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Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

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Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#121

Post by mahyarm »

branchless wrote: post #79
wrong_variable wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its a lot more complex than that. If the cost of beef was increased 4x for whatever reason, then most people would just switch their preference for meat. There are ofcourse a lot of greedy companies. But a lot of the time the consumer demands a price point for software product, many startups cannot afford to pay 400K to developers. I think its not a reflection of how difficult it might be to create software b…

The system of usury against land ensures that land costs adapt to absorb all available income after food/clothing/energy costs have been accounted for. Why is silicon valley more expensive to rent in? Because people came with money and the banks agreed to loan at a multiple of the new wage ceiling. If wages increase x4 guess what will happen? We need to stop banks creating debt to issue against land otherwise it will…

Also known as supply vs demand...

Bay area is infamous for many housing supply constraints in regulations. As far as loans increasing the demand side, banks can be pretty strict with %20 down payment restrictions. Which is why once houses go out of the dual income high earner price range ($1-1.5 million), you start seeing it overflow to other less desirable regions in the bay area.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#122

Post by ryandrake »

BadassFractal wrote: post #57
ryandrake wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the tired old "Shortage of Engineers" meme is bound to come up in any discussion about tech hiring that ignores compensation. Saying there is a shortage of something in a market only makes sense given a price. Sure, there is probably a shortage of Bay Area engineers if you're paying $70K, but I bet there is no shortage if you're paying $400K.

Would you be the CEO that decides to pay your employees 2-3x market rate? I'd love to watch that experiment from the sidelines.

If employers are constantly complaining about a shortage, I would argue that their idea of the "market rate" is not correct.

I want to buy a BMW M3, but I will only pay $5,000. I can't find any, therefore there is a shortage of BMWs??

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#123

Post by dragonwriter »

lostlogin wrote: post #119
rco8786 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective tax rate would come out to about $100k, not 180. Income tax brackets are marginal... https://www.taxact.com/tools/tax-bracket-calculator.asp and https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator#CZ1Kw... You also just kinda snuck in a random 72k/year for something that was never discussed. How about a spouse who also works? Would likely cover that 72k right there. 300k was a single person's income in t…

I've just been chewing that over. That childcare cost is phenomenal and illustrates Bay Area prices to me better than housing cost examples. Unless that cost is completely misleading...

> That childcare cost is phenomenal and illustrates Bay Area prices to me better than housing cost examples

You can pay that much for elite child care in places that aren't the Bay Area. The Bay Area probably has more people that are price-insensitive enough to imagine that the kind of places that charge that much are a reasonable minimum for "high-quality" child care, though, but that's more a difference in incomes than costs.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#124

Post by raverbashing »

ryanSrich wrote: post #43

Remote work is not a silver bullet for solving the faux work shortage. Aside from the fact that there is no shortage in the first place [1], remote work is still very new. Without proper operations in place and a solid, tested, management structure you'll end up with a hodgepodge of culture and unhappy employees. I used to be bullish on remote work until I actually started doing it. It can certainly work, and I still…

Making remote work work is "easy", but it requires breaking a lot of existing behaviours.

Devonkim is right, remote work fails because people think it will work just like working on premises

Rather, you need your work on premises to work the same as remote.

- Communication is key: slack is good, but actual phone or video calls are needed (and face to face meetings sometimes - just so people know each other). But more importantly, nothing should depend on a face-to-face meeting. This requires people to actually stop being lazy and getting communications going

- Good infrastructure for code/testing, no "this is only available on site" kind of stuff

- Redundancy and fallbacks (what if the internet is down?)

- Clear information on the people to reach for anything you might need

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#125

Post by knicholes »

nibs wrote: post #22
wtvanhest wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cambridge and Boston should be together, but Silicon Valley and SF shouldn't. I could walk to Cambridge from my house in the city of Boston. There is no way I could walk to Palo Alto from SF.

Yes. Big difference between 20 minute walk and 2 hour drive.

