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

#91

Post by wilkystyle » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:52 PM UTC

adjkant wrote: post #2

I usually hate posts about top job, top tech talent, etc. This post was a lot of great stuff. The idea of pairing talented people of different levels is crucial. A senior lead with shit backup can only do so much. The right balance I think can turn two mythical 10x devs into 100x total instead of 20x. Of course, make sure those people are also compatible, as half the 10x devs I know are loners who don't mix well and…

> Of course, make sure those people are also compatible, as half the 10x devs I know are loners who don't mix well and work best when left alone.

This is absolutely a great point, and the author also addresses this:

> That doesn’t mean that a top-performing developer will write 10x as much code or crank out 10x as many features. What it means is that they’ll deliver 10x as much organizational value.

I too have seen developers who are very talented actually cause negative organizational value, due to their inability to work well with others.

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

#92

Post by barrkel » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #61

humanrebar wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An idea I've had on 10x developers... in the long term they steer the code base... Agreed. And on the flip side, you can have -10x developers that make all the wrong choices, like inventing and entrenching their own language or crappy framework for reasons of boredom or ego. I suspect that junior developers are less likely to be net-negative to that degree. Perhaps it's one unarticulated reason employers tend to pr…

And sometimes they invent a framework that hits all the right design points, but junior engineers can't read a book about them or take a class about them, so don't understand and badmouth them as crappy and a result of boredom or ego. Its hard to invent something, and have it get no traction because nobody else wants to move forward. I've been at two startups that had frameworks that solved all the problems in the pr…

This is an incentive alignment problem. Developers want to maximize their human capital since they usually don't have significant capital in the business itself. With experience in all the latest buzzword technologies, they can get good offers elsewhere, or use the leverage to increase their pay. Whereas sinking all their effort into an in-house framework is fantastic for the business in multiple dimensions: it's a custom fit so it's more productive, but it also locks in the employees, reducing their employability elsewhere and BATNA.

I do wonder if incentives can be aligned for things like this, or if it's just a structural problem we need to live with.

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

#93

Post by thedufer » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:08 PM UTC

ldarcyftw wrote: post #25

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.

What's the point in getting all those $$$K if a single major medical event (like cancer) will bankrupt you? Ah, and I just checked my retirement calculator. It claims that once I retire at 67 I'll have to pay $8K/month for my medical insurance.

Keep inflation in mind. I don't know how old you are, but that's probably going to be more like $3k/month in inflation-adjusted dollars, which honestly isn't much more than my employer pays to cover my family now.

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

#94

Post by kod » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:17 PM UTC

ageofwant wrote: post #89

kod wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The 'one bad apple' thing never cut it for me. If you are bad apple's manager, you have measurable metrics on her performance, and you act based on that, no more no less. This has no bearing on any of the other apples.

And what exactly do you think objective metrics for developers should be? LoC? Defects? As soon as a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure.

If one person in a group takes unfair advantage of flexibility by e.g. only going to the office half as much as the rest, it sure will have an effect on the "other apples".

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

#95

Post by ben_jones » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:21 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #90

I find the most important thing is the “deal” with the manager. “Here is what I can give you, Here is what I want in return.” Some people want promotability. Some want remote work. Some want new technical challenges. Some flexibility. A manager can’t give everything to everyone but they can say, “I can give you all the flexibility you need as long as the servers never go down” or “I can work to promote you in a year…

I agree 100% EXCEPT for the huge asymmetry in information that exists during that phase of an interview. "Hit every deadline", you would then need to know how aggressive and how frequent those deadlines are. You would have to know how stable the team(s) are because if a team has a deadline and loses the head engineer, well shit.

Negotiating and accepting an offer letter is way too much like gambling. Whether its start-up equity, growth/lifestyle promises of a manager, or hope that office politics won't grind your soul to dust within 3 months, its a huge risk even saying "yes".

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

#96

Post by DLay » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

usernam wrote: post #5

curiouscat321 wrote: post #3

People who espouse remote work seem convinced that it’s the end-all way to work. I don’t care if I have to go into an office. I like offices. What I care about is that you don’t mind if I work from home every once in a while. I care that it’s okay for me to leave early or come late.

I worked remotely for more than two years because I had to move to another place. I loved the company and they were quite happy as well, so they let me work remotely full time without problems. I absolutely loved it for the first six months, then I quit my job after the second year despite being a "dream scenario" for many. I generally work alone when I want to think, but I loved the interaction with excellent collea…

I’ve always been hesitant to try remote work because it seems like there’d be an added pressure to seek out face to face interactions or else I’d slowly become a hermit. I consider myself an introvert, but even that has its limits.

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

#97

Post by ttoinou » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

staunch wrote: post #10

Most companies don't provide a work environment even half as good as an average home office. I think remote working may be the first killer app for VR but it would probably require a $3k HMD today to be viable. Most tech companies could easily afford one per worker.

Your brain's going to melt if you're going to play VR all day

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

#98

Post by Vinnl » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #46

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…

> 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. It's a peculiar quirk of the tech industry that "changing the world through X" is a reasonable expectation. Bus drivers don't wonder how they can make a difference through bus driving. They do their shifts and then go volunteer at the hospital, food bank, homeless shelt…

Depending on where you're from, there might be a refugee code school in your neighbourhood. I love that: it's volunteering, but in a way that effectively uses my skillset.

[1] http://hackyourfuture.net/ (warning: autoplaying video with sound)

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

#99

Post by enraged_camel » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 4:36 PM UTC

mathattack wrote: post #90

I find the most important thing is the “deal” with the manager. “Here is what I can give you, Here is what I want in return.” Some people want promotability. Some want remote work. Some want new technical challenges. Some flexibility. A manager can’t give everything to everyone but they can say, “I can give you all the flexibility you need as long as the servers never go down” or “I can work to promote you in a year…

This doesn't work in many states because labor laws require companies to give every worker in a given role the same perks. If you allow Bob to work remotely, you also need to give that choice to Jason and Ashley. Texas is like this for instance.

This is the real reason why a lot of companies have trouble switching to remote work: they can't slowly transition. It has to be an on-off switch for all workers.

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

#100

Post by pinewurst » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

rhapsodic wrote: post #84

whatshisface wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want to climb Maslow's hierarchy in every area of their lives. If bus drivers had better pay and job security (so much so that they hit the region of diminishing returns), maybe we'd see more talk from drivers about wishing they were driving especially important buses.

> If bus drivers had better pay and job security... City bus drivers are often public employees represented by a powerful union. Hence their pay and job security are often pretty good by most peoples' standards.

I really need to stick up for city bus drivers, speaking as a regular passenger. They deal constantly with crazy, disruptive, violent people whilst getting other riders safely from point to point operating a large vehicle.

It’s a difficult and socially valuable job and they earn their money.