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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?

#381

Post by g051051 »

jameshart wrote: post #380
g051051 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand this desire to wallow in the belief that anyone who tells you it doesn't have to be like that must be lying or selling something. Because literally every time we've encountered cake it's a painful and disgusting experience. It's more like you've been given something that's been called cake, but is actually not cake. Whoever baked it realized that the recipe for cake could never work, so they chan…

Yes, I believe you have been subjected to that abuse. But... the point of my metaphor is: cake does exist. It's real. You can make your own! The recipes are available! They do work! The fact that people have convinced you that cake doesn't exist is a reflection on them , not on me . You are trying to convince me - a person who is eating a cake right now - that cake is a lie. And for some reason you seem really angry…

Angry? That's an odd assessment. I'm angry at the people that make and sell LieCake, and how they've deluded you into thinking that cake is a sweet, tasty treat. The key point for you to take away, is that it's remarkably hard to make an edible cake. It should be clear that you're in the minority (in this thread) of having received something edible when many others have been given burnt tires and glass.

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

#382

Post by kwdc »

facorreia wrote: post #369
kwdc wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the "highly skilled engineer paid at great expense but not allowed to have an extra pen" problem. Sounds ridiculous until you go and need to almost beg to get a pen.

Oh this triggered some memories! Yes, I've worked for companies that made you return the old pen to get a new one.

Definitely for me. Having to sign for pens snd pencils was a thing at one place. They later went broke. My contract ended two years before they did, I wonder if it was the stationery budget or the bad will it caused?

There's a potential research paper in this somewhere: "Subtle consequences of mildly antagonistic workplace practices and their effect on annoying the crap out of people to the extent of later bankrupting a company due to the snowball effect."

Been a long day.

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

#383

Post by tharkun__ »

heywherelogingo wrote: post #276
mschuster91 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's incredibly short-sighted, but a lot of British businesses treat their software staff as equivalent to generic office inhabitants, rather than highly skilled software practitioners. They also seem to treat their tech staff like children. This is not just true for British businesses... it's common worldwide across everything that's not a tech startup. The older the people in management are, the less like…

What do software staff have to do with laying rural fibre infrastructure? What do octogenarians have to do with software managers who these days are usually younger than the engineers, either because they went straight into management having negligible interest in tech, or because they soon found out they weren't any good at implementation?

Wanna live in a nice place with a garden for reasonable prices in your own house? Rural Germany is for you. Remote work from there? Yeah, not on 36k modem speeds you're not!

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

#384

Post by wstuartcl »

smsm42 wrote: post #374
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.

In California at least, if you have X days of vacation time and you don't use it in the year when you leave, they have to pay you for these days. If it's "unlimited" time, you get bupkis.

thats the rub, the companies dont need to pay you on exit and they can manage against the average they would have granted in the first place and prune employees taking more. net win.

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

#385

Post by chris11 »

g051051 wrote: post #379
dblohm7 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Agile is more suited toward software maintenance IMO, not building new software. One other learning that I've taken from big-A Agile is that it is only suited for teams where everybody is a "generalist" within the team. By "generalist" I mean that any developer on the team can work on any issue within that team's purview. If your team is responsible for any component where only a subset of the team has the speciali…

In the "agile" environments I've seen, devs are expected to be the ultimate generalist. We have to do planning, documentation, testing, qa, ops, and still write the code.

Personally I don't see that as a bad thing. I care more about ownership, I'd much rather be responsible for a project instead of just tickets.

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

#386

Post by phibz »

There has got to be a middle ground on pay. I've worked contract positions that transitioned to full-time. There is something wrong when a company tries to transition me to full-time at less than half my contract rate. I'm talking about total compensation: base pay, pto, bonus, equity, health insurance, even employment tax that they are legally obligated to pay. The sum of that was less than half my contract rate.

How can I be paid more than twice that for two years and then they claim they can't afford to get anywhere close for a full-time position?

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

#387

Post by softveda »

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…

The same in Australia. I doubled my income from going to contract work without even using a business/company structure. Long timers use a company structure for even better gains.

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

#388

Post by softveda »

dominotw wrote: post #85
Nursie wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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…

As a contractor training is my own responsibility. I pay for own Pluralsight and O'Reilly subscriptions and conferences all tax dedcutible. I take at least 2 certification exams each year as the motivation to stay current. This has allowed me to improve my resume year after year.

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

#389

Post by softveda »

DarrenDev wrote: post #197

Looking through all the comments, it seems to me that there is a huge differnce between contracting in the US and contracting in Europe, and that that difference is why more European developers favour contracting than US developers do. Contracting in Europe (especially in the UK and Ireland) is largely controlled by recruiting agencies, who act as middle men between companies and contractors. A contractor looking for…

Almost the same in Australia too.

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

#390

Post by aristofun »

whimsicalism wrote: post #323
aristofun wrote: post #313

Focus on what FAANG can’t usually give — high signal/noise ratio, feeling of being really important and appreciated, opportunities of making big impact, near zero bureaucracy, big stock options etc. It’s basic marketing thing, no? Differentiate if you cant compete directly.

> FAANG can’t usually give > big stock options ?

I meant big in percentage, not in cash value
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