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

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

#251

Post by Nursie »

LanceH wrote: post #213
Nursie wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, reviews, another part of employee life I haven't missed! That stuff re: training was not something that was part of my life as a perm worker, in the UK or Australia. The companies certainly liked to pay lip-service to employee development, but I didn't see much evidence of it actually happening.

One of the things I enjoy about contracting is that instead of watching all the videos on harassment and whatever, I usually just have to sign a code of conduct. Those corporate videos are soul crushing. I guess the exception was one quiz about bribery I had to take at IBM. It asked me what I would do if I were offered a cook to go with my lodgings where I was staying during an engagement. This woke me up to the poss…

Actually you raise a good point - I also did a short bribery and corruption self-driven training thing at IBM, and that one was at least interesting.

The “Active Shooter” one at JPMC was somewhat sobering.

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

#252

Post by techsupporter »

bradstewart wrote: post #164
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…

> 5. Raises that matter. Not some 1 or 2 pct insult. There's no excuse for that. None. Is a big one. I am very unsure why companies seem so reluctant to do this when the cost of hiring and training a replacement are non-negligible.

I think a big reason is because that "1% to 2% base pay raise" gets hidden behind bonuses that (usually, but not always) seem bigger, plus stock-based pay that tends to be bigger every year (until it isn't).

For me, it's not as gigantic of a deal because as long as my raises cover the rising cost of rent--which it might not this year due to where I live becoming even more massively popular in the wake of COVID--then I am fine with this trade because I hate interviewing and I hate change even more. I used to spend the bulk of my annual bonus and stock grants and saving a little; in recent years, I've flipped that.

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

#253

Post by blaser-waffle »

Nursie wrote: post #169
dopidopHN wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

companies investing in training is real. Be it pushing for certification, mooc, internal training credit. All of that was part of my review for instance. It does work.

Ugh, reviews, another part of employee life I haven't missed! That stuff re: training was not something that was part of my life as a perm worker, in the UK or Australia. The companies certainly liked to pay lip-service to employee development, but I didn't see much evidence of it actually happening.

Same. Heard much discussion about it at every job, but in terms of actual time or dollars -- nah.

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

#254

Post by npsimons »

Interesting question, as I just handed in my two weeks notice for my day job of nearly 20 years (so I guess I'm a senior engineer, but I suffer from imposter syndrome and think I still don't know what I'm doing after all this time).

I'll second the interesting work and keeping people busy, as the job was boring me to tears. Part of it is on me, as I was having problems giving 100%, and that's unacceptable to me as a professional. But if I was being tasked, I don't think it would be as much of an issue.

I'll also second bare minimum raises. It's not about the money, but rather that the Trinity study found that inflation averaged 3% YoY. If salary isn't going up by at least that much, you're cutting my pay every year.

While I can sling bits in just about anything and have system administrator experience to boot (running my personal domains and mail servers on the open Internet for decades), I have to insist that my personal development seat is Emacs running in Linux. Apart from the fact of it sucking less, I'm so experienced with them both, it's a waste of my time to force me to use other tooling. I can (and have) cross-developed software for Windows, OSX and vxWorks (and soon to pickup Android and maybe iOS), but I've done it all from Emacs under Linux with no issues. I have no issues learning new SDKs, toolkits, frameworks, languages, etc, I just have 20+ years of Linux and Emacs experience under my belt, it's one of my skillsets that is a feature.

And last, I'm never going to work in an office again if I can manage it. No, I don't care how awesome your team or office is, I'm happier, healthier and more productive at home. Other tech firms have realized this[0], figure it out or I don't want to work for you.

ETA: Ooh, another big factor is leave. I don't need money, in fact I'm probably a bargain, but I want to work less hours, not more, and in my free time I rescue people off mountains. But this requires I be in a state of semi-on call, able to drop things at a moments notice to go rescue people. I always make up the time later (or take annual leave), but part of what I like about software development is the "episodic" nature, where I can cut to something else for a day or two, then come back to the project fresh.

[0] - https://stackoverflow.blog/2013/02/01/why-we-still-believe-i...

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

#255

Post by dom96 »

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…

As someone that is employed full-time in the UK I must say you (and others in this thread) have piqued my interest. I am still quite early in my career but the ability to choose contracts (and possibly even the tech stack) sounds like a dream.

Do you or anyone else have advice on how to get started with becoming a contractors?

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

#256

Post by philmcp »

Offer a 4 day week. I've been searching for a role which fits this description since I left Uni and I finally found one

It amazes me that more companies don't offer this benefit (even for a 20% cut in salary!) when the demand is so high

It annoyed me so much I decided to make a website listing Software jobs with a better work / life balance:

https://4dayweek.io/

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

#257

Post by sigstoat »

mdavis6890 wrote: post #199

Lots and lots of equity. For the most part, money talks. But it doesn't have to be guaranteed cash. You can offer a risky gamble instead. FAANG pays $1000, but instead you can offer a coin flip for $2200, or a snake-eyes dice-roll for $50k or something like that instead. People will tell you all kinds of other things that simply do not matter as much for people who are not already wealthy. Good team, nice people, imp…

> But give a person the choice between all those things and an extra $100k income, and I'm pretty sure you can guess what they'll choose. At least most people.

i suppose "most" can mean a range of things. but i think that if money was even top 3 for somebody, we'd see them studying for FAANG interviews continuously, and applying over and over. in all my years i've run into maybe one person who behaved like that. maybe that's more common behavior than i realize? (google is the only one of them that's had a real presence in my area for >10 years.)

it's important! and i think management definitely likes to underestimate the importance, but it seems to be balanced with a selection of other interests. many of which management could provide for ~$0 or <$0, so they're worth mentioning in (what i feel is) the context of this Ask HN.

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

#258

Post by philmcp »

nvarsj wrote: post #13

Try 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.

Upvote for mentioning a 4 day week - couldn't agree more

It amazes me more companies don't offer this benefit (even for 20% salary cut) so much so that I just launched this: https://4dayweek.io/

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

#259

Post by npsimons »

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

> Language doesn't matter, but platform can/does to some

Very much this. I can put up even with FORTRAN - hell one of the most interesting challenges I had recently was figuring out how to call C++ from FORTRAN.

But I've been living in Emacs for almost two decades, and longer than that in Linux. I have to insist that my personal development seat is Emacs on Linux. Yes, I can target Windows and probably anything else from Linux (iOS is a challenge, but I'm looking into it), so I don't see the "need" to develop natively.

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

#260

Post by ex_amazon_sde »

junon wrote: post #243
jameshart wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

You're assuming that agile is a "positive spin on the working environment". In 11 years of professional work, it's only ever been used as a weapon against the development team.

Spot on. Often it feels like a cult, but even more often is used as a micromanagement tool.
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