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Want good programmers? Then pay them.

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Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#201

Post by Evernoob »

randomdata wrote: post #179
switz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that cute puzzles are annoying and unnecessary, but if you look at the puzzles Stripe has on that page, you'll see that they are anything but cute puzzles . Something like the CTF that they built is an awesome and fun way to see if a developer has the chops to run with the big dogs. These are cool real-world problems. They're not sitting you down in front of a whiteboard and forcing you to complete e…

They are boring though. If I have to take a programming test, I'd rather take that time build a real feature onto your product, even if for free. If you like the results, at least I've created real value for my time, not just played a silly game. There's a risk that you won't like the results and it will be thrown away, but that's a reasonable gamble.

No way. I'm not going to do free work for your company to make money off in the hopes that you'll give me a job later.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#202

Post by knieveltech »

clavalle wrote: post #185
elliottcarlson wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with a lot of what you said; but stating that you will under no circumstances work more than 40 hours a week bothers me. I try to get out of the office every day on time - but shit happens, and there are instances where someone needs to fix something or else the company is losing revenue. You want financial stability with a high salary - but aren't willing to help make the company stable. Yes, a healthy work/…

Crisis mode is addictive. It was fun to play the hero and get 'That One Critical Feature' out of the door for an important demo. It is a rush. Investors like it. Engineers like it. Soon a company is always in crisis mode; pushing hard to get the next great thing out. It becomes the culture. At one company I worked at the VP of Engineering was the hardest, longest working person I'd ever met and a driver of that cultu…

"The product did not languish. Things still got done. Turns out clients, for the most part, could not care less how hard and fast we worked. Having good information for when something would be complete was sufficient. Sometimes better because we were not breaking ourselves trying to impress them with impossible deadlines that we would sometimes miss. Good information was better than fast information."

This. After years of working at shops where putting out fires was the norm I took a position with a company that handles their client deliverables in the manner you describe. For the first six months I was constantly jumpy, waiting for crunch time to hit and slinking home at 5:00pm feeling vaguely guilty that I was done for the day.

I just couldn't famthom how we could be working on all of the large project initiatives in our pipeline with no screaming clients and no marathon code sprints.

After a year in a sane environment it'd take more than six figures to get me to go back to the soul-eating grind that is so typical in small dev shops.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#203

Post by rmc »

danssig wrote: post #191
rmc wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no-where on earth are there 30 holiday days per year and 40 hour maximum. No-one works that. Except several EU countries which have that as the legal minimum… (e.g. France: 35 hr legal working week, 25 days holidays and ~ 13 paid public holidays per year)

Most of western Europe, if not all, gets at least 4 weeks vacation. 40 hours is a bit more demanding but 42 is pretty common.

All of the EU gets 4 weeks. It's called the European Working Time Directive. That'd give you 20 days paid annual leave. Some member states have higher. (I think) all member states have paid public holidays aswell.

All of the EU gets 48 hours maximum working time per week, that's the European Working Time Directive again. The UK has a sort of an opt-out to it. Some member states have a lower maximum.

Fun Fact: I'm from Ireland (20 days holidays per year). Talked to some Germans, and they were shocked I could get by on 20 (they got 30).

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#204

Post by Avshalom »

jshen wrote: post #158
ntkachov wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he meant that if there is a serious crisis he might stay. Sure, every once in a while a tornado sweeps through your data center. That happens once every other year. "We need you to stay till midnight because a very serious VC is coming in and this project needs to be done" is not a crisis. Serious stuff happens, it does not happen every other week.

"under no circumstances do I work more than 40 hours a week." Should we take him at his word or assume that he isn't precise when speaking? Both are bad signs.

Precision isn't accuracy, and pedantic precision isn't super common in casual conversation anyway.

Look I can't speak for the OP, maybe ze would quit the first week ze's expected to work 40hours and 1 minute. Saying "no more than 40 hours, unless a tornado hits the data center; or my close friend and co-worker's mother dies and he asks me to stay a little late to finish some of his paper work; or a bomb will go off killing a dozen orphans if we stop coding" might be more precise, but it's also less accurate because by listing off every one of a billion unlikely situations in which OP might be willing to work over time it creates the impression that 40 hours is a much more flexible limit than it is.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#205

Post by danssig »

RobertKohr wrote: post #156
pmjordan wrote: post #13

Some context/perspective on the Austrian employment situation: * Salaries are typically quoted per month, but there is a bonus of 2 months's salary paid per year, so yearly gross is 14 x monthly. The bonus is taxed at a lower marginal rate (6%, no social security contribution, IIRC, vs 37.5% lowest marginal rate). * There is no fixed minimum wage in Austria. Instead, there is a collective bargaining system, which set…

I think you might have got to the the main issue. It is not like there is a cultural pressure to keep the pay for a programmer down, because that would break down quickly if there are a lot of positions not being filled. I somehow doubt that the value earned by hiring a programmer is much less than elsewhere. So really that leaves only some other operator that is messing up smooth market operations, and that is the e…

The market is notoriously inefficient in hiring/working because companies work so hard to keep prices (salaries) hidden so one has a really difficult time knowing what the market value of a given skill is.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#206

Post by smiler »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #28

Sometimes small and medium businesses simply don't have the money to pay the big bucks that we think we are worth. I've worked with a number of companies turning over in the low £millions, and it's very rare that the founder is taking lots of money off the table whilst low balling the staff on salaries. These businesses simply don't have the margins and the runways to let salaries get out of hand. As most of the econ…

This is spot on. Most businesses, the Fortune 5000 if you will, are not operating with hefty profit margins and most as you say, have people who are not taking lots of money off the table.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#207

Post by skrebbel »

Jasber wrote: post #143
skrebbel wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonderful for you maybe. I call it positive discrimination. Btw, is that startup cloudfrag? Where're you guys located? (I'd rather be a garbage man than write Python for a living, but I'm always curious about Dutch startups that I didn't know about)

Out of curiosity why would you rather be a garbage man than write Python for a living?

