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Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

neomindlabs.com

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Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#61

Post by throwaway1777 »

paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

I think it’s poaching from the perspective of the employer not the employee. The employer wants to keep its prized employees from getting poached by other ruthless employers.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#62

Post by LordKano »

paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

Approximately 10 years ago, I was really unhappy with my work situation and was checking job postings. I found one that sounded right up my alley and I reached out to the agency that posted it. They told me that because I was working for another one of their clients, they wouldn't submit me for the job because they felt it was unethical.

I responded that I wasn't owned by my employer and just as they were free to let me go, I was free to leave on my own. The real reason was that since employers pay them and talent does not, they don't want to risk their income stream. Since that day, when this agency emails me to ask if I'm looking for new opportunities. I remind them of that incident and request that they don't contact me again.

It took about 8 years to finally sink in that I would NEVER have any dealings with them and they eventually stopped emailing me.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#63

Post by nitrogen »

treeman79 wrote: post #34
roland35 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think "hit by a bus" generally means there is 0 chance of knowledge transfer and is more a disaster recovery term than a talent retention term. Unless you really burn a bridge with your workers they should have at least a week or 2 to transfer knowledge!

Opposite opinion. You should never need more then a day to knowledge transfer. If that. I always try and cross train people enough that I can quit at any point and it’s not an issue. All processes are kept automatic where no one is crucial to keep it running. Mostly it’s useful for vacations. In the past I went on a cruise. And I wasn’t sure the company will be online without me to baby them through. After that I got…

I agree with making things automatic. But sometimes you have to let team members specialize. It's less efficient for everyone to know everything. But, it is good if everything is known, at least in part, by at least two people.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#64

Post by cptskippy »

paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

> I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach".

It's intentional language used by employers because it has preconceived notions and they succinctly communicate a story that benefits the employer.

When you hear poached, you think illegal and victims. It makes you think that the employer has been wronged in some way and that the employee was both participatory in something illegal or at least underhanded and at the same time being taking advantage of.

The reality is that the employee was being taken advantage of by the employer and received an offer more closely aligned with their actual value.

But that's the nature of the employer/employee relationship, it's never truly balanced and one party is always benefiting more than the other.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#65

Post by stormbeard »

ninkendo wrote: post #32
pandaman wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/poach 2 a: to take (game or fish) by illegal methods b: to appropriate (something) as one's own >>> c: to attract (someone, such as an employee or customer) away from a competitor <<<

Webster’s dictionary describes language as it is used, it doesn’t prescribe definitions. Citing a dictionary means nothing in a debate of whether we ought to use a word in a certain context.

If everyone strictly used words based on what is “correct” English, the language would never evolve and we’d still be speaking Chaucer’s English.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#66

Post by nitrogen »

LargeWu wrote: post #57
roland35 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think "hit by a bus" generally means there is 0 chance of knowledge transfer and is more a disaster recovery term than a talent retention term. Unless you really burn a bridge with your workers they should have at least a week or 2 to transfer knowledge!

In practice, "knowledge transfer" is pretty much a joke anyway. Unless they have been documenting important things to know along the way it's usually at best an ad-hoc, partial data dump of the most recent thing they were working on.

Even that goes a long way. I've seen in-progress work just dropped on the floor, then they launch, and the team scrambling like their hair is on fire when just looking at the dev's assigned tickets would have shown in-progress work to fix all the hair-on-fire issues before launch.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#67

Post by conro1108 »

naveen99 wrote: post #41
fizwhiz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are $500k+ yearly salaries in SV really that usual? Salaries? Not at all. Total compensation? Well, it depends. Software engineers with * Salary * Bonus (anywhere between 15-25% of salary) * Initial grant that vests over 3-4yrs * Stock "refreshers" that you get annually * General equity appreciation due to a bull market For senior engineers, the equity portion of their compensation far outweighs their salary.

I wouldn't count the equity appreciation as compensation. you already own the capital, its your own capital gain, not income from employer at that point.

I'd argue that if we're talking about unvested equity, counting appreciation as a comp increase rather than capital gain is reasonable.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#68

Post by logicslave12 »

naveen99 wrote: post #41
fizwhiz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are $500k+ yearly salaries in SV really that usual? Salaries? Not at all. Total compensation? Well, it depends. Software engineers with * Salary * Bonus (anywhere between 15-25% of salary) * Initial grant that vests over 3-4yrs * Stock "refreshers" that you get annually * General equity appreciation due to a bull market For senior engineers, the equity portion of their compensation far outweighs their salary.

I wouldn't count the equity appreciation as compensation. you already own the capital, its your own capital gain, not income from employer at that point.

It’s basically guaranteed at this point. And you don’t own the capital, you don’t start getting the massively appreciated grants until you are a few years in

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#69

Post by [deleted] »

paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

[deleted]

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#70

Post by hinkley »

thelean12 wrote: post #35
roland35 wrote: post #11

FAANG companies can certainly offer more money, but there are lots of things other companies can offer too (besides Ruby on Rails apparently). - ownership of the product and process - less red tape and politics - good work life balance - location other than Silicon Valley - boss who pays attention to engineer needs and wants Money is a huge factor but it isn't the only one!

I feel like people try to tell themselves this, but money is BY FAR the most important factor. And FAANGs pay a ton. Maybe this can be true if you're going from like $250k to $270k from FAANG to FAANG. But most of the time we're talking about something like $180k to $250k when getting poached to a FAANG. It would take a huge amount of perks or otherwise to make that gap worth it. (Of course this isn't true for everyo…

I know a guy who passed on Apple because they weren't offering anywhere near that. Are a lot of people really seeing this kind of money?
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