Just to add some thoughts here: I’ve interviewed people who were google L7+ (IC) a couple of times who weren’t very good engineers, at least on the work sample stuff.
I’ve found that the highest correlation to performance in senior engineers is raw algorithmic skill and willingness to say “I don’t know” when you don’t know.
This is not true of hiring devops or sre’s. For those positions, you want the gopher archetype. This is the person who loves hunting down weird behavior and doesn’t give up when debugging. Let’s be real, debugging is you versus the machine and you’re eventually going to win if you can just be honest and patient.
Hiring senior engineers is really hard, I wish everyone luck.
I’ve found that the highest correlation to performance in senior engineers is raw algorithmic skill and willingness to say “I don’t know” when you don’t know.
This is not true of hiring devops or sre’s. For those positions, you want the gopher archetype. This is the person who loves hunting down weird behavior and doesn’t give up when debugging. Let’s be real, debugging is you versus the machine and you’re eventually going to win if you can just be honest and patient.
Hiring senior engineers is really hard, I wish everyone luck.