Not everyone can get into FAANGs, so you don't necessarily need to match FAANG level rates.
Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
11–20 of 424 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#12There are many reasons to work for a company and money is not always #1. Maybe your product is exciting? Maybe your team, tech, industry?
And they don't even need to be exciting necessarily, many would prefer a pleasant non-draining place.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#13Try not to compete with FAANG.
Don't make the interview process stressful. Allow people to work from anywhere. Allow flexible work and fully remote working. 4 day work weeks. Lots of things that can be done to entice the right people.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#14The basic mechanism of capitalism is supply and demand. When you write: "it's pretty much impossible to match day rates", you mean that your company doesn't want to pay the market rate. There is no secret strategy. You either pay market rates or hire less capable developers who will work for the rates you are willing to pay.
To add to this:
If your company doesn't have the funding for expensive engineer salaries you can compensate with stock options and an exciting product people can believe in.
It means your career page needs to become a pitch, and your interview is most definitely going to be a two-way one where you need to convince the engineers.
Not everyone is after the money alone, a lot of people want to work on something with a mission they can get behind.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#15I don't know your context, but here are some thoughts on what I've seen/experienced:
Allow remote work -- European rates are much lower than Silicon Valley rates even now, and I imagine the same might be true for other parts of the world.
Flexible working hours -- as a parent with kids, my current contracting arrangement for about 25 hours per week works quite well, and it's unattractive to me to return to a regular 40-hours (let alone 50-60 hours).
Paid time off -- I believe in the US it is still common for people to only get like 2-3 weeks off, or get "unlimited time off" deals that, apparently, often come down to the same thing because of social pressure. For comparison, here in the Netherlands, 5 weeks is table stakes, and I take at least 6.
Interesting tech stack -- in the Rust world that I participate in, there is a lot of discussion about the lack of jobs (especially outside the blockchain industry), so if you can offer something that is more novel, that might help.
All of this assumes that you can't easily change your organization's mission or product, which of course might be another way to attract folks.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#16Better conditions. - 100% remote so you can hire people of areas with lower life cost - part-time, maybe you cannot match the FAANG's salaries for full time but you can pay better for part-time - exciting product/tech
The 100% remote part is questionable. IMHO people should be given offices to come when they want to, especially senior engineers.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#17Relatively few engineers actually want to do contract work. The day rates look high, but they have to pay self-employment taxes and health insurance, as well as charge more to cover inevitable gaps between contracts.
It seems unlikely that the existence of contract work is preventing senior engineers from joining your company. To be blunt, it’s more likely that you’re simply not paying enough to be competitive or you’re not an attractive place to work.
Without knowing more details about your specific situation, the obvious change would be to simply offer more compensation. Higher compensation can make an unattractive job more attractive.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#18Offer some form of training and development, which has often been woeful at some places I've worked and the opportunity to progress within the organisation. This would appeal to the kind of people that seek permanent employment.
Offer good holiday allowance and flexible working hours and location.
I've recently moved from contract to perm (UK). I accepted because with the holiday, pension and better job security I gained I could take a small loss in salary.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#19PART-TIME and REMOTE are the keywords you are looking for.
Also, stay away from Agile/SCRUM bullshit. I personally stay away from companies who have "Agile Coaches" or "SCRUM Masters".
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#20What I don't get is why are the rates so different? Arguments like: uncertainty, getting clients is hard, certain overhead isn't paid, not always having work are all valid reasons. However, they don't seem to make sense for such a big difference. Based on those reasons, I'd suspect a 1.5x difference to be more reasonable, but in most cases it's like 2x to 4x.
It's usually because of different accounting treatment and the relaxation of employee policies.
A contractor can be booked as a fixed expense, can come out of discretionary budgets, you don't have to follow salary banding and it's not necessarily seen as a problem if they're paid more than management - especially if it's hard to tell if they actually are (taxes, insurance, etc. complicate things).
The other stuff is retroactive justification.