This sounds like a wonderful idea in a business culture not obsessed with burning tomorrow to a crisp for more return today. Not to mention this requires trust and loyalty, both rendered cruel jokes by the all-against-all knife fight that our (in the US) labor market is.
Great developers are raised, not hired
71–80 of 341 posts
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation. And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentile for individual income. The harder I push on comp the more I get each time. I am not going to lie and say that it didn't take years to build to this point in terms of skill, work record, professional network, and interview ability. It took three FAANG companie…
> Sure they were willing to match, but who wants to try and soak blood from a stone. I've never tried it myself, but it's supposed to be common knowledge that perhaps more than half the time a company is forced into granting you a raise to match an offer you have in hand, they're only doing it long enough to arrange replacing you. There are certainly many reported exceptions to this, but why take a chance with a comp…
I am very wary of making this about respect or the individuals in the company who didn't grant you better compensation. It's toxic for yourself and if other people find out you think that way it can spoil relationships. Never underestimate how the people you work with at your old jobs can end up being stepping stones to bigger and better things later on.
I believe no one in my management chain could have done significantly better. They had their budget and even if they had moved things around in my favor it would have just been a different level of inadequate.
Structurally the entire industry is biased towards preventing you from achieving what I call equilibrium. Equilibrium is where you can't leave your current job for a >10% raise.
I believe it's just a cost saving measure (assuming the ability to pay exists which it may not) and the industry has decided that the average wage suppression is more valuable then the cost of the turn over it creates. I'm not going to pass judgement on whether they are right or wrong.
Ability to pay is a big factor. Most of my prior employers could only offer a fraction of what I currently make.
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#73I 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…
Maybe I'm just a grump, but: 5% is pretty low number for training people up. Perhaps that's just the "hit the books on your own, but during work time" portion? If it includes other things (talking people though a project that's on the edge of their capabilities, discussing the architecture of important project from an educational perspective, ...) then it seems pretty low. EDIT: non-phone spelling
It is, I believe from talking to others and my own experience, significantly higher than the average (outside the mystical FAANG etc).
The average is basically zero.
Talking people through things at the edge of their capabilities and discussing the architecture etc that they need to know; that's just doing the actual job, surely.
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
It's not "what if they go elsewhere" under that situation, it's "when". This is gold. It's just a specific application of, "You shouldn't fight market forces, if you can help it." Simply coming close to parody parity Though, this started me thinking on what "parody bits" would be.
Ugh. I swear it was "parity" in my head. I have no idea how I managed to mis-type that. Wow.
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#75At what size of company does this pay off? My experience of hiring juniors is generally that they are net negatives to productivity for quite a while, and the smaller the company, the more significant the impact of that is. How do people here go about mitigating that?
Don't have proven techniques, but have been toying with an idea I'd like to try the next time I have the chance. Have been thinking of starting a "farm team" to develop green programmers. Have a meetup once or twice a week, work on a focused project together, do mutual code review. Read the classics (e.g. the MMM) as homework. Perhaps give out some Amazon gift cards for good work. When a participant levels up, move t…
What is the MMM?
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't have proven techniques, but have been toying with an idea I'd like to try the next time I have the chance. Have been thinking of starting a "farm team" to develop green programmers. Have a meetup once or twice a week, work on a focused project together, do mutual code review. Read the classics (e.g. the MMM) as homework. Perhaps give out some Amazon gift cards for good work. When a participant levels up, move t…
What is the MMM?
[deleted]
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't have proven techniques, but have been toying with an idea I'd like to try the next time I have the chance. Have been thinking of starting a "farm team" to develop green programmers. Have a meetup once or twice a week, work on a focused project together, do mutual code review. Read the classics (e.g. the MMM) as homework. Perhaps give out some Amazon gift cards for good work. When a participant levels up, move t…
What is the MMM?
The Mythical Man-Month, by Fred Brooks
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not "what if they go elsewhere" under that situation, it's "when". This is gold. It's just a specific application of, "You shouldn't fight market forces, if you can help it." Simply coming close to parody parity Though, this started me thinking on what "parody bits" would be.
Ugh. I swear it was "parity" in my head. I have no idea how I managed to mis-type that. Wow.
I keep looking back on past comments and finding stuff like that. I wonder if someone has come up with a homophone/typo mistake filter? Being able to turn that on for opponents one would like to discredit would be really insidious and evil. What if some evil genius at Google has come up with a hidden way to do this in Chrome? Would we ever know? Maybe not, if the frequency was kept low enough.
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#79> Your mentees will support you and promote you for the rest of your life.
The problem I've seen is that this is rarely true. We've had a big set of grads we've trained that quit for a 20% pay rise, or a project that they happen to like better. Many regretted it but it didnt stop the next guys from doing the same. I'm really burnt out over teaching green newbies again and again.
Re: Great developers are raised, not hired
#80> Your mentees will support you and promote you for the rest of your life. The problem I've seen is that this is rarely true. We've had a big set of grads we've trained that quit for a 20% pay rise, or a project that they happen to like better. Many regretted it but it didnt stop the next guys from doing the same. I'm really burnt out over teaching green newbies again and again.
Why don't you match their pay rise?
Or give them projects they're more keen to work on?