Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era • Hacker News Board

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#321

Post by gavinray » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:29 PM UTC

the_only_law wrote: post #310

gavinray wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's so bleak. I think I'd sooner go back to drugs and homelessness than face the thought of waking up every day to give the majority of my waking hours to something I don't care about. For almost the rest of my life. Or even worse, something I disliked/working for trash people. I used to have panic attacks thinking about this when I worked mundane, dead-end jobs. Pardon my language but: the fuck is the point even?…

No issues, I get what you’re saying. Funny though, although it’s mostly a “rose colored glasses” sort of thing, I think fondly on my time working shit dead end jobs because I was at least working towards something better whereas now I have to constantly question whether I’ve peaked. > Pardon my language but: the fuck is the point even? When you find out let me know. Some people seem to get lucky enough to have all so…

Damn that's really sad actually =/

I and my partner don't have family either really. We have living families, but not the way most people consider family I think.

  > There’s plenty of things I find interesting, just nothing that anyone would ever pay me to do. Maybe they aren’t commercially viable, maybe they’re not really career related things, or maybe I’m not smart/wealthy/educated enough to take them on.

This hits close to home for me. I got lucky with my interests/hobbies, but your scenario is identical to my partners.

6 years of a wildlife biology + animal behavior degree and she says she can't find a job doing what she wants.

I'm convinced it's possible, but that it would take a lot of hunting people down, knocking on doors, networking, emailing random people, basically taking every measure and avenue available.

I could also be wrong though, who knows.

But, she doesn't want me to do that and has something else she's doing so I go "Okey, if that's what you want."

I have no idea what it is you like to do, but if there's any earthly way for you to do it for a living, or make your living off of something tangential IMO you should quit tech and do that.

I'm sure you have pursued that at this point though.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#322

Post by mmaunder » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:30 PM UTC

unnouinceput wrote: post #316

mmaunder wrote: post #123

This is very real. I run Defiant Inc (at defiant.com) which makes Wordfence (at wordfence.com) - a popular firewall and malware scanner for WordPress. We're hiring PHP devs that are senior level only. The job demands it because we deploy code weekly to over 4 million sites on a wide range of environments and configs, many of which are mission critical. We started hiring in 2015 and have always been 100% remote. We ha…

120k / 12 months => 10K/month salary 10K / 22 working days / 8 hours each day => ~$57/hour. Kinda low, don't you think? Especially for senior level.

You picked the bottom of the range and didn’t add benefits. Top of the range with cost of benefits, which a contractor would have to pay for themselves is over $100 an hour. Keep in mind we pay for all certifications, exams, college degree programs, 21 days PTO which accumulates to even more, matching 401K, conferences with biz class travel, healthcare, etc.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#323

Post by inter_netuser » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:32 PM UTC

noleetcode wrote: post #219

dbish wrote: post #4

Even if you think you’re well paid, now is the time to look around. I’ve had a lot of friends, mentees, and coworkers get huge bumps on total compensation even as relatively senior engineers and managers. Pay is jumping and companies aren’t doing a great job keeping that up for their people who have been around for a few years. As an employer, that should be the top worry, keep comp up, don’t lose your people because…

I'd love to, as I'm really tired of my current employer, and they're definitely taking advantage of me, but I resolved to never waste my time with leetcode garbage again... which means I either stay where I'm at, or exit the industry entirely.

what is it about leetcode that makes it a waste of time?

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#324

Post by geofft » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

gavinray wrote: post #283

zinclozenge wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a joke? No I don't care about the companies I work for in the slightest. A company is only as good to me as their last paycheck, to paraphrase from The Sopranos.

Why do you work for a company you don't care about, instead of one you do? Don't you feel hypocritical -- you're supposed to treat others the way you want to be treated. I assume if you were hiring people, you wouldn't want them to do that to you. So why do it to others?

Not the person you're replying to, but I think there's a whole lot of mistaken assumptions in this comment.

There is one employer in the world that will reliably give me work I care about and am happy to work on for its own sake, and that employer is myself. Unfortunately, I can't afford to hire myself full-time. I tried it once, and it turns out (unsurprisingly, given my career) that I'm interested in working on interesting infrastructure problems and not interested in building a product, let alone marketing or selling it. I got some PRs into an open source project and then I ran out of money.

So no matter what I do, I have to settle for an employer I care less about. At that point, the choice of employer is just negotiation.

