis clears up.
"I'm not 100% saying we will no longer be flying [in] candidates," he told BI. "All employers need to make candidates' experience good.”
Triplebyte VP of Product Aaron Cannon recently started up a webinar interview series on this topic of technical hiring during the COVID pandemic. His first guest, Scale AI Head of People Richard Ni, expressed the same concerns as Stein. He also, however, provided something of a workaround.
“Normally, you have the ability to have a candidate see your office and decor, see how your team is welcoming and friendly, how they collaborate at their desks together and whatnot,” Ni said. “And so one thing we did is we took a video of our office and our teams working together before we all went remote. … I do think it is important to have that close interaction.”
Still, nothing beats a quality face-to-face meeting when recruiting talent, Ni thinks. And that’s why he said sticking with remote interviews after the rest of the tech world has gone back to business as usual could ultimately turn into a competitive disadvantage.
“I do think a lot of companies are going to go back to bringing candidates into the office to see people and develop that emotional connection. And I don't want that to be the reason why we lose out on great candidates,” he said. “It can come down to the fact that people make decisions on feelings, and if they didn't feel like they connected with us as well because it was remote and they were able to go to the bar together with engineers from the other company, then I think it's worth the cost to fly them out.”
You can read the full conversation with Scale AI’s Richard Ni here.
Do you have thoughts on how well remote software engineering interviews hold up, either on the technical or cultural side? Email me at daniel.bean@triplebyte.com or leave a comment on this newsletter post.
Insights From Stack Overflow’s 2020 Dev Survey
It’s that time again: Stack Overflow annual Developer Survey time! The 2020 data dump from the programming community site, as usual, dishes on things like programming language popularity and engineering job trends. Here are the most interesting findings from this year’s collection of 65,000 devs surveyed:
Perl ($76k), Scala ($76k), Go ($74k), and Rust ($74k) are associated with the highest paying jobs worldwide this year.
Rust is still the most loved programming language, up to 86.1% from last year’s 83.5%. TypeScript has locked up the number two spot (67.1%), knocking Python down a notch year-over-year to number three (66.7%)
Data science/machine learning specialist roles have jumped up to match DevOps specialists in salary in the U.S. this year. They now both average $125k.
The percentage of developers in the U.S. who say they code as a hobby dropped from last year’s 80% to 77.9%.
Developer dissatisfaction doubled from last year, going from 10.6% being slightly to very dissatisfied in 2019 to 24.1% now. (H/t to The New Stack for spotting this trend.)
You can read Stack Overflow’s full 2020 Developer Survey here.
Quick Hits
The Android 11 beta release has been delayed. Engadget
Tech companies have cut over 40,000 jobs during the pandemic. Bloomberg
Software will eat software in a remote-first world. Margins
What’s the one programming thing you always have to Google? Dev.to
Why is Kubernetes getting so popular? Stack Overflow Blog
From Triplebyte
Need to pick a programming language for a technical interview? Choose wisely. A new blog at Triplebyte gives some tips on how to find the right one for you. Because despite popular opinion, there’s no “holy grail” of languages that works for everyone. Read more here.
You ever wonder what makes a successful Shark Tank pitch? Wonder no more, because Triplebyte researcher and science writer Jen Ciarochi crunched the numbers to find out. Here’s a teaser: Contestants from the Southeast U.S. have the best success rate in pitches. Read all 11 insights here.
Some companies hiring engineers on Triplebyte right now:
Check out Triplebyte’s Actively Hiring page to find more companies that are looking for software engineering talent right now!
Tech Updates
Android Studio 4.0 was released: The best new feature here, as explained expertly by The Next Web: “The most eye-catching of the upgrades is a souped-up Motion Editor, Android’s interface for creating MotionLayout animations in apps. In previous versions of Android Studio, developers had to manually create and modify complex XML files to design their animations. The new Motion Editor generates the XML files for you, allowing you to create complex animations through a simply click-and-drag interface.”
Triplebyte helps engineers assess and showcase their technical skills and connects them with great opportunities. You can get started here.
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