Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cushychicken.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 927 posts

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

#441

Post by BoorishBears »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #434
BoorishBears wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Initial grant was 100% of one year's salary you mean right? So +25% of yearly salary before appreciation? Otherwise you're saying something like a 250k base, 1MM RSUs before stock appreciation... which is a very lopsided looking offer

The non-faang but with faang pegged compensation company I work for does yearly grants My L5 comp is ~$150k base and $140k equity per year (I'm based in UK, would be higher if I was in the US)

I guess this is just lower base than I'm expecting

I work at a company in a similar situation (we get a lot of Xooglers and pay accordingly) and my L6 base is 250k and I have 150k worth of RSUs vesting per year for the next 3 years.

I do negotiate base aggressively vs equity so that might be skewing my view of things

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

#442

Post by halfjoking »

ummonk wrote: post #123

I don’t actually want any of that. I just want reduced work / work hours. I’d rather make half faang compensation and work half as much.

Not even half - my web dev salary is a little over $100k and I stay because the job is a joke.

My priority is my SaaS products I’m making on the side.

Why would I risk my ability to work on what I care about with a change? I could get an asshole manager, shitty coworkers or bad projects at a new job. If you stay at a non-tech company that doesn’t know what they’re doing, you’ll end up being the only person who knows how everything works after a few years. I can just coast maintaining that software now. Screw big-tech, they’re a bunch of pro-censorship authoritarian assholes, even if I could get a job at one of them I wouldn’t.

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

#443

Post by jmstfv »

kelnos wrote: post #327
rr808 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can earn 5% investment returns after inflation during your saving years This is very unlikely long term. Right now treasuries are 5% less then inflation. Lots of FIRE people are going to get shafted.

Not sure I agree. Trinity study suggests that if you retire 30 years before death, you can safely withdraw 4% every year during retirement, regardless of economic fluctuations. If you retire super early and need 50 or 60 years, your safe withdrawal rate is probably closer to 3% or even 2%, though. Your point may be that we should expect significant economic turmoil in the near- and medium-term, much more than "fluctu…

> Consider that the 2021 inflation rate is likely a symptom of COVID

It's mostly a symptom of reckless monetary and fiscal policies.

> Monthly inflation rates for the last few months of 2021 were trending downward

It's the opposite if CPI is to be believed (which is a big if): https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...

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

#444

Post by warner25 »

reikonomusha wrote: post #400
warner25 wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "pay a lot" and "full remote" are basically the dream for anyone who's currently responsible for supporting a family. Your company sounds like it offers some great things, but those things would be much more valuable to single and empty-nest folks. At this point in my own life, with four growing kids and an overwhelmed spouse, I don't have the luxury of being able to trade time and money for "really cool…

It's actually the opposite. While the company I work for doesn't do remote, the absolutely rock-solid stability and superb work-life balance alone attract people who support families and people with mortgages. The average age is also a lot higher, since we have zero qualm interviewing people with 25+ years of unfashionable industry experience. Their family—husband, wife, kids, pet cat—can basically always depend on t…

Good points. There's more to work-life balance than just being able to work remotely and save time with no commute, getting chores done in parallel at home, etc. There are definitely organizations that will burn you out while you work from home.

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

#445

Post by nix9000 »

pm90 wrote: post #346
jmchuster wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno if it's that ridiculous. Having to spend a couple of months studying to get a 100k raise, seems not a completely unfair trade.

It’s selecting for certain attributes that don’t have a major effect on job performance. I would actually paint it as pseudo scientific at this point.

Leetcode questions are not really selecting for anything. It's mostly selecting against false positives.

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

#446

Post by danbmil99 »

gdcbe wrote: post #406
pjmlp wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over in Europe and East Asia, $50 to $60k salaries are the norm Yes, and we have plenty of nice stuff that goes along with it Healthcare, 30 paid holidays, unions, paid overtime, weekends and calls off work come extra (it is 40h week period, want more pay for it), retirement, flex time, ... Like the OP, my expenses are more than covered, getting more isn't worth the hassle to change. Ah, and in some countries havin…

Dunno where you live but in Belgium: - That salary certainly does seem realistic, even though I'm on the higher end and have a base salary above that; - I also get the same amount of paid holidays, might be even a couple more; - we have great hospitality insurance, mutuality (general health care) has to be paid by ourselves however, even though that's cheap; - they do help me save for pension in the form of a contrib…

Not rainbows -- FAANG are out-bidding startups at every level.

If you have a modicum of talent and a flair for interviews, they will gladly buy your soul for $250k/year + bennies from heaven.

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

#448

Post by W0lf »

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...

I'm a freelancing software consultant from Germany that gets increasingly spammed from UK recruiters and always wondered what the case is here. Your linked article pretty much nails it though. That being said things are only slightly different here in Germany, albeit not too much.

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

#449

Post by mcv »

pjmlp wrote: post #361
ihateolives wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah, and in some countries having too many companies on the CV isn't well seen, it appears the candidate isn't able to fit-in anywhere. It is changing though in the tech field. Yes, it used to be that 10 years in the same company showed that you're loyal and dependable, but now it's more like "so you haven't learned anything new or been in a different environment in 10 years?". There's a difference between changing…

Depends, there is a big difference between staying at the same role or having moved between roles while at the same company. Also better have a good answer why having changed so much between companies, saying it was for more money isn't going to be a good outcome on an interview.

This has never been a problem for me. The job I stayed the longest was almost 4 years, most were 2 years or less. Switching jobs is good for your development and growth.

If you want a good answer for that question, tell them you switch jobs once it's become clear that there's not enough room for growth in a company anymore. And this growth isn't just about salary; it's also about learning new skills, new technologies, new responsibilities. If they want to keep you longer than that, they need to keep investing in you.

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

#450

Post by cik »

I've never had a problem hiring engineers, in either of the countries or cultures I've lived in. It's been the same for tiny startups, and large organizations. I've never understood the complaints that it's problematic. Articles like this are a key part of the issue that others experience. As much as we'd like to pretend - Engineers aren't systems and people aren't robots. /rant over.

Productively - we have to understand that different people are motivated differently. Some are motivated by money, some are motivated as in the article by cool tech. But others simply want time to learn, a contractual obligation by the company to provide time to work on open source, compassion, or any number of things.

The issue becomes when an organization continuously tries to filter people into an exact box. Systemic hiring produces systemic outcome - but if we value diversity, then we can equally value diverse motivations. A key part of managing properly is recognizing and working with the differences in people, helping them (and by nature all of us!) be the best we can be.

Okay, second /rant over.

Post reply on HN