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Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

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Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is important, but I'm going to stop you right there. #1 is solved by more money. Want me to work in a team that mocks my work? $100k extra will do it #2 is solved by more money. Want me to work with dirtbags? $100k #3 is solved by more money. Want me to wear a "super junior nobody" title? As long as you're up front about it, $100k. #4 is solved by money. My overtime rate is 2x normal rate You know why? Money bu…

Thinking as an employer, though, is it worth an extra $100k to be able to mock you? Hell no. Politeness is free. Is it worth an extra $100k to be able to employ dirtbags alongside you? Maybe for some jobs that involve ethically dubious actions, but probably not for most. Is it worth an extra $100k to be able to give you a super junior title? No, titles are free. Is it worth 2x your normal rate to get you to work over…

If it is important to you to be able to mock your employees, and you wouldn't run your business without being able to be a jerk like that, then you might want to pay that extra money.

Good business? No, but not all businesspeople are good at business. People get into it for very different reasons.

I've worked for a lot of acerbic bosses. I charge extra. Right now, with things so tight, it's approaching a 100% premium. You know what? The "jerks" keep paying it, because they can't find anything else.

Are they good bosses? Hahahahaha! No. About the only thing I do is make it really clear is that I'm there for the money, and I will walk off if I don't like it. So, I get the extra pay, without the abuse.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you think that more money doesn't motivate you, either you've never been paid enough Or you have; there's significant evidence that behind a certain level, additional income doesn't actually provide additional improvement in most measures of satisfaction and subjective quality of life (IIRC, some studied in the 1990s showed this on average at somewhere around $250,000 in then-current dollars in the US.) Once you…

It is certainly true that money has diminishing returns. Think of it as an asymptotic function approaching a maximum level of happiness as income tends towards infinity. However, it's also important to take into account the cost of living. That $400K/year figure (accounting for inflation), which marks something like 90% of the way up the asymptotic curve, is an average across the US. But if you're living in very expe…

Sorry if you make 500k and have financial problems you are either stupid or you fool others by complaining a lot. A lot of well off people complain about money all the time. I guess that's what motivated them to make more.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#83

So. Much. B.S. There is only one thing that people who have not been dropped on a head interested in. It is called money . Money buys them stuff. Money lets them have a nice roof over their head. Money lets their family not worry about a slum in the economy. Everything else is secondary. Here's a magic formula: MaxMoney(Min(work)) 402 "PAY_ME_MORE_MONEY" P.S. That's why it is called a job and not hobby or volunteerin…

I disagree with this. I'm motivated by money for two reasons; 1) I have bills to pay. 2) I want to be paid a fair rate, in line with other people with my level of skills and experience. So beyond fair pay that meets my needs, money is far less motivating for me than having a fulfilling, mission-focused career.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, $750k per year would put all of those concerns to rest for me. I don’t care about respect when I’m sitting on a boat off the coast of Nice. “Comfortable” for me means having the option to not work.

And that's how it works in finance. You are hired to do a job. For boat load of money. When that job is done, you are fired. And no one cares because working 3 years for guaranteed $800k/year + $500k bonus that you will probably get is worth being fired on a 3 year + 1 day anniversary.

Serious question, how many people in finance really make $3.6+ million in just a few years then retire? Honestly that's enough to pay off every cent of debt for both my wife and I, and then pull off over $100k/yr for the rest of our lives.

Give me $3.6 million today and I will never touch an office door for the rest of my life.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is important, but I'm going to stop you right there. #1 is solved by more money. Want me to work in a team that mocks my work? $100k extra will do it #2 is solved by more money. Want me to work with dirtbags? $100k #3 is solved by more money. Want me to wear a "super junior nobody" title? As long as you're up front about it, $100k. #4 is solved by money. My overtime rate is 2x normal rate You know why? Money bu…

Thinking as an employer, though, is it worth an extra $100k to be able to mock you? Hell no. Politeness is free. Is it worth an extra $100k to be able to employ dirtbags alongside you? Maybe for some jobs that involve ethically dubious actions, but probably not for most. Is it worth an extra $100k to be able to give you a super junior title? No, titles are free. Is it worth 2x your normal rate to get you to work over…

>Is it worth 2x your normal rate to get you to work overtime? Maybe, but that's pretty expensive. They would be better off if they could get another person to do it at a normal rate.

