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

Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

firstround.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 163 posts

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

#101

Post by [deleted] »

pc86 wrote: post #89
saosebastiao wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#102

Post by saosebastiao »

pc86 wrote: post #89
saosebastiao wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In absolute terms, it's pretty good. Relative to competing offers for similar experience levels, it isn't.

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

#103

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

raducu wrote: post #34
derekp7 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 heard this argument thrown by a manager at an annual review: "We're paying you what you are worth to us, not what the market pays", to which I promptly replied: "Following your logic, can I step in a Ferrari dealership and pay only 1000$ for a nice car, because that's what it's worth to me?"

You should take it as a compliment. Your manager is saying that your company cannot afford an engineer of your level.

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

#104

Post by notyourday »

BeetleB wrote: post #99
notyourday wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me be a Certified Finance Asshat to demonstrate that you are externalizing money: I will give you $35k/year for 40 hours a week total compensation and you get all the other 4. Why aren't you taking this job? The reason is because you know that it is a laughable salary. FRC has an agenda. Its agenda is convince naive people to go work for their startups ( and other startups ) for Magic and Unicorns, rather than $$…

You're being downvoted because you ignored this: >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. It's difficult to counter his comment when you don't address it and give an obviously low salary.

Whenever one needs to quantify using unquantifiable words like "important but past a certain point" it is helpful to solve that point at the limit.

Pacifists, for example, will refuse to kill someone who is pointing a gun at their family because of their, in my not humble opinion, stupid beliefs. I may think their beliefs are stupid but I cannot say that they themselves are full of crap because, after all, they live their beliefs.

The people who are making claims that money is not the only mandatory thing and everything else is optional nice to have thing(s) tend to weasel out of the lets solve for money being zero ( or minimum wage ).

Unfortunately, while pacifists do not disrupt my life (when their world collides with reality, they die and their ideas die with them ) the people who are claiming that conferences are more important than $$ disrupt my market. This means that my goal is to illustrate as much as possible how silly their positions are.

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

#105

Post by kemiller2002 »

hood_syntax wrote: post #53
kemiller2002 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some people you are correct. They will not turn down more money. After a certain point in your career you realize that money does not buy happiness, and it certainly does not buy you more time. As people get older and have families etc., people begin to realize that going home at a reasonable hour is much more important than extra money.

That 200k extra means 2 years of not having to work, whether it's now or some time in the future. Not having to work means having more time to spend on myself and with people whose company I enjoy. Money is literally exchangeable for time.

Sure you can gamble that after spending a year working for that money you can make up for what you missed. It's possible, or you realize that as you get older, things get more difficult to do. Say you find out that you have arthritis and what you could do 2 years ago, you can't really do now. Maybe you find out that during that year of extra hours was when your daughter got cancer, and she's going to die within the next 6 months. You never get more time, you're just hoping the free time you have later makes up for what you're not doing now. The problem is that a lot of people never make it to later.

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

#106

Post by Bob2019 »

dmitrygr wrote: post #37

I guess I'm one of those "red flag" candidates that this guy says you shouldn't hire. If I wanted to make a difference, I'd join the Red Cross. If I wanted to solve people's problems, I'd go work as a life coach. I want to get paid the maximum amount while working around people and doing a job that doesn't make me want to blow my brains out or work 20 hour days. That is all.

Red flag = "not a gullible looser". It's a flag of honour.

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

#107

Post by BeetleB »

dmitrygr wrote: post #41
jcadam wrote: 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…

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…

I'd agree with some of yours but not others. I definitely won't take 1 or 2 for $100K extra for the long term - maybe a year at most.

For 3, I'd have to be paid a lot more. There is always a serious concern that while I have all the skills to do my current job, I don't have the skills to do most developer jobs out there (stuck with old paradigms and technology). So me getting paid a little extra now may mean I'll be out of a job soon with little to show on my resume.

4 is definitely an option for me if it significantly reduces the time to retirement.

>You know why? Money buys more than just "roof" and "comfort". It buys everything. Planes. Parachutes. Yachts. Horses. Jet skis. Vacation homes. College and private school for kids.

Of all these, only the last one interests me.

To be totally frank, an average paying job which lets me retire at, say, 60 and gives me a lot of free time and is very low stress is ideal, and none of the above would interest me. The only reason I don't stick to such a job is because I know job situations are fickle. Management changes, etc. But if I knew the job situation (decent pay, lots of free time and no stress) would stay forever, I'd just stick to it.

Which is what the parent was saying: Past a certain point, money isn't a great motivator.

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

#108

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

maxxxxx wrote: post #78
CydeWeys wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most people have this idea that either you get paid less and have a good job environment or you are highly paid in a bad environment. From my experience it's the opposite. Companies that pay well also have a good environment.

Here to second that notion. So far in my career every move I've done has been for a salary bump and quality of life improvement.

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

#109

Post by ghostbrainalpha »

jcadam wrote: post #8
notyourday wrote: post #2

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…

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…

> 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)

My problem is with that statement. I know this is a very common belief, but has anyone actually hit that point?

I have gone through several cycles over the past 10 years, where I thought 20% more money would get me there. At each point, what was required to be comfortable would change.

At first it was having enough money for me, then having enough that I could get married and buy a house and help my wife, then it was having enough money for my kids to go to a decent day care. Now I'm worried we don't have enough to send our kids to private school.

Once I hit that, I will probably want to have enough money that my wife doesn't need to work. I wonder if that's when I can relax and the stress of finance will go away?

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

#110

Post by jawilson2 »

badpun wrote: post #65
jcadam wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing with you in principle, but nobody is going to offer me a job and say "It sucks to work here, the people suck, the conditions are stressful, and the hours are long. In fact - if you join us, I'm going to hire someone whose sole job will be to kick you in the marbles every morning when you walk in the building. You say you earn $X at your current job in which you are content? How does $X*5 sound?" I…

My impression is that a lot of coding jobs in finance are like that - the offices are ugly, the business people more chaotic and sociopath than in other industries, the working conditions poor (terrible tools, security tying your hands etc.), the mission uninspiring - but they pay top market rates to compensate for that.

This isn't really true in my experience.
Post reply on HN