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I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

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Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#301

Post by el_benhameen »

voakbasda wrote: post #234
didip wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I would go as far as saying that LeetCode interview is biased against older engineers with families. Especially young families.

What?! Age discrimination in the software industry??? Say it isn’t so!!! Seriously though, your insight is astonishingly spot on: LeetCode is a perfectly legal means of practicing age/lifestyle discrimination. Yet another innovative Silicon Valley dark pattern. Why is this the first I’m hearing it characterized this way?

Yeah, this is so obvious once it's stated this way, but I'd never thought of it like that either. Every time I talk to prospective employers and they wax about their rapid fire technical challenges and 5-round interview processes that last six weeks, I wonder "how the hell do they expect someone with other commitments to do all of this?" And the answer is ... they don't!

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#302

Post by intricatedetail »

hguant wrote: post #8

There comes a point where the money just isn't a motivating factor anymore, and companies are struggling to figure out how to work in that environment. This bit from the author hits the nail on the head: >Is an extra $10k per year worth learning a new org, a new skillset, a new set of expectations, a new set of coworkers, and a new boss? For many engineers, the answer is: “No.” Yes I could quit and get a ~20k raise b…

10k raise is not worth adding extra anxiety - unless your current job pays so little it will make a difference. Engineers are severly underpaid that's why money seem irrelevant, because these sums are too small to be.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#303

Post by leeoniya »

SOMA_BOFH wrote: post #265
hguant wrote: post #8

There comes a point where the money just isn't a motivating factor anymore, and companies are struggling to figure out how to work in that environment. This bit from the author hits the nail on the head: >Is an extra $10k per year worth learning a new org, a new skillset, a new set of expectations, a new set of coworkers, and a new boss? For many engineers, the answer is: “No.” Yes I could quit and get a ~20k raise b…

>There comes a point where the money just isn't a motivating factor anymore clearly you've never been poor.

the implication is that most people have a limit to how much money they can reasonably spend before they start seeking things other than more money in life.

even a poor person can tell you that an extra $10M in their pocket will be no more life-changing than an extra $1M.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#304

Post by ptr »

it_does_follow wrote: post #148
Waterluvian wrote: post #15

I’ve gotten 7 recruitment emails since Sunday and none of them have come close to sufficiently explaining what the company or job is for me to even consider responding. It’s bizarre how secretive they are. I imagine the recruiters are looking out for their own interests. Recruiters are in the way.

> Recruiters are in the way. I'm astounded at how awful recruiters have gotten. What's insane to me is how no one in the industry seems to question the spray and pray approach to recruiting. There are a few "whoa that's neat!" things on my resume such that if a recruiter or hiring manager looked at it they would certainly notice. This works as a great test for if a recruiter is really looking at me or just spamming a…

A recruiter contacted me for a position at the company that I co-founded. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to play along, so the only outcome was a message to the hiring manager.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#305

Post by kelnos »

lolinder wrote: post #138
anonporridge wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it does. If you have a high salary, you are probably living in a HCOL area. If you have a low salary for the same kind of work, then you are probably living in a LCOL area. The savings rates of these different individuals could be the same if the salary difference is proportional to the cost of living difference.

But 20% of $200k/yr is $40k/yr, while 20% of $100k/yr is $20k/yr. If you make twice as much while saving the same rate (i.e. cost of living goes up proportionally), you'll still end up saving twice as fast. Then move to a LCOL area, and you've got twice as much saved as the people who've lived there all their lives.

I think it's a pretty big unsourced assumption that savings rates are similar between LCOL and HCOL areas. I'm curious if that's really true; I wonder if there's any research/polling done on this.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#306

Post by greyface- »

user123456780 wrote: post #150
reikonomusha wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an under-discussed topic that this apparent utopia isn't available to everyone. Race, gender presentation, academic background, country of residence or origin, Twitter blue-check, etc. all seem to be correlated (no numbers; purely anecdotal) to those who enjoy (or don't) this utopia. Being masterfully technical, social, or political have a lot to do with it too, it seems.

