Want good programmers? Then pay them. • Hacker News Board

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#401

Post by Retric » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:06 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #296

Jabbles wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something intrinsically wrong with giving someone 30 days' holiday per year? Surely this is the same kind of freedom to spend your time as you wish that Google (with its 20% time) is famous for? As you said, in Europe this is common, and the viewpoint that it "smacks of entitlement" is puzzling. Is it just a cultural difference? I'm don't think there is any evidence either way that this affects productivity.

In my experience Europeans have a different view of life than North Americans. Especially East coasters. In work I find they are more interested in perfection and creativity, and less so on productivity, output, and efficiency. Thirty days of holiday a year is affordable if North Americans would be fine with houses that were 13% less spacious, but most North Americans I met heavily optimize living space, where Europe…

I am a 31 year old programmer working 40 hour weeks in the US. I get 21 days PTO + 2 floating holidays + 7 Government holidays + 5 days training days + 3 months sick leave at full pay + unlimited sick leave at 60% pay (long term disability). I also pay 2k/month in rent for a small, but nice apartment in the DC area.

Ignoring sick-leave and training that works out to 30 days / year off, they don't let you cash it out and there is a 25day cap designed to get you to actually use that time off. (Most people end up taking a month off every other year or so, they also let you go a little negative to encourage longer vacations.)

PS: They also do maternity / adoption leave, and give separate time off for funerals etc.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#402

Post by jakobe » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

pmjordan wrote: post #347

manmal wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austrian (currently self-employed) developer here. You are mostly right, except that: Employees are not impossible to fire, that's a myth. There was this big Siemens layoff some years ago where several hundred developer lost their job, just because Siemens decided they are not into software anymore. Also, it is common to pressure people into signing mutual "job quit contracts" (don't know a better word). How did you…

Veering into the crash barrier of off-topicness, but... How did you get screwed in Austria? It's hard to overstate how much the SVA (the social security provider for self-employed people) annoys me. The amount you pay them in theory depends on your earnings[1] but in practice how much you pay right now is linked to how much you earned 2 years ago : They assume your profits will go up 8% each year, so for the current…

I'm in Austria too. My accountant told me that it is possible to just pay higher SVA payments. So if you assume that you will have to pay 5000/year, but they only charge you 3000/year, you just pay them an extra 2000 EUR on your last payment. And as long as you pay that before the end of the year, can deduct that from your taxes.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#403

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:14 PM UTC

randomdata wrote: post #335

infinite8s wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you aren't really working for free. More like on contract.

But that would only be true if they decide to use the results. Otherwise, it's just another contrived quiz with no real-world merit. The worst case is remains the same as the status quo, but the better case is that you'll be paid for your time in the interview. It still seems like a positive step. No quizzes at all seems like an even better way, but I did qualify the point with the assumption that the quiz would happ…

[deleted]

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#404

Post by eli_gottlieb » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:18 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #147

throwaway1979 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really glad you mentioned "cute little puzzles". I am sick of them. I'm not really sure who has sufficient time to spend blazing the employer with feats of their programming prowess (I was going to say only undergrads would do that - however, many undergrads in top programs have little time to bathe). If this was big companies being stupid, I'd get it. The HN crowd ... some of the smartest hackers around do littl…

If a recruiter goes after you, and didn't bother to Google your name and look at your GitHub/OS contributions etc. he's obviously cold calling and wasting your time. He's the guy who asks DHH how much Rails experience he's got. But, on the other hand, if you apply to a company, especially one that's more or less famous, puzzles are a very good way of separating the wheat from the chaff on a level playing field. Evalu…

Do you really think it's fair to require Stripe to assign a member of their engineering team (that means you after they hire you) to review every strangers GitHub accounts, when you refuse to invest even a little time in signalling to them that you're the real deal (the puzzles aren't all multi-day endeavours)?

There's no such thing as fairness in the job market. If Stripe can't find enough programmers to fill their needs, then yes, they need to allocate their own labor to recruiting. At some point, the business cycle will swing the other way, and it will become necessary for programmers to put our time into hunting for companies who want to hire even one programmer.

C'est la vie.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#405

Post by rguzman » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:19 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #109

DominikR wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I've been thinking about moving from Vienna to somewhere more competetive for some time (though its not about the money, I'm paid really well here - just about competition, which I happen to enjoy a lot), but the reasons for not doing it are some of the features you get when living in a more "socialist" (though I wouldn't call Austria socialist) country. Security, low crime rate, very few homeless people, drug…

Sure, I would probably earn more if I did the same job in San Francisco, but then I would have to deal with a much worse social situation, and I would have to be more cautious. Does the crime rate actually differ much between SF and Vienna? A quick google search provides very little info, but suggests there is not much difference. I haven't been to SF lately, but crime is a negligible issue in NYC. Though SF may be a…

The crime rate is probably different. But that is not really meaningful to your every day life since your life doesn't happen in the whole city. ie the crime rate is an aggregate.

