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Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

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Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#231

Post by pradn »

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…

"Do they have 17 years of experience, or have they been repeating year one 17 times?"

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#232

Post by h02 »

rhelz wrote: post #220
h02 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we can't possibly interview 1000+ people, so we have to filter it somewhat based on what they give us: their resume. If you can build me a tool that can find in a stack of 1000 resumes a genius then I'd like to start a company with you and we can make a lot of money together. Basic requirement is at least 5 years of professional experience. Most of the people who apply don't have that. Then after that, a lar…

> If you can build me a tool ... I'd like to start a company with you and we can make a lot of money together. If you can't tell how good a programmer is by his resume, then....why the hell does everybody use resumes to try to do it??? The kicker is you can't sort good programmers from bad programmers by keyword filtering. Asking for specific languages, or specific frameworks, is a particularly egregious sin. If one…

> If you can't tell how good a programmer is by his resume, then....why the does everybody use resumes to try to do it???

I'm wondering at this point if you've ever hired for an engineering position before...

Lots of assumptions here, but we don't use keyword filtering.

> you'll filter out all geniuses who decided that 4 years at Amazon is enough for anybody and wants to make a move. Geniuses with 4 years of experience are probably working at Google for 400k+ salaries and are outside of our hiring range.

You have to prioritize time and when you get 500 people with > I hate to put it in such stark terms, but if your assessment is ruling out good programmers and letting through bad programmer(s), its worthless. You need replace it with something that actually works.

It's a difficult balance because if it's made easier then it lets through more bad ones and if it's made harder it potentially filters out more good ones.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#233

Post by fatnoah »

phillipcarter wrote: post #183
VirusNewbie wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? It’s on the higher end but getting 200k stock a year vested is common enough for senior engineers at FAANG.

Given enough time, yeah. 400k salary doesn't have the time requirement. Of course if you're lucky the stock vesting could be worth more than the equivalent cash, but probably not so much now that ZIRP is over.

Facebook stock grants vest every three months, so it's as good as salary, so a senior engineer will be getting >$50k in stock every three months from day 1. Google is the same, except it's monthly. Not exactly the same as cash, but close enough for budgeting purposes.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#234

Post by Ancapistani »

selimthegrim wrote: post #229
Ancapistani wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case - because I can. It's part of my value proposition from my employer's perspective. I try not to think about it in terms of total compensation, but of marginal income (net income - cost of living). My taxes here are lower, and my cost of living is much lower. I own a 5-bedroom home on half an acre that I paid $125k for. My mortgage is $850 / month. My entire monthly expenditures, including food and such, ar…

I assure you no one's mortgage here is $850 a month unless they bought after Katrina (and even then insurance now has obviated that). Personally I just think employers here think the talent has handcuffs and won't or can't leave. It's not so much about matching the Bay Area salaries but more about respect (a place in Metairie that starts at 120k outright tells you "We don't want you leaving after two years (and impli…

> I assure you no one's mortgage here is $850 a month

That doesn't surprise me, but it doesn't change my point. Your math is just slightly different.

I'm not super familiar with NOLA housing prices and such, but I can't imagine that it's on par with SF or LA. That means you can work for a lower base comp and still have the same amount (or more!) left over after meeting your basic needs.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#235

Post by rhelz »

feedforward wrote: post #230
rhelz wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free market, there's no such thing as a shortage. This isn't a 1980's soviet grocery store. The market for programmers is not centrally planned. Its one of the least-regulated markets extant today. So anybody complaining about a "shortage of programmers" is just a cheapskate. In a free market, what signals to us that more of something should be produced? Buehler? Buehler?

I spent much of 2020 trying to find things like bread in US supermarkets. It's funny how people harken back to Russia 40 years ago as if I was not walking through empty supermarkets four years ago.

There was only a shortage because it wasn't a free market, i.e. nobody wanted to make the dick move of raising the price of bread or toilet paper, because it would cause hardship.