Live data from Hacker News

Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes

firstround.com

131–140 of 163 posts

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

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 ). Except it wasn't his claim. The claim is pretty well known: Below a certain threshold, money is the most important thing. Above it, it is not. This is very different from the extreme pacifist mindset. The equiv…

> The claim is pretty well known: Below a certain threshold, money is the most important thing. Above it, it is not. This is very different from the extreme pacifist mindset. The equivalent would be: "There are certain circumstances where it is important to kill another. Outside of those circumstances, it should not be the primary means." The claim is horse manure which is why it includes no numbers for the threshold…

>The claim is horse manure which is why it includes no numbers for the threshold.

Attribution of intention is a common step towards the breakdown of dialogue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias#Types

>That's ok. I do not need many friends.

OK, perhaps I was too narrow in my statement. Let me rephrase:

Telling people what is important to them and ignoring their own claims on what is important to them will not get you fruitful conversations.

Which is likely why people are downvoting you instead of replying to you. You are giving strong signals of poor communications, and people are not finding it worthwhile to engage with you.

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

#132
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In which part - is the job not dreadful, or pay just average?

BTW this was obviously a gross generalization that was only signalling that such jobs exists and that there is a significant amount of them. At the same time, most finance coding jobs probably don't pay top market rates.

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The claim is pretty well known: Below a certain threshold, money is the most important thing. Above it, it is not. This is very different from the extreme pacifist mindset. The equivalent would be: "There are certain circumstances where it is important to kill another. Outside of those circumstances, it should not be the primary means." The claim is horse manure which is why it includes no numbers for the threshold…

>The claim is horse manure which is why it includes no numbers for the threshold. Attribution of intention is a common step towards the breakdown of dialogue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias#Types >That's ok. I do not need many friends. OK, perhaps I was too narrow in my statement. Let me rephrase: Telling people what is important to them and ignoring their own claims on what is important to them will…

Well, based on the + of the post, it seems not to be the case.

Also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

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

#134
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so how do I buy a 3-day working week with my extra salary?

You can. Yes. Go to your boss. Ask to be paid 60% of your current salary to work M-W. I'm sure you'll get a yes.

Tried this a few months back.. didn't work :(

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

2x overtime means that one 16 hour day equals three 8 hour days. This is standard language among workers in the US who get paid overtime. It means you get paid 2x your hourly rate for each of your overtime hours. Also referred to as doubletime.

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

#137
post #44

Wow these comments are depressing. The extreme polarization between, pay me enough and I'll do anything, and take one for the team by making peanuts and working obscene hours is kinda frightenting. Has no one had a job where they were treated well and paid a fair wage? Its perfectly reasonable to get both of those things and be able to make a decision on a company based on additional things, like what the mission is,…

> Has no one had a job where they were treated well and paid a fair wage?

I think IBM would qualify there, with the one exception of their occasional mass firings ("resource action").

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

#138
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depending on the lifestyle you want, your choice of location etc, 3.6MM doesn't go far. You also have to take into account inflation / insurance against major changes in future (divorce / health hits / accidents?).

Yes, you can choose to live in rural India for Finally the concern about uncertainities of future means you can pretty much never afford to go out of touch with the industry that made you all your money. Yeah I can F off on my bike / paint etc after $X MM, but there might come a day when that isn't enough and here I am with zero marketable/sellable skills having to downgrade my life style because I chose to not practice my profession. You might think but I will do open source, but I will do hobby projects etc. - in reality, I have seen very few (again with equal or more discipline to what they were putting into their desk job) succeed in keeping up with the market via a 'hobby'.

If I didn't make it clear, I don't see myself not working on software until the day I die :). It might be lower hours, but it is going to be a significant portion of my time. The alternatives are too risky, but again YMMV because your risk tolerance is different.

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

#139
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 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 c…

In my current job I am paid below market rate. If I cared about money first I absolutely would not remain in this job. However, the coworkers are absolutely excellent and I am treated with respect. I would hesitate to trade that for anything less than an absolutely stellar offer well above market rate because not only what I have good, but also that I am content with my current lifestyle.

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

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This doesn't make sense to me. Cities are the most expensive place to live, no? I would have thought that living in some small town and making 500k would give you even more buying power than it does in the city. Where does your friend live that $500k does not pay for rent or a mortgage on a nice house, dinner at restaurants on a regular basis, and still money in the savings account?

You are severely underestimating how much it costs to put multiple kids through expensive colleges. Also, they don't live in "some small town", it's just not the city; it's still seriously expensive compared to the national home value.

But I'm not here to debate this other person's life choices, nor could I. The point is that even $500K/year is not enough for a decent number of people, whereas, say, $1M would be.

Post reply on HN