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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

#581

Post by codethief »

mcv wrote: post #439
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…

Despite all of that, I think engineers are underpaid in Europe (and presumably East Asia). I just left a job at a major bank where all the non-engineer roles got paid, or at least could be paid more than I got. There were 5 pay scales for engineers, the top 2 of which weren't even being used. I got there from a freelance contract, and I had to take a serious pay cut to continue working on the project. It was a really…

Slightly off-topic questions, because I've been thinking about freelancing lately:

- Where/how do you (as a freelancer) find your clients? (Do you focus on clients from the financial industry?)

- Where are those clients from (location-wise)?

- Do you work remotely? If yes, does your timezone need to match your client's timezone? Put differently: How flexible are you when it comes to working hours?

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

#582

Post by cebert »

I am shocked this author doesn’t mention the interview process itself. Leetcode grinding does very little to benefit engineers in their current position and will not help them at future employers either. I can tell some firms like Amazon are in need of talent as I get hit up frequently by their recruiters. My current job is good and I don’t feel like doing leetcode prep to interview anywhere. Their loss.

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

#584

Post by avar »

eyko wrote: post #568
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…

I'm from Europe and I don't find unions particularly attractive, especially when they want to function like guilds, as they do in my country. That's basically gatekeeping and they want to have the power to specify salary ranges based on qualifications (e.g. university degrees, certifications, etc). A lot of people in the tech community are self taught and don't always take well to the idea that the only way to prove…

I don't know about unions in the UK, but in some other European countries your union won't have anything to do with your salary negotiation or setting industry-wide salary ranges.

They might if you're in a teacher's union, or working in some minimum-wage job with a mandatory union.

But for any high-paying position like software engineering your union is there to have your back if you're being screwed over on your employment contract, to bust the balls of employers who worked you for 41 hours, but only paid out 40 etc.

It's essentially a form of collective employment insurance for your industry, for which you'd pay a small monthly fee.

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

#585

Post by mrweasel »

DenisM wrote: post #553
mrweasel wrote: post #431

The whole "Quittening" is a little US-centric. The short answer is: "Too many jobs, too few qualified people" We're struggling to hire senior talent, well, senior, entry level, anything but apprentice. The thing is: So is everyone else. There are statistic on these things, there aren't anyone to hire, you have to get people to leave other jobs, but then those companies are just shorthanded and you solved nothing. So…

Can you tell more about this apprentice system? And what legal status does it have in your country?

It's like carpenters or bricklayers. We hire student who are enrolled in a tradeschool, in our case they're studying "systemadministration/networking" and the job is part of the education. They are actual employees. They are organized by one of the unions, weirdly enough the metal-workers union, but they handle all apprentices, regardless of their field of work.

The apprentices are paid a fixed salary, they are allowed to work 37 hours a week, when not in school. We pay their salary while at school. We're allowed to have four per senior employee, to ensure that we can actually help them learn. In return we can more or less dictate what we teach them, so we can provide them with the education we need. They normally get the boring trivial tasks initially, but that's okay because it's new to them and they feel like they're help and doing actual work (which they are). As they progress we give them more and more responsibility, until they, in our case, get to handle customers on their own and do their own projects.

It's more or less the same deal with the student my wife has, they're just organized differently, because they're pharmacy workers.

On the surface it seems expensive, but it's a good way to hire people and in the end I believe apprentices actually make us more money than they cost.

We're not obligated to hire them afterwards, but normally most are interested in staying for at least a few years.

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

#586

Post by codethief »

Joeri wrote: post #566
glitchalumni wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you do get (speaking here from my experience in Belgium) is that the top of the wage scale is invisible because past a certain tier everyone works as a consultant to avoid the high taxes. It is not unusual in senior tech roles to charge 1K+ per day or 20K+ per month, and pay a lower effective tax rate on that income, while having long term engagements with the same companies so that little time is lost to churn.

> everyone works as a consultant to avoid the high taxes

You mean, to avoid the social security fees (health/pension/unemployment/…)? After all, as a consultant (whether incorporated or not) you still need to pay taxes and the rates are pretty similar to tax rates for employees.

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

#587

Post by haney »

elihu wrote: post #559

I think there's something else that's necessary that doesn't align well with the things in the article, and which is currently lacking in my current work environment, but which is kind of hard to describe succinctly. Basically, my job requires using a lot of tools and technology and processes created by other people, but none of those tools are easy to use or well documented. In order to get stuff done you have to ha…

This sounds exactly like my experience at Meta.

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

#588

Post by democracy »

jatins wrote: post #278

Another reason companies can't hire right now is because they like to shoot themselves in the foot with their terrible interview processes. Any A lot of times interviewers turn interview into an ego contest where they are looking for reasons to reject. Try your best to remove those biases. If you are a company, have a predefined set of 10 questions that your interviewers can ask from -- make the evaluation criteria a…

Yeah, the hiring process is complete crap in all companies

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

#589

Post by democracy »

digianarchist wrote: post #65
mrkentutbabi wrote: post #17

That’s weird. I like money more than “work for cool stuff”. Cool stuff don’t pay bills. Heh, maybe this is why I am an average engineer.

It's funny that most of my high school buddies grind their jobs for a paycheck, but as a software developer I'm supposed to "find a company I'm passionate about" so work "has meaning". Hard lessons I learned over the last 24 months: - Titles don't matter. Promotions provide minimal pay increases. It's better to focus on finding another job. - Job difficulty doesn't scale linearly with salary. I'm working roughly the…

100% correct. Tell you more - one can try to get a job that pays less thinking you are going to work less - in reality you are going to work more for less money and less respect. These are shit companies and must be avoided.

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

#590

Post by [deleted] »

codethief wrote: post #576
elihu wrote: post #559

I think there's something else that's necessary that doesn't align well with the things in the article, and which is currently lacking in my current work environment, but which is kind of hard to describe succinctly. Basically, my job requires using a lot of tools and technology and processes created by other people, but none of those tools are easy to use or well documented. In order to get stuff done you have to ha…

I'm getting the same impression at my client and my client only employs ~150 devs, not a 100k. All in all, this strongly reminds me of the "Collapse of Civilization" described by Jonathan Blow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko

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