Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent • Hacker News Board

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#71

Post by user5994461 » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

delinka wrote: post #58

user5994461 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surgeon only did his first operation 3 years ago and started studying medicine a few years earlier. The developer did his first program a decade ago when he was around 12 and he's been studying and practicing ever since.

“A decade ago” is more than “3-6 years” of experience - is that your argument? Because he doesn’t have 3-6 years experience working woth others, or realizing that the problems he’s solved were solved decades ago and those solutions can be found in the right places, or living with the reality that out in the workforce he’s most likely not the brilliant unique snowflake his family thinks he is.

There is always more to learn in leading people and maintaining existing software. The point is that the developer had many years of practice already AND THEY ARE NOT ACKNOWLEDGED.

Surgeons don't have that expectation. They never butchered a human until their first class in medical school at 20. A developer that is a total starter, like the surgeon, will have a hard time passing any interview and landing jobs.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#72

Post by kod » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC

madamelic wrote: post #19

Are people really making these salaries? I mean like mid-level, not god-tier type people. I don't know if I am stupid or just don't say the right things but are there really mid-level devs not at huge companies making $160k a year? I mostly hang out at startups and it is normally around like 130k for a senior dev.

Yes, absolutely, there are normal people at normal companies outside of the bay area making 160.

If you're actually senior and are still making 130 you probably aren't negotiating.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#73

Post by sailfast » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #15

What this doesn't talk about enough is work impact -- mentioned yes but doesn't emphasize it. These are shitty years and it eats me I am working for an enterprise gardening their websites instead of literally making the world a better place. I mean, sure, it pays and challenging and whatnot but I miss NowPublic dearly because we made a god damn difference. We ran one of the biggest Katrina missing person boards. We w…

USDS is hiring. Defense Digitally service is hiring. VA Digital service is hiring. Other government agencies responsible for these missions every day are hiring.

It’s a weird climate, sure, but all those missions still need doing.

Further, organizations like Urban institute, NCRC, other advocacy groups are getting deeper into data visualization and web platforms for advocacy and need help - sounds like you know where to find the opportunities.

Totally agree with you - mission is one of the key parts of any job description and ranks above comp for me.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#74

Post by user5994461 » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:18 PM UTC

qaq wrote: post #23

madamelic wrote: post #19

Are people really making these salaries? I mean like mid-level, not god-tier type people. I don't know if I am stupid or just don't say the right things but are there really mid-level devs not at huge companies making $160k a year? I mostly hang out at startups and it is normally around like 130k for a senior dev.

"startups" is the keyword here

Emphasis. One MUST stop working for startups to make a living.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#75

Post by _rerr » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #49

rsp1984 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion as an employer: Sure, feel free to take your work hours as you like and WFH every once in a while. Just make sure that overall your total hours are what we agreed to in the employment contract.

> Just make sure that overall your total hours are what we agreed to in the employment contract. What's the justification for monitoring total hours and not something more directly tied to business success? End users and profit margins (assuming your engineers are salaried) don't care about whether your engineers had consistent 40+ hour work weeks.

In my previous company, they has a name to distinguish these two kinds of metrics.

- Inputs are the things employees can act on easily, like the number of LoC written or the number of features developped.

- Outputs are related to business success, for example the number of customers, or the revenue.

The key here is to consider the external business environment as a complex machine, in which you put some effort, measured by inputs, and you observe the outputs as a result (reward). Because you don't know how the environment is going to respond, running the activity consists in adjusting the measures of inputs according to previous results, and trying to maximize those.

This is sane for business because executives can focus on maximizing the input metrics, without caring too much about the outputs, and evaluate separately the assumptions they made about the business (e.g. that x number of features requested by customers developped within 1 month increase the userbase).

It kind of looks like a reinforcement learning process actually.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#76

Post by raverbashing » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:24 PM UTC

TamDenholm wrote: post #18

Senior developer salaries in my local area (Edinburgh, Scotland, UK) are £30k-£40k which is about $42k - $56k USD. On a £40k salary you pay roughly £9,500 in tax. Ive no idea what the tax rate is in America but the difference in salaries between the UK and the US is astounding.

I thought it would be at least £50k, that's not a great salary (city isn't very cheap as well)

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#77

Post by crdoconnor » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:31 PM UTC

user5994461 wrote: post #60

crdoconnor wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contractor premium will get dragged down in a year or two as well - the Tories are planning on kicking up taxes for them in order to bring in an extra £200 mil. That will probably lead to an exodus of the experienced developers from the UK. This will not only have a negative effect on UK software houses it will also exacerbate the existing problems with UK government IT projects, which have already have a multibi…

Not so sure. People who've been living here often can't just go back to where they come from. They wouldn't have moved to the UK if the situation in their countries was better. The effect so far of Brexit is to stop the flood of newcomers, not making establishing people leave. It's good as a developer, less competitors for the same amount of jobs.

I get what you're saying, but contractors by their nature tend to be mobile and motivated by pay. This strongly increases the likelihood of an outflow, especially if companies don't react to the extra taxes by raising pay.

The effect is compounded because a) good techies really like to work with other good techies and b) losing most of the good ones also means losing all of the people who can recognize other good techies and hire competently and c) there's a scarcity of mentors too, impeding the ability of junior techies to develop.

The UK is still a tech center in spite of Brexit. For now.

I've worked in markets before where there's a scarcity of high end talent because it all got sucked away elsewhere and software-wise, these environments produced mediocre crap.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#78

Post by auggierose » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:34 PM UTC

maxaf wrote: post #41

auggierose wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an interesting point. Personally, I think remote work should be freelance work.

Are you saying that remote employees should be deprived of full-timer benefits and legal protections, however meager? All because of trust issues that grew out of experience with a bad apple which isn't representative of remote workers in general? Empirically speaking, effective remote employees are more trustworthy and less prone to organizational politics. I can even tell you why: these people have a system of valu…

I didn’t have any bad experiences with remote workers, and I can definitely see how that can work for non-freelancers. Personally, I just think remote and freelance are an ideal combination for independent creatives.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#79

Post by Retra » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

kod wrote: post #68

humanrebar wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having had twins in the last year it's been vital. Employers that actually want workplace diversity should really consider how many lifestyles their work culture can accommodate. Some people adopt lots of kids and need more room. Some people love their families and won't move more than a few hours from them. Nearly everybody needs flexible work arrangements from time to time: health problems, ailing family members,…

The problem is that not all humans are decent. The more of them you hire, the more likely one of them is the asshole who will take advantage of flexibility and ruin it for the rest.

How are they ruining anything?

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#80

Post by ethbro » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

jrs235 wrote: post #56

pleasecalllater wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This always makes me sad. 3-6 years of experience, and you are senior. 20 years of experience, and you are too old for the "young and dynamic team". I'm slowly hitting 20 years soon... and even now I have troubles with getting a job. I didn't have the problem when I had 3-6 years of experience. A surgeon with 3-6 years of experience is usually too inexperienced to operate on her own. 20 years of experience, and you c…

Because you might not fit in "culturally". Which is BS. I've noticed that going to work for many, primarily younger, people is more a social thing than a professional one. I see lots of time spent talking about and focusing on what people did in the 16 or so hours since they last saw each other at work. Mondays are the worst as sometimes an hour or more is blown catching up on what everyone did over the weekend. Peop…

"This should always be a normal Monday" or "This should never be a normal Monday" are both wrong. What matters is that the team is productive.

There's always a give and take, especially with the labor market being tight. All a balance between value_of_happy_employees : value_of_more_work. Because the only thing worse than the current team pissing away time is having to hire a new team...