Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#141

Post by gwbas1c » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:40 PM UTC

I started a contract job three months ago, with the mutual intention that it will convert to a full-time job. I stayed at my previous job for nine years.

In general, I prefer to stay in a job a long time, 5+ years. We (my employer and I) chose to contract for risk management. I demanded a generous salary, and they wanted to test drive me. I was also very nervous about situations that lead to poor working conditions.

Specifically, what kept me in my old job so long was that, when there was a problem with working conditions, we usually resolved it. It wasn't perfect, but it was "good enough." When we had a tech stack that was difficult to work with, we refactored. Troublesome co-workers were given severance. Poor managers were shuffled out. Pay eventually got high. Poor processes were improved. (See last paragraph.) When my manager tried to push me to become a manager, we realized that I was better as a lead engineer.

In my current job, I was afraid that I'd show up and the stack would be impossible to work with. (Turns out that is true, the stack is impossible to work with.) But what's going to make me stay is that I'm allowed to refactor the stack to make it workable. (I also have the freedom to fix the 4000 compiler warnings.) I'll probably convert to a permanent employee.

(Note regarding processes:) Good processes are what make or break a company. When people complain about process; either they are unable to fix their processes, or they just don't want to do their job. The biggest factor in my eventual success in my old job was, ironically, getting a manager who backed good process. Initially, we had a lot of problems with poorly-written bugs and support tickets. It required a good manager to push back on the organization to make sure that, once bugs and support escalations made it to me, the tickets were in a state where I could take them. (IE, we didn't tolerate the "duuuhhh, there's a bug" tickets without steps to reproduce, or the "duuuuh, the customer has a problem, what do I do" tickets without preliminary research.)

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#142

Post by bdcravens » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #96

TimTheTinker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that treats software development as an iterative research and development process, lets engineers self-organize, respects their time, and respects that time estimate certainty is asymptotic with respect to the time horizon.

I’m sure I read something similar in some sort of manifesto...

And many companies filled with employees with "Agile" in their job title have probably never read it.

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#143

Post by varsketiz » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:41 PM UTC

myfavoritedog wrote: post #84

I'm going to be a curmudgeonly contrarian in this thread. You can highlight the text of my comment to make it easier to read after the incoming downvotes. :) I'm not desperately searching for work-life balance, using the latest fad of a technical stack, remoting, unlimited vacation, having the best free snacks in the break room, etc. Sure, at a superficial level, all that stuff sounds great. I'll make use of the in-o…

I don't think this is a very contrarian view, is it? I value the same things in the company - I want to work on something that changes the world, I want a company that has a vision, mission and strategy - where the business side is at least as senior as the engineering side. And of course I want to take part of what I create home financially. Bells and whistles in the form of remote work, snacks, etc are nice, but they are bells and whistles :)

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#144

Post by coldpie » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #80

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

Relatively 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…

yes exactly. I did contracting when i was single and young. Contracting requires you to tolerate random loss of income, paying health insurance yourself ( in usa), traveling, unpredictable work schedules. Its impossible to afford health insurance for the family, traveling ect when you have kids.

> ect

It's "etc". Short for "et cetera". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#145

Post by StevenWaterman » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

3np wrote: post #112

TimTheTinker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything that treats software development as an iterative research and development process, lets engineers self-organize, respects their time, and respects that time estimate certainty is asymptotic with respect to the time horizon.

> asymptotic with respect to the time horizon. I don't get what you're trying to say here.

If I understood correctly, if I estimate something will take 5 minutes, and I'm doing it now, it'll probably take 5 minutes. If my estimate is 18 months and we don't start for another year, my estimate is worthless.

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#146

Post by gadders » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

iwangulenko wrote: post #51

Technical 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

That is just common sense, surely? Companies don't hesitate to get rid of people they don't need. Why shouldn't employees leave for better roles? As they say in boxing, if you want loyalty, get a dog.

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#147

Post by dopidopHN » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

2 cents anectoda:

I just out of my third contract period over the last 15 years.

I will never do contract again. It promotes bad working condition and less interesting work.

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#148

Post by g051051 » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

sirsinsalot wrote: post #135

g051051 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’re shooting yourself in the foot by ignoring companies that take pride in offering an agile development environment. Fine by me. Everything I've seen and heard of Agile (both in the last company I worked at and from others) is that's it's a dumpster fire. It wasn't created by developers to improve development, it was created by consultants to sell consulting. DevOps is dumb, too. > Consider the alternative: a c…

As a counter-point, i've seen engineer-led Scrum and other agile varients work very well. Low stress, high productivity, high predictability. YMMV, and sadly the norm tends to be bad practice, but it isn't all like that. Companies with good engineering culture do engineering well. Companies with a poor culture do most things poorly.

> Companies with good engineering culture do engineering well. Companies with a poor culture do most things poorly.

Very true, but the "good" companies will be good regardless of what methodology they use. And it's rarely a one-size-fits-all approach. They recognize what works and what doesn't, without slavishly adhering to a single doctrine in the face of all evidence.

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#149

Post by Nursie » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #140

atonse wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. That's not been the case with our best contractors. Yes, in some cases, they were hired for skillsets they already had. But a couple of them we work with, we were happy to let them learn elixir on company time because they demonstrated solid polyglot skills.…

> But a couple of them we work with, we were happy to let them learn elixir on company time Yes thats what i am saying. Hiring rails devs and letting them learn elixir is no big deal and kind of makes sense. But that not really exciting stuff for senior engineers. Senior engineers want to learn new domains like sales, learn leadership skills, have a say in product direction ect. That to me is exciting stuff, not lear…

> Senior engineers want to learn new domains like sales, learn leadership skills, have a say in product direction ect.

Not all senior folks are interested in that stuff though. Some are more interested in picking up new tech and delivering good quality technical work than they are in going outside of tech to other parts of a business, or getting into management.

> That to me is exciting stuff

Sounds to me like you're less interested in the software creation aspects these days, which is also fine :)

Re: Ask HN: How to attract perm Snr Engs when the contract market is so lucrative?

#150

Post by viraptor » Thu, May 06, 2021, 1:47 PM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #55

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

Relatively 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…

> Relatively few engineers actually want to do contract work. The better contractors I've worked with all do, here in the UK. The day rates are high. The taxes are the same or lower, health insurance is optional. There's some company insurances you need and you have to get an accountant, but all-in that should be covered by less than a week of work each year. Gaps between contracts are desirable! Having a whole summe…

> Gaps between contracts are desirable! Having a whole summer off to live on your accumulated war chest and chill out, it's amazing.

If you can do that, that's amazing. Unfortunately many contractors fall into the "if I don't work I'm losing money" mentality and never stop. Then they start converting everything to how many days it cost them to earn and try to never spend money. I've seen it so many times and it's so unhealthy. Strangely it seems to mostly affect people who do get stupid-high rates.

The most absurd case was a contractor guy in a big corp at lunch with employees from the same team - he was pulling 3x our employee rate equivalent and complaining how he can't afford to take any days off or he'd be "losing" his daily rate.