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0 pointsBoorishBears4y ago0 comments

Don't do that. Don't conflate having to dumb yourself down for recruiters that reached out to you for a director of engineering role with communication skills.

Yes sometimes you need to be able to simplify things for non-technical shareholders, but no that's not what this should be.

In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up they should either be solely acting as a data gatherer while a highly technical person reviews, or they should be technical enough themselves.

We're not talking about screening internships here, the person in the article didn't ask Google for an interview, it was on Google to provide competent points of contact. That doesn't necessarily scale if we're talking about applications they receive, but that's why the article states almost immediately it was an unsolicited interview.

0 comments

emptybottle4y ago

At the same time, don’t conflate engineering skill with director level management skill, they are two vastly different things.

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

I don't see how this follows what I said in the slightest...

hiptobecubic4y ago

If the person can't tell the difference between "dumbing down" and communicating appropriately for the audience in order to get their message across then I think the process ending in "no hire" is working fine.

There's no level above which this stops being important. If anything, it only increases as you go up.

ricardobeat4y ago

> for a position this high up

There are probably thousands of 'director of engineering' or similar roles at Google. If it's anything like other companies, they will be managing something like ~50 people. It's a middle management role, not that high up - except in compensation relative to the median...

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

Are we really downplaying being an L8 at Google now?

ricardobeat4y ago

The point is that for a role with 1000 seats, at a turnover of 10% and the usual acceptance rate of 0.1-1%, they will be interviewing thousands of people for this role every year. It's not gonna be a white-gloves process like hiring a C-level.

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

See sibling comment, and also there is a gulf between C-level hiring loop and throwing clearly non-technical recruiters at L8s.

They didn't even need a technical recruiter, having the recruiter do their thing when it comes to soft aspects, like lightly checking dates, seeing if the person seems interested, etc. Then bringing in someone technical to review the technical stuff... it's really not asking that much.

aiisjustanif4y ago

L7 is < 3% and L8 is < 1% about of all of the employees specifically in the engineering department. Should be much less than 1000.

1 more reply

sangnoir4y ago

> In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up...

How high up is this? What's a director in FANG-land? In some places, a manager of managers is a director - which isn't very high, and can be closer to the ICs than to the CEO on the org chart.

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

This isn't about saying a director is a 1 of 1 position, it's not.

But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5.

So the expectation is past a point you're not going to reach out to someone and waste their time like this.

Also a manager of managers is plenty high, some places are just so bloated it doesn't seem that way.

You'd think someone you're trusting to have that level of influence is worth the extra effort

sangnoir4y ago

> But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5.

That is true, but gives no indication of how many Director candidates they have to go through as Google has "a lot* of L5s. I would expect the C-Suite to get the high-touch approach, as they probably screen less than a dozen interviewees for CxO.

Let's ballpark this (simplified). Say there's a 1:3 manager to L5 ratio, and 1:5 director to manager ratio. We'd roughly expect 1 director to be hired for every 15 L5s. If Google hires 1500 L5s a year, then it would hire 100 corresponding directors. If it averages 20 applicants per post, that's about 2000 screens per year. Would that justify getting specialized recruiters? I don't know

Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

> I don't know

Allow me to inform you it is. Your ratios are unrealistic even for estimating unless you really think there's 1 L6 for every 3 L5s at Google. Also we're talking about around an L8 for director:

Yet it still holds for those numbers that yes, if you can afford to reach out to them, you can afford technical staff to be in the loop. Because it's not just about the company, it's about respecting the engineer's time. Not that many people are qualified enough to be getting calls to be hired in as directors, it's not a small feat even if it's 100 hires a year. You don't want them having experiences like this if only for the image it gives off to other potential hires..

> Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly

Used to use about a decade ago? And I believe the moment you said "1:3 manager to L5 ratio" your interviewer would give you a subtle but questioning look and expect you to revise that.

1 more reply

vanusa4y ago

Either way, the point stands.

aiisjustanif4y ago

L8, above senior managers that are L7.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

emptybottle4y ago

At the same time, don’t conflate engineering skill with director level management skill, they are two vastly different things.

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

I don't see how this follows what I said in the slightest...

hiptobecubic4y ago

There's no level above which this stops being important. If anything, it only increases as you go up.

ricardobeat4y ago

> for a position this high up

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

Are we really downplaying being an L8 at Google now?

ricardobeat4y ago

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

See sibling comment, and also there is a gulf between C-level hiring loop and throwing clearly non-technical recruiters at L8s.

aiisjustanif4y ago

L7 is < 3% and L8 is < 1% about of all of the employees specifically in the engineering department. Should be much less than 1000.

1 more reply

sangnoir4y ago

> In an engineering focused organization if recruiters are reaching out for a position this high up...

How high up is this? What's a director in FANG-land? In some places, a manager of managers is a director - which isn't very high, and can be closer to the ICs than to the CEO on the org chart.

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

This isn't about saying a director is a 1 of 1 position, it's not.

But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5.

So the expectation is past a point you're not going to reach out to someone and waste their time like this.

Also a manager of managers is plenty high, some places are just so bloated it doesn't seem that way.

You'd think someone you're trusting to have that level of influence is worth the extra effort

sangnoir4y ago

> But there are orders of magnitude fewer people are hired yearly into director positions than something like an L5.

Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly

BoorishBearsOP4y ago

> I don't know

Allow me to inform you it is. Your ratios are unrealistic even for estimating unless you really think there's 1 L6 for every 3 L5s at Google. Also we're talking about around an L8 for director:

> Aside: this used to be the kind of "estimate/puzzle" question Google used to ask it's interviews, allegedly

Used to use about a decade ago? And I believe the moment you said "1:3 manager to L5 ratio" your interviewer would give you a subtle but questioning look and expect you to revise that.

1 more reply

vanusa4y ago

Either way, the point stands.

aiisjustanif4y ago

L8, above senior managers that are L7.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse