Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
triplebyte.com

I won't work on an ancient Java codebase that has no tests or no deployment pipeline, because doing that is death. Gotta keep moving forward or find yourself sliding backwards. I would say your analysis is spot on and I could have written the same article myself.

Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" and not entirely necessary, like moving to a newer tech stack, might be worth it as it will make it easier to attract new talent. And if they stay behind, they might encounter the famous "dead sea effect" and wonder why things break, and every new feature takes forever -- the best technically minded people have left for greener pastures.

However, I'd say that considering people who are great at interviewing are great engineers is flawed. There's a correlation, but it's probably a weak one. To get great at interviews, you have to practice interviews a lot. It's a separate skill orthogonal to software. Basically, you're selecting the most motivated to succeed -- but motivation to succeed doesn't necessarily translate into the best technical ability. It makes sense that they care most about salary, impressive surroundings and fast pace, as they're probably the most careerist SEs out there.

> devoting (say) $1,000 or even $5,000 to classes or other forms of professional growth is not particularly expensive, but it can have a disproportionate effect on recruiting.

I don't need classes. When I say I want professional growth, it means I want to play with new technologies and gain experience with them at work. So if you're willing to hire me to work on a new hot thing, I'll be more likely to take it.

But please, please do away with the conceit that great interviewers are great employees unless you have data that suggests otherwise. Reading this, I'm under the impression you only look at candidates and don't have any metrics to understand their actual work performance.

I'd love to see questions like this phrased to account for this: "Opportunity for professional growth, to grow my future earning potential." "Opportunity for professional growth, because I enjoy learning new things." "Opportunity for professional growth, to reach a role I cannot fill with my current skills."

I know the article tried to address this with the responses, but that's sort of the default answer you give in this field. No one really says, or enjoys hearing, "I want to learn more so I can make more money".