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Great developers are raised, not hired

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Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#81

Post by thanksDr »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #66
thom wrote: post #52

At 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…

This sounds super fun! You're not in Toronto, are you?

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#82

Post by maxxxxx »

anarazel wrote: post #59
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…

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

5% is pretty low to basically nothing. I agree.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#83

Post by madrix999 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #80
rb808 wrote: post #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.

Why don't you match their pay rise? Or give them projects they're more keen to work on?

Cant lower the CEO's paycheck 8) (mostly serious sarcasm)

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#84

Post by mixmastamyk »

thanksDr wrote: post #81
mixmastamyk wrote: post #66

Earlier 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…

This sounds super fun! You're not in Toronto, are you?

Agreed, however am in Los Angeles. Would recommend remote but this type of thing might be better in person. Perhaps each city can create their own. Even in LA there'd probably need to be a group in each part of town, like west, downtown, and/or Pasadena.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#85

Post by man2525 »

That's roughly what they do at my company. Many people in the company have some form of Computer Science certificate/degree, so shouldn't be that hard to make them develop...but you hit the Peter Principle much faster in this line of work. The CTO loves the hanging on by the seat of your pants optics. "Look at him go. He doesn't have any idea what he's doing, but he's getting it done. That's what we want." The rock stars puff up and grouse about the recent QA to senior DEV promotion, then ridicule them, then you find out the rock star has been working until past one every morning since part of their responsibility as a lead is to make sure the QA-cum-Senior Engineer's work is code complete. Then they leave. And yes, then a great developer is hired...but they never tell us where they're going...

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#86

Post by rb808 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #80
rb808 wrote: post #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.

Why don't you match their pay rise? Or give them projects they're more keen to work on?

I'd love to give everyone around me huge pay rises each year and only work on really fun new projects but unfortunately the boss doesn't agree. :)

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#87

Post by EliRivers »

maxxxxx wrote: post #82
anarazel wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

5% is pretty low to basically nothing. I agree.

It's very low and, from my own experience, significantly higher than average.

My experiences are almost entirely UK based, outside big name or hip companies.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#88

Post by luminati »

salarycommenter wrote: post #61
wccrawford wrote: post #47

Earlier 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…

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…

Off topic - but your username and the vast majority of your commenting history is primarily on salaries. Curious - is there some backstory to it? Feel you got severely underpaid?

To each and his own, but bay area engineers pissing about making ONLY 300K has always come off as being a bunch of spoilt brats - especially considering the vast majority just gem/npm/pip install this and that and glue all the code together. Of course the market deserves to pay accordingly but I think it's just a big bubble that's going to crash soon - since there is a huge mismatch between demand and supply of CRUD glue programmers (which most programmers are).

My guess is that once Lambda School, Make School, ISAs all become mainstream and the pool of CRUD glue programmers matches the demand all salaries will come crashing down. I think overall it's a good thing for society in general (and especially the tech towns).

ps: Pardon my tone. I work in the space industry. Maybe I have an axe to grind ;)

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#89

Post by chrisseaton »

rb808 wrote: post #86
chrisseaton wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you match their pay rise? Or give them projects they're more keen to work on?

I'd love to give everyone around me huge pay rises each year and only work on really fun new projects but unfortunately the boss doesn't agree. :)

Right but you're already paying out the money it sounds like, in terms of burnout and churn in employees. 20% could be cheaper.

And I guess people are grateful for training, but not if they're effectively paying 17% of their pay for that training indefinitely. They'd be idiots to take that deal.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#90

Post by AnimalMuppet »

stcredzero wrote: post #53
wccrawford wrote: post #47

Earlier 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.

wccrawford could be correct. I have seen companies come close to parody...
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