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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

#791

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

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…

I think the trick here is that there's definitely a break point in TC that can buy someone's boredom. Sort of the inverse of "fuck you" money. Call it.. "fuck it" money.

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

#792

Post by RHSeeger »

moonchrome wrote: post #771
tablespoon wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These things might be reasonable in a startup with a dozen people, but we have over a hundred thousand. My opinion is that once an organization is a certain size, everything really needs to be written down and easily accessible. I shouldn't have to regularly ask people how to do basic things, it should be on a wiki. If it's complicated, it should be in a training video, or a user manual. Here's the root cause of yo…

Few people read the documentation (spent a lot of effort early in my career on writing docs and copy pasting the docs in replies to questions). Writing good documentation is a skill that takes a non-trivial amount of time to develop. It also takes time to write. Keeping documentation up to date is hard and takes time/effort. Poorly written or out of date documentation is worse than no documentation.

> Poorly written or out of date documentation is worse than no documentation.

No, it's not. I _can_ be, but it can also be much better. Documentation is hard, we know that. But it's also incredibly useful in many cases. There are plenty of times where software is nearly useless, or the time required to use it becomes untenable, without documentation.

Honestly, I feel the same way about the code; if you can't be bothered to put a note in a file indicating what it's for (unless it's clearly obvious to a casual observer with limited domain knowledge), then you shouldn't be writing software at all.

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

#793

Post by csunbird »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #752
csunbird wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post really strikes me as ignorant. Most of the developers stay around 2 years in a company, because the companies usually do not make market price adjustments to the salaries and you start to lag behind if you stay too long. For example, after 2.5 years, I am looking for a new job, as the company is simply refusing to make adjustments based on the market prices, even after a promotion, I am making 20 percent le…

You are making a good point on one hand, but on the other hand you seem to have misunderstood me. Let me elaborate: > For example, after 2.5 years, I am looking for a new job, as the company is simply refusing to make adjustments based on the market prices, even after a promotion, I am making 20 percent less than I should be making right now, and this is not an isolated incident. OK, that is just one job change. It i…

As I explained in a sibling comment, unfortunately, the 2-3 year stays are now the norm and 10 year stays are the outliers.

Doing the same job in the same company does give you blind spots, as 90 percent of the companies do not allow novelties in their processes and tech stacks, e.g. you might not be allowed to do containerize your applications, as the current procedure "just works". If your job allows you to sharpen your skills, keep up with the tech stack, allows you to learn new algorithms and add new skills to your arsenal, even after 10 years of work: Congratulations! You have the perfect job, please let me know of the company, so that I can apply.

>OK, that is just one job change. It is not like 5 in 10 years. It becomes increasingly unlikely, that every company you work in behaves like that, the more years and job changes you add. As in 6 jobs in 12 years makes that explanation more unlikely than 2 jobs in 4 years.

Exactly! The frequency needs to be slower, as with more experience, you are supposed to have a good sense what works out for you and choose a job that you won't be leaving after a year or two. That is why you are expected to stay longer as you get more experience, from what I understand with my measly 6 years of experience in the field.

But, maybe you should also consider that the job market has changed and 2 year turnovers may not present a huge red flag, as long as the candidate can explain why they wanted to switch jobs. Although, many companies are now optimizing their salary/perks/promotion structure and their culture for developers staying for 2-4 years, instead of 10 years as it is used to be. All my three companies were like this, maybe I am just too unlucky, I guess.

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

#794

Post by jdavis703 »

devwastaken wrote: post #762
jdavis703 wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call BS on this, at least in America. I went to community college and a middling state university. Pell Grants combined with various STEM and achievement-based scholarships covered my tuition and then some. When I graduated I applied for two jobs and had three offers (my current employer at the time also wanted to keep me).

Good for you, scholarships are non existent. There are very, very few, and are outside of the use of students in the middle class trap. Most scholarships want requirements that students cannot meet such as references and achievements. Tuition and housing costs of university, at the cheapest of uni's just barely is covered by FAFSA federal and state grants + student loans at a $0 income. One of those grants are also d…

> There are very, very few, and are outside of the use of students in the middle class trap.

Granted I grew up poor, so perhaps middle class students are trapped. I assumed that college educated, middle class parents would otherwise step in where means testing kicks in.

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

#795

Post by alistairSH »

claytonjy wrote: post #765
alistairSH wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. At my employer, Senior Developer is the 3rd (of 6) title in the developer hierarchy. Also the first where promotion upwards isn't mostly automatic. Though the comp ranges for Senior and up have a lot of overlap between levels - to earn beyond 150ish, you'll have to be really good, regardless of title. A Senior Dev would be expected to operate mostly independently on day-to-day tasks, capable of contributing…

> Also the first where promotion upwards isn't mostly automatic In such cases is it still considered the terminal title, the one you either earn or are pushed out for not earning, but are not required to go beyond?

