Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 424 posts

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

#221

Post by mooreds »

learc83 wrote: post #206
mooreds wrote: post #198

Because money isn't the only thing that matters. Sure, money is great, but it's not the sole determinant of happiness in my experience. Other things that matter: * being part of a team, pulling towards a goal. * stability. Contracting is awesome, but often feast or famine. * work life balance. Yes, as a contractor you control your working hours, but it can be hard to stop working at 5pm too. * benefits (if in the USA…

> ability to explore different areas. When you are a contractor, you are expected to be top notch at what you do. Often that means you don't get to explore new things (except on your own time, which you should do). It's nice to get paid to learn as an employee. I've also done both over my career, and I haven't noticed much difference in this regard. I've proposed we try out (and they accepted) a different language or…

> long-term clients.

Ah, maybe that is it. There is a distinction worth diving into between the first project you do as a contractor (where, in my experience, you are hired to deliver) and later projects where you are a known entity who has solved problems and delivered. In the latter case you are (and I have been) able to propose getting up to speed on new technologies.

I was thinking more of the former case when I wrote that, but you're correct, there are different scenarios I glossed over.

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

#222

Post by omgwtfbbq »

pessimizer wrote: post #215
aphextron wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But it is a reason to leave the company because you can easily get 10% or more switching jobs. Depends on the company. Mine is 100% remote since COVID, has generous benefits, a strict 9-5 M-F culture, and plenty of interesting work to do as much (or as little) as I have an appetite for. I make maybe 10% under market rate, but it would take at least a 50% raise to get me to leave. That's never happening, as it would…

What if there are identical "intangibles" at the place offering you a 10% raise?

Unless you know someone inside the company I'd guess that's pretty hard to judge from the outside or through a few interviews.

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

#223

Post by ryandrake »

jameshart wrote: post #52
junon wrote: post #33

I'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…

You’re shooting yourself in the foot by ignoring companies that take pride in offering an agile development environment. There are, sure, places that have control-through-forced-scrum as their management philosophy who will call themselves ‘agile’; but there are also places that practice exactly what you’re looking for: getting out of the way of tech practitioners, giving them direct access to stakeholders to decide…

I once worked at a place on the opposite side of the "process" spectrum:

No source control

No bug tracker

No formal QA

No versioning or release process. When a customer needed a build they just took whatever happened to be on the lead developer's PC at the time.

No roadmap planning process. The CEO would walk into your office and spout off about some idea for the product, and that's what you'd be working on next.

And I can assure you the did not do agile or scrum. Wasn't a really great place to work. Very chaotic and everything was a fire to put out. Lots of turnover and burnout too. Would not recommend. There's a sweet spot in the middle of the 'process' spectrum.

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

#224

Post by mooreds »

LanceH wrote: post #209
HumblyTossed wrote: post #87

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but here is why the company I work for currently is able to keep me. 1. Interesting work [0]. My day to day is not a slog. I find it challenging and stimulating. 2. I get to the freedom to make decisions. My manager tells me, "I know you have this, so just do it." If I fail (we all do occasionally. Some things just don't work), they don't let the bus hit me. We figur…

A big one I have to add is time off. I've rejected a lot of companies that tell me, "All new employees start with two weeks off per year." Yea, I'm sure the new CFO starts with 2 weeks vacation, too. I've been doing this for 25 years, and if you offer me two weeks, we're done.

> Yea, I'm sure the new CFO starts with 2 weeks vacation, too.

LOL

I would add that if the company has "unlimited vacation time" it's really important to press and find out how much time people actually take. I like to ask for averages or how much time has taken off in the last few years.

That'll tell you what the limits really are.

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

#225

Post by rurban »

Fix HR and hiring committees first. The best usually don't get past these folks, who e.g. demand PDF resumes, job titles, work references and have no idea how to read beyond buzzwords or how to evaluate github profiles.

Once you get past the silly, it's usually easier.

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

#226

Post by myfavoritedog »

pessimizer wrote: post #218
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…

My superficial read of the Basecamp kerfuffle is that what people are really upset about is a lack of professional development, but it was expressed as a sort of aimless resentment of everything the founders are . If what the founders are is the most important thing in the company - if the company is thought of as their thing , and not a thing any other employee will ever have a hand in steering, it would be frustrat…

I could see some of what you're saying as well. Although I would argue that if people think it's dead-end job working on someone else's toy -- the company leaders aren't focused on winning. They're still going to attract new employees for the wrong reasons, or at least for reasons that wouldn't get me to want to work there.

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

#227

Post by swat535 »

I'm not sure if it's a possibility for you but you can hire internationally if you are operating remote. You can find cheap, great talent from many places especially if you are paying in USD. For like 40k you can hire entire competent teams in Poland for example.

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

#228

Post by jameshart »

Frost1x wrote: post #133
ericbarrett wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it’s become a high-confidence signal that shenanigans will be ongoing.

I use this as a signal of avoidance: not interested in your varied way to try and manipulate SWE labor and squeeze another once of productivity out or pass off your debt in the form of my time at the cost of my sanity. I know many others that do the very same. Perhaps it's my loss, it's a risk I'm willing to take due to the number of bad apples associated with such practices.

I'm not sure what this kind of cynicism actually gets for you.

If you approach any job ad with the assumption that whenever they try to put a positive spin on the working environment they offer, they really mean they'll manipulate your labor to squeeze out productivity at the cost of your sanity...

... why would you work for anyone?

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

#229

Post by wyldfire »

packetlost wrote: post #214
HumblyTossed wrote: post #87

I know this doesn't directly answer your question, but here is why the company I work for currently is able to keep me. 1. Interesting work [0]. My day to day is not a slog. I find it challenging and stimulating. 2. I get to the freedom to make decisions. My manager tells me, "I know you have this, so just do it." If I fail (we all do occasionally. Some things just don't work), they don't let the bus hit me. We figur…

> I'll take interesting work over tech stack any day. I don't give a rat's ass about language wars For me, having a Windows (Server) environment is enough to kill my interest. I know several shops in my area (mostly medical field adjacent tech) that are entirely Windows. That's probably more because of my extensive *nix background than anything. Language doesn't matter, but platform can/does to some

Yeah, after developing on linux for the last 17 years or so I would never go back.

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

#230

Post by analyst74 »

Do you really need top tier engineers?

Top tier firms pay lots of money for engineers because they expect them to have specialized knowledge, ability to deal with global scale, business intuition and communication skills to identify and drive large scale projects.

If your company can fully utilize all those skills, those engineers can easily bring in revenue at multiples of their cost.

Post reply on HN