I've only seen Utahans measure distance in time.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#126

Post by nicobn »

riskable wrote: post #80
dschiptsov wrote: post #24

Remote is still rare, it seems, because usual sweatshops are traditional habitat for pointy haired bosses and other parasitic "management". For remote, the way Linux kernel or BSDs are being developed, one needs nothing but git, emacs and browser (well, in case of Linux also a working mail) and no management at all. How could, say, Amazon, even hypothetically switch to remote? More seriously, there is no market for c…

> They will pay you for filling a slot in the social hierarchy which supports them, not for your good code. This is absolutely true but remote workers can still be FTEs that extend a manager's umbrella of influence. So really, working remotely is orthogonal to managerial pyramids of power. If anything, hiring remote workers may allow managers to get more employees working for them because they can get more bodies for…

Not always. A friend of mine works remotely for a financial institution. His manager wanted to revoke his work from home agreement because he wanted to hit a target metric of number of man-days worked in a physical office to justify a corner office with upper management. Sad but true.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#127

Post by rwhitman »

xando wrote: post #109
rwhitman wrote: post #105

I'm increasingly curious about what kinds of trends there are in tech hiring outside of the English speaking world. Wouldn't the HN "Who's Hiring" thread being in English make it inherently biased in terms of global trends, especially when looking for the "next Silicon Valley" as the end goal? Would a city like Beijing or Taipei be adequately represented here at all?

I've just run the query and it's 6 (not this month, all time) with Beijing as a location. My best guess for China is: they have to have something similar, although obviously not in English. They have a huge market with limited reasons to cooperate with English-speaking Internet. Also, Chinese Internet is isolated you won't see many services that are available in US or EU. Fun fact there was an attempt to implement (c…

Makes sense. I couldn't help thinking about this post from a few months back, in the context of tracking geographic shifts in startup hiring:

http://www.recode.net/2016/5/13/11592570/china-startup-tech-...

I wonder if China's tech startups would impact the data if they had a presence on HN. Kind of an interesting puzzle

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#128

Post by speeder »

spraak wrote: post #107
speeder wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Brazil, since I graduated around 2009, I never got a 100% legal job, and never got a well paying job or contract. I keep hearing that I should move, or should work remote, I always reply: "How?" Because most countries only allow you to move into them if you get invited or is already wealthy. Most remote jobs I see, no matter where I look (I don't look only on HN) are US-only, or local only. Most jobs that a…

A way to get experience might be to suggest that you're hired as a consultant or contractor. It's easier for the company to do, but be careful that they still treat you fairly. I know a company in the UK that does this for its remote workers.

I don't lack experience. I lack JOB. Or REAL contract.

I've been working since 2009, I have lots of projects done, plus a startup.

But most of this, is not legal, usually I had jobs pretending to be contracts (ie: it was a day job, but paid as if I was a contractor, highly illegal in my country, because the government consider this a way to avoid following labour laws... and it is exactly that), low-paying contracts that don't follow all laws correctly either, stuff paid off the books, and so on.

But I found noone, in any country, willing to hire me 100% legally with fair pay, either as employee or contractor. (I did got some offers for legal work, but the pay was always less than my student loans, and later the loans I made to pay student loans, so not worth it at all).

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#129

Post by doozy »

kowdermeister wrote: post #71
ryandrake wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the tired old "Shortage of Engineers" meme is bound to come up in any discussion about tech hiring that ignores compensation. Saying there is a shortage of something in a market only makes sense given a price. Sure, there is probably a shortage of Bay Area engineers if you're paying $70K, but I bet there is no shortage if you're paying $400K.

$70k is a splendid salary if you live outside the US :) It's probably more than I ever earned in my lifetime.

It may be a splendid salary in some locations outside the US, it is not in many others.

Americans tend to believe they are wealthier than anyone else. Not so! Apart of the fact several countries in Europe have higher salaries (and cost of living than the US) there's the fact major cities are much more expensive than smaller ones, even in poorer countries.

Case in point: The most expensive cities in the Americas are Sao Paulo, Bogota and New York. You can easily enjoy a higher standard of living earning $70k in most of the US than you can in Sao Paulo or Bogota (I've lived in both, I know it for a fact)

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#130

Post by k__ »

phantom_oracle wrote: post #31

My own assumption is that even though remote work will increase, it will remain marginal and not consume most of the IT jobs out there. The simple reason being that the biggest IT/tech companies have invested heavily in land & buildings (think about how Apple and Facebook have built huge "campuses" - why they call the offices/building a campus, I don't know, but anyways ...) and they need to utilize those assets in o…

maybe not having land/building investments puts companies in a better position? To apply changes faster etc.
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