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Great developers are raised, not hired

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Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#21

Post by eduardsi »

dfrage wrote: post #16
eduardsi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you mentor people if you are afraid of being fired or replaced by a "cheaper" mentee? To mentor people, you have to be a professional developer, at the first place. Professional developers achieve job security by doing great work and making themselves replaceable. Mediocre developers – by building knowledge silos.

> Professional developers achieve job security by doing great work and making themselves replaceable. Wouldn't that be "achieve career security"? Because as I attest upstream in this subthread, in my most notable example of being a mentor, I was indeed fired as soon as my non-technical salesman background CEO decided I was replaceable. Although he didn't realize that wasn't quite yet true, and the mentee decided to l…

Good point, "career security" is definitely more appropriate term.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#22

Post by yani »

I recently asked a question where this answer would fit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19627404

We have tried this with 3 different candidates: 1. No experience last year in university 2. No experience with BS 3. 1 year working experience

My experience with this approach is that it is a far more expensive investment that takes long time to pay off. The safe ratio that I can recommend is 5 seniors to 1 junior

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#23

Post by LfLxfxxLxfxx »

yzfr12006 wrote: post #2

The article is not only on point but it reflects a big problem in the tech companies. Businesses loose millions and they just burn cash because of toxic and arrogant developments teams. I can quadruple the sales of the company that I work for but you cannot push any change through the arrogant development team who don't give a chance to other people, it is so pathetic.

> Businesses loose millions and they just burn cash because of toxic and arrogant developments teams

If a business is treated like that, maybe it should quit its current development team and try to get a job at another.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#24

Post by EliRivers »

I have, to some degree, given up trying to hire senior developers. Instead, I'm doubling down on the internal training programme (and have hired extra juniors).

5% of time is set aside for training. Works out a little over a half-day every fortnight - every fortnight, after lunch on Friday, drop the code and hit the books, pet projects, videos, experiments, whatever clearly makes you a better software engineer. If you don't spend that time on your own training, questions are asked. Nobody has been fired for not training yet, but if we get someone who simply refuses to, I could see it going that way; when we hire someone, we're not just hiring that person today - we're hiring that person next year, and we're banking on that person next year being better at this.

There is CapEx for books. We have PluralSight licences. New starters' agreed objectives include reading and thence using "Effective C++"; I will come by your desk every so often to chat about parts of it. We have short presentations every fortnight (the time of which doesn't even come out of the 5% training time) on technical topics. Once you've covered the basics, the company starts contributing towards conference attending.

The last senior dev who got internally promoted currently has an allowance of 50% of his time for helping more junior devs understand things. Fifty percent! The intention is to get his senior dev knowledge and experience out of his head and into the heads of five other people; growing ourselves five more senior devs.

I got all this by asking for it. Grow your own. Everyone wins. The company wins, the employees win. Just had to ask; if you ask, and your company isn't interested in improving, isn't interested in producing better products, faster and cheaper... well, is that really the company for you? :)

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#25

Post by Fordec »

msluyter wrote: post #20

I officially mentored someone at my previous company and helped him move from a support tech role into a software dev position. It was incredibly rewarding. But to play devil's advocate for a moment, isn't there something of a natural disincentive to level up one's employees in such a tight labor market? To follow the author's analogy, by mentoring someone, we're effectively "adding a fish" to the pond, and if someon…

"CFO: What happens if we train them and they leave?

CEO: What happens if we don’t and they stay?"

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#26

Post by eduardsi »

adestefan wrote: post #19
eduardsi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you mentor people if you are afraid of being fired or replaced by a "cheaper" mentee? To mentor people, you have to be a professional developer, at the first place. Professional developers achieve job security by doing great work and making themselves replaceable. Mediocre developers – by building knowledge silos.

I mentor people for the same reason I automate things; at the end of the day I'm lazy and I'd rather concentrate more on the things that matter to me. It that means I can teach someone else how to do the work that I don't want to do but they'd love to do, then more power to everyone.

Very good approach. A force multiplier.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#28

Post by commandlinefan »

cva10 wrote: post #7

Ok, so the guy is in the training and conference business. That would seem to skew his perspective. Usually the people who talk loudest about mentoring are clueless or are in the teaching business. In the real world, there is zero reward for mentoring. Moreover, if you do it, you might get fired and be replaced by the now cheaper mentee.

> you might get fired and be replaced

Actually, you'll get fired before you get a chance to "mentor" them for not getting your own JIRA tickets closed fast enough.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#29

Post by maxxxxx »

EliRivers wrote: post #24

I have, to some degree, given up trying to hire senior developers. Instead, I'm doubling down on the internal training programme (and have hired extra juniors). 5% of time is set aside for training. Works out a little over a half-day every fortnight - every fortnight, after lunch on Friday, drop the code and hit the books, pet projects, videos, experiments, whatever clearly makes you a better software engineer. If yo…

"The last senior dev who got internally promoted currently has an allowance of 50% of his time for helping more junior devs understand things. Fifty percent! The intention is to get his senior dev knowledge and experience out of his head and into the heads of five other people; growing ourselves five more senior devs."

I am pretty senior and I like mentoring people. But the incentives are generally the other way: If as an IC I transfer my experience to new people I almost get no credit. The manager of the group gets credit for building a good team but I have to justify my salary compared to the people I mentored. So sometimes I wonder if it would be smarter to keep knowledge to myself so I can look better.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#30

Post by reureu »

msluyter wrote: post #20

I officially mentored someone at my previous company and helped him move from a support tech role into a software dev position. It was incredibly rewarding. But to play devil's advocate for a moment, isn't there something of a natural disincentive to level up one's employees in such a tight labor market? To follow the author's analogy, by mentoring someone, we're effectively "adding a fish" to the pond, and if someon…

I've worked for enough crappy managers that I know how much that affects my job satisfaction and work-life balance. I'm at a point where I'd probably (and, currently do) sacrifice 10-15% of my salary just to work for someone who is respectful and interested in my development and wellbeing. I'd bet others are like me, and if you truly mentor and develop someone, you won't need to pay Netflix-level salaries to retain them.
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