>So, you might be willing to put up with those things for more money, but for the employer it is usually a waste of money pay that. It doesn't make sense for an employer to pay extra for those things unless they are really getting a lot of value out of it.

Good. The whole point is to make it painful for the company to have you work overtime regularly. In fact, 2x is quite cheap and a better way to accomplish that would be to charge more for each overtime hour (so that 16 hour days would cost much more than 2 normal 8 hour days).

If the company can't extract enough value out of the employee's time, maybe they shouldn't ask them to work overtime.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#86
post #12

> There is one motivation that should raise a red flag, though. > “The candidates that I don't usually want to spend much time > on are folks who are basically just looking for the next big check. This is a red flag to me. What if engineers want to buy houses or support families? What if they have elite backgrounds and want a similarly high level of living as their friends? Offering bread-and-circuses and work-as-lif…

That resonates, but few people are in the boat to make those demands. They are competing against people who would gladly be "exploited" if it meant they could work on technology-X. You basically can't get hired at companies like WayMo or SpaceX with this mentality because there are too many people that would gladly take your place with half the pay.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#87
post #14

So. Much. B.S. There is only one thing that people who have not been dropped on a head interested in. It is called money . Money buys them stuff. Money lets them have a nice roof over their head. Money lets their family not worry about a slum in the economy. Everything else is secondary. Here's a magic formula: MaxMoney(Min(work)) 402 "PAY_ME_MORE_MONEY" P.S. That's why it is called a job and not hobby or volunteerin…

As an employee, I don't want to work for a place that is paying me more than they feel I'm worth. Because then they start to resent you. "What do you mean you can't read my mind? That's what I'm paying you [large sum] for." Had this at a previous job (I was actually right at market rate, or slightly below, but a year prior the company was offering about 20% below market for this position). And every time I asked for…

I theorize it's the opposite way. If you take less money, you'll be respected less because you were willing to work for less.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#88
post #12

> There is one motivation that should raise a red flag, though. > “The candidates that I don't usually want to spend much time > on are folks who are basically just looking for the next big check. This is a red flag to me. What if engineers want to buy houses or support families? What if they have elite backgrounds and want a similarly high level of living as their friends? Offering bread-and-circuses and work-as-lif…

This is a good summary of the Republican Manifesto. People in power convince powerless people that they shouldn't desire power. This allows the people in power to consolidate more power.

That’s ridiculous. Conservatism is about smaller government and not using the government to pick winners and losers. The implementation leaves a lot to be desired, but in the context of manifestos, you have it completely backwards.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#89
post #12

> There is one motivation that should raise a red flag, though. > “The candidates that I don't usually want to spend much time > on are folks who are basically just looking for the next big check. This is a red flag to me. What if engineers want to buy houses or support families? What if they have elite backgrounds and want a similarly high level of living as their friends? Offering bread-and-circuses and work-as-lif…

That resonates, but few people are in the boat to make those demands. They are competing against people who would gladly be "exploited" if it meant they could work on technology-X. You basically can't get hired at companies like WayMo or SpaceX with this mentality because there are too many people that would gladly take your place with half the pay.

According to Glassdoor (which is notoriously 5-15% below actual numbers pretty much across the board) a senior dev at SpaceX in Los Angeles will make $160k cash and nearly $200k/yr in total comp with 20-25% of that in stock. That's not too shabby even for a California city.

Re: Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

#90
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is important, but past a certain point (when you are able to live comfortably and are no longer feeling stressed about your personal/family finances), other factors come into play. Off the top of my head: 1) Respect. By that I mean professional respect - I want to feel that my contributions are valued and that people recognize my talents :) 2) Team. Working with dirtbags is miserable no matter how much you get…

A lot of these are independent from salary, however, and usually uncorrelated. I pretty have all of these at my current job, certainly the best I've ever had at any job (and I'd throw in a #5: Perks). And my current job, at a Big 4, also happens to pay by far the most of any job I've ever had too. I would certainly never sacrifice any of these for a minor bump in pay, but oftentimes you don't have to sacrifice any of…

Actually, oftentimes they are correlated. Your pay is often low when you work on a shitty overstressed team on a dead-end project, and vice versa.
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