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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?

#351

Post by junon »

Cederfjard wrote: post #211
bdcravens wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, but the top-level comment’s stated point wasn’t that, but rather that Agile is a waste of time, period. So I’m curious what other ways of working handle these kinds of projects better. Edit: This is a genuine question, I'd be very keen to hear concrete ideas on how to work better.

Identify the problems first. Everyone is searching for a solution when half the time they don't even know what the problems are.

Sure, releases might be slow. Why, though? Is it because you're not letting your engineers fix broken windows? How long does it take for PRs to get reviewed? If a long time, why? Do your engineers even know how to make proper commits? Are your PRs more than about 100 changes on average? Are you building your product from a prototype a non-programmer made? etc.

There is no silver bullet, period. Searching for one indicates you're looking for workarounds to fundamental issues on your team.

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

#352

Post by jjav »

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…

> getting out of the way of tech practitioners

Agile is the literal exact opposite of "getting out of the way of tech practitioners".

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

#353

Post by jjav »

jameshart wrote: post #228
Frost1x wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

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

Not OP, but cynicism against agile get me (somewhat) avoidance of the most toxic workplaces, which is what agile is.

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

#354

Post by water8 »

junon wrote: post #350
jameshart wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll take that as a yes. So I wonder how you feel about: Individuals and interactions VS processes and tools Customer collaboration VS contract negotiation Responding to change VS following a plan

They're all important. I don't really see the point in chosing one or the other.

You have to pick one or the other when choosing your development strategy. If you focus on customer collaboration, you could end up giving away too many freebee features that should have been feature requests and billed.

If you have a design iteration plan, how do you respond to a showstopper that makes the plan infeasible if you are on a strictly waterfall design plan?

Each has it's trade offs so you can't always pick one or the other willy-nilly or else you don't have a design strategy at all

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

#355

Post by Symbiote »

uranium wrote: post #274
mooreds wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's a very important point. My company has always had unlimited time. We just had an announcement from our HR head that managers are going to start making sure you take at least 2 weeks a year, ideally in a big block. I've never had trouble taking my vacation, but I'm really pleased that we're going to be enforcing a minimum, to help folks who are more hesitant to take theirs.

The legal minimum in the EU (and many countries) is 20 days.

I've seen this enforced once, and everyone was amazed that our colleague hadn't used the minimum 20 days. (We had 30 days according to our contract, but the requirement was for him to take 20. The other 10 were up to him.)

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

#356

Post by Symbiote »

scarby2 wrote: post #314
uranium wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very important point. My company has always had unlimited time. We just had an announcement from our HR head that managers are going to start making sure you take at least 2 weeks a year, ideally in a big block. I've never had trouble taking my vacation, but I'm really pleased that we're going to be enforcing a minimum, to help folks who are more hesitant to take theirs.

We have unlimited vacation time I have taken 4 days holiday and 6 days sick leave in the past 12 months (4 days because i was on my ass with the COVID vaccine doses). I would have normally taken at least 20 days holiday but it seems pointless to take time off to sit at home and do nothing. This year i have 2 weeks in July and 2 in October and a week for thanksgiving and a week for Christmas.

Take a break!

I took 26 days leave last year (4 pre-Covid), and carried over a few extra. Even with Covid, there were opportunities to take trips locally, or just have a day out of the house with no obligations. I used a few days to work on hobbies when friends were working.

When it's use-it-or-lose it (or, in my case, use-it-or-be-forced-to-use-it-in-crap-weather-December), why work?

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

#357

Post by [deleted] »

babelfish wrote: post #301
packetlost wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, my preferences for tech stack are less "I must have X, Y, Z" and more "I refuse to work with X, Y, Z"

[deleted]

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

#358

Post by Frost1x »

jameshart wrote: post #228
Frost1x wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

Because you have to? Your other options are to be born wealthy, start an independent business (which also usually requires up front capital), or live out in the wilderness.

As the alternative, you try to find positions that don't look like they have a pile of spin buried in them that seem to be hiding something. You look for red flags and then interview the set of employers that is also interested in interviewing you.

You can reduce the filter and wait for the interview processes to reduce false positives but from my experience, being cynical is a good filter to save me time from working in toxic positions at toxic companies. After interviewing and working in business environments, you learn more and more of the spin techniques everyone seems to use.

It's interesring how being critical of business ads is viewed negatively, yet it's perfectly fine for businesses to have full day interview processes, background checks, resume filters, skill tests, etc. Hiring businesses obviously don't trust you and your advertising, why is it assumed you should trust them? Trust is a two way street and has to be built and business relationships are growing increasing transactional and shorter term which doesn't exactly instill a sense of trust between people.

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

#359

Post by dave333 »

I'm out of touch with current contract rates and salaries, but when I switched from contract to full time in 2012, I figured that a nominal pay cut was actually a 30% raise based on the full time perks: paid vacation/holidays, 401K, stock purchase plan, paid healthcare (this was before Obama care) etc.

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

#360

Post by Rapzid »

bennyelv wrote: post #40
jen20 wrote: post #29

There are a few options I can see: The primary way is to pay more. Technical skills are in a (global) marketplace, and right now it is a sellers marketplace. If demand outstrips supply, this is the natural path. That said, if you can’t match the pay of the top bidders, you need to provide an environment they can’t or won’t, and how you go about this is specific to individual target developers. Some things I might con…

>Don’t do “dog and pony show” interviews. If I have to write code on a whiteboard, or even in an editor live on a call, or look at an extensive take-home test (anything more than a 15-30 minute task), I’m highly likely to pass for anything except an a top shelf package at a company I’m highly motivated to work for. I'm always interested in this point of view, because I understand why candidates don't like it but as a…

Fire fast.
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