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Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

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Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#171

Post by Ma8ee »

komali2 wrote: post #141
hoov wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To play devil's advocate, why was a migration so complicated that your engineers couldn't do it without you if it failed, being done on a vacation that everyone knew about for six months?

I won’t say anything the planning, but I’ve learned that migrations are usually hard, in the sense that you have to deal with poorly understood, seldom documented and, almost always inconsistent data. And at the same time critical since you usually can’t afford much downtime between the shutting down the old system and start using the new.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#172

Post by war1025 »

Retric wrote: post #74
stakhanov wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That equation is a theoretical one. On the whole, jobs that offer high $/hr will mandate crazy hours. Jobs that will allow you to go 20 hr/wk, or 10 hr/wk will usually not pay you well on a per-hour basis either. -- I predict that in response to what I just wrote, there will be people showing off about how they managed to make a consulting lifestyle business like that actually work because of how awesome they are. --…

Taking time off between jobs is a real option for most programmers. Depending on how long you stay at each company it can even add up to a few years of time off without having obvious gaps on the resume.

If not for the fact that I need to have health insurance for my family and the only way to do that without breaking the bank is through an employer, I'd agree with you.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#173

Post by frequentnapper »

cbanek wrote: post #122

> Second, women engineers prioritize growth to an even greater extent than men, and they place particular secondary emphasis on inclusivity and comfort with their work and environment. Woman in tech here. I agree completely, and I'd almost say that saying you want to grow your career in an inclusive environment is saying "I want to grow in a place that will actually value me and promote me." Been in so many places wh…

true story: sister was hired at a big company as a tester with degrees in bio and comp sci. The manager had her doing manual testing for a year. She aspired to be a developer. Even offered to automate testing on her own time after work. The manager told her if she has extra time, she should do more manual testing instead. When a dev position opened up on the team, he just hired some coop guy instead for it without even considering her. She quit.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#174

Post by chucksmash »

RussianCow wrote: post #158
natefox wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That strikes me as wildly out of bounds. I imagine your wife has a job too, and her own work issues to deal with. I'd be very upset with the individual bothering my spouse because I hadn't returned their call fast enough for their tastes.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#176

Post by vmateixeira »

jonny_eh wrote: post #145
cheeky78 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The opportunity to contribute more than just lines of code should be offered and encouraged, but don't be surprised at how few will be interested." I learned a long ago: 1) I can offer the best ideas that go beyond lines of code, but it usually comes down to the decision of someone in a higher position than me (manager, sales, the CEO, etc) and if they just don't feel like utilizing your ideas, they won't. Fighting…

There's no shortage of ideas, especially within a company. If you want your ideas to win out, you should take advantage of what you do best… making things. If you combine your idea pitch with a working prototype (doesn't need to be polished), it's odds of getting adopted will be far more likely. If your idea isn't one that can be prototyped, e.g. "Ask Microsoft for a billion dollars", then you may as well just pitch…

Just out of curiosity, when would you think these prototypes should be best built? Surely not on my free time, right?

If the company is not interested on listening to new ideas, and you're keen on participating in something you would like to help build, then perhaps this is not the right company for you.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#177

Post by quickthrower2 »

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…

Priorities can also shift as different levers are pulled. You'll care more about inclusion when your expenses are less than your income.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#178

Post by quickthrower2 »

WomanCanCode wrote: post #135

There's no such thing as growth in the technology field. Most of the organizations just want a specific and narrow expertise in a particular technology. If you think your 7+ years of experience in certain technology is something then you are wrong. There'll be an 18 year old who has been programing in that technology since he was 12. You'll eventually get pushed over. Employers don't want a well-rounded person. They…

Your downvoted but there is some truth in this.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#179

Post by Circuits »

First of all I don't like how aloofly this article uses the term Engineer. Perhaps, as a community, we should be more careful when using the term Engineer as in most countries there is a distinct difference between programmer/developer and a professional, licensed Engineer.

In any case, I have to ask myself how seriously one can take the answers given by their candidates. For instance, one of the top answers was opportunity for professional growth. So I tried imagining that I was in the position of a candidate who was answering the questions in their survey. I simply couldn't imagine a myself selecting: flexible work arrangements or high employee retention over something like opportunity for professional growth for a couple of reasons. The first being the one they addressed in the article: what exactly does that mean?

However; the second reason is rather simple. If I was under the impression (even vaguely) that there was a chance that my potential employer would see the answers to my survey then that would highly influence my answers. So perhaps the 99'th percentile is just more confident and therefore more honest? In truth, I too: "...want comfortable and meaningful work..." with "...the ability to choose..." my "...work environment and timing." and if an employer could offer me those things I would take the job in a heartbeat.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#180

Post by robohoe »

vinceguidry wrote: post #163

The vast majority of programming jobs, like the vast majority of ordinary jobs, are not going to be able to offer growth potential, at least, not growth potential that would actually look appealing to anyone posting here. If the only incentive on the company's part is increased retention, that's just not a good-enough reason to spend time on more than lip service. My company is a weirdly-effective consulting firm wit…

That sounds like something like Accenture, InfoSys, etc. I too hope this business model dies but I don't see it dying for a long time. As long as business school MBA types keep making decisions and hiring those companies, they will keep hiring butts in the chair.
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