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

cushychicken.github.io

451–460 of 927 posts

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

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link if you have it? I’m curious. I’m not surprised people are trying it. While I can definitely see it being possible to get the work done for a while, I can’t imagine how they could avoid meeting conflicts across 4 jobs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861370

As said on that thread - in many countries, if you're working 4 jobs it's likely fraud or breach of contract, so "hopefully" this person is contracting instead.

Still, it's not "unusual" to outsource your job to somewhere cheaper: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21043693

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

#452
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 r…

i've met plenty who have regretted the timing, or having 3+ kids instead of two. but never about having 1 kid instead of zero and it preventing their otherwise early retirement. having one kid will delay any kind of FIRE strategy significantly for all but the top 0.01%. the GP's argument is that people just dont have the willpower to make the necessary sacrifices to retire early...such as simply skipping having those…

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

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, I feel like engineers are much more likely to be attracted the FIRE mentality and tend to have the incomes and low spending habits that can get them retired easily by their mid 30s. I'm personally in that boat, and frankly, I'm a little bored but not bored enough to go back to work as an SE full time. If companies offered more part time work and highly flexible work, it might be enough to drag me back in. Even…

Exactly. Once your needs and wants are met, every extra dollar can just get saved, and means less time until retirement. For this reason, there is never “a point where the money just isn't a motivating factor anymore.” If you are already comfortable and have the trajectory to retire at 55, why not job hop if only to be able to retire at 45? To me, the only point where moar money is truly useless is the day you retire…

I think it's rather personal. I never plan to retire. I want to die coding. The extra cash isn't really a motivation. I've quit a job that I sort of liked, to take a job that paid 10k less, but was something I ended up loving. I didn't notice the difference in my spending habits.

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

#454
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?

They ask questions that kids are taught at 18/19. It's almost shocking; this is how you're selecting?

People that are in their 40s aren't confused by the question but are more confused by why it's the question as being able to answer it is so disconnected from any metric of competency or quality.

It'd be like saying "so you have an engineering degree, oh a masters from 20 years ago. Cool, remember Lagrange multipliers and Hamiltonians? I'm sure you do. Here's a problem. You have 10 minutes"

That's why we keep seeing the failures of the past repeat. Tech selects for people too young to know it and too arrogant to study it.

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

#455
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone here earning $500k in their 20s like this person suggests? I’m sure some can but this is not the norm and expectations need to be checked and called out when wrong.

I was in startup land over in SF, so my salary topped out lower at 160k USD but with ~2% equity. I was in a partnership in a small plane, and one of the guys was "in his 20's making $500k+" at google as an L6 plus retention bonus. Several engineers in my circle (early 30's) are on $500k+. Currently I'm living in Europe but leaving back to SF. I tell people all the time about salaries in the US and point them to level…

I think the big question is: can you reach these salaries on a normal work week, or does this require sacrificing your personal life?

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

#456

I'm sure this article is on point, and the comments here seem to confirm it. But to me it's just wild that working to bring about a net positive impact to the world isn't mentioned anywhere. And no: that's not even remotely the same as "cool stuff". Making a rocket taxi for the super rich or tunnel for SOVs is not it. We are on the brink of a global environmental collapse, and a lot of the blame is on the "cool stuff…

The problem is that the more likely a job is to help people the less likely it is to pay well, software engineers are expensive and is helping people going to outweigh things like being able to support a family? Or at least an extra 100k

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

#457
post #40
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…

I do not disagree with your take, but I think you may only be speaking for a subset of engineers that are already fairly well compensated. The article likewise seems to discard the importance of money in favor of three other more immaterial factors, but I do not think this is representative of the situation of the global job market right now. I also think such a perspective can not fully explain the difficulties that…

There is the proverb: The engineer is the mule, business people ride on towards (their) success.

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

#458
post #311
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not disagree with your take, but I think you may only be speaking for a subset of engineers that are already fairly well compensated. The article likewise seems to discard the importance of money in favor of three other more immaterial factors, but I do not think this is representative of the situation of the global job market right now. I also think such a perspective can not fully explain the difficulties that…

> 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…

>30 paid holidays

I'm always angered by these over-generalizations for the whole of Europe. Europe is not a single country with identical laws and working conditions but they differ wildly by borders.

The minimum amount of vacation days by EU law is 20 per year for every full-time worker in the EU but workers can get more based on union negotiations of each individual country or individual company perks that wish to attract talent.

