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Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

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Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#141
post #66

I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup. However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and inte…

Here I was thinking $95/hr was pretty good for app development.

Years ago when i was much more junior my rate was $85, and if I couldn't get paid more than that today I would be totally ok, but a little disappointed.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#143

For the past year the most common topic whenever I go to any conference or meetup has always been that the economy sucks and that economists have no idea what they're talking about. I hardly know anyone under 65 who is particularly well; certainly not in comparison to even 2 years ago. Many people who used to be financially secure are in much more precarious situations now. It's not just anecdotal. I see it at a larg…

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Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#144
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With experience comes pattern recognition. You can see traps 10 steps ahead of your junior peers. Yes, they can experience personally those steps faster but you can spot 5 of them reading emails with your morning coffee. My problem now is stopping myself from thinking 20 steps ahead and thinking of all work being pointless. It's a mental trick you play on yourself if "maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'll learn something, chop…

> With experience comes pattern recognition. How do you put a dollar value on that though? If I can hire either 2 junior programmers for $100k, or 1 senior programmer for $200k.....how the heck am I supposed to know that this guy can pattern-recognize an extra $100k of value??

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Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#145
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is your approach to hiring consultants, I'd like to set up a meeting. :)

Sure, as long as you're okay being terminated without warning. And we're expecting results quickly. Like within the first hour.

This made me laugh. Can't tell if it's a joke or not.

Are you looking to hire robots or something?

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#146

For the past year the most common topic whenever I go to any conference or meetup has always been that the economy sucks and that economists have no idea what they're talking about. I hardly know anyone under 65 who is particularly well; certainly not in comparison to even 2 years ago. Many people who used to be financially secure are in much more precarious situations now. It's not just anecdotal. I see it at a larg…

Maybe it’s your circle. Things are particularly bad for entry level devs right now, but I know a lot of people outside of tech, and the vast majority are employed and doing OK.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#147
post #116
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had one person today - with lots of FAANG experience who’d recently gone freelance - tell me that they weren’t willing to work with me to write code but they were willing to do advising for $450/hr. We just weren’t on the same page. I don't know. If you're not hiring them full time, it might be a bargain, and save you a bunch of money. Particularly if you're trying to architect services from the ground up. Some p…

It’s always a question of ROI. It’s hard for me to identify any form of technical advice that would be worth that much at my current company stage. I’ve already allocated n% of shares to investors and advisors. Before spending money I must identify a specific need. I can give a very specific need for code (features, launch dates, customer requests) but frankly do not have a need for technical advice by itself.

If the project is really open source, maybe you need to shift from feature implementation to community-building. If the userbase is large and has a cause, then that can be a better carrot for a first SWE than an outsized salary.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#148

So, as a 56yo who's been programming professionally since 2004, currently having trouble finding enough contract work, a bit of perspective: When there are more openings than qualified people, even when you reduce qualifications to what is actually necessary, it seems like there's "nobody" available. Now, when the shoe is on the other foot, it seems like "nobody" is hiring. It's harsh, but it also doesn't take that m…

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Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#149
post #100

11 years experience. took me 4 months to get a new job, the longest its ever taken since I became a dev.

4 months is actually really good, relatively speaking. Just wait until you have 20 years experience, and you are trying to explain to your interviewer (who has 5 years experience) something which took you 15 years of hard experience to learn.... 35 years experience here, been looking for 2.5 years.

The problem is that “experience” has no value in our industry, unless it is recent experience with some technology, framework, language, and the memorization of those algorithms and data-structures.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#150
post #66

I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup. However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and inte…

It doesn’t make sense to try to hire devs whose experience is at the largest companies in the world for an early-stage startup position. You’ll have a mismatch not only in risk tolerance but also skills.

The way to go IMO, is to hire someone who’s experience has been startup-focused and offer generous equity to compensate for the fact you can’t pay market rate.

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