Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 81 posts

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#51

Post by escanda »

sixhobbits wrote: post #15

This is true for developers applying through job ads. patio11 has a written millions of words of advice, many of which talk about how to land work (hint, don't apply through job ads), so I'm not going to try rephrase that, but if you're a developer (even without experience) and you're good at what you do, you really shouldn't have any issues finding work. (shameless plug) I'm working with hyperiondev.com. We offer 6-…

I am assuming you are making an overstatement. Even then, you are really mislead if you really think someone who knows the basics of control structures is going to get a job in the industry.

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#52

Post by arielweisberg »

btilly wrote: post #43
maxsilver wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But your own company doesn't capture all of that value. If they paid their employees properly, with adequate salary bumps as their experience grew, then the company would capture all of that value, most of the time. People jumping every 2 years isn't exactly something most employees want to do, it's something companies force upon them.

No, the employers won't capture that value by following your recommendation. What you are recommending is that employers pay for training, and then pay employees exactly the same that they would get for hiring someone with equivalent skills from the market. This leaves employers out by the cost of training from the cost of hiring from the market. So the business is strictly behind where it would have been. But worse…

You also need to take into account the cost of not filling positions.

Eventually that cost eclipses the cost of training. Also more experienced developers have an easier time jumping ship for their next >20% bump in compensation. Even with senior developers that's more knowledge and training walking out the door.

It's also much easier to con a junior developer into staying in one place too long for too little money. You might spend two years skilling them up, but if you pay them well (or even don't) you might get them for 6 years or more. Seen it happen too often.

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#53

Post by cholantesh »

jajern wrote: post #42
kirykl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a manager who had a job posting for a COBALT programmer. He couldn't find a single one

Did you mean COBOL or did he misspell it and that's why he couldn't find one?

From the context, I'd surmise it's the latter.

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#54

Post by LaSombra »

Most companies have forgot the power of training. Hiring a junior dev to shadow a mid-level or a senior engineer trumps, almost all the time, the trouble of finding the unicorn candidate.

Companies want to hire a silver bullet and forget all about the perfectly capable people that don't have "15 years of Java/C#/Python/whatever experience".

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#55

Post by superb_herb »

watty wrote: post #8

It's not abnormal for a company to have senior-level openings and no junior openings. My company for example is also "desperately" in need of a senior developer / architect to fill in a role.

Does your company not have any junior devs who are ready to step up?

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#56

Post by SatvikBeri »

kirykl wrote: post #30
devnull42 wrote: post #2

I saw a company asking for 10 years OpenStack development experience. The initial release of OpenStack was 7 years ago. Cant make this shit up.

I had a manager who had a job posting for a COBALT programmer. He couldn't find a single one

Yup, I had one who was looking for someone with "Mongoose DB" experience.

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#57

Post by dep_b »

watty wrote: post #8

It's not abnormal for a company to have senior-level openings and no junior openings. My company for example is also "desperately" in need of a senior developer / architect to fill in a role.

A company I worked for always was looking for senior devs. Not because they needed them, but if one would stumble in accidentally they would still hire the programmer (and fire one of us? I never saw this pan out!)

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#58

Post by rabbite »

Yup. 45 applications, several face-to-face interviews and homework assignments since June. No offers. This is with over 6 years of development and 11 years of technical work and leadership.

Hiring practices suck when the only advice my father can give me is "make sure to smile and be positive!"

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#59

Post by SatvikBeri »

vonmoltke wrote: post #35
SatvikBeri wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, say you hire a junior developer and spend a year training them to the next level of seniority, at significant training / opportunity cost expense. They now command a much higher market rate - you can pay the higher salary and retain them, or not and they'll leave. Either way, the company is out the training cost relative to hiring someone senior from the beginning. (I say this as someone who hires 90% junior peop…

You need to balance the training cost (offset by revenue generated) of growing juniors against the cost of acquiring and onboarding senior hires.

Right - as of recently, I would claim that the market is distorted in a weird way where hiring senior people is just a better deal for most startups than hiring juniors and training them, even factoring in all the associated costs, because a weird effect where market rates for senior developers are maybe ~2-3x higher but they are 5-10x more effective.

Market rates for senior developers relative to juniors should go up in this scenario, but they haven't really, and I don't understand why.

The main selfish economic reason to hire junior developers is if the marginal return of hiring someone sooner swamps the relatively higher total cost, which is why you'll see companies like Google that have huge RoI on engineers hiring many more college grads.

Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”

#60

Post by s73ver_ »

vinceguidry wrote: post #46
s73ver_ wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one instance. Yes, it's not going to be 100% retention. Nothing ever will be, unless you decide to bring back slavery. I asked how often does it happen. I can almost guarantee you that the retention rate of developers who feel they're being treated well is much, much higher than otherwise.

Let's rehash your argument here. You think that companies that need skilled devs should train up junior devs instead of looking for skilled devs on the job market. Your answer to the retention issue that creates is "treat employees better." You don't understand why that's a bad deal for employers? You want them to take on all of the risk and get none of the reward. Look, I like the current system where you have to bu…

No, I'm saying that if they're not able to find senior devs, that they should train junior devs. And I reject the idea that it creates a retention issue, unless you have no intention to treating those people well.

"You don't understand why that's a bad deal for employers?"

No, I don't, at least not for employers that respect their employees. It may be a bad deal for employers that don't, but for them, I really don't care.

"You want them to take on all of the risk and get none of the reward."

As opposed to now, where the employee takes all of the risk and gets no reward?

"Look, I like the current system where you have to build the skills yourself and find some way to get into the job market."

Yes, people who have been through hazing like the system of hazing and have no desire to stop it for the next class.

"Asking companies to play the role of code schools is just way too much."

I don't agree. But if that's the case, then they can stop complaining that there aren't enough skilled developers out there if they're not willing to help out.

Post reply on HN