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Stop complaining and pay programmers more

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Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#161

Post by BrandonM »

What about those Hacker News members who are looking for jobs? Is there a good resource of tech positions available?

Personally, I'd love to see a nicely-indexed list of jobs. Things like location, work environment, remote working arrangements, languages used, expected number of hours worked, typical responsibilities, schedule flexibility, vacation possibilities, who I'd be working with, degree of autonomy, level of recognition for work, perks and benefits, etc. are all factors that go into liking a job. And that's not even mentioning money.

Personally, I'd love to start a job working remotely at $40/hour for 20 hours a week or so. Once it was determined that I'm a good fit, I'd be willing to relocate to a lot of different places (e.g., Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Atlanta, New York, pretty much anywhere warm and coastal).

I think the question isn't so much why is it so hard to find the right employee or job. The real questions are:

What are the actual job requirements? I don't mean traditional notions of what a reasonable work week are. I mean what do you truly need? It might be possible to get a rock star developer working for you at a cost of $40K per year, if you can eschew the standard notion of a 2000-2500 hour per year commitment.

If you're a potential employee, what do you really want from the job? Focusing on the money is not the answer. Make sure that what you'll be doing, who you'll be working with, and where and when you're working all fit well with your personality and work habits.

And why is it so hard to match jobs and people up? Is there a decent resource anywhere that I could use to actually narrow down job opening according to a slew of criteria? In a high-demand field, doesn't it make sense for the potential workers to post what they want in a job, and have the jobs bend to that? Maybe I'll make a submission along those lines...

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#162

Post by c00p3r »

That was solved years ago. Just consider how a professional soccer team (including the double) are managed and paid. ^_^

hint: it is not just a performance and productivity, its also morale, influence and starness factors. And it works.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#163

Post by roel_v »

starkfist wrote: post #123
binaryfinery wrote: post #122

Managers assume that because one good programmer will do the job for $100k that all good programmers will. Many here point out that good programmers will generally find a job that challenges them, and that pays them enough to live. They then conclude that if $100k fills one seat, then $100k is the right price. This is totally wrong, and the key is "enough to live". I love programming as much as I did when I was 10. M…

They have $1.2 million dollars, they can't pay more. $125K is a huge pre series-a salary.

This is another one of those nonsense excuses. If they can't pay the proper price, they won't be able to get the best people. Period. I'd like to drive a Lamborghini Gallardo yet I'm stuck with a crappy Citroen. Do I go out and bitch on a blog about how I can't find Lamborghini's (with the implicit assumption that I can only afford 1/10 of the normal market price)? No I accept that I can't afford it and make due with what I have.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#164

Post by ido »

ulrich wrote: post #145
ido wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the interviewing process is different where you are, but around here the salary is normally not mentioned in the posting - you'd normally get asked about your salary expectations once you've been through the interview.

I will not attend a long interview process if the salary is completely unknown. The least I do is to tell the possible employer what my expectations are and check whether this is ok for them. Of course it would be better to make them define a salary range, but until now I was never able to do this.

The first interview (at the end of which you'd talk about the salary) is only an hour or 2, so I don't think it's that bad.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#165

Post by BrandonM »

kranner wrote: post #157
BrandonM wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly didn't consider that it might be because the comment was entirely pointless?

I actually thought it was better to be specific about why I liked the parent link, because that way the parent would get more upvotes, which I believe it deserved.

This is not a community concerned with upvotes. It is a community concerned with content, and especially with getting good content as quickly and as easily as possible. We upvote to signal good content. We do not comment to signal good content; that is what upvoting is for. We comment to add content; this can be in the form of insight, correction, elaboration, humor, summarizing a long article well, adding a personal anecdote or expert knowledge, answering a question, or any number of other things. Our comments should not be complaints, memes, or other wastes of space and time.

Before clicking the reply button, ask yourself, "Am I really adding something, or should I stop procrastinating and get back to work?"

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#166

Post by arethuza »

wake_up_sticky wrote: post #95
mkn wrote: post #18

If you've been around yc for more than a month, you've doubtless seen a number of links to articles on motivation as it pertains to creative activities like software development. The consensus is pretty clear. Incentives hurt productivity in creative activities. This seems to have something to do with the relationship between creative effort and intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation. The prospect of an incentive seems t…

"Incentives hurt productivity in creative activities." Unadulterated nonsense. On the one hand, I recall a cartoon-drawing presentation about school contests and the like. On the other hand, there are these centuries and centuries of evidence that PEOPLE RESPOND TO INCENTIVES, PERIOD. If you think that a company couldn't assemble a team of OUTSTANDING programmers by offering each $200k a year, you're crazy or stupid…

Anyone clever enough to be worth $200K a year in salary will also know that anyone paying £200K a year probably has some very particular expectations - i.e. they have a ROI in mind.

People who are really good tend to have their own ideas of what platforms they want to work on and what kind of problems they find interesting. Anyone paying $200K a year probably doesn't expect to give much leeway.

Note: I know people who get paid that much, I wouldn't want their jobs. I've been approached for positions paying roughly that amount and said "no" purely on the description of the working conditions.

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#168

Post by Loic »

jquery wrote: post #121
ryanbigg wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a programmer bonus and perks are definitely incentives, but a nice steady "I love your work" kind of vibe is a great way to keep me in my job.

> "I love your work" Nothing says "I love your work" more truthfully than a bonus or a raise.

Where have you been working for the past few years? A bonus you get it twice a year, a boss respecting your work and saying thank you, you have it every single day. If you are paid correctly, you should not even need a bonus but you cannot go long without respect from your boss and peers.

By the way, it is proved by countless experience that once salary is good enough, it is disconnected from happiness at work.

Good pay and respect will bring you way further than good pay, bonus and "you are my slave".

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#169

Post by rimantas »

lowdown wrote: post #88
danudey wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you'll have to offer them equivalent worth to what they're making. I left a high-paying job at a company that didn't appreciate its geeks to go to a lower-paying job whose entire staff (except for three project managers and the accountant) were geeks. The founder started the company doing websites in Perl in the 90's, and grew it into a small-scale hosting/app dev company. It's still private, it's still owned b…

really, keep your "perks" - it is like giving a gift card. Just give me the cash and I will buy what I want.

How are you going to buy more vacation days or ability to work from home?

Re: Stop complaining and pay programmers more

#170

Post by Enlightenment »

Some HR departments need a major overhaul.

I've interviewed at some manufacturing companies that have large numbers of blue collar workers and small numbers of engineers, yet the moronic HR department tries to run the engineers through a similar hiring mentality as the blue collar workers. Why the fck do I need to fill out a fcking job application that is targeted with lots of blue collar type questions...OMG!

Every so often, upper management needs to hire some specialist to anonymously go through the hiring process to determine how good or bad their HR department is doing!

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