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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

#471

Post by Hydraulix989 »

danbmil99 wrote: post #446
gdcbe wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's just the first year out of school pay. It goes up to mid six figures quickly once you get a promotion or two.

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

#472

Post by pirate787 »

pjmlp wrote: post #311
pattusk wrote: 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…

Must be nice to live rent-free under the U.S. security umbrella.

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

#473

Post by Broken_Hippo »

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.

Is it really? I mean, you more than likely aren't going to get paid 500k+ per year, even if you "navigate your career" efficiently.

And in so many cases, you might be losing out. Did you want vacation time or do you simply want to work while you are young?

Do you want to have children in your 20's? If so, maybe not move to the US. Your child probably will have citizenship of your home country - but maybe not, especially if you don't move back. Worse, though, is that the child automatically becomes a US citizen. This means that if you move away, your child must have a US passport if they ever want to visit again... or must pay $2350 to renounce. It means that the child will, until they renounce, be taxed by the US government on their global earnings.

You probably won't get 4-5 weeks of vacation a year - and even if you do, it isn't a legal requirement that they let you use much of it. And they probably won't let you take 3 weeks off at a time.

Or you might find that you get sick and lose your job. You might fall in love and realize that your partner isn't eligible to move to your country with you. You might find that your retirement in your home country isn't as much because you haven't paid into it as much (depending on the system). Or you could very easily find that your retirement is tied up in a 401k that failed miserably, leaving you without.

If you have dark skin, you might find yourself dealing with a US police force at a traffic stop in ways you didn't in your home country. Good luck if you are trans, and in some places, a same-sex relationship will get you ostracized. Of course, the places in the US where that happens most aren't places paying 500k - in no small part because those places are few.

So no, it isn't totally worth it to move to the US.

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

#474

Post by helsinkiandrew »

ironman1478 wrote: post #269
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #257

> In spite of these truths, people flock to working for TSLA and CosmosY. I often wonder how many of the people working at cool places are doing cool stuff and how many are doing the same things as elsewhere. Does it help working in a place building autonomous cars, rockets if you’re not doing that, but doing the same web dev or door knob release software that you could do in a hedge fund, accountancy firm, or evil c…

Autonomous cars make everything difficult and therefore pretty fun, if difficulty is fun :). Let's talk about door knob release. Ok, so now that there isn't a person driving the car, how do you authenticate that the person at the door is who it should be? All of a sudden you've opened a whole can of worms with that one question. The answer to that problem is gonna be a lot more complex than an electronic lock on a ho…

Yes but my point was (in relation to the article) that a lot of the work in cool companies is the same as that done in 'non cool' companies. Does working in a cooler company when you're doing the same stuff that your buddy down the road in the non cool company is doing make it feel a 'better' place to work.

Using my bad examples - if developing the same door knob release system or dealer booking system - feels better because you're doing it in Tesla than say Ford or Skoda? And how much

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

#475

Post by fnord123 »

glitchalumni wrote: post #432
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…

We are talking about 50-60k before taxes here though (e.g. healthcare isn't included yet) - there really is not that much left in the end, especially compared to the US where quite some companies will match our European amenities (talking about software engineering jobs). Also all inclusive contracts are quite common or some legal workarounds with payed overtime after x amount of hours (where x amount would be workin…

> specially compared to the US where quite some companies will match our European amenities (talking about software engineering jobs).

Debatable. In most European countries, if you lose your job you still have health cover. If you lose your job in the US you do not keep the company benefit health insurance (except as part of a severance package for a limited time). For H1-B visa holders, they must leave the country (this is relevant for anyone based in Europe who is trying to determine whether to stay in Europe or use a visa programme to relocate to the US).

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

#476

Post by mantas »

episteme wrote: post #469
IshKebab wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why would you include national holidays into vacation days? National holiday is more like an extra sunday. You can't move it for example if you're on a medical leave through it.

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

#477

Post by gdcbe »

danbmil99 wrote: post #446
gdcbe wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see, so while not rainbows it does come with the fact that you're expected to be a slave on location for 24/7? So if I understand it correctly it is only rainbows if you wish to combine that with a family life and without having to move to us?

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

#478

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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?

That's just it, it's stuff you learn in computer science, then forget about because you don't use it in your day job.

Your day job is writing CRUD services. That's the job.

Our tech interview - ~8 hour take-home assignment, it was well-paid consultancy - asked people to basically demonstrate they could write a CRUD service. It had reading XML, some business logic / calculations, a REST/JSON API and a front-end.

Ten years later, I'm still working with that basic model. I mean sure, it's been broken up here and there by a different tech stack (Angular instead of React, Go instead of Java, native iOS instead of web) but the basics are still the same.

I haven't had to invert a graph or do a depth / breadth first search since college. The most algorithmic thing I do is implement a comparator function for sorting.

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

#479

Post by niuzeta »

AuthError wrote: post #383
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…

Re: Amazon, I think most of other faang or establishing growing company employees usually don't even response to amazon recruiter which seriously limits their capability to hire even if the comp was going to be very high, there is no way to convey the pay increase they'd get until they respond.

Can confirm. I've set up a filter for amazon recruiters and haven't looked at it since. I don't find them worthwhile to respond.

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

#480

Post by Cthulhu_ »

solididiot wrote: post #377
didip wrote: post #87

The article is concise but missing a lot of real-life examples: * The highest paying software companies employ LeetCode style interview. That is off-putting to a lot of people even though the money would be super sweet to have. * Some wannabe startups also employ LeetCode style interview even though they don't pay anywhere near FAANG/Unicorns. * You know what's worst than LeetCode style interview? LeetCode style inte…

There's something much worse than Leetcode. Take home unpaid long projects that end up in rejection or lowball offers.

I had a take-home assignment not long ago for some... dodgy recruitment-consultancy-disguised-as-training company. It was the exact same assignment as my previous employer used ten years ago. Ended up just showing and talking about my current project, which is basically the same thing.
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