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Great developers are raised, not hired

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Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#261

Post by brandall10 »

bosie wrote: post #239
brandall10 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simple - pay people by the value they bring to the company upon every annual compensation review. Yes, it costs money to train people. Consequently they get paid less during that period. But once they can fly on their own, treat them as if you hired them like that.

> pay people by the value they bring to the company upon every annual compensation review. how do you determine the value they bring to the company? Presumably it must be a % of the revenue or valuation growth but I cannot come up how you derive the value.

How do you determine the value of any candidate you interview? You have a job req. Do they match that req? Yes, good, you make them an offer. What level of pay do you negotiate? What is market. If they're otherwise happy going toward the bottom of market is feasible, esp. if it's a large bump.

If this person goes out the door, you're going to be paying their replacement roughly the same as what they'll negotiate elsewhere... and on top of that, you have to deal with the cost of turnover. You basically just lost a ton of $$ by letting them walk. This is not hard. Just run the thought experiment of what it would cost to find a suitable replacement.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#262

Post by brandall10 »

vetinari wrote: post #227
brandall10 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simple - pay people by the value they bring to the company upon every annual compensation review. Yes, it costs money to train people. Consequently they get paid less during that period. But once they can fly on their own, treat them as if you hired them like that.

> Consequently they get paid less during that period. But once they can fly on their own, treat them as if you hired them like that. That's too early. You made an investment, that investment has to break even. With your suggestion, it would never break even.

With all due respect, if hiring an entry level dev is a loss for your business then perhaps don't hire them? A dev should be a net gain regardless of skill level.

You pay them market when they need to be trained, you pay them market when they move up the skill food chain.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#263

Post by reading-at-work »

wccrawford wrote: post #47
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…

> 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.

Can confirm. I just got a 54% raise by switching companies. It's absurd. I think a lot of companies just get complacent and don't keep up with the pace of developer salaries, then start leaking talent until it becomes a problem.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#265

Post by scarface74 »

hello_moto wrote: post #257
scarface74 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who is making $135K+ in any city that is not on the west coast or NYC, is probably 10 years into their career and may already have a family. In that case, they probably don’t want to make the sacrifices needed to go from making enough to live an upper middle class lifestyle - ie the nice house in the burbs to downgrading to a small apartment. In my case, I’m 45, why would I move to the west coast for $300K whe…

But you're assuming with 10-15 years of experience you're stuck at 250-300k. People who advanced in their career at Bay Area can make 500k or more (IC, not management), solving challenges that did not exist in the first place too (that alone might potentially put you in top 1-5%?). There are more startup opportunities (whether IPO or just the technical challenges, that's up to you) with higher chances of success. Dif…

I’m not denying that different people have different goals. But if you already are living a life free from worry, can work part of the year, doing what you enjoy, paid off house, what’s really the difference between 2 million and 15 million? (not saying I am there yet).

It’s not like I go to work everyday hating software development and hating what I have been doing since I was 12 years old. My wife works for the government and we have guaranteed access to health care whether she works or quits tomorrow.

I can have technical challenges and jump from opportunity to opportunity in two years once my youngest graduates.

Outside of the west coast/HN bubble, people retire comfortably all the time with a million in the bank, I paid off house, and social security.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#266

Post by james_s_tayler »

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 wonder if that's what Peter Drucker meant when he said "Culture eats strategy for breakfast"

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#267

Post by hello_moto »

scarface74 wrote: post #265
hello_moto wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're assuming with 10-15 years of experience you're stuck at 250-300k. People who advanced in their career at Bay Area can make 500k or more (IC, not management), solving challenges that did not exist in the first place too (that alone might potentially put you in top 1-5%?). There are more startup opportunities (whether IPO or just the technical challenges, that's up to you) with higher chances of success. Dif…

I’m not denying that different people have different goals. But if you already are living a life free from worry, can work part of the year, doing what you enjoy, paid off house, what’s really the difference between 2 million and 15 million? (not saying I am there yet). It’s not like I go to work everyday hating software development and hating what I have been doing since I was 12 years old. My wife works for the gov…

2 vs 15 depend on the person.

