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Great developers are raised, not hired

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Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#311

Post by wolfgke »

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.

This is a very US-centric perspective. At least in Germany, the situation is somehwat different. Here, changing companies too regularly, often bears a social stigma.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#312

Post by ikeyany »

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% = 2 hours out of the entire week

It's basically 4 conversations and that's it.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#313

Post by wolfgke »

novok wrote: post #135
Roritharr wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This the technically true, but also a very tough starting position. If my six person startup has issues squeezing as much value out of my Dev than FANG companies with all their support structure and research into this, this is only to be expected, imo. So yeah, it's a problem, one on the list of many problems most companies have though, so it's oversimplified to simply say:"Let's just pay for expensive training and h…

That is why the small startup has to do what FANG is not willing to do, like full remote work anywhere for everyone.

> That is why the small startup has to do what FANG is not willing to do, like full remote work anywhere for everyone.

This is in my opinion (because of the infrastructure) easier to do for FANG than for the startup.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#314

Post by detaro »

wolfgke wrote: post #313
novok wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why the small startup has to do what FANG is not willing to do, like full remote work anywhere for everyone.

> That is why the small startup has to do what FANG is not willing to do, like full remote work anywhere for everyone. This is in my opinion (because of the infrastructure) easier to do for FANG than for the startup.

What infrastructure do you have in mind? I guess if you employ people from everywhere, there's a bunch of overhead for handling international work contracts, payment etc.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#315

Post by teddyh »

scarface74 wrote: post #307
teddyh wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, when digging a moat you have to be careful that it does not drown you as well.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#316

Post by ebiester »

brandall10 wrote: post #262
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.

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.

And as such, junior developers don't get hired, because the first 2-3 months of their career, a junior developer is at negative productivity, considering the work the team is doing to start getting them up to speed.

Some of HN works in areas that are harder than the bog-standard CRUD app. So, do you give up on hiring junior developers at all? I believe our whole industry suffers if we come to that conclusion.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#317

Post by wolfgke »

detaro wrote: post #314
wolfgke wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is why the small startup has to do what FANG is not willing to do, like full remote work anywhere for everyone. This is in my opinion (because of the infrastructure) easier to do for FANG than for the startup.

What infrastructure do you have in mind? I guess if you employ people from everywhere, there's a bunch of overhead for handling international work contracts, payment etc.

> What infrastructure do you have in mind?

All kinds. From your mentioned international work contracts and payments over structuring the work/code so that in can easier be distributed worldwide,using standardized hardware and software configurations so that adminstration/updating can be done automatically etc.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#318

Post by gorpomon »

dfrage wrote: post #115
gorpomon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like we've just had really different workplace experiences in software. I've never seen a scenario where a trained employee replaces a more senior one. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's just not something I've seen in my career (e-commerce, a food delivery startup gone global and now a consultancy). Also, I've seen people take jobs that promise mentorship multiple times. I've seen multiple people t…

Maybe you're lucky, or very good a picking companies and having the luxury of doing so , or maybe you just haven't worked in the field long enough, through multiple nasty downturns in the market. I started my career four decades ago, for "big ones", rode down one metro area's effective end as a high tech region, and lived through the dot com bubble and bust.

I would say it's a mix of all of those things. I have been lucky in my career, but before I went into development I was most assuredly unlucky. I do pick good companies, I've declined jobs from places that paid more but were a quality of life hit. I do have a luxury of choice since I'm younger, but I'm planning my family and saving sensibly so that choice isn't a luxury I can't afford down the line.

But the more I reflect on this thread, the more certain I become that mentorship is important and cost-effective for any industry.

A company that can't justify training and mentorship is either two things: financially poor or culturally rotten.

This is American capitalism, for all it's good and bad, this is a company first society we live in. A company that can't plan to have enough money to train employees is irresponsible. A company that won't train employees is pernicious. Either way, count me out. In the competition of employers I'll take the one that invests in me, and as I've said earlier, I've seen others follow suit.

This isn't some hippy dippy stuff. I don't want a company to cradle me. A company that can't or won't see the value in training its employees to be more effect in the industry its in has to be a special type of near-sighted. For a variety of reasons this is hardly a death knell for them. Plenty of places consider you a liability and glorified typist, they do just fine, but the rot is there and even if it won't kill them, they are a company diminished.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#320

Post by vetinari »

scarface74 wrote: post #309
vetinari wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, deferred compensation is also a good idea.

Right now, we directly outline the plan: for now, you will be getting less, once you start working on the client work, your pay will ramp up, depending how much weight you can pull.

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