I reckon the "effective" crime rate for the places of SF where someone with a developer's salary may choose to live are comparable to those of the similar places in Vienna. I bet the same goes for most other "quality of life" proxies.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#406

Post by bearmf » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:22 PM UTC

danssig wrote: post #399

gopi wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this argument (Europe is superior) made again and again. Let me try to clear the misconceptions. Please note i am a immigrant in US and somewhat qualified to compare it with the other countries. 1, Public education is free in US. Of-course the quality varies depending on which school district you live. But in most metros (other than NYC/Bay area/north east) you will be able to buy a 4 bedroom house in a good sc…

You're not clearing any misconceptions, you're making them. It would take a lot of research and work to discover what a "good district" is, while in western Europe you can just send your kids to school and not worry about it. Lots of states don't have any good districts at all. Healthcare paid for by the company is the stupidest thing ever. The company is trying to save money and having them pay for health care means…

I don't know why people are downvoting parent, most of the points are true.

"It would take a lot of research and work to discover what a "good district" is, while in western Europe you can just send your kids to school and not worry about it. Lots of states don't have any good districts at all." All of this is false, sorry. There are sites like greatschools.org where most public schools are rated. It is relatively easy to distinguish a good district from a bad one. And I don't believe you can send your kids to schools and not worry anywhere in the world, it is just a bad way to raise them. As about states not having any good districts.. Examples, please.

Health insurance certainly sucks, but 10k deductibles are not common at all. Insurance companies pay most of the time, if you are in network they really cannot refuse after the fact.

Salaries for software engineers in US are much higher than in most of Europe, and taxes are lower. Though it is probably not 2x.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#407

Post by JVIDEL » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:24 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #264

The comparison to equity being getting paid in lottery tickets is apt (IMHO). Nevertheless there has never been a short of pioneering spirits willing to risk it all to strike it rich (just look at the gold rushes in the Dakotas, California and elsewhere). This is really the modern day equivalent. There was a thread here last year where people talked about their exits. A common story was "worked my ass off for X years…

Dude if you are working at Google and _not_ getting paid then the industry would be about to collapse...

I think you got a couple of things wrong and that's assuming this was about making an easy million off some code.

It is not, the problem here is that most engineers (which aren't working at companies like Google) might not be properly compensated for the work they do, while coworkers in other less critical/relevant areas make more for completing tasks that nowhere as complex as writing decent code.

But hey don't look at me! look at all the would-be coders that chose other careers because of this.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#408

Post by kragen » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:29 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #356

horsehead wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just incredibly naive, but are fizzbuzz tests really that necessary? I have a hard time believing anybody could get an interview, let alone graduate with a BS in compsci, without being able to do something THAT simple ....

You'd be surprised... But actually, fizzbuzz is just the bottom level. You also want to do basic coding exercises for whatever specific area you are hiring for, such as: - Set up an extremely basic web app that lets the user enter a name and echoes it back to them. - Make a sprite move across the screen. - Display a 3d cube with different colors on each side and make it rotate. - Make it play some music. - Aggregate…

I wonder if there's a harder equivalent to FizzBuzz — one that doesn't take any longer to explain or do, but requires a much higher level of skill to pass. One we used at http://airwave.com/ was "Write a Perl subroutine to determine whether a string is a valid dotted-quad IP address," which is something you can do in various reasonable ways in one to five lines of code.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#409

Post by bearmf » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:32 PM UTC

carlob wrote: post #281

gopi wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this argument (Europe is superior) made again and again. Let me try to clear the misconceptions. Please note i am a immigrant in US and somewhat qualified to compare it with the other countries. 1, Public education is free in US. Of-course the quality varies depending on which school district you live. But in most metros (other than NYC/Bay area/north east) you will be able to buy a 4 bedroom house in a good sc…

1. [Public education]. If one supposes a good public school in the US is comparable to schools in France or Scandinavia, which I doubt, the issue of secondary education being at least 10 times more expensive remains. 2. [Healthcare]. Not all insurance plans are equal and most of them do not cover limitlessly. In the unlucky event of something like cancer, Americans are left bankrupt, Europeans are not. 3. [Vacation].…

1. Why do you doubt it? There are very good public schools in US. But the variance is very high, so the bad schools are very bad, which brings the average down.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#410

Post by ScottBurson » Thu, May 03, 2012, 9:38 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #264

The comparison to equity being getting paid in lottery tickets is apt (IMHO). Nevertheless there has never been a short of pioneering spirits willing to risk it all to strike it rich (just look at the gold rushes in the Dakotas, California and elsewhere). This is really the modern day equivalent. There was a thread here last year where people talked about their exits. A common story was "worked my ass off for X years…

The lowering of the barrier to entry means talented engineers are nearly always better off starting their own startup rather than working for yours

Yes -- I think a lot of us are starting to figure that out :-)