Great developers are raised, not hired • Hacker News Board

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#281

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:03 PM UTC

rooam-dev wrote: post #274

robwilliams wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course not, they should be comfortable to be able to pursue this, but I don't think it's a recipe for becoming great developers. They may become great managers, CEOs, etc.. but not craftsmen. Would you rely on someone that started their tech career thinking about pay instead of engineering challenges, problems and solutions?

Yes. It might surprise you, but people work for money and people go into development for money. Not for the love of the art or challenge.

Thinking otherwise is why gullible developers will work 60+ hours per week while the owners get rich.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#282

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:06 PM UTC

rooam-dev wrote: post #275

pjgrad wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not devs, but junior devs in particular. Jumping 10 times a year may be for different reasons for experienced people, although some may see it as a red flag. There is a huge difference between devs that do development for the money and devs that do development because it's engineering. Nothing wrong with this, but it's not a recipe for becoming great developers. Would you want to work with code monkeys that do whatev…

Why is it either or? Yes I work for the money first and foremost. I don’t learn anything that isn’t going to either make me more money by being better at my job, keep me competitive in the market, or make more money in the future.

Yes I started programming in the mid 80s in my bedroom. But I keep up to date strictly for the money.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#283

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:08 PM UTC

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.

Simple. How much would it cost you to pay someone to replace them at market rates and then add the amount it would cost you to give them time to ramp up on the institutional knowledge and codebase.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#284

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:16 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #143

mixmastamyk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everyone wants to look for a senior developer with 5+ years But no more than 10.

Right because 10+ year people are expensive and there's the stigma of spending your whole career as a programmer. After 5-10 years, most companies expect you to move into a specialized field or management. I don't agree with that stigma at all, but it's there all the same.

Well seeing that I’ve been developing for over 20+ years and really only started switching jobs at 35. I’ve had no trouble finding jobs.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#285

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:20 PM UTC

dfrage wrote: post #121

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know about Estonia, but in the US conventional careers as a software developer start ending when you're in your 30s, with 40 being a hard limit in finding a new conventional job because that's when our national age discrimination law kicks in. In the US, I found a new developer job at 43, and another at 47. Haven't looked in a decade, so I don't know how it goes at 57. Caveat: I'm in embedded systems, which…

As you say, you're in embedded systems, that's well known to be the other US employment domain that's friendly to developers with grey hairs. Not a "conventional" field.

I’m a bog standard “Enterprise Development”. I found jobs within less than a month at 34,38,42 and 44.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#286

Post by bosie » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #283

bosie wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Simple. How much would it cost you to pay someone to replace them at market rates and then add the amount it would cost you to give them time to ramp up on the institutional knowledge and codebase.

Well, not really. The phrase was specifically about how much value they bring to the company. Market rates have no meaning in this context. E.g. how is "if a team works on a product that no customer seems to use/purchase/pay for, what is the value that team brings to the company" connected to market value? I would say it isn't.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#287

Post by scarface74 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 12:46 PM UTC

bosie wrote: post #286

scarface74 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple. How much would it cost you to pay someone to replace them at market rates and then add the amount it would cost you to give them time to ramp up on the institutional knowledge and codebase.

Well, not really. The phrase was specifically about how much value they bring to the company. Market rates have no meaning in this context. E.g. how is "if a team works on a product that no customer seems to use/purchase/pay for, what is the value that team brings to the company" connected to market value? I would say it isn't.

If you want to keep the employee you have to pay market rates or they can easily leave. If the team works on a product that no one wants, that’s the fault of the business side. It’s up to the business to either find something for the tea to work on or let them go.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#288

Post by squallleonhart » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 2:52 PM UTC

x2f10 wrote: post #248

squallleonhart wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

#2 doesn't work if the company can't get anywhere close to #1. With no work experience, I was hired as a junior dev with a $40k salary, which I gladly accepted. A senior dev mentored me throughout the year and it was fantastic. Coming up on my 1-year anniversary with the company, I was thoroughly enjoying my job, the people, and the culture. I was hoping to get a raise up to at least $60k, though, since I was signifi…

Do you have a mentor at your new job? If not, what would you consider his continued mentorship worth?

Great question. I unfortunately don't have a mentor at my new job and it definitely hurt at first. However, I don't regret leaving as I've still learned a great deal independently, perhaps akin to a kid leaving home for the first time to go to university.

I do find mentorship to be invaluable and hope to have a mentor again in the future, though. I am forever grateful to my mentor from my previous job for the foundation he provided. He instilled good habits and philosophies in me that pleasantly surprised some of my new co-workers and we've even implemented some improvements based on what I learned from him.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#289

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #184

pro-duct wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#290

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 3:01 PM UTC

mamon wrote: post #216

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This advice functionally doesn’t work. They’ll just intentionally lowball the first offer and then say well they can’t read your mind so you need to tell them what you want. A better strategy is to really research competitive wages and anchor high by honestly saying what you want. If they can’t come close, then walk away. If they ask you to compromise, tell them you’re not going to negotiate against yourself by stati…

First of all, they cannot force you to give them your current salary. My standard answer to such question is a slightly more polite version of "it's none of your bussiness". And if they don't want to provide a salary range, and ask you to come up with the number, then just give them your current salary +50% and see how they react. Of course you might then need to step down a little, and accept your current salary + 2…

They won’t try to force you. They’ll just lowball the first offer, and if you say “that’s not close to what I’m seeking” then they’ll say, “well we can’t read your mind, so it’s unreasonable for you to expect us to just repeatedly guess until we hit the number you want, so you need to outline your expectations.”

If you still decline to discuss a range of expectations at that point, they will usually just drop interest in you and decline to interview you further, assuming that you might just be fishing for a high offer to use to negotiate somewhere else, or that you want way more than they could possibly offer, etc.