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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

#461

Post by DrBazza »

reikonomusha wrote: post #29

Purely anecdotal: In my experience as a hiring manager seeing trends change over the past 10 years, and selecting from the top 10% of candidates by some vague metric, it's primarily about "does it pay a lot" and secondarily "does it offer full-remote"? A lot of my friends, former colleagues, and candidates I've failed to hire end up going to either a FAANG or a very successful brand-name company (typically a SV compa…

> > Ex-Colleague: Pay is great. Not a lot going on. Not a lot of fuss on the job. I easily own a house and pay a mortgage and have a lot left over. Definitely put in less than 9-5 worth of effort. Probably can retire early at this rate.

The gilded cage.

As you get older, you have seem to have less time. It's some sort of biological illusion, but having to spend time prepping for interviews, running your life, family and so on, means the incentive to move from a very comfortable job to another has to be a lot more than when you were in your 20s.

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

#462

Post by nly »

eyjafjallajokul wrote: post #340
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…

> 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.

You say that like moving to the US is as easy as pie. Emigration to the US is incredibly difficult.

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

#464

Post by IshKebab »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #458
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…

>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…

Yeah same in the UK. 25 days is the norm. 28 days is good. 30 days is very rare. Also nobody gets paid overtime, the company's pension contribution is 5% of your salary.

Yes benefits are better in Europe, but not so much that you're better off earning $100k here than $200k in America.

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

#465

Post by dastbe »

exdsq wrote: post #433
dastbe wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you interested in the norm in terms of raw numbers, or where you would need to work to achieve this? and are you interested in people who have won the stock lottery, or just people who have their total comp pegged at 500k+? assuming the latter, you're looking at getting hired in at level as a senior engineer (maybe one level higher depending on the company) at most of your brand name tech companies that value eng…

Okay sure, but it’s hardly the case one can just join a FAANG company at a senior level to earn $500k easily as OP suggests. Want to retire early? Easy! Just become a managing partner at JP Morgan in your late 20s and you’ll be rich enough by 30.

i would guess as a percentage there are two orders of magnitude more senior engineers at an arbitrary tech company vs managing directors at an arbitrary investment bank. senior engineer is ~5 years of experience to achieve, with maybe 1-2 years extra if you're meandering.

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

#466

Post by roel_v »

loeg wrote: post #141
lhorie wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't really seen a whole lot of evidence that there's any stronger correlation between FIRE and engineers compared to other jobs (in fact, many FIRE blogs are from non-eng people). And conversely, there's plenty of engineers who have kids (hence, very much not FIRE). The vast majority end up going down that route, in fact, at least in my experience.

Why do you say kids are incompatible with FIRE? They add some expense, but it is not insurmountable with a high income like many senior software engineers enjoy. There are prominent FIRE folks with kids -- e.g., "Mr. Money Mustache."

MMM sells shovels in a goldrush, and got divorced (with relatively young kids) out the blue while selling his white picket fence (albeit a cheap one) lifestyle dream for years. Hardly the one to bring up as an example for a successful FIREee.

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

#467

Post by [deleted] »

giantg2 wrote: post #70
anonporridge wrote: post #61

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…

"that can get them retired easily by their mid 30s" Maybe a small subset. The median dev salary is $110k. So no, only a very small number are able to retire in their 30s.

[deleted]

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

#468

Post by BoorishBears »

reikonomusha wrote: post #308
BoorishBears wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The whole point is if you're getting a TC of 180k at a startup and Amazon offers you 550k/year, Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google are all likely to do similar numbers.

You don't have to already be working at one.

In fact a good number of companies are likely to be closer to 550k/year than 180k since they're also aware they need to compete with FAANG offers.

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Meanwhile Amazon is not particularly easier to join than the rest of FAANG (modulo the specific team), they're not particularly more prestigious than the rest of FAANG, the work is not particularly more exciting than the rest of FAANG... meanwhile the culture aspect is a huge negative outlier.

Amazon almost has this cartoonish level of negativity hovering over it ever since things like URA and Focus have slowly come out to actually as real things... between all that and the on-call and the general work you'll be doing, it's just not an amazing choice.

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

#469

Post by episteme »

IshKebab wrote: post #464
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Yeah same in the UK. 25 days is the norm. 28 days is good. 30 days is very rare. Also nobody gets paid overtime, the company's pension contribution is 5% of your salary. Yes benefits are better in Europe, but not so much that you're better off earning $100k here than $200k in America.

But does this include bank holidays? We have 8(?) paid bank holidays in the UK so even 22 days is in reality 30. There are much fewer in the US.
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