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Great developers are raised, not hired

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Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#301

Post by NullPrefix »

dba7dba wrote: post #251
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…

> 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. From what I've noticed, companies really want to avoid raising salary of an employee in a meaningful way, because it means they will have to increase pay of others also So 10% increase of salary of 1 employee would eventually equal 10% in crease for the whole team or company,…

Unrelated to the topic at hand, but have you used speech to text to write this ?

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#302

Post by NullPrefix »

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?

I would think that extra $40k would allow him to hire a mentor personally.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#303

Post by bosie »

brandall10 wrote: post #293
bosie wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re taking the use of that word too literally. I meant it as what perceived impact would the addition/omission of an engineer of that level have on a company? The stuff that factors into determining annual budgets.

Fair enough, thanks for the clarification.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#304

Post by bhl »

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…

Is this a free rider problem?

While a developer is being mentored and improving, they’re still contributing to the company for the same salary even though their market value is rising.

Eventually, without a raise in salary, they’ll move to a company that pays market value. So developers aren’t free riders because the aforementioned; the new companies are free riders because they pay market rates.

Edit: it may be a free rider issue if the mentorship / training is orthogonal to their tasks. For example, if Starbucks started to offer their baristas CS classes, it’d be a free ride for employees. But what are perks classified as?

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#305

Post by jogjayr »

vetinari wrote: post #224
freyir wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 emp…

You have it backwards. We are not trying to have cheap labor. We are trying to have more labor. However, the experienced people are limited resource, so the next step is to find inexperienced ones and train them. However, that doesn't work that way so easily. If you train someone for 6-12 months (during that time the trainee not only isn't making you any money, but other people, who otherwise would, are not either),…

> during that time the trainee not only isn't making you any money

They're training full-time? They're not even doing junior-level work? Why are you paying them a salary then?

> other people, who otherwise would, are not either

Senior folks are getting valuable experience of mentoring and growing people too.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#306

Post by beastcoast »

chillacy wrote: post #258
TheHegemon wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the fact that higher paid CEOs actually perform worse [0]. [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highe...

> the companies run by the CEOS who were paid at the top 10% of the scale, had the worst performance. How much worse? The firms returned 10% less to their shareholders than did their industry peers By that metric isn't Amazon the worst company there is?

To their credit, Amazon is pretty diligent about making sure that high performing employees get pay raises to match their market. My record is a 30% raise, mostly by switching job functions from non-tech to a tech role.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#307

Post by scarface74 »

teddyh wrote: post #238
vetinari wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But that’s not the trick. The trick should be that you train your employees how to do your business, and then you pay them more than what they’re worth to someone else . Since you’ve trained them in the ways of your business, they’re worth more than that, but only to you , and that’s the trick. Nobody else could squeeze as much value out of these people as you could (since the training is specific to what your busine…

I never thought about this, but this definitely seemed to be the original thinking at one company I worked for.

As far as I know, the company was started in 2003. The founder wrote a custom IDE, VM and compiler. This was the only company that used it.

He hired a bunch of people from a well known but not well regarded private for profit college and paid them below market rates. Of course developers on this proprietary platform were completely useless anywhere else.

By the time I came aboard in 2008 and the rest of the “adult supervision” - a new CTO and developers - they were in the process of transitioning to C#.

Once the bottom fell out of the market with the 2008 recession, they laid off most of the developers working on the proprietary stuff who hadn’t learned C# on their own. They also forced the founder out. They kept me around because I was the only person who both knew C# and knew enough C++/MFC to maintain the old system.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#308

Post by scarface74 »

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.

That’s easy, “let them learn LeetCode and work for a FAANG”.

At least that’s always the answer over at r/cscareerquestions

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#309

Post by scarface74 »

vetinari wrote: post #224
freyir wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 emp…

You have it backwards. We are not trying to have cheap labor. We are trying to have more labor. However, the experienced people are limited resource, so the next step is to find inexperienced ones and train them. However, that doesn't work that way so easily. If you train someone for 6-12 months (during that time the trainee not only isn't making you any money, but other people, who otherwise would, are not either),…

What type of training program would be worth signing a contract for? Alternatively do like Amazon and offer deferred compensation that takes four years to fully vest.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#310

Post by scarface74 »

vetinari wrote: post #297
freyir wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. Keep blaming the employees for your retention problems. It's definitely not your fault. I'm sure it will work out.

I don't blame anyone, just filter out the too selfish ones early. If they can't go for win-win of both sides, they can try their moves elsewhere.

So how do you do that?
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