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

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#281

Post by zuhayeer » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:01 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #273

zuhayeer wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creator of levels.fyi here - a big part of making the site was to highlight the economic impact of working a technical job and the exponential growth it comes with as you progress in your career (Glassdoor sucked at showing this). There are just more & better opportunities the farther you go!

Hey, thanks for the site - it's pretty cool. I was curious what made you pick your cities, though. Data availability? Boulder and not Boston surprised me.

Just added Boston to the filter dropdown. Honestly, we've just been adding cities as we go and totally overlooked Boston, thanks for pointing it out!

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#282

Post by gronfr1 » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:08 AM UTC

I like how the authors studiously avoided mentioning the gender tradeoff between wages and work-life balance that's right there in the graphs, staring them in the face.

I also like how I'm the first person to mention this in 266 comments.

Obviously this is a throwaway account.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#283

Post by viscanti » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:26 AM UTC

bigiain wrote: post #279

RussianCow wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People in desperation tend not to think things through, especially when customers are the ones telling them that there's an issue. After the second occurrence, I explained to the relevant parties that my wife's phone cannot be used as a secondary contact for myself, and it didn't happen again after that, so I chalked it up to a misunderstanding. It was annoying, yes, but no one was pestering my wife on purpose.

You're somewhat more generous than I am. I'd have told my wife to just block that number, and waited until I got back from vacation to explain that it'll happen to anyone else who calls my wife for anything other than an existential emergency as well.

He also knew he was on-call and went somewhere where he didn't have reception. It sounds like he knew that might be an issue so gave his wife's number as a backup. That's basically training the person who has to escalate to use his wife's number as it's the one he responded on. I don't think he's being generous at all, it seems like an obvious outcome of being on call and not responding on his own phone.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#284

Post by mikekchar » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:29 AM UTC

jshowa3 wrote: post #209

tylerhou wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That isn't necessarily true. There's a difference between respect and benefits/culture. Some would say that Google, in all its free lunch glory, doesn't respect its employees that well consider they've had employees go on strike due to their policies.

I think a better example of this is Netflix. They make it a stated goal to pay you more than what you will be able to make anywhere else. They also are pretty straightforward about wanting a return for that pay :-) They'll milk you for all you're worth and if you aren't 100% anymore, they will replace you. They are completely above board and honest with their approach, so I think it's fair ;-)

Not saying that isn't a good strategy for some people (and I probably would have enjoyed that pace when I was younger), but it's not really what I think of when I think about respect and good culture.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#285

Post by potta_coffee » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:38 AM UTC

jv22222 wrote: post #91

Again, with the demonizing PHP as a staid old language to stick with. So silly, and completely incorrect, as PHP frameworks and the language itself continue to innovate and keep Up and in some cases are cutting edge.

I have never cared for PHP but I've been working in Laravel recently and it's comfy. There are definitely worse tools out there.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#286

Post by mehrdadn » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:44 AM UTC

bostik wrote: post #205

Jach wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a disorganized workplace to me. The standard thought experiment is: what happens if gets hit by a bus and dies? What if they're just in a coma for a few weeks? The response to the first satisfies a sudden "I'm quitting" and the response to the second satisfies a sudden "I'm going on vacation". Business is more forgiving of course, since both quitting and vacation planning typically have a time delay.…

I am going to hazard a guess: you have not been exposed to some of the nuttier regulations within this space. The regulatory demands in financial technology, and especially in those industries where both the regulators as well as majority of the players may not be technically literate, are effectively the anti-thesis of robust and reliable engineering. When the industry regulations demand that for every potentially d…

> There are research papers from 1950's that explicitly endorse [rapid] iterative bottom-up approach as the only sensible way forward.

Interested in this... any links?

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#287

Post by aantix » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:44 AM UTC

40acres wrote: post #226

aantix wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Union? If you’re one of the best, why would you want to be equalized with your peers? No way I would want this. Why is it my problem that some introverted programmer can’t get themselves together enough to throw together a portfolio, some OSS contributions and ask for what they’re worth?

A major issue with the labor movement in America is that folks only join a union when they are weak and/or threatened by bosses. The best time to negotiate is when you're strong, it amazes me that big tech was caught colluding to depress wages and nothing occurred in terms of a labor movement. Many industry wide issues could be addressed through collective bargaining: age discrimination, training material, a strong v…

But if you’re one of the best, oss contributions, speaking engagements, you have plenty of leverage.

No need for the collective power, you set your own individual terms.

None of the items you have listed are enticing enough for me to forego 30% so that the collective are equalized. I am my own responsibility. You are your own.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#288

Post by alchemism » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:45 AM UTC

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.

Speaking of signaling mechanisms, if you take time off from working to travel to “interesting” places, and mention it in the interview, you are indicating a clear lack of financial pressure, which I have found to be quite helpful in price negotiations.

You aren’t jobless; you are successful. Even as a bluff, with a now-empty bank account.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#289

Post by frequentnapper » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:49 AM UTC

Benjammer wrote: post #201

frequentnapper wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

Why did she take a job as a tester if she was a CS grad with developer aspirations?

we were in a small city on the west coast. it was almost impossible for her to get hired as a dev most probably because she was a female and because she didn't have "coding" experience was made to feel worthless. She is not the type to open up an IDE and just start coding. She asks tough questions first.

Another story: comp sci 4th year - systems course. She's assigned a team. Douche c++ whiz thinks he's the shit. constantly belittles her. comes up with some idea of "redundancy" as part of the project they are coding. His idea was to have a cache storing redundant data in case the database failed. She suggested that it wouldn't work in case of power failure. Told her to be quiet because she didn't know what she was talking about...

As a guy, I have never faced this and so had no idea women faced this sort of behaviour till she decided to enter the field. Yes she didn't even know how saving a file worked till she decided to go for her comp sci degree, and so yeah she is not very confident about just opening up an ide and start coding a la "create-react-app", nor she will win any hackathons, but her concepts are rock solid. Still she is constantly underestimated.

It's a tough world in software dev if you aren't the type to constantly overestimate your worth.

Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth

#290

Post by cheeky78 » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 12:52 AM UTC

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…

"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."

I have a family and only have so much free time. Even if I didn't, why would I spend my free time building anything for a company and not get compensated for it?

Even if you go through all of this, there is no guarantee you will get the responsibility and pay increase.

I honestly don't really care about any of my ideas winning out. I'm perfectly content getting told what needs to be completed and coming up with a good solution.