Tech salaries have gone up faster than founders/VCs expected and it's becoming more expensive to run a startup. Perhaps startups should wait a little longer to raise money. It seems more important than ever to find product-market fit before hiring.
Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
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Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
If good developers want to level up their skills, how do you keep the senior developer who you've turned into a tutor happy?
Mentorship and teaching are also valuable skills. Many good senior engineers would love to focus on them if their employer recognized it as valuable.
Even then, pair programming with a different person every day sounds awful.
Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#63It's funny because people keep saying this yet I've noticed something... The interview process for developers is about 10X harder than it used to be a decade ago. It used to be that you'd chat with a couple of people about tech, projects you'd worked on... then get a job offer. Now there are multiple rounds spread out over weeks with a massive number of team members, live coding challenges galore, non-tech screening…
> I call BS. To me this is just weak management. It's actually not that difficult to fire someone. If you're in doubt, put an explicit probation period in the contract. I think being able to effectively fire is management 101 but looks like it's becoming a lost art. I'm not sure if this is because people are afraid of confrontation or they're just cargo culting the story they've heard about bad hires.
It has little to do with confrontation, and a hell of a lot to do with potential legal issues. Maybe this fear is unfounded, but I doubt it.
If you are a small company, you might get away with it on pure luck. If you are a big company, you can average out the cost of "bad firings" with the rest, and see how expensive it is. I'm guessing it's a lot.
Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what? If you are used to freelancing, it's the same thing. I would prefer that 80% of people are fired in the first month.
Sure, but, most employees would not prefer that...its a Market for labor. You are buying, Labor is selling. If what you are buying is an employment contract with a penalty-free terminate-for-convenience clause, expect that you are buying that piece of insurance from the employee at a high cost.
To be fair, we already have a penalty-free terminate for convenience in the US in most states, it is really social convention that prevents it.
Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#65Shortage my ass. These companies are not paying enough, not looking for remote workers, and generally not offering enough attractive packages. There's no shortage. Start paying more. Offer remote work. Stop being a shitty workplace. Qualified developers will start pouring in. If you think a ping pong table and beer keg are going to attract quality talent over a proper salary and remote work you're delusional and shouldn't be in a position to hire.
Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#66I don't think the problem is a shortage of talent.
I think the problem is that the expectations for the amount of work a single employee can produce are unrealistic.
Everyone wants to hire the 10xer. The problem is that they're a) expensive, b) not always easy to work with, c) usually already employed.
If companies stopped focusing on getting the "best of the best" to produce results overnight, and instead spent energy in investing in young/less experienced candidates, things would be a lot easier for everyone. Of course, this means that companies need to come up with ways to retain talent so they don't "waste they time" on developing someones career to just have them poached.
I find it funny how posts like these alternate between "why can' I find a job?" and "why can't we hire anyone?". Obviously there's a disconnect somewhere. There is absolutely no shortage of talent, it's just mismanaged expectations (on both ends).
Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#67Pay more or be more willing to work with people who don’t have all the skills you want. (Yet.) A lot of startups want to hire senior FAANG type talent and pay them less than entry level at those companies. Good luck. You have to be scrappy as a startup and that includes how you find talent.
Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#68This problem is no longer exclusive to the Bay Area. Hiring is time-consuming and expensive, and many startups feel that they can’t compete with some of the top salaries and perks offered by deep-pocketed alternatives. Offer to teach the developer something. "Java developers - want to learn Node and React?" "Rails developers - want to learn Elixir?" Get one senior person on staff who really knows the stack well and r…
> "Java developers - want to learn Node and React?"
Could be a great incentive, but not to me personally. I'm very invested in the JVM, and I'd rather have that investment used. Something like the following would make me jump ship instantly:
"Java developers - want to use Flink/Spark, some Scala/Clojure? How about 'very fast decision trees' learned online out of a Kafka bus?"
Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#69The usual HN refrain here is 'pay more'. And as a developer in NYC, I'd say this is accurate, but simplifies the problem a bit too much. Companies like their salary bands. Companies like to hire people at around the same compensation as current employees in the same role with around the same experience. The problem is that demand has recently gone up and pay should go up with it, but companies are refusing to adjust…
I'd like to add on to that: "Pay more" and "Hire remote". Don't disregard the consultant firms either. Many times I've seen a big push to hire an FTE (or series of FTEs) to do a Big Project(tm), only to have to let the FTEs go after Big Project(tm) is completed because there was no more work for them to do.
Re: Ask HN: Finding tech talent is getting harder. It's not a Bay Area problem only
#70As a developer who has recently been through the hiring process, I think the problem is not a shortage of talent, but rather that companies are awful at hiring. Here are a few of the main issues: 1. Don't limit your potential talent pool to the miserable and the unemployed. In theory, any developer who is currently employed might be interested in leaving their job to work for you. Perhaps you will offer them more mon…
I'd estimate (without bothering to sit down and crunch the numbers) I've had a 30% success rate interviewing for programming jobs. I usually get about 2 rejections before I get an acceptance (and, of course, when I get accepted, I stop interviewing). Based on that, I'd be led to conclude that I was a _dismal_ programmer, probably not fit for the industry at all. If there was as tight a tech shortage as they keep insi…
> It's almost as if the "talent shortage" is imaginary...
Talent shortage means that employers can't find workers with the skills the claim they need at the price they want to pay.