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

cushychicken.github.io

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

#671

Post by dav_Oz »

Can only attest to small to mid-size businesses (up to 300 employees) in Europe.

The default expectation (from business school?) seems to be if for a given job interview you are left (95% of the time) with say 1-4 (reasonably) good choices mangement is quick to cry wolf: you see, this is the skill's shortage everybody is talking about.

You can make this - at least here in Europe there is a tendency for that - a numbers thing (i.e. performance indicator) which mangement is "measuring". Meanwhile what "specialization" in the labour market meant in the 70's and what it means now a half decade later has changed significantly, multiple times.

For example: We are long at a point now where paradoxically time spent in the educational system is simply time lost for developing and honing skills (for a rapidly changing environment) which is exactly the opposite of acquiring as much "competence" as possible in order to "catch up" with the pace of innovations.

You want to expose young people to real challenges in the world as soon as possible and when they become frustrated with a problem you offer them teaching fundamentals they obviously lack. I am mostly oblivious about my ignorance but when someone can show me how e.g. a mathematical concept can possibly package my problem to make it manageable I will bite.

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

#672

Post by zelphirkalt »

ihateolives wrote: post #336
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…

> 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…

As a software developer, if anyone asked me something like "Should we hire this person, who has had 5 jobs in 10 years?" I would suggest caution. Not immediate rejection, but at least caution. Especially, if all they talk about in the interview is, how they introduced new tech xyz at previous employer. Even more so, if it is about some frontend framework of the month. For me 5 jobs in 10 years would still be some kind of an at least yellow to orange flag.

Many people just want to try out new tech and when that fun is over and they have introduced the cost of complexity for that new toy, they run off to the next job. "Improving" the world in another place.

Fun for them, maybe, but bad for the employer. 2 years is often barely enough to have experienced maintaining the full system of the employer for a while and have felt the costs of complexity. Someone who runs from that every 2 years ... I would be careful with that. I am not saying, that this is the case with everyone, who follows the 2 years strategy, but often it is.

In comparison, if I was visiting interviews and if someone interviewed me and asked something like: "So you haven't learned anything new or been in a different environment in 10 years?". I would probably start to laugh and mention to them, how I had a major hand in basically everything that was developed in the whole organization, have done everything from dev-ops to backend and frontend and more in my job and I have maintained it. If that is nothing to them, then they are probably do not value experience or have no idea what to look for.

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

#673

Post by nicbou »

wreath wrote: post #616
fnord123 wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (…

Depends where in Europe. In Germany, if you lose your job you still have to pay for health insurance, at least the first three months until your unemployment kicks in (assuming you're eligible for it, like in most cases) and I don't know if unemployment covers your health insurance. If you are married and you and your spouse were on the same statutory health insurance, then you're covered by your spouse. Which can be…

This is true, but not quite the full truth. You will fall on the minimum tariff, and both unemployment and social security cover your health insurance. IIRC, they will cover it retroactively for those 3 months, even if you quit. However that last line is from a conversation in a bar.

And yes, if you earn below 450€ a month, you're generally covered by your spouse or family's health insurance with many little rules and exceptions. None of those exceptions are deal breakers though.

This page (https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/german-health-insurance) explains more, and has a very accurate calculator that takes those edge cases into account.

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

#674

Post by evancoop »

"There was a time that engineers were willing to trade years of their lives for the lottery ticket of stock options. I find that, as more companies try this approach, and it becomes more common, more engineers are becoming literate as to the downsides. More bluntly: more people are starting to understand that stock options are frequently worthless."

What's interesting here is not the engineers becoming wise to the poor value proposition, but rather, the market's failure to respond with alternatives. In some cases, there is an inability to pay (e.g. "startup X cannot match FAANG company Y"). But in many others, perhaps the optimism of the person making the equity offer is blinding?

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

#675

Post by bitschubser_ »

pjmlp wrote: post #489
sascha_sl wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a Germany anecdote. >Healthcare That's definitely a you problem, the US is the outlier here. >30 paid holidays 24. Based on 6 day workweek. So 20. More is optional. >Unions, Paid overtime Rarely are there Unions specifically for the IT department. Employers here like "Vertrauensarbeitszeit", which means count your own hours, which usually ends up with you doing more (unpaid) work. >weekends and calls off work co…

Pick companies that have IG Metal deals, for example. Quite a well known names do it.