> Being masterfully either technically, socially, or politically have a lot to do with it too, it seems. I don't think you need to be a master to get more money. What I have noticed as a hiring manager/tech lead is candidates/team members fall into either asking for more money or not. I have guys on my team who if they asked for money I could easily add 20 - 50k to their salary. But they don't, they also don't shop t…

> I have guys on my team who if they asked for money I could easily add 20 - 50k to their salary. But they don't

Give them a raise, proactively.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#307

Post by isoprophlex »

jen20 wrote: post #95
ikiris wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had a recuiter get angry at me recently for asking them for a basic job description and salary after their cold email had literally zero information other than the expectation I'd set up a call with them for a "very competitive role". Like, I just don't understand the audacity of most of them. Especially when almost invariably their competitive pay is 30% of what even base level fangs would offer. Its a co…

This was (and I assume nothing has changed) an endemic problem in the UK, especially for contractors. One of the most accurate descriptions I’ve ever read about it is “Don’t feed the beast - the great tech recruiter infestation” [1 - though an archive since the original has been taken down]. [1]: https://gist.github.com/CumpsD/696599d1bd4cd472a056586967293...

This is beautiful. Shithead is what would have happened if Terry Pratchett wrote a novel about recruiters.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#308

Post by reikonomusha »

BoorishBears wrote: post #289
reikonomusha wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could simply be extremely small sample size, but I know 5 (!!) people personally who fall into this intersection. All of them are quite talented. All jumped ship from meh-paying start-ups to a high-paying role at AMZN after railing on AMZN the years prior for being an awful company. One of them even took a department leadership role (or whatever the title equivalent is) and cited a 3x increase in TC. It could be t…

Amazon is not so far ahead in comp that the type of dev being talked about has to go with them for a given TC. Until the last few months Amazon was barely competitive in FAANG, it's a very recent development that they've started shoveling money into offers. So you could always go to another company competing with them for talent with a given offer and (assuming you performed well enough to justify it) you'd have no p…

"Just simply get a competitive job offer from the revolving doors of the top-10 top-paying companies and you won't see a 3x increase" is absolutely true, but only useful if you're talking about employees of these revolving door companies. If your getting a TC of 180k at a startup that gave you options of no value, and you score a high enough position at AMZN (as apparently this ex-colleague of mine did), then seeing total comp over 4 years exceeding 550k/year—while perhaps not the norm—is totally possible.

It could be argued that $180k is not a fair number to judge a 3x increase on for the reason you state, but it is what it is, this is a real salary that real people get paid. Not everybody flocks to FAANG as their first career move.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#309

Post by kelnos »

leeoniya wrote: post #173
anonporridge wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People regret having kids all the time. It's just not socially acceptable to talk about openly. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/m9vh8a/serious_p... https://www.reddit.com/r/Parenting/comments/1wvx04/serious_d... https://www.reddit.com/r/regretfulparents/

if you read the links you posted, a large portion of these are from people who weren't ready, or had kids with disabilities or adopted without enough vetting, or were not financially ready, etc. all parents go through difficult periods where they do regret not sleeping, or the work. but on the whole, the vast majority would not trade their kids for lonely family-less early retirement. just because you found 10k comme…

> just because you found 10k comments on the internet doesnt imply this sentiment applies to 7bn people.

No, but at least the parent provided some kind of source to back up their assertion. Where's yours? I don't think it's safe to assume "nearly everyone who has kids don't have regrets".

I went through a phase 5+ years ago where I was reading a lot about this sort of thing, and found that there are more people who regret having kids (entirely) than I would have expected, and way more people who regret the timing of when they had kids than I would have expected.

As the parent points out, it is very very taboo -- especially for a mother -- to admit this sort of thing, so we can expect this to be under-reported.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#310

Post by refurb »

pb7 wrote: post #260
refurb wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn’t use Reddit posts to justify a statement of “all the time”.

“All the time” here means it has happened in the past, it happens today, and it will probably continue happening. It may not be a high percentage of parents but it exists. Believe it or not, Reddit is made up of human beings just like you.

"All the time" infers high frequency.

And sure, Reddit is full of humans, but it's nowhere close to a representative sample of the populations. That should be clear as soon as you start reading.

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