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Great developers are raised, not hired

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Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#41

Post by JustSomeNobody »

amarkman wrote: post #8
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.

The problem in tech companies is arrogant and clueless management that treats developers like dirt and blames them for everything.

Trust me, there are arrogant developers out there and they suck to work with. They treat code and design reviews as chest beating exercises. They refuse to work on anything remotely legacy. If their idea or design gets questioned in any way they get loud and obnoxious. You can't mentor these devs at all.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#42

Post by dfrage »

gorpomon wrote: post #36
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…

IMO that devil's advocate argument is incorrect. There is no trap in working to increase an employee's skills. If you train someone at work and level them up-- they're not in class 8 hours a day not contributing. They are working on a project. All software mentorship is based around the idea of growing skills while meaningfully contributing to a project. Actually it's much harder to train someone without a project. I…

> There is no trap in working to increase an employee's skills.

There's absolutely a trap if the now bigger fish stays in your pond for a while and the even bigger management shark decides you can be replaced by him for much less money. As I detail in another subthread in this discussion.

Given the near absolute absence, at least in the US, of rewarding employees who have become much more valuable because of the experience they've gained in doing very real work, you're absolutely right that it needs to be tied to a real project, what you should generally do is complicated even before you factor in the vastly increased probability of it getting you fired. Is the greater productivity your company enjoys for a short period of time worth the shorter tenure of the mentee in it?

> But an untrained employee might leave as well-- for a place that offers meaningful mentorship.

How many of these places exist in the real world?

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#43

Post by astura »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #33
ohaideredevs wrote: post #27

I have found the premise of the title to be completely false in real life. Not much else to say to this - I haven't seen too many people grow, and when we hire someone great, they are great.

> I haven't seen too many people grow... Are they allowed to? Are they mentored? It's not just one sided.

In my experience, as a mentor:

Quite a lot of people are certainly capable of growing, but many (most?) aren't. Either they aren't capable, or they don't feel like it.

Luckily you can almost always tell from the get-go who will grow and who will stagnate.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#44

Post by mixmastamyk »

kgraves wrote: post #4

I have never seen a single company/startup place a job posting for a junior position, (lucky if they even say training) Last time I checked, everyone wants to look for a senior developer with 5+ years of experience. It's some sort of hidden bonus if you're from a FAANG company as well. I'm guessing everyone wants to be the next Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix or Uber.

> everyone wants to look for a senior developer with 5+ years

But no more than 10.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#45

Post by maxxxxx »

EliRivers wrote: post #34
maxxxxx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I certainly sympathise. In a strong culture, when you mentored someone, their achievements and success would reflect on you. The boss would see your cohort doing well, and give you a pay rise for your fantastically valuable contribution to the company. "Thank you, maxxxxx, for making these junior software engineers 50% more effective," the boss would say. "Why, you've had the same effect as hiring two or three more p…

Another factor is that by mentoring my own output goes down a lot. If I get interrupted several times a day to help then I get nothing done on my own stuff. I think on overall it's still a big gain for the team but I look worse.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#46

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

maxxxxx wrote: post #29
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…

> almost get no credit

Delivered four senior developers in order to accelerate our team's velocity...

that's what my resume says.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#47

Post by wccrawford »

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…

>To follow the author's analogy, by mentoring someone, we're effectively "adding a fish" to the pond, and if someone else "catches" the fish, that effort is largely wasted.

Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company.

So these companies put all this effort into raising a better developer, and then refuse to pay them what they're now worth and basically force them to go elsewhere.

It's not "what if they go elsewhere" under that situation, it's "when".

I'd argue that you don't even have to "pay more than everyone around you". Simply coming close to parity is enough to stop most people from going through the pain of a job search. But these companies don't even get that close.

The last time I switched jobs, I got a 40% pay increase. That's ridiculous. I even told the company I was underpaid and they asked if I could wait a year for a raise. I didn't even answer the question. I just walked away and started looking for a job.

They weren't surprised when I found one and quit.

And a couple weeks before I left, they put in a job ad for 7 developers, offering what I was making at my new job for each of them. I've been at this new job as a senior developer for 8 years now.

Could I make more? Almost certainly. But they gave me decent raises and have a good culture (almost zero overtime in 8 years) and benefits, and I don't feel like leaving.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#48

Post by mixmastamyk »

ohaideredevs wrote: post #27

I have found the premise of the title to be completely false in real life. Not much else to say to this - I haven't seen too many people grow, and when we hire someone great, they are great.

This is the fixed mindset, the unfortunate idea that abilities can't be developed. See my top-level comment.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#49

Post by maxxxxx »

astura wrote: post #43
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I haven't seen too many people grow... Are they allowed to? Are they mentored? It's not just one sided.

In my experience, as a mentor: Quite a lot of people are certainly capable of growing, but many (most?) aren't. Either they aren't capable, or they don't feel like it. Luckily you can almost always tell from the get-go who will grow and who will stagnate.

It takes me around 4 weeks to figure out if someone can grow or not. There are exceptions though. Some people are almost traumatized by previous jobs so they need some time to learn that it's OK for them to grow.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#50

Post by dfrage »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #46
maxxxxx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> almost get no credit Delivered four senior developers in order to accelerate our team's velocity... that's what my resume says.

> that's what my resume says.

Which implies it was only valuable to future companies you worked for. Those that actually believe in mentoring, which seems to be rare based on what others are saying and my own experiences.

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