Offer good benefits, a gentler pace of work, and security
Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
101–110 of 424 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Plus jumping on to a new project every few months keeps the work interesting But contractors are usually hired for their existing skilsets where they can jump in and start contributing immediately. So you end up doing similar projects. eg: If you are a backend programmer, no one will hire you to work on as a machine learning engineer on day rates. This is a big myth that contractors are working on something new and…
All I have to say to that is "You'd be surprised", particularly when you get a reputation for picking up new things quickly. > Companies invest in training Literally never happened for me in 12 years of perm work, for large and small companies. Discounting trivial/patronising things like security training. I've self trained or picked things up as I go along a few times as a contractor, just as I did when perm.
> I've self trained or picked things up as I go along a few times as a contractor
Why would i hire a self trained machine learning engineer with no experience on high day rates when I can hire someone with experience. Ppl hiring contractors don't have time or patience for you to experiment with self training on their dime, I would hire a fulltimer if i have all the time and money for ppl to learn on the job.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 100% remote part is questionable. IMHO people should be given offices to come when they want to, especially senior engineers.
Everyone is different. Senior engineers tend not to be young and usually have families and want to live in cheaper areas/countries. Of course it's subjective, but I'd wager more senior engineers would want remote work.
Senior here. I prefer remote, but comp has to be enough for me to rent a bigger place isolated from kids, or straight up a nearby office.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#104I'm a senior eng out of work for a year (per my own choice) slowly looking to get back into the market. These points are my own: - My managers have always been a point of friction. If you hire an expert, stop telling them what they do and don't know. I'm afraid of full time work because of incompetent managers or tech leads. - I don't care if your company is a unicorn. I care that I'm going to be happy doing the work…
There are great companies out there who not only are remote first but also works distributed and async, like github and gitlab. Per your point about managers there is also the concept of "Manager of one" for being own manager in these companies.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#105In the USA, good health care benefits would be a major way.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#106Technical recruiter here. For okay-paid fulltime roles, you won't never attract people who are after the money. These people will always prefer juicy contracting rates to your small company salary. You have to try to find people who care less about money and more about other perks like remote work, interesting tasks, a strong technical team, meaningful mission etc. In Switzerland, which is my market, freelancers aren…
> people think former freelancers won't ever be loyal and leave once there is a better opportunity.
I think that's ironic. The entire software development industry in the US is based around retaining full-time employees for stints of 18-24 months.
I remember being lectured that no one wants to hire me because "I'm just waiting for retirement," and "won't be loyal."
Yet they don't have an issue with hiring someone that plans to use their gig as a stepping stone, and will leave behind a steaming pile of spaghetti code that they never had any intentions of maintaining.
There's a real good chance that offering senior developers stability and consistency will be valuable.
I ran a C++ shop, staffed by pretty high-functioning senior developers, for a long time.
When we finally rolled up the department, the engineer with the least seniority had a decade.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#107Relatively 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…
I'm with you. As a QlikSense developer, almost all jobs I see are Contract-To-Hire. The rates look good, but they aren't good enough to justify me having to get my own health insurance, nor do I want to risk 6-months of nothing happening for a full-time position I may not want in the end.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#108I switched from consulting to a company. In short contracting is a headache if what you care about is doing good tech work. Rates in the contract world represent a lot of overhead and headaches you experience there: 1. Payment risk: chances someone doesn’t pay you is surprisingly high. A lot of time is just spent chasing down your money. 2. Poor payment terms: being able to bill after 30 days of work is actually seen…
How on earth do they justify anything except next-day payment? If they can't pay a few thousand dollars what is going on with their cashflow?
Once a company hires a certain kind of financial specialist, they delay payments just because that’s one of the few levers they have to change how the company performs and they feel they need to do something beyond keeping things working smoothly. Just like some HR specialists make rules just because they can, or some designers compulsively adjust the brand. It’s hard for people to competently maintain status quo and feel comfortable in their jobs.
In case it needs to be said, yes, there are times when cashflow is dire, employee policies are a mess and the logo looks bad.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#109I'm a senior eng out of work for a year (per my own choice) slowly looking to get back into the market. These points are my own: - My managers have always been a point of friction. If you hire an expert, stop telling them what they do and don't know. I'm afraid of full time work because of incompetent managers or tech leads. - I don't care if your company is a unicorn. I care that I'm going to be happy doing the work…
> incompetent managers or tech leads.
This is one of the things that ruined my last gig. I have 3 decades of experience. Managers and tech leads are unlikely to have a fraction of that, so let me do my job.
> Agile is a time stuck and time waster
This was the other thing. We fell into the hands of Agile cultists (really no other way to portray them) and wound up getting buried in process, useless meetings, etc.
> I'm probably not with your product or service's target demographic
Same! I've never worked on anything that I would have an interest in using personally. I don't have anything against the products, and they served their target audience well, but that's not me.
> Stop drowning us in processes.
See above. The so called "Agile" stuff they brought in basically crushed our development staff. It was used as a bludgeon.
Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?
#110ya ya ya