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

> I doubt you are actually working together on a common goal though, if you do not see value in standups for example.

It sounds like you're assuming the only way to sync up with folks is a stand up, which is just ridiculous. I'd even make the argument that if you think you need a stand up so that team members actually communicate with each other then you're not working on an actual team, you're working with other people that are loosely grouped together. Any good team I've ever worked on, people just organically collaborate as needed. You don't have to wait for some arbitrary sync-up time to let each other know what's going on.

In general, I'm not necessarily against stand-ups, as long as they're quick and don't turn into status meetings. In my mind, a perfectly reasonable stand up could be "does everyone know what they're doing? Does anyone need help?" and if the answers to those are "yes" and "no" respectively, then we can be on our way. But more often these things turn into minor status report meetings, where everyone starts saying "this is what I did yesterday; this is what I'm doing today..." and often those details are not relevant for everyone on the team and could just as easily be communicated elsewhere in an async fashion.

I feel like a lot of things like stand-ups exist for the lowest common denominator teams. Bad teams don't organically communicate, people slack off if you don't micromanage them, etc., and so for those teams you NEED a stand-up. But then it gets forced on everyone and is a drag for high-performing teams, and good people end up leaving because they just don't want to deal with all the BS. So you end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy where what you're mostly left with is bad teams and so it feels like stand-up is necessary or is working. It's kind of maddening.

It depends. Some midwestern companies want to pay < $100/hr. Californians will pay up to $145/hr for special skills. New York is accustomed to outrageous fees. I feel bad about taking advantage them so I only go up to $165/hr or so. And of course for assurances about hours and duration of the project, discounts.