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Great developers are raised, not hired

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Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#181

Post by scarface74 »

luminati wrote: post #88
salarycommenter wrote: post #61

Earlier 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…

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.…

I would seriously have to think about giving up my lifestyle where I don’t make nearly $300K to move to the west coast and work for a FAANG. I like my short commute, good school systems, and my big affordable house in the burbs that would cost at least four times as much if we moved.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#182

Post by loco5niner »

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.

> 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.

Ummm... are you sure, THEY are the arrogant ones?

I'm sensing some irony here.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#183

Post by chadash »

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…

> Make the culture of your company so awesome that people will want to stay, even if you can't pay the most. Make mentoring/growth a central strategy at every level so people will see a path to grow.

I think this only goes so far. There are better companies and worse companies, sure, but even the best companies have their issues and after enough time, most people want to move on. People also change, and what seems awesome to a fresh graduate may not be great for someone older, so it's always hard to keep everyone happy.

Pay, however, seems to be a motivator that keeps a lot of people in place (certainly not everyone, but a lot). I know plenty of talented people who feel trapped at their jobs because their jobs pay very well. It's common enough that there's a term for it, "golden handcuffs".

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#184

Post by scarface74 »

pro-duct wrote: post #98
luminati wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The hard part of engineering isn't the ability to glue packages and microservices together. Those tasks are literally done by entry level, bottom of the totem pole engineers. You're saying that all bankers do is run models and spit out valuations, and all a chef does is put stuff in a pan. I'm not speaking toward your argument of a bubble bursting, but engineering isn't going anywhere. And where else would an entry l…

$300K to live on the west coast is really not that appealing to someone who is living in a major city, with the stereotypical house in the burbs in a good school system with 2.1 kids where on the higher end you can make $150K to $160K as an architect/team lead/principal. Especially if you are married with two incomes where you can easily put the lower income completely toward increasing net worth or cash flowing your kids college expenses.

Engineers getting paid $300K could easily be the stereotypical r/cscareerquestions “learn LeetCode and work for a FAANG” type graduating from college.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#185

Post by GVIrish »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #160
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…

I think the problem is largely isolated to companies in decline or stagnant -- which unfortunately is most companies. At a growing company, if you're a growing individual, there's room for you to rise. At a stagnant or declining company, if you're outperforming your boss, there's a strong incentive for your boss to want to keep you down to keep his/her job. In a growing company, your boss might be happy to get your p…

> I think the problem is largely isolated to companies in decline or stagnant -- which unfortunately is most companies.

I don't think that's the case at all. I think it's just that typical corporate culture (in the US at least) is not accustomed to giving large internal raises to employees based on increases in that employee's market value.

Most companies base their annual compensation on giving people a few percentage points for cost of living adjustment, then a few more percentage points based on performance. They standardize those numbers so they can say, 'you did average, you get 4%' 'you did great this year, you get 6.5%'.

Many, many companies don't factor in at all that employee value on the market can increase much, much faster than 2-8% per year. Even companies making money hand over fist. The usual way of approaching annual raises is wildly unsuited for compensating talent that is in high demand.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#186

Post by freyir »

vetinari wrote: post #176
freyir wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think you’re entitled to a trained developer for the price of an inexperienced developer. That’s not going to happen. No wonder they leave.

The end result is hiring trained developers for the price of trained developers, and sending the inexperienced developers to be trained somewhere else. Where? That's their problem. See? Looking just for one's interests works both ways.

You act like you’re doing them a favor by hiring them. You’re not. You’re trying to get cheap labor, and expecting them to feel indebted to you and work at below market rate. It’s not going to happen.

Pay them cheap during training. After they’re trained, pay a premium to the ones you want to keep. Let the rest go to a competitor. It’s simple.

If you can’t afford that, that’s a problem with your business, not the employees.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#187

Post by dbancajas »

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…

how do you negotiate? do you give your current salary?

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#188

Post by freyir »

msoad wrote: post #175
freyir wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My last company would insist that they couldn’t give promotions or significant raises. Until you came in with an outside offer, then they’d roll out the red carpet and bend over backwards to keep you. It breeds distrust, discontent, and disloyalty. The best people don’t like this and leave. They company is left with people who can’t land outside offers. And the company ends up needing to pay market rate anyway to rep…

This works for the company because most people don't bother interviewing and coming up with a counter offer. In my previous company the best of the best would leave because company had this blanket policy that they would never do a counter offer. But in overall it was good for the company because they were able to retain most of engineers with raises as little as 1% and no stock refreshers.

I actually prefer that policy. At least they stuck to their guns.

We had an inexperienced junior dev come in with an “amazing offer.” This signaled to management that he must be amazing, so they offered a promotion to team lead to keep him. Half the team quit within a month, then he proceeded to run everything into the ground.

There was a certain amount of shadenfreude watching that play out.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#189

Post by 0xffff2 »

bpicolo wrote: post #62
cimmanom wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so they do want junior developers. They’re just giving them the “senior” title ridiculously early in their careers. What no one REALLY wants are ENTRY LEVEL developers, who tend to be a net negative to productivity for roughly the first year or two.

Every new grad, intern I've worked with has done an amazing job hitting the ground running. They're not ready for "here's a big problem, please dream up a solution and get it out the door", but with reasonably laid out tasks they do a fantastic job working out the code and improving their technical chops along the way. Juniors who are eager to learn are my favorite employees

>Every new grad, intern I've worked with has done an amazing job hitting the ground running.

You've been incredibly lucky. It's great when it happens, but it's certainly not the norm (speaking from experience at a well-known organization that hires a lot of interns).

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#190

Post by blackflame7000 »

hello_moto wrote: post #180
luminati wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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 (w…

“This whole "salaries" will crash down demise has been around forever and it hasn't happened yet just like any other "demise" prediction”

- agreed, lots of people can some problems the naive way but you need to be at a deeper level of understanding and experience to know what will and wont work before you build it

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