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Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

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Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#151

Post by AlchemistCamp »

memset wrote: post #116
bb88 wrote: 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.

It’s possible that your issue is allocating too much equity to investors and advisors and not enough to employees.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#152

Post by kapp_in_life »

rhelz wrote: post #90
alphazard wrote: post #35

Not all experience is equal, but people expect to be compensated for the "experience" (time since entering the workforce) they bring to the table regardless. That's the issue here. There is plenty of software that needs engineering, but we can't make a market. This specific person has 17 years of experience. Are they a staff level engineer, critical to their group? 17 years is more than enough time to become more com…

> unless management is totally incompetent Sooo...how do you measure how good a programmer is? You've got to cut $200,000 from your budget. You can lay off 2 junior programmers, or 1 senior programmer. How, exactly should management determine whether or not the senior programmer is worth twice what a junior programmer is? This is not a rhetorical question, and generalities like "keeps the juniors unblocked" are not a…

I mean.. thats the whole job for the manager? Through performance reviews and keeping track of the work their team is doing. If the senior is actually "unblocking projects" then it should be apparent.

Project not making progress => senior gets involved => project making progress. Or senior gets involved and some architecture decision gets changed to alleviate some risk.

If the senior is doing this but its a visibility problem, then it may suck but they also need to self-advocate if the manager isn't proactively keeping track of their team(like they are supposed to be getting paid to).

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#153

Post by Ancapistani »

memset wrote: 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…

> And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries.

I don’t understand this.

Yes, for some engineers, in some roles, in some locations it makes sense - but that’s a tiny part of the overall market.

I’m 40, live in a rural area in a Southern US state, and have right at twenty years’ experience. I’ve worked a big companies, have been the first tech hire at a startup, and have specialized somewhat in healthtech. I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever been; I have room to grow but I know exactly where that room is and how to make it happen. I’ve done everything from knocking out new tickets every day from a queue to architecting large distributed systems. I love my current job that consists mostly of two things: figuring out what the product side of the org actually wants/needs and making sure it gets done, and supporting all of the other engineers with internal tooling and support.

I make $170k base.

There is equity to consider there as well, but equity in an early-stage startup that doesn’t yet have a firm exit strategy. That’s not compensation - that’s a lottery ticket.

You can get junior engineers in my area for $60-70k, and mid-career around $120k.

I’m at the point where I believe I could _justify_ a salary of $400k… just not in my current role. Not in any engineering role that consists primarily of actual engineering work. That’s the kind of money I’d expect if I were looking at an engineering director or CTO position. I’m very comfortable at my current rate; moving “up” into those roles would require significantly more of my time and energy. My kids are teenagers, and I want to be able not only to spend time with them, but to actually leave work at work sometimes and focus on supporting them. I don’t plan to target those roles for another ~7-10 years.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#154

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

rhelz wrote: post #121
d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #99

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??

It's on the hiring manager to decide what if they need a senior or a junior. High functioning teams need a mixture of both skill sets.

Your job in the interview is to show that you are a senior. Not to make business decisions for them.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#155

Post by lippihom »

memset wrote: 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…

I'm a founder in this exact same boat. Had enough calls with ex-FAANG that have gone this way that if someone has worked there I basically don't even bother.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#156

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #52

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…

"There is no kind way to put this: a lot of stupid stuff got done with a lot of smart programmers in the last ten years."

Any reasonable person would agree, but would the people in Silicon Valley agree.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#157

Post by bcaxis »

Ancapistani wrote: post #153
memset wrote: 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…

> And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I don’t understand this. Yes, for some engineers, in some roles, in some locations it makes sense - but that’s a tiny part of the overall market. I’m 40, live in a rural area in a Southern US state, and have right at twenty years’ experience. I’ve worked a big companies, have been the first tech hire at a startup, and have specialized somewhat in healthtech. I feel…

I'm in a similar boat. Rural Midwest.

Worked for 23 years now in professional development. Started in big companies, then moved to smaller companies/startups.

I'm very very good at what I do and my salary is up to the point where small companies are starting to choke on it a bit, and I'm just a tiny bit higher than yours.

Been a senior, team lead, principal, architect, dabbled in some management. Also with successful product launches under my belt.

If I want to move up in salary - it probably won't be in startup land unless I find a relatively big one and I'm CTO.

More likely that I'm just going to start my own companies even if I have to do everything myself.

It feels like jobs, while somewhat available, just aren't what I'm looking for anymore. And the market is turning, or has turned, unfriendly to the super senior.

From my experience the 400k base is very very niche. Plenty of top end engineering talent out there available for less.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#158

Post by ptero »

bossyTeacher wrote: post #46

Unsurprising. Experienced engineers in this market are like Oracle or IBM post-peak, overly complacent and not used to fight for a job. The kind of people posting on Youtube or making courses about How Everyone Should Code because everyone can get a job coding and no matter how many people join the workforce jobs will always abound. The kind of engineer talking to non-tech people about how they should always negotiat…

While there is a basis for many of your points, the overall take is a quite a bit too doomsday-ish.

Many senior software engineers have financial cushion. This market will probably get worse before it gets better, but like after dotcom boom and 2008 crisis it will recover. And having assets that you can live on for a few years means one doesn't need to dash around panicked to every job posting. My 2c.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#159

Post by jvanderbot »

Solvency wrote: post #12
jvanderbot wrote: post #4

I will admit that a few positions I've applied for have suddenly changed parameters to exclude me, but most of my recent job search difficulty is because all my network is also looking, so getting an anchor in a good place is much more challenging. But the number of new businesses gobbling up these laid off folks is really crazy. There's been a huge diaspora and in a couple years I'm hoping everyone I know will have…

"elwebmaster" posted a completely contradictory assessment of the market 11 minutes after you. WHO DO I BELIEVE?

I don't believe I'm being contradictory with data or with those statements (which I did look up). It's been hard for me, pay is lower when offered, and "diaspora" is essentially a huge amount of people leaving wherever they are, even if I painted a rosy picture of startups (lower pay, lower stability, worse work-life balance, required moving) gobbling up most of them. In a few years, I think it'll be better and we'll be in a better non-FAANG place, that's all. And some of us will be working at the next ~B$ company.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#160

Post by bradlys »

cccybernetic wrote: post #28

There's something to this. I’m a senior dev in NYC with ~7 years experience working across the stack (NextJS/ReactJS, Node, Python, Postgres, SQL Server, etc). I’m also not half bad at design. I haven’t been able to get a response much less an interview.

I’ve got about ten years with acquisitions and IPO as an early engineer at startups plus some big company experience.

I’ve barely been getting any interviews for the NYC market. When I do, they have weird processes too. I haven’t done a single leetcode interview yet and it’s mind boggling because that’s what I’ve been prepping for this entire time.

That said, I’ve run out of places to interview. The market is insanely dry for nyc and I’m worried I’ll have to move back to SF to get hired.

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