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

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#431

Post by nowarninglabel » Fri, May 04, 2012, 12:18 AM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #354

moocow01 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Never working more than 40 hours a week nor staying late? It just smacks of entitlement." Working 40 hours a week is considered being "entitled"? What is entitlement is employers pushing down pay rates by paying on salary while pressuring for extra hours without overtime. Fostering this culture and attitude just collectively serves to push down everyone's pay rate and detracts from the attractiveness of our field.

Then color me entitled. I've had these arguments about how many hours a salaried employee should work. Despite the law saying 40, the lawyer was insistent that they could make me work any amount of hours. The next two weeks I put in 20 hours a week. Then I explained to her that any means any, and that if they didn't like it they could terminate my contract, go spend a month finding a replacement and then explain to t…

>Businesses use their negotiating position all the time to lower wages, it's not called entitled, it's called business.

[Citation needed]

Wages are sticky. Very rarely do wages go down, at least in nominal terms. So unless you meant, employers negotiate to not raise wages, and this lowers an employee's real wage in an inflationary environment (in which case you should be more clear) then I don't see any facts to back up your assertation.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#432

Post by potatolicious » Fri, May 04, 2012, 12:31 AM UTC

skerrit_bwoy wrote: post #293

juddlyon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are plenty of jobs that will both pay you more, require less hours, require less commitment, and will be a very safe career(from outsourcing)." Tell me more!

Any of the medical careers, from nursing to MD to podiatrist to dentist. T14 law school and BIGLAW. MBB consulting drone and then BigCo Apparatchik. Buy-side finance, like equity research, portfolio manager, private equity, etc. Commissioned officer in the US military. CPA Accountant. Patent attorney.

I can't speak for some of the items on that list, but I call BS on the medical jobs. I know some doctors and dentists, and let me tell ya, the only thing they've got on engineers is the pay (and even then, sometimes not). They've got an order of magnitude more stress, worse hours, and way more required commitment than even the worst coding job I've ever had.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#433

Post by Periodic » Fri, May 04, 2012, 12:32 AM UTC

fleitz wrote: post #353

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…

Don't dig for gold, sell shovels. 30 days of paid vacation? This is easily achievable, say OK, normally for this position we pay $150K and 2 weeks vacation, so we'll cut the pay by 4% and give you an extra 2 weeks. Then it turns into $144K and 30 days. Most people realize vacation costs money, those that prefer the cash to vacation simply wait til the end of the year and get cut a cheque for their vacation time.

So, in all the companies I've worked for so far you accrue vacation up to a cap, and if you leave the company you get paid out for vacation you don't take. This has lead to a nice chunk of change when I switched jobs in the past.

So what a lot of people don't realize is that you pay for every vacation day. If you would get paid out for it at the end then you are opting to get less money overall for some vacation now. Of course, if you did stay with the company forever then vacation is "free" time, but it could also be considered an investment as it usually scales to salary at time of departure.

With this mindset, unpaid time off is the same thing as vacation, you're just moving the cost to the next paycheck instead of your last paycheck.

Just take some unpaid time off. If you are valuable and productive it probably won't make a difference to the company and it might even make you more productive in the long run.

Anyone have a counter argument to this? I've been spouting it for a while and I'd hate to have a gaping flaw.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#434

Post by mynameishere » Fri, May 04, 2012, 12:43 AM UTC

elliottcarlson wrote: post #133

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…

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/…

Yes. That guy is 100 percent liability.

"I screwed up, but it's 5:00 so I'm going home. Remember my childish contract? So long!"

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#435

Post by mahyarm » Fri, May 04, 2012, 1:20 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #243

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…

You need six figures to make rent?

A 1 Bedroom starts at $1600. A 3 bedroom house is ~$3000. 6 figure tax rate is %40 not counting deductions. If you have a family, your rent already takes out over half your 6 figure income. You only live so long, so you need to make some savings too.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#436

Post by ataggart » Fri, May 04, 2012, 1:23 AM UTC

tensor wrote: post #253

waterlesscloud wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Raise salaries and attract developers from outside your area. The problem was that you weren't actually offering "competitive" salaries, you were merely offering what may have been standard for your area but no longer was sufficient, by your own report.

When someone says "there is a shortage of oil" it is indeed true that oil costs skyrocket. It is also true that there is a shortage of oil. Shortages cause prices to increase, so much so that many people might not be able to afford a resource at all. It's a bit silly to say "there are no shortages! Only cheap consumers!"

>When someone says "there is a shortage of oil"

Someone else should immediately retort with "At what price?"

>It's a bit silly to say "there are no shortages! Only cheap consumers!"

It's only silly insofar as shortages result despite the existence of consumers willing to pay market rates; these generally involve state-imposed price ceilings. What is silly is conflating "shortage" with "someone somewhere wants something but isn't willing to pay the market rate".

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#437

Post by getsat » Fri, May 04, 2012, 2:16 AM UTC

horsehead wrote: post #262

masterzora wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, yes they are. I don't even see all of the resumes submitted to my company since they are filtered through the recruiters and our HR guy but the ones I do see still need a fizzbuzz test more often than not. Granted, it is not a thing you should give everyone . I can usually tell when I look at a resume that such a thing is likely to be pretty pointless (It points me to a github account I can look at instead? Why…

While this is a little disappointing in that it speaks to the quality (or lack thereof) of developers coming out of college, or elsewhere, it is also really encouraging too! the fizzbuzz problem is actually incredibly simple and I was able to write code out by hand that worked in my python interpreter. Hopefully I'll have some good github stuff to point potential employers to soon (i'm working on some things now). Bu…

Congratulations. You're better than 50% of the programmers I interview. Want a job in SF?

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#438

Post by Kaizyn » Fri, May 04, 2012, 2:58 AM UTC

Periodic wrote: post #433

fleitz wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't dig for gold, sell shovels. 30 days of paid vacation? This is easily achievable, say OK, normally for this position we pay $150K and 2 weeks vacation, so we'll cut the pay by 4% and give you an extra 2 weeks. Then it turns into $144K and 30 days. Most people realize vacation costs money, those that prefer the cash to vacation simply wait til the end of the year and get cut a cheque for their vacation time.

So, in all the companies I've worked for so far you accrue vacation up to a cap, and if you leave the company you get paid out for vacation you don't take. This has lead to a nice chunk of change when I switched jobs in the past. So what a lot of people don't realize is that you pay for every vacation day. If you would get paid out for it at the end then you are opting to get less money overall for some vacation now.…

Most places won't let you take unpaid time off when you have vacation days left.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#439

Post by randomdata » Fri, May 04, 2012, 3:33 AM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #382

randomdata wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm beginning to suspect the math is so bleak that it isn't possible :( I'm starting to come to that conclusion myself. They say you need $1M to retire today. With inflation, we're probably talking at least $2M by the time I'm ready to retire. Given that you and I are of similar age, these are critical times for compounding our retirement funds. With so little investment opportunity right now for the average investor…

> it seems like the only hope of seeing a decent retirement for the average person without a lot of capital to start with not on a risk-adjusted basis

The odds are low, sure, but the odds are essentially zero if you take any other route. Granted, a lot can change with time.

Re: Want good programmers? Then pay them.

#440

Post by DominikR » Fri, May 04, 2012, 4:19 AM UTC

khuey wrote: post #393

carlob wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A national law that imposes at least 0 weeks of maternity leave. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave#Americas

No paid leave.

Do less fortunate women with a new born child receive some kind of support from the state in the US, in case the father or family doesn't support them?