41–50 of 424 posts
Start by not calling them Snr Engs. That makes it sound like you don't value them and view them as a comodity that you can't be arsed to write out completely. Not to mention, it won't come up in a search when active, motivated candidates are looking for new opportunities. This is not just a nitpick. If someone emailed me looking for a "Snr Eng", the email is getting deleted and flagged as spam.
Start by not calling them Snr Engs. That makes it sound like you don't value them and view them as a comodity that you can't be arsed to write out completely. Not to mention, it won't come up in a search when active, motivated candidates are looking for new opportunities. This is not just a nitpick. If someone emailed me looking for a "Snr Eng", the email is getting deleted and flagged as spam.
But you're not looking for the type of engineer that will succeed at consulting - these people will in general be more extroverted and will look at he risk/ROI as a life-calculus. You're looking for the less flamboyant and risk averse engineer.
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…
Since work in most of the US is “at will”, it’s an easy problem to solve if it turns out someone has exaggerated their abilities.
My problem is not with _any_ coding to be clear. It’s mostly the Google gotcha questions designed to make the interviewer look smart, and where the primary takeaway is that the candidate has or has not seen that question before.
Things like “let’s refactor this thing collaboratively and discuss trade offs” are fine - and discussing trade-offs gives you far more of a feel for a senior engineer than whether they can implement some trivially Googleable algorithm for which “use a library” is almost certainly the actual correct answer. This is the style of question I personally use when doing technical interviewing.
Maybe something to do with stock/shares which become available over time, if that's something you can do. Remote working, some flexibility in working patterns, a good amount of leave each year (30 days is good) - be a good company to work for, which is friendly to family and other non-work needs and sensitive to the balance.
A reasonable amount of freedom and influence on the tech stack always helps engineer satisfaction, though the senior engineer you're looking for will likely want to keep things simple rather than chasing every new framework or language.
If you're specifically trying to attract people away from contracting then something I hear a lot from my contractor friends (and something that is important to me too) - try to cut out the corporate crap. I don't want to write an annual plan detailing my aims and commitments to the company. I don't want to buy into your corporate vision. I want to do good work and deliver what you need, but I don't want to spend half my life in pointless conversation with managers.
The basic mechanism of capitalism is supply and demand. When you write: "it's pretty much impossible to match day rates", you mean that your company doesn't want to pay the market rate. There is no secret strategy. You either pay market rates or hire less capable developers who will work for the rates you are willing to pay.
This. I'm a senior engineer. I'm passing good at what I do. When I left my last company, I started looking for work in a culture that has changed significantly since the last time I'd looked for work (I was at that company for 27 years). It was a shock. The naked and unapologetic disrespect and ageism has been pretty crazy. I threw in the towel, after a few months, and I'm now working with a nonprofit, for no money,…
Full time work just doesn’t offer a competitive amount of holiday. I can contract 2/3 to 3/4 of the year and take the rest off to travel, work on my own projects, meet friends etc. The money works out about the same but 25 days leave (or whatever the standard amount is) just doesn’t cut it for me. The older I get, the more I value time over money.
Also the flexibility of doing so: if I need to take tomorrow off, I'll just let the client know I'll be unavailable for the day, and not charge for it. If they really need my work to be done that day, I can offer a substitute, charge the client, and pay the substitute.
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…