I second that... IG Metal companies have nice deals 35h/week is the norm, 30days paid vacation and a decent salary for germany...

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

#676

Post by lmm »

tharkun__ wrote: post #662
lmm wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I increase my take home pay, I can stay on the same savings rate as before and retire earlier (assuming that I don't want to make a certain percentage of my last pay during retirement and instead have a fixed goal for my retirement income). That would be extremely unwise - if your savings rate hasn't changed then that means your lifestyle has inflated, and so your fixed retirement income will be a bigger step do…

FWIW, this was simply an example to refute the absolute claim of the parent and the article that only the savings rate matters for when you will be able to retire. This one counter example disproved that. Now as for your claim, I would agree that it is generally unwise to do that. It doesn't necessarily mean that your lifestyle has inflated in a bad way though. If I make 50k with 10% savings rate (5k savings), single…

> FWIW, this was simply an example to refute the absolute claim of the parent and the article that only the savings rate matters for when you will be able to retire. This one counter example disproved that.

But you don't have a counterexample, not unless you can show someone actually succeeding in retiring on a different savings rate. Plenty of people think they'll be happy to live more cheaply when they've retired, but experience suggests that this isn't actually true, which is what the article is going by.

> The other 4k are used to finally be able to go to the museum with the kid, buy them some used skates so they can go skate in the park in winter whenever they want instead of renting skates once per winter etc. While I agree that this is "a lifestyle inflation" I wouldn't say it's one that affect the retirement in the way you mentioned.

Of course it does. You get in the habit of buying things for the kid. You get in the habit of going to these places. (I don't think it's bad to spend money on things you enjoy, especially if what you enjoy is helping others, but it's important to be aware that it's extremely habit-forming).

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

#677

Post by burntoutfire »

kristopolous wrote: post #539
jmchuster wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if FAANGs are so deserving of such vitriol. I would probably say that big companies overall just fundamentally have a set of issues, and FAANGs are probably above average in many aspects relative to the rest of the big ones. Now, if you prefer certain small companies, or other humanitarian or mission-focused ones, that's not a FAANG-specific complaint, in my mind. And just product-wise, it's just way too…

> google, gmail, chrome, iphones There's four excellent examples of things that were better 10 years ago before this practice was instituted. The youngest thing on that list (chrome) is 14 years old. Both Apple and Google used to not hire in this 3-4 interviews of canned programming question way. Then they did. Those products are now stagnating and deteriorating so much that it's obvious to everyone. If you think it'…

> There's four excellent examples of things that were better 10 years ago before this practice was instituted.

FWIW, I interviewed with Google in 2009 and the interview was 100% pure leetcode (not even design/architecture questions). It was exactly a series of four back-to-back 1-on-1 meetings, which consisted of "Hello" followed by an algorithmic puzzle.

If anything they seem to have broadened the scope of interviews since then.

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

#678

Post by natdempk »

leeoniya wrote: post #303
SOMA_BOFH wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There comes a point where the money just isn't a motivating factor anymore clearly you've never been poor.

the implication is that most people have a limit to how much money they can reasonably spend before they start seeking things other than more money in life. even a poor person can tell you that an extra $10M in their pocket will be no more life-changing than an extra $1M.

I feel like there's a big difference between $10M and $1M. At $10M you're free to no longer work because of high returns from that money, you can effectively never worry about money again and live a comfortable life. At $1M that isn't true, you still need to work full time to maintain quality of life. $10M is obviously more life changing than $1M in terms of opportunities you can safely pursue.

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

#679

Post by AuthorizedCust »

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…

Corollary: the documentation must be written to speak to the stupidest person in your team/company who you expect to use the product it describes. Otherwise, you may end up with a documented system that you can’t use or fix.

Fortunately, that’s often me (a supervisor), so I get to be self-deprecating when conveying this requirement.

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

#680

Post by nhumrich »

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…

> hard to describe succinctly

To me, what it sounds like you are describing is the developer experience. Or "devX".

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