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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

#801

Post by RHSeeger »

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?

Because people see this

> Working software over comprehensive documentation

and use it as a reason not to do documentation at all. It's ambiguous, and can clearly be read as "you should not work on documentation when there is software to work on", and there's always software to work on.

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

#802

Post by hoffspot »

geekbird wrote: post #759
gnud wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> video based tutorials there's your problem.

Seriously. I hate "video tutorials" on how to do technical stuff. I read faster than videos can explain stuff, and with text I can go back and forth to the stuff I need without trying to forward and reverse a video to a certain time.

The feedback is totally fair. What we do is conduct live "learning sessions" with experts in aspects of our implementation that go through tutorials on specific technical aspects of the platforms. These learning sessions are recorded and referenced next to the text based documentation that complements inline comments in the code. They are not a replacement for the text based documentation. Think of them as equivalent to various YouTube videos you might reference when learning how to do something. You might read the particulars in a piece of documentation but then also watch a walk-through of a specific piece of technology if you find that helpful.

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

#803

Post by claytonjy »

alistairSH wrote: post #795
claytonjy wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Cool, that lines up with my recent experience at a "mid tech", a Fintech that will IPO this year or next. I interviewed for Staff, they downleveled me to Lead, I quit in 6 months. There were people ahead of me with half my experience...but those folks had basically never worked anywhere else.

Funny to compare that with my previous experience at an IIOT startup, where I was employee ~#30 and the third or fourth engineer doing cloud stuff. Started at Staff, left at Senior Staff after two years but would have been Principal if I stayed another 2-3 months. The gap is big!

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

#804

Post by winrid »

shostack wrote: post #314
winrid wrote: post #133

Loosing out on 10k a year doesn't sound bad until you're 100k/yr behind where you could be.

Everything is relative. I know many people who would trade $100k over 10yrs (less if we assume it's overrated) to watch their kids grow up and spend time with them.

You don't have to make that trade, though. I have way more spare time at the higher paying jobs. To an extent I suppose.

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

#805

Post by IshKebab »

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.

It doesn't, so yeah standard is 33 days including bank holidays. How many are there in the US?

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

#806

Post by claytonjy »

decafninja wrote: post #750
alistairSH wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG employees, particularly on the West Coast, are an anomaly, even within the US. People also often include stock grants in listed comp, so be sure your comparing apples to apples. DC/Mid-Atlantic salaries at an established (non-FAANG) company are more like $85-$100k for a recent grad, $130-$170 for senior developer positions. Most of those jobs are in the suburbs, where a nice house is in the $500-$1million range…

While there is cost of living differences per region in compensation too, I imagine the typical senior+ software engineer in the US is lucky to retire after decades of work having broken $200k-250k total compensation. Meanwhile junior FAANG engineers are probably making that much. I'd say this applies to HCOL areas too like NYC or even the SFBA. If you're working for a cludgy old Fortune 500 tech-is-a-cost-center ent…

To put a point on this, I saw an opening for a Chief Data Engineer (or something like that) at Ford. I asked my friend, a long tenured mechanical engineer there with friends on the software side, what that would pay...he said 200k! I bet it's closer to 300, but still, it's no wonder everyone hates their car software.

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

#807

Post by rr808 »

kelnos wrote: post #327
rr808 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can earn 5% investment returns after inflation during your saving years This is very unlikely long term. Right now treasuries are 5% less then inflation. Lots of FIRE people are going to get shafted.

Not sure I agree. Trinity study suggests that if you retire 30 years before death, you can safely withdraw 4% every year during retirement, regardless of economic fluctuations. If you retire super early and need 50 or 60 years, your safe withdrawal rate is probably closer to 3% or even 2%, though. Your point may be that we should expect significant economic turmoil in the near- and medium-term, much more than "fluctu…

Wow I never heard of the "Trinity Study", its a report written 25 years ago by a few guys at a small university I've never heard of. Remember back then bond yields were 5% and inflation was 2%, Clinton was president and the dotcom boom was really starting. Things are very different now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_study

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

#808

Post by avgcorrection »

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…

“Talent” drives me nuts. Makes it sound like people are talking about applicants to Berklee.

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

#809

Post by travisjungroth »

tablespoon wrote: post #722
commandlinefan wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's the root cause of your bug Hang on, don't blame the agile manifesto here. Blame the management that adopted the agile manifesto as "do all the exact same things we used to do that didn't work, but call it 'agile'".

> Hang on, don't blame the agile manifesto here. I totally can, and will. It's on them if they popularized slogans that can be too-easily misunderstood. That's meant that agile, in several respects, has been an exercise of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. > Blame the management that adopted the agile manifesto as "do all the exact same things we used to do that didn't work, but call it 'agile'". That's clear…

Good ol’ intent vs impact. If you’re proselytizing something, it shouldn’t be judged by your intentions or how true it is, but the impact it has on the world. Agile was not great in that regard.

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

#810

Post by optymizer »

BoorishBears wrote: post #294
optymizer wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20% seems very low to me. In the 2 FAANG's I've worked at, the RSU's ended up being 100+% of my salary (which was average for my level).

Initial grant was 100% of one year's salary you mean right? So +25% of yearly salary before appreciation? Otherwise you're saying something like a 250k base, 1MM RSUs before stock appreciation... which is a very lopsided looking offer

I meant 100% yearly, but after reading your comment I double-checked my offers and I was wrong. RSU grant (per year) was at ~45% of base salary.

I was going by my tax filings, and because of the stock growth (and additional grants), I end up with 100+% yearly, but that's quite different from the initial award.

Thanks for pointing this out.

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