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Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

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Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#31

Post by waterlesscloud »

ig1 wrote: post #16
jasonkester wrote: post #3

Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.

The salary is inline with market rates. It's crazy to compare salaries across cities and sectors let alone across countries without taking into local factors (for example paid holidays and sick leave). Plus I think you have a vastly skewed market view, even in places like SF and NY very very few companies are hiring iPhone developers for $165k USD (feel free to post examples if you disagree). What do you think the av…

If they aren't finding people, they aren't offering enough.

I know no business wants to hear this, but it's the simple truth.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#32

Post by ig1 »

ig1 wrote: post #16
jasonkester wrote: post #3

Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.

The salary is inline with market rates. It's crazy to compare salaries across cities and sectors let alone across countries without taking into local factors (for example paid holidays and sick leave). Plus I think you have a vastly skewed market view, even in places like SF and NY very very few companies are hiring iPhone developers for $165k USD (feel free to post examples if you disagree). What do you think the av…

For the curious I pulled the US govt salary data:

   75% of developers in the US earn less than 100k/year.
   10% of developers in the US earn more than 130k/year.
To get in the top 10% of developers in the UK you need to earn £60.5k (about 100k USD). So developers do earn more in the US than the UK (although once you take into account things like greater holiday allowance, etc. the difference comes down to about 10%).

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#33

Post by ig1 »

edderly wrote: post #28
ig1 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The papers actually quite weak, as there a strong distinction between IT and software development (and CS (G4xx) and IT degree), which the paper doesn't really pick up on. They make the mistake of using HESA data which classifies all IT degrees as computing. Non-development IT roles in the UK have been dropping dramatically over the last decade due to outsourcing and automation while developer roles have been increas…

I think you're splitting hairs in the first point, it's also strange though that CS grads also have the highest unemployment rate: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10477551 . Which seems to contradict your point about developer roles, or speaks to other issues. However, I absolutely agree that it is cultural trends that drive the choices, which goes back to my original point that now there is a broader cultural understandin…

I'm not splitting hairs this is actually a major issue. I run a developer job board, before that I founded a social mobility non-profit that specializes in understanding university admissions and outcomes. I'm intimately familiar with the data.

The BBC article is based upon the JACS classification of Computing which incudes IT subjects. From anecdotal evidence CS has very low unemployment and IT has high unemployment, but due to HESA using the JACS classification a graduate in Business IT is considered the same as a graduate of Computer Science.

If you split universities which only teach CS from those that teach IT, you can see very clearly in the HESA data that Computing has a much higher employment rate at universities which don't teach IT (this isn't clear cut evidence as universities which don't teach IT tend to be academically stronger universities; but it does back up the anecdotal evidence).

I wrote to the universities minister asking him to get HESA to split CS and IT data after he gave a talk at TechHub, but sadly he didn't respond.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#34

Post by vanessa »

Thanks for posting this - I think regardless of market rate you've identified a key problem in the hiring industry, especially in software. The incentives for recruitment agencies/headhunters to do ridiculously shady things like copy your ad and then sell you candidates (without even necessarily telling you they promised the candidates more money) are high because companies feel so lost in the hiring process, sometimes they are willing to pay. And they usually get burned/waste a lot more time and money (in my experience).

Good for you for calling them out when they're clearly not providing a respectable service to you OR the jobseeker.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#35

Post by bugsy »

Your salary is absurdly ridiculously pathetically low given the things you were asking for. It almost seems like a joke or onion article. That's obviously why you had a problem and all the rest of the insights you are having about this don't really count since the ad would not be considered serious by any qualified candidate. Sorry.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#36

Post by wildjim »

jasonkester wrote: post #3

Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.

I would say a Senior iPhone Dev in London would be £60k+ but since the number of com's who need ObjC is pretty small (even though London has a lot of Mobile dev's) then I wouldn't be surprised if it topped-out at £50k. In London, a £75k job is very well paid, even in finance, therefore a £100k job (I assume you meant $160k) is getting into higher-management or Contractor territory, not Senior Dev.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#37

Post by jasonkester »

ig1 wrote: post #32
ig1 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The salary is inline with market rates. It's crazy to compare salaries across cities and sectors let alone across countries without taking into local factors (for example paid holidays and sick leave). Plus I think you have a vastly skewed market view, even in places like SF and NY very very few companies are hiring iPhone developers for $165k USD (feel free to post examples if you disagree). What do you think the av…

For the curious I pulled the US govt salary data: 75% of developers in the US earn less than 100k/year. 10% of developers in the US earn more than 130k/year. To get in the top 10% of developers in the UK you need to earn £60.5k (about 100k USD). So developers do earn more in the US than the UK (although once you take into account things like greater holiday allowance, etc. the difference comes down to about 10%).

Indeed, that's the range you get if you include PHP devs and corporate IT folk. For specialist iPhone devs who are provably good at what they do, however, $150/hr is a pretty good starting point, and there are plenty of companies willing to pay more than that.

With that in mind, I don't imagine you'd find many good devs with solid iPhone experience willing to work for less than $75/hr, which coincidentally translates to about $165k/year.

Incidentally, if you're a company looking to put out an iPhone app, you absolutely should seek out a guy who's good enough to demand $150/hr. Given the esoteric nature of the platform, you'll probably find you save money in the long run going with a guy who doesn't need to train himself up on your dime. He might be 4x as expensive, but he's probably also >4x as fast.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#38

Post by ig1 »

jasonkester wrote: post #37
ig1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the curious I pulled the US govt salary data: 75% of developers in the US earn less than 100k/year. 10% of developers in the US earn more than 130k/year. To get in the top 10% of developers in the UK you need to earn £60.5k (about 100k USD). So developers do earn more in the US than the UK (although once you take into account things like greater holiday allowance, etc. the difference comes down to about 10%).

Indeed, that's the range you get if you include PHP devs and corporate IT folk. For specialist iPhone devs who are provably good at what they do, however, $150/hr is a pretty good starting point, and there are plenty of companies willing to pay more than that. With that in mind, I don't imagine you'd find many good devs with solid iPhone experience willing to work for less than $75/hr, which coincidentally translates…

You can't just compare permanent salaries to hourly rate contract roles directly (you need to take into account downtime, risk, vacation, overheads, etc. in order to make a fair comparison).

I don't know what the standard is in the US but in the UK you can generally earn 1.5-2x as much contracting on a day rate as you can in a permanent job.

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#39

Post by tzs »

jasonkester wrote: post #3

Is it possible that this experience was influenced in any way by the fact that they're trying to find a "Senior iPhone Developer" for under £40k? That's ~$65k, and thus roughly $100k shy of what you'd need to offer before you started to pique the interest of any good iPhone Developers in the current market.

They are looking for a permanent employee, not a consultant. Is $165k (presumably plus benefits) really the going rate for that?

Re: Hiring Without Agencies - Lessons Learned

#40

Post by biot »

sjtgraham wrote: post #29

This is how I would have dealt with this situation: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2346729

Exactly. Take the time and small expense to officially register the copyright. When they clone it and slap their name on it you can sue for damages and you'll win. It might even be a profitable business on its own if you act as intermediary for those actually posting jobs... a "job dilution protection service" that costs them nothing but makes you money.

edit: at the very least, in the US you can issue a DMCA takedown notice.

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