In Austria, the norm is 25 paid vacation days a year for all full-time workers including tech workers. I rarely saw more that 25 days of vacation offered for tech workers here even at supposedly "top" companies which Austria doesn't have many of.

>paid overtime

Same for this. In Austria, most tech jobs don't pay overtime (thanks to shitty "all-in" contracts) but, factory style jobs with clocked shift-work do, since those are usually unionized and the metall workers union is one of the strongest in the country. Also many jobs, especially in public healthcare sector do a lot of unpaid overtime due to underfunding and staff shortages. In low-skilled jobs with high competition, like hospitality and cleaning services, unpaid overtime and your boss being abusive is pretty much the norm.

>Ah, and in some countries having too many companies on the CV isn't well seen

Gee, let me guess, hyper-conservative, 100-year-old German boomer companies(factories)? They're free to expect that, but staying 10+ years at the same company was good way-back-when there wasn't rampant inflation, and rampant real-estate prices, and a factory worker could support a family and buy a home from his income and he'd be employed till retirement and the company would always invest in his training. Those days are long-gone now thanks to globalization, offshoring of jobs and unrestricted immigration, so any company is happy to keep your wage growth below asset inflation levels as you loose out and the company wins as inflation is eating their loan paybacks and the salary they have to pay you, so the only way for you to claw back some of those losses is to job-hop (if you can).

And if you don't like it, there's nothing you can do about it if you don't have skills in high demand in a filed suffering from a shortage in your domain, as unlike the 1960's when even workers with basic education(high-school) had leverage, the company can now hire through a plethora of more candidates thanks to easy immigration, or offshore your job completely to a palace with less employee/environmental protection, while paying fuck-all in taxes through their shell company registered at a post-box in Luxembourg, basically depriving workers of most of their leverage they had in the past. That's why political parties on both extremes of the spectrum are seeing a resurgence in Europe. If we don't fix the rampant wealth inequality yesterday, we're gonna see political extremes and civil unrest growing stronger in Europe. Which is why I guess the EU nation states are so keen on gaining more surveillance powers and banning encryption, to make sure they stomp out any civil unrest before it happens.

The biggest perk we have in most EU countries is paid sick leave and health insurance if you lose your job. If your health ever declines and you end up loosing your job this is invaluable to not becoming homeless. Although many of those social benefits suffered cutbacks and receiving them became stricter in some countries after the 2008 recession.

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

#459
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, ... If you are in your 20's, it is totally worth moving to the US where you can get paid 500K+ per year if you navigate your career efficiently. I posit that making this much money more than covers any of these additional expenses that you call out.

Anyone here earning $500k in their 20s like this person suggests? I’m sure some can but this is not the norm and expectations need to be checked and called out when wrong.

I think it feels like a bit of an extrapolation from recent market conditions. But someone who’s 28 is still in their 20s and can have enough experience to be considered a senior engineer. Big tech companies will pay >$250k for that and recently those companies have done very well in stock markets so if you were offered $x of shares (at the current price) over 4 years at the start of the job, they would now be worth say $2x. If you combine that with a job market where those companies are all competing for the same people it is likely one could do well by being in the group that is being competed for.

So I think it is reasonably plausible for someone towards the older end of the range with a bit of skill and good fortune. It feels unlikely that the trend which I described above (of company stock going up 2x every two years) will continue so I would expect effective compensation to go down a bit. But on the other hand compensation can be pretty sticky and plenty of people will be willing to quit after reaching the 4 year cliff (where their stock awards would no longer be worth 2x what they were meant to be worth) to look for high pay elsewhere.

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

#460
post #356

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

This is actually a common offer. Some companies that wanna continue to offer high compensation without this upfront sticker cost are now resorting to one year rather than 4 year grants (stripe, Lyft).

Stripe and Lyft are definitely not aiming to avoid upfront sticker cost with their 1 year grant scheme.

An exceedingly charitable view is that they're limiting downside, but realistically they're limiting upside so that you don't end up with people reaching targeted compensation for the next 4 years in a year or two and then leaving regardless of unvested shares

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But I also mentioned in a comment above, I think my view is skewed because I negotiate base aggressively

As an L6 I make 250k base, and my initial grant was just over 600k in RSUs at a non-FAANG company. I think that's a higher base than median but lower equity than median for FAANG

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