Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting • Hacker News Board

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#171

Post by igorgue » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 3:27 PM UTC

daemin wrote: post #146

scythe wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say you refuse to learn them. If you're not going to learn their technology what use can you possibly be?

I think he means that he's not going to learn it himself independently because he doesn't use it for work, and he's learning/using other technologies for his personal projects. And all technologies are more useful to him currently than the one's for building billion visitors/month sites.

Yes sir, you're right!

I love learning new things, but to be honest I don't find a good use case for e.g. Hadoop, at least not in my personal projects. Nor they are attractive to me. And it's not because I'm not into non-mainstream tech, because I am into R, Haskell, Redis (yes I know some of you might consider them mainstream).

Lets say you don't have a super-model-girlfriend but you want to know everything about them... Some people like to do that I don't.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#172

Post by bruce511 » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 3:28 PM UTC

danssig wrote: post #159

bruce511 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If they're going to outsource you, they'll outsource you. Whether you come to the office or telecommute won't make a huge difference to the decision when you're looking at wage differences of 5x-20x." I disagree. Many companies wouldn't outsource because the shift from having workers-in-house to workers-remote is a big one. I _know_ I can get staff in India or China much cheaper than here, but there are enormous ben…

>I _know_ I can get staff in India or China much cheaper than here No you can't. If you could more companies would be doing it. You get what you pay for. When you get cheap outsourced labor in India you're getting people with no experience and insanely high turn over rate. If you want people from India with more experience you'll find them out west somewhere making a better salary. The market rate is the market rate.…

It's interesting to see the knee-jerk reaction when someone talks about Indian or Chinese programmers. The hypothesis that "all smart Indian programmers are in the US" is, well, somewhat naive. Sure not _all_ Indian programmers are great, not all are even good, but that's true everywhere. Finding the good ones will take as much work there as it does here. There's an awful lot of chaff. But there are good ones, even great ones. And a _very_ tiny percentage of a billion is still a lot.

So let me make the argument less prone to misunderstanding. When you open the door to making a post "work remotely" you are competing with programmers in Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Israel, Holland, Germany, New Zealand and so on. All have excellent English language skills (ok, apart from the pesky Germans), excellent work ethics, and in many cases require a living wage below that found in the US.

When your job requires you go to the office, you're competing with say a million others who could do that job. You might even be the very best. But are you still the best if we expand the pool to include a billion people?

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#173

Post by eru » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 3:44 PM UTC

bartonfink wrote: post #112

hugh3 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but if you sell your house you need to come up with the difference between what you sell it for and the amount still owing on it in cash, don't you?

Or you're still on the hook for the balance of the mortgage, depending on your terms. Either way, you're in a very unpleasant situation.

Yes, but you're in the books for that anyway. No matter whether you still have the house or not.

Though I do see that it is a problem, if you have to come up with the margin call in cash when you sell the house.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#174

Post by eru » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 3:47 PM UTC

mgkimsal wrote: post #47

eru wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you sell your house? Your house has already decreased in value, not accounting for the loss in your books doesn't make it more valuable.

There's not a lot of buyers in all areas these days. And this isn't just a me issue - this is something which is affecting large numbers of people.

Yes, though for the market price there should always be buyers. And you already made the loss on your house, and your books would reflect this if you marked-to-market.

By sticking around in a depressed area your are just depressing your earnings.

(It's something different, if you have to come up with cash to pay off your mortgage; instead of just being able to keep paying the normal rates after you sold your house.)

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#175

Post by johnbacon » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 8:25 PM UTC

joelrunyon wrote: post #142

johnbacon wrote: post #139

Timely article, comsidering 37Signals is relocating their entire team to Chicago. Apparently they are freaked out, not about their employees, but about people in their homes who might break in to their stuff. Aka ex spouses et al. So David H said they will all work from the Chicago office, with iMacs Chained to their desks and wear uniforms. No more working from home or laptops unless it's on open source projects. I'…

I'm on an iPhone but I did anyways. Here's the link - http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2838-were-relocating-everyone... Look at the date - April 1st. Context.Context. Context.

Thanks for the context Joel. April fools is what I get for reading that on April 15th!

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#176

Post by jacques_chester » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 9:35 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #172

danssig wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I _know_ I can get staff in India or China much cheaper than here No you can't. If you could more companies would be doing it. You get what you pay for. When you get cheap outsourced labor in India you're getting people with no experience and insanely high turn over rate. If you want people from India with more experience you'll find them out west somewhere making a better salary. The market rate is the market rate.…

It's interesting to see the knee-jerk reaction when someone talks about Indian or Chinese programmers. The hypothesis that "all smart Indian programmers are in the US" is, well, somewhat naive. Sure not _all_ Indian programmers are great, not all are even good, but that's true everywhere. Finding the good ones will take as much work there as it does here. There's an awful lot of chaff. But there are good ones, even g…

I am Australian and I don't see why American programmers would deserve any special treatment over Indians, Kiwis, Saffies etc.