If you're a single? none.

Married couple with no child? none.

Married couple wanting more children? yes, it matters.

Parents who want their kids to enjoy life? yes, it matters.

Parents who need to take care both in-laws and kids? absolutely, it matters a lot.

2 mills can get you a Duplex (closer to center) /House (further away) in the suburb of Vancouver/Toronto (Canada) with probably 100-200k left. Certainly not enough for retirement. In Seattle (USA), I suppose it depends on the area of your chosen.

How long do you have to work to reach the point of no-mortgage (nice house), kids done college paid by parents, and $2 mills for retirement?

But this is just what might be one dimension of the discussion: financial => lifestyle.

> I can have technical challenges and jump from opportunity to opportunity in two years once my youngest graduates.

We both live in different cities. I don't know your city as well as you do but where I live, there's definitely a ceiling to that technical challenges. Now before we go further with examples... I live in a city that certainly have huge hi-tech ecosystems and quite well known internationally.

I don't see Facebook/Google/Uber/Netflix/AirBnB anywhere nearby. My coworker would love to do impactful ML work. There's zero companies in my city that does ML meaningfully (more than just gluing OSS solutions or calling 3rd-party APIs). I personally would love to work on tackling scaling challenges. These opportunities just don't exist here.

The companies here are quite good compare to major cities out there, but certainly there's a virtual ceiling/limit due to a mix of VC, culture, talent, etc.

Just to wrap things up and to put things into perspective, I'm not a workaholic or ambitious person. I see those challenges as opportunity to invest my skill to stay relevant for years to come so I can take my foot off the pedal a bit. Otherwise, I'd be just an Engineer like everybody else in this city...

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#268

Post by pjgrad »

robwilliams wrote: post #249
rooam-dev wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to sound harsh, but junior devs that think about living standards while being junior will remain junior or average at best.

I don't understand. Shouldn't everyone care about their standard of living? Are you implying that junior developers shouldn't?

His point may be that devs that are constantly job-hopping for better pay will "experience the same year 10 times" and not grow in skills. I'm not sure I agree with that viewpoint.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#269

Post by julius_set »

ozim wrote: post #236
julius_set wrote: post #221

This article assumes that the person you are mentoring is open to being mentored. I’ve worked with some engineers who were definitely junior despite having years of experience and very opposed to even a slight suggestion on how to improve their thinking process or implementation process.

On the other side of spectrum there are those people who "really want to learn real programming" but you have to do all the work for them. You point them at the resources, contribute ideas and it turns out person is not following through even though when they talk they are enthusiastic. So basically you have to somehow spot right person to spend time with, and it is hard. At least guys that don't want to be mentored…

This too, I’ve also worked with people like this, it is extremely frustrating to teach someone who wants to be mentored not take your mentorship advice and continue to make the same mistakes.

The counter argument here can be that I possibly may not have mentored the person in the right way using the right motivation, but methods I tried were (ranked in succession):

1.) Showing by example but asking to come up with own examples 2.) Templating examples 3.) Listing out steps 4.) Finally just directly asking to do x, y, and z

Utilizing data patience time boxing.

This is definitely a difficult problem I don’t particularly have an efficient solution to, my best answer is just find someone to mentor who will execute

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#270

Post by hashfunktion »

enraged_camel wrote: post #191
scarface74 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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…

I think you are perhaps too focused on the immediate salary, and not thinking long-term. Yeah, $300k in the Bay Area isn’t that much. But if you work for a Tier 1/2 company for a few years, it can have a drastic impact on your future employment prospects and salary levels. Furthermore, the street cred can open many doors that otherwise would remain closed to you.

> Furthermore, the street cred can open many doors that otherwise would remain closed to you.

The assumption here is that technical screenings actually work. As many here have pointed out, technical interviews today are highly capricious and pretty have no correlation with actual technical qualifications. "Street cred" and even superb interview performance don't seem to matter anymore.

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