Pretty much. We don't have codified up-or-out rules. I don't see many truly terminal Senior Devs, but have seen people "hang out" in that role for many years. Same thing for Lead Dev, which is one title more senior.

Assoc to Senior or Lead - being successful at normal tasks over time gets you there without much active career management.

Senior to Principal - you'll have to seek out interesting work, prove capable of working across product/business or technical boundaries, and start interacting with leaders outside you team.

Senior Principal - all of above, plus interacting regularly with VP, leaders in Product Management group, capable of high level design/analysis, trusted by peers and leaders across your organization. High level of ability mentoring and leading.

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

#796

Post by exdsq »

nvarsj wrote: post #512
chifintech2021 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the devs at prop trading companies in Chicago or New York will hit 500k/yr after a few years if they can hack it and stomach it. Depending on how close to the money they are, it could be 2-6 years.

Unless it changed dramatically in recent years, when I was in Chicago prop trading firms were paying mid 200 to 300 after a few years. 500k was definitely not normal comp for most engineers at any trading firm, although obviously there are exceptions.

Thank you. This is really my point. People share these rumors of a small minority making huge sums and normalize it as what anyone can do, which just does harm to the industry and to individuals. People actually in the sector/area know it’s not true yet there are those just sharing things they heard like facts.

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

#797

Post by fifilura »

democracy wrote: post #606
fifilura wrote: post #158

I remember, back in year 2000, I went to a speech held by ESR (somewhat odd since I am based in Europe) with content very similar to this article. He was ranting about how all companies should open source their code because that is what keeps employees stay and happy. It was in the middle of the netscape/mozilla open source craze. My reaction was "OK, this is the guy everyone is talking about". A few months later - t…

I am trying to think of a reason why open-sourcing my employer's code would make anyone happy and I can't :) Or maybe I have too much stuff I work on on my own to worry about it...

Exactly. This was 2000 and ESRs speech.

The example he brought up in his speech was some boring banking middle layer which he had with him on a cd-rom.

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

#798

Post by SuchAnonMuchWow »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #320
anonporridge wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absolute value of your salary doesn't tell you anything about how long it takes to get to retirement (or more accurately, financial independence). That's exclusively a function of your spending and saving rates. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-si...

Forecasting your spending rate far enough into the future, however, is a very tricky problem if you're trying to retire at 30, especially if you're living through turbulent times. I'd rather work 3 days a week until I'm dead then let my skills start deteriorating now and live the next 60 years in fear that my fixed income won't be able to sustain me.

When you forecast your spending rate, you naturally take some security margin, for example by retiring when your passive earnings gets 1.5x times larger than your targeted spending. And that security margin (which won't be spend most years) will compound.

Sure, you might encounter a black swan event which force you out of retirement only 3 years after you started, and at that point your security margin won't have increased your stash by much, but at the same time your skill won't have deteriorated much in 3 years.

It also work even if the black swan even happens 20 years after your retirement. You just need to take a security margin your are comfortable with, and project how much you will have after 3, 10, 25 years to see how much you have for unforeseen events.

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

#799

Post by jandrewrogers »

jyounker wrote: post #638
wreath wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Once you are unemployed you do have to pay for your health insurance, but it's heavily subsidized, costing (as a 50 year old) around 200 a month. Compare that to 1200 per month in the USA. It's a huge difference.

Where did you get $1200/month in the US? At least where I live, it is $400/month.

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

#800

Post by tablespoon »

commandlinefan wrote: post #761
salawat wrote: post #730

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's not real Agile If I hear that damn mantra again, I'm going to puke. Xtreme Programming had it right If you aren't writing the damn manual, you aren't delivering an entire dimension of product to your user. I sat down a little while ago to an old 80's handheld digital business organizer. The device itself was meh. The manual tho! My God, I'd forgotten what it was like to read a primer on a product that had act…

> If I hear that damn mantra again ... never take Minimum viable documentation But... you're not doing it right. Like, not at all. Where on earth do you get "don't provide user manuals" from the agile manifesto?

>> If I hear that damn mantra again ... never take Minimum viable documentation

> But... you're not doing it right. Like, not at all.

Nope, sorry. You can't honestly say someone's doing it wrong, especially when "it" is defined so vaguely, or when "doing it wrong" seems to emerge from the document at least as much as "doing it right," if not more so.

> Where on earth do you get "don't provide user manuals" from the agile manifesto?

Where do you get "provide user manuals" from the agile manifesto"? The problem is that it's most easily read as a rejection of documentation, in general.

That fault lies with the manifesto.

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