Ask HN: Do companies hire Principal and Staff level engineers from job postings?
Ask HN: Do companies hire Principal and Staff level engineers from job postings?
I'm in the same hole as a ton of other people in Canada and the U.S, such that I'm unemployed and prospects are nil. What I'm seeing is that most companies, if they have any postings, have chosen to only advertise positions for people who are comically well-decorated; Principal engineers with 10 years of experience, plus the masters degree, plus a bunch of specific cloud orchestration, scalable systems, or other devops experience that just seems entirely impractical to accumulate without simply advancing at the same company or FAANG for 15 years, which seems itself to be an unachievable tenure in this millennium.
I've been some kind of software developer for nearly 10 years, not all in a professional capacity and I don't claim that, but I'm not qualified for these positions; I just don't really have any other option but to chance it.
My question is, are qualified people actually hired through this channel, or are these postings just a formality so they can bypass some bureaucratic requirement?
Edit: Is it worth spending the time on a decent cover letter that indicates I'd be interested in discussing a lower seniority position if they don't consider me qualified for the Staff or higher? Also, this isn't relegated to startup land, more traditional online retailers, and others who's core competency isn't necessarily software
There is a discussion on Hacker News, but feel free to comment here as well.
Hiring manager here. It totally depends on the culture of the company. We do not post JDs like you describe. If anything I aim wider with minimum requirements and hope for more skills. I don’t screen incoming resumes, I have people who do that for a living (note: not software). Resumes and cover letters that get past some initial screening I most definitely read. If you include a cover letter, best to use it to augment some angle that may not be apparent reading your resume. I do set aside some promising candidates that don’t fit the immediate job and I have hired these people for other ones.
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