Also, it turns out there are a handful of employers who pay really well - to the point where if I work a job I'm fairly happy with, I can then eventually save enough money that I can hire myself full-time for the things I care about.

There is no hypocrisy here, and bluntly you're being scammed by your employer if you've let them convince you there is. The way the employer wants to treat you is to pay you money in exchange for services. That's it. Would you feel hypocritical if you were an Uber driver who took rides from people you didn't care about? Would you feel hypocritical if you were a barber who cut one person's hair, and then the next day you cut a different person's hair?

I didn't make a vow of faithfulness to my employer, promising to be with them for richer or poorer, for better or worse. (And even that agreement is two-sided, and you can non-hypocritically break that agreement if the other party isn't holding up their end of the deal.) I signed an employment contract, promising them that I would do work for them and they would pay me, and that they could stop paying me at any time and I could in turn stop working for them at any time.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#325

Post by nythrowaway » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:33 PM UTC

What does this mean on a real world level in NYC? Can anyone offer 350+ to 15+ YOE in NYC besides FAANG. 4 years ago I interviewed and failed 6/6 design and 4/6 leetcode (passed lyft and fb leetcode). 4 years ago I studied about 50-100 LC and did a design review class to get that far . I’m much better at design but couldn’t pass 5 hard LC. I’ve got a family and with work it’s a lot to do that much studying every day again. 4 years ago I could not get any 300+ offers

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#326

Post by remus404 » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:35 PM UTC

jpollock wrote: post #301

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that FAANG pays very well in India and Japan and Canada. Is this not true?

They pay top-end for the local market. However, if a competitor comes in paying Bay Area salaries for remote work, that can be a lot higher than local wages.

After extensive research, I've found that almost no companies are paying Bay Area salaries for remote work outside the US.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#327

Post by slyall » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:36 PM UTC

blacha wrote: post #181

y04nn wrote: post #32

Is this situation specific to the US? Has anyone experiences in other countries?

New Zealand, with our borders closed my company has had multiple job ads open for intermediate/senior developers for over a year. Every candidate we do interview, generally also has multiple other job offers.

The immigrant supply is cutoff and there is upward pressure on wages but employers are not panicking yet. Just grumbling that usual pay is not attracting good enough candidates.

Plenty of places have not increased wages yet and interview process seems around the same.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#328

Post by brailsafe » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:40 PM UTC

baby wrote: post #185

cxx wrote: post #115

Not my experience at all. For context, I'm a L6 at FB right now and have more than a decade of experience. I've never seen tech interviews become as stupid as they are now. In the last 3 months I've applied to a few places, including one where I literally built from scratch what the hiring team wanted to do (and got promoted for it at FB), and I've never seen the difficulty of the programming rounds so high as now. I…

The programming interviews are getting ridiculous. It is really an immense pain to go through an interview for a senior developer role nowadays, and it is super arbitrary. I did like 5 at the end of last year and I was just sooo tired. Got mixed results as well even when I felt like I understood the problem better than some interviewers. On the other hand, I got two companies that gave me take home assignments which…

It's bad for any level, not just senior. I literally haven't received an offer in over a year of varying interviewing, because no matter what I'm applying to, I get hit with a hackerrank test that compares me to probably anyone in terms of simply whether or not I solved every test case. Others will put me through 5 interviews before deciding to not hire. I can't support myself financially with programming skill as a result (in Canada). It was bad 5 years ago, it's worse now.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#329

Post by MattGaiser » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:42 PM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #305

MattGaiser wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For my current job the posting said 4 years of experience. I had 1 at the time. Officially, my company is only hiring seniors, but if a decent junior applied (at least a year of experience inclusive of internships), I could see us taking them, especially with the right tech stack. So, apply anyway.

This bums me out. On two levels: * The company doesn't have a clear idea of what they want, so they fall back on 'years of experience'. Lazy. I've written job descriptions and I know it's hard, but c'mon. * This will turn off talented folks that might make great team members (esp folks who don't apply unless they have 100% of the qualifications).

It is a more a case of what they want vs what they are willing to/forced to take in the current market.

I doubt they would openly consider that person, but when there is a candidate in front of them who has reasonably passed some questions and is willing to accept, I would hope they would budge.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#330

Post by irrational » Sun, Aug 01, 2021, 11:43 PM UTC

I work for a Fortune 500 company who has announced that when people start going back into the office, it will be work from home M and F and in office the other three days… except for IT employees. I thought that was interesting they specifically said IT employees can stay remote. Now I’m wondering if this has anything to do with it.