Usually when I explain this, I get downvoted by the HN Pythonista downvote mafia, but since you asked, I'll take that risk.

In essence, I think Python is the mediocre features of all languages combined. It's a mish-mash of ideas, badly mish-mashed together. I don't want to use a mediocre language.

- It's object-oriented, but not consistently so (len() anyone?)

- It's object-oriented, but not really the standard library (derive from dict? Oh, no, you should derive from UserDict then. dict isn't a class, didn't you know that?)

- The language's evolution shines through even more than that of PHP. First it was "functions! short little functions! those are easy!" (except "print", come on, that's so common that we must make it a statement), then came some data structures, then came objects and classes, so they backported those datastructures onto OO stuff, but not entirely, and oh by the way here's some additional magic functions for some more magic because magic is cool! And lambdas cause hey, you asked. (note: if this isn't the real history of Python, then I apologize to the apostles; to me it feels like this is the history)

- It supports functional programming constructs, but in such a limited fashion that any code not written in a imperative style quickly gets very hairy and difficult to understand.

- It's batteries included, but half the APIs are hell (admittedly, this is getting fixed with the whole "for humans" hype)

- Package management is hell. easy_install isn't easy, oh and it's not installed by default so good luck figuring that other library's "getting started" tutorial out. But hey, you need pip for this! Doh, pip is the new best thing. Except for those database drivers there, they have an installer. Oh, and they'll only work on Python 2.7.1 32-bit, but they won't warn you if this doesn't match cause that would make the code longer! We hate long code. BTW, I've heard this is less bad on non-Windows, but still, what's wrong with a single package management system, shipped with the language?

- Its documentation is complete, but very limited. Few examples, a lot of information vaguely hidden in very short sentences. What are this function's argument's types? Is this index value here zero or one based? What type does it return, and why can't I click on that to get to that type's documentation?

Now, none of these are horrible sins. In all honesty, maybe I'm overreacting with the garbage man thing. But Python is so popular, and only growing in popularity, and IMHO entirely undeservedly so. If Python was as popular as, say, Lua, I'd probably have complained less.

For a language with pretty much the same "general" featureset (dynamically typed, big community, multi-paradigm, low entry-barrier), I think Ruby does it better on all fronts except docs. Though in reality I prefer C#, but that's simply an unfair comparison.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#208

Post by jroll »

randomdata wrote: post #179
switz wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that cute puzzles are annoying and unnecessary, but if you look at the puzzles Stripe has on that page, you'll see that they are anything but cute puzzles . Something like the CTF that they built is an awesome and fun way to see if a developer has the chops to run with the big dogs. These are cool real-world problems. They're not sitting you down in front of a whiteboard and forcing you to complete e…

They are boring though. If I have to take a programming test, I'd rather take that time build a real feature onto your product, even if for free. If you like the results, at least I've created real value for my time, not just played a silly game. There's a risk that you won't like the results and it will be thrown away, but that's a reasonable gamble.

This is how we hire, and I think it's great. Both sides get to see if it's a good fit, we see how you work and if you have a product sense. You get to see if you like our product and company culture. Win-win.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#209

Post by tomjen3 »

Mikushi wrote: post #124
josephcooney wrote: post #98

"we're having trouble finding people" is a familiar refrain from people looking to hire developers. if you're having trouble finding people you are, by definition, not paying enough.

Or there is a shortage of developers in your area. My previous company was offering competitive salaries, good environment, challenging work, and we had trouble filling position with decent developers...

If there were too few developers then you should have raised the salaries and gotten developers to move to your place.

Supply and demand is not magic, and it does work.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#210

Post by Apreche »

adpirz wrote: post #106
Apreche wrote: post #93

So true. I get calls from startup recruiters all the time. They don't seem to realize there's this thing called rent. They want to pay with equity. Might as well pay me with lottery tickets. Here's the minimum I need to even bother talking to a recruiter. That means that for me to accept the offer, it probably needs more than this. Six figures, 30 vacation days, full benefits, infinite sick days, convince me that you…

So, I'm outting myself as outsider here but: In five sentences or less, could you describe how you got to be the programmer you are today? I.e., skilled enough to be commanding the kinds of benefits you do? It's mostly out of curiosity, I'm not looking to get directly involved with programming.

I have been programming since Kindergarten. I can program in any language. I also have the skills of a systems administrator, PC repairman, etc. I can do almost anything you need to do with computers, except setup email servers (screw you postfix!)

Also, don't assume that what I am demanding from recruiters is what I am currently receiving. Just because I ask for 30 vacation days doesn't mean I currently have 30 vacation days.

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