Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth • Hacker News Board

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#151

Post by tylerhou » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:16 PM UTC

jshowa3 wrote: post #143

chadash wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills, partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium for it." And it's one of the unfair things in life that jobs that pay more often get other benefits as well. Making $40k/year? Chances are you get 2 weeks vacation, inflexible work hours, inferior…

This rarely has anything to do with salary and more so to do with what your company can afford. I've made 60k/yr at jobs where I've had awesome equipment and flexible hours. People respect you more if you get things done and solve problems. Not because you have a big salary. How often do you think people respect management? Just geography alone determines salary. I could make double if I simply moved to San Francisco…

> People respect you more if you get things done and solve problems. Not because you have a big salary. How often do you think people respect management?

That's not what the person you replied to is saying. The above person is saying that companies which pay well also tend to respect their employees more, so seek out a higher salary because those companies also tend to offer better benefits/culture.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#152

Post by wincy » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:17 PM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #64

Can we stop with this “we hire only the best programmers?” You are probably not the best company so stop trying to hire the best programmers. It’s like the fat, ugly, jobless guy that only dates accomplished super models.

Kim Dotcom wrote this article?

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#153

Post by opportune » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

yezanotherone wrote: post #72

dpeck wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my experience many developers want to be bricklayers (not to discount bricklaying, there's an art to it, but they're focused on the individual bricks, not the other aspects of the building). They get annoyed when they're asked to think about the bigger picture and just want to focus on the code, the architecture, and whatever is new and shiny. It is largely due to these sorts of developers that we've developed all…

I am one of these happy bricklayers. It's the only way I can stay sane in a job. When I'm working on my own projects, I'm all in, and I love all aspects of the process. But in a job, on a project that 99% of the time is run badly, and my colleagues are writing terrible code, just give me the bricks and tell me what to build. If I try to care, I get frustrated and depressed. Plus, I'd be fooling myself if I were not l…

Yeah I agree with this. If you are not in a high-up position you will just get too frustrated caring about the bigger picture because you have little power when it comes to actually making bigger-picture decisions. So all you can do is suggest things which 1) may not be well received, could be perceived as some low-level employee overstepping their bounds 2) probably won't be heeded since then the managers/pms/directors/etc. have to concede power

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#154

Post by xtracto » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

chrissnell wrote: post #125

It's a little peculiar how this blog post really pushes the inclusiveness angle despite the numbers showing clearly that it is not a big priority for prospective employees. They even go as far as highlighting that the sampled women want inclusiveness 171% more than the sampled men, which sounds pretty strong, but hides the real story when you look at the _actual numbers_. Only 15% of women ranked inclusion as a top p…

It is because it is SEO spam. TripleByte regularly posts these here in HackerNews to promote their hiring platform. People seem to like it nonetheless

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#155

Post by _def » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

Isn't this conclusion only natural? It baffles me that so many people responsible for companies don't understand basic human needs and instead blindly follow trends. I just don't get business stuff.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#156

Post by asark » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

hoov wrote: post #100

logifail wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when someone pays you more, they respect you more The counter-example to that could be that once you're senior enough, you are never 100% on vacation. If enough goes wrong, you will get called back to work.

Or even nothing goes wrong suddenly. Once, I had a vacation planned for six months and had to spend the long weekend cooped up in my hotel room overseeing a complicated migration.

Planning something over your vacation and expecting you to work on it is just your manager being a dick. If they can do it without you, they should. If they can't do it without you, guess it can wait 'till you get back. Not like you dropped it on them last minute.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#157

Post by opportune » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:21 PM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #64

Can we stop with this “we hire only the best programmers?” You are probably not the best company so stop trying to hire the best programmers. It’s like the fat, ugly, jobless guy that only dates accomplished super models.

Why would a company ever insult their employees like that?

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#158

Post by RussianCow » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:24 PM UTC

natefox wrote: post #98

logifail wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when someone pays you more, they respect you more The counter-example to that could be that once you're senior enough, you are never 100% on vacation. If enough goes wrong, you will get called back to work.

I give my boss/coworkers my wife's phone number when I go on vacation. I tell them you have to talk to her to get to me. I then put my phone in airplane mode 95% of the time and use it as a camera. I'll occasionally undo airplane mode to upload photos or check the internets for something, but vacation for me is usually unplugging as well. I've yet to be called with this strategy.

Funny, I tried this once when I was on call and I still got called. And for a while after that, whenever someone couldn't reach me on my phone, they would call my wife. So really, it was a lose-lose.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#159

Post by sq_ » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

natefox wrote: post #98

logifail wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when someone pays you more, they respect you more The counter-example to that could be that once you're senior enough, you are never 100% on vacation. If enough goes wrong, you will get called back to work.

I give my boss/coworkers my wife's phone number when I go on vacation. I tell them you have to talk to her to get to me. I then put my phone in airplane mode 95% of the time and use it as a camera. I'll occasionally undo airplane mode to upload photos or check the internets for something, but vacation for me is usually unplugging as well. I've yet to be called with this strategy.

That's honestly an amazing strategy. Adds a pretty big extra layer of thought about whether the decision to call you would be worth it.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#160

Post by Karrot_Kream » Tue, Jul 23, 2019, 8:28 PM UTC

elindbe2 wrote: post #73

lotsofpulp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "$X to cover all expenses in lifetime" figure is impossible to calculate, and is not under your control at all. It will be inflated away without your consent, and requires constant evaluation and re-evaluation. My philosophy is to always be investing in capital, whether it be equity, political (relationships with people), or resources.

My spending is not impossible to estimate and for the most part it is very much under my control. If what you said is true then no one could ever reasonably retire at any age.

The closer you get to retirement, the more obvious it becomes about how much to save to reach the goal. Until then, it's better to just try to eke out as much savings as possible than estimate your spending. Estimating lifelong spending is quite similar to modelling global economic activity over a long period of time.