Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
It's a bit embarrassing perhaps, but I don't actually look much for clients. Recruitment agencies find me on LinkedIn and contact me about projects they're trying to fill. Doing my own acquisition would be a lot of extra work, and I'm not convinced I could do it better than these recruiters, so I just sit here and let them contact me. My projects tend to be 1-2 years where I'm part of a team working on the same thing…
I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
901–910 of 927 posts
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#902Earlier quoted context omitted.
The app that people use to access their money is absolutely core tech. If the payment infrastructure goes down (or worse: is buggy), that's a massive problem. Banks that don't consider this core aren't keeping up.
Many of our customers didn’t even use the app. They could phone up and get someone to do every action for them. If your product can operate without the app then the app is secondary
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#903Earlier 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…
>30 paid holidays I'm always angered by these over-generalizations for the whole of Europe. Europe is not a single country with identical laws and working conditions but they differ wildly by borders. The minimum amount of vacation days by EU law is 20 per year for every full-time worker in the EU but workers can get more based on union negotiations of each individual country or individual company perks that wish to…
* 25 paid days off (vacation)
* + 13 paid days (national holidays/bank holidays)
* + 1 personal paid day off (this is quite new)
* + 5-10 paid days off to care for a sick child
* + 1-3 paid days off for moving/wedding
* + up to 40 days paid sick leave (per case)
* + 40-80 days paid off for pregnant women (Mutterschutz)
* + some companies/contracts offer more than that
additionally to that you have:
* Karenz - up to two years maternity leave (paid, but capped)
* Bildungskarenz - up to one year education leave (paid, but capped)
* Arbeitslosengeld - unemployment insurance for at least six months, but up to 5 years (paid, but capped)
All this stuff does not depend on your employer. For some
(everything based on 5 day workweek)
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#904I once had a recruiter tell me: “Elon Musk is one of the easiest people on earth to poach senior leadership out from under.” After eighteen months in the gulag of rocketry/EVs, many managers are ready to cry “Uncle”. As a non-native speaker, I have the hardest time parsing this sentence, could anyone help me out? What does it mean when someone poaches “leadership out from under” — does it mean that leadership grows i…
“Poach senior leadership out from under” means “steal away from.” So it’s easy to hire senior leadership from companies run by Musk. “Cry uncle” is an idiom meaning “admit defeat”. So they work there for 18 months, realize they can’t handle it, and admit defeat and quit.
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#905Earlier quoted context omitted.
He’s right. If customers are not able to do this themselves through an app, the required headcount would boom and no retail bank would be profitable.
You might want to look at the profitability of the 'app only' banks vs the traditional ones
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#906Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It's a huge difference when you compare absolute numbers for sure. But also there is a huge difference in taxes. You could argue 1200 is not so bad when you pay 25% taxes instead of 40% for example.
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#907Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might want to look at the profitability of the 'app only' banks vs the traditional ones
What would I learn?
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#908Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt the stagnation is the fault of poor hiring practices. More likely has to do with monopolization and business models that favor advertising over users.
Can you elaborate? I'd like to hear your thoughts
This is why the web is stagnating with near Chrome monopoly, just like during (shudder) the IE years.
Same for Google itself. Bing/DDG are only half-assed competitors. Google seems to be making search worse for all kinds of bad reasons, just because they can.
I'd guess most people who use an alternative to gmail specifically don't want to use Google, not because something else is better.
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#909Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 allow…
I wonder if we have something like this in the US.
Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now
#910Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got about a 4.5% effective pay cut this year. I'm 10 years in with an MS and I'm only a midlevel making under $100k. I don't think those excuses apply.
None of that has any bearing on what I said. If anything, having an MS and mid-level experience only make it easier for you than most. But you’ve been complaining about your job for months and you’re still there. And you talk about all other jobs like they’re beneath you.
Source? I haven't said any jobs are beneath me.
"only make it easier for you"
Basically what I'm saying - I don't suck at interviewing etc. There aren't many high paying jobs in my area. I do just generally suck.