Anyway, Australians are more expensive than Americans at this point. The AUD has surged against the USD and property prices and the rents linked to them have spiralled out of control.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#177

Post by jacques_chester » Wed, Apr 20, 2011, 9:36 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #170

danssig wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Oh wait, there's some super-keen, super bright chap in India who'll do your work for a tenth of the price? Except he wont. If he's as good as you are his telecommuting rates will be close to what yours are. Think about it.

"If he's as good as you are his telecommuting rates will be close to what yours are." Sorry mate, but no. A developers rate factors in a number of things, including cost of living. A guy working from his home in Silicon Valley charges more than a guy sitting at home in Iowa or wherever (to make the same disposable income). The guy in Iowa knows he can work for less, but still make more, in terms of disposable income.…

And I suppose the Silicon Valley programmer is being forced to stay in the valley?

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#178

Post by technomancy » Thu, Apr 21, 2011, 1:10 AM UTC

jbrechtel wrote: post #136

technomancy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't you find it gets a bit lonely after a while? At work we spend 80% of the day pairing over voip and SSH. It's ironic because I moved from California to Seattle because I got tired of telecommuting all by my lonesome from down there, but these days with pairing it doesn't bother me at all.

That sounds like an interesting pairing setup. Would you mind expounding on the details, both technical and logistical, if possible? Specifically, are you sharing a screen session with VIM in a terminal or what? Do you rotate pairs or is it always the same person? How would you compare your remote pairing setup with live, in-person pairing?

We are all Emacs users, and we share tmux sessions on Vagrant VMs over SSH. (It's like GNU Screen, but a lot more convenient for sharing.) We usually stick with the same pair for about a week and rotate among our 10-man team, though each person has areas they're more proficient in. We use Skype for VoIP (though Mumble works better in some cases) and IRC for chat.

I haven't done much in-person pairing, but I think the main difference is not having to share a keyboard. Each person can use a system they're comfortable with; no fuss about dvorak vs qwerty, Kinesis vs Natural 4000, standing desk vs sitting, or Ubuntu vs Macosecks. It does mean you need to use auditory cues to indicate who is in control of a given session. The biggest drawback is probably that you can't share a web browser over SSH, but since we are doing backend coding it doesn't affect us.

For me it's been a huge win. We do also have week-long meetings a few times a year to bring the whole team together in-person to promote the team's cohesion. But working from home is great; as long as I'm able to switch things up occasionally by working from a coffee shop a couple times a week, I'm happy.

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#179

Post by jbrechtel » Fri, Apr 22, 2011, 12:05 AM UTC

technomancy wrote: post #178

jbrechtel wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an interesting pairing setup. Would you mind expounding on the details, both technical and logistical, if possible? Specifically, are you sharing a screen session with VIM in a terminal or what? Do you rotate pairs or is it always the same person? How would you compare your remote pairing setup with live, in-person pairing?

We are all Emacs users, and we share tmux sessions on Vagrant VMs over SSH. (It's like GNU Screen, but a lot more convenient for sharing.) We usually stick with the same pair for about a week and rotate among our 10-man team, though each person has areas they're more proficient in. We use Skype for VoIP (though Mumble works better in some cases) and IRC for chat. I haven't done much in-person pairing, but I think the…

That sounds like a really great setup. I'm going to have to try this out one day. I've never really considered the specific benefits remote pairing would have over in-person pairing...generally the only things considered are the downsides.

Obviously, some of the things you mentioned with in-person pairing can be alleviated. At my current client, our setup includes multiple keyboards and mice. A friend of mine uses his own keyboard with a hardware switch to go between dvorak and qwerty.

You mention not being able to share a browser which makes me think of the times where it would have been convenient to look something up for a moment while my pair experimented (two pronged problem solving approach... :).

Also, what kind of pairing patterns do you use in this setup? Ping Pong TDD, driver/navigator, etc... ?

Re: Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

#180

Post by technomancy » Fri, Apr 22, 2011, 4:08 PM UTC

jbrechtel wrote: post #179

technomancy wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are all Emacs users, and we share tmux sessions on Vagrant VMs over SSH. (It's like GNU Screen, but a lot more convenient for sharing.) We usually stick with the same pair for about a week and rotate among our 10-man team, though each person has areas they're more proficient in. We use Skype for VoIP (though Mumble works better in some cases) and IRC for chat. I haven't done much in-person pairing, but I think the…

That sounds like a really great setup. I'm going to have to try this out one day. I've never really considered the specific benefits remote pairing would have over in-person pairing...generally the only things considered are the downsides. Obviously, some of the things you mentioned with in-person pairing can be alleviated. At my current client, our setup includes multiple keyboards and mice. A friend of mine uses hi…

> You mention not being able to share a browser which makes me think of the times where it would have been convenient to look something up for a moment while my pair experimented (two pronged problem solving approach... :).

Definitely. Occasionally we'll read docs in w3m, but often it's good to go async on looking up some boring details.

What we do is probably more driver/navigator since whomever is hosting usually has better latency. The remote guy can still get around just fine, but it's just barely noticeable enough to give an edge to the host. Since we work in a language that makes it easy to do strict FP, (Clojure) test-first is not as important as it would be in an imperative language, though we do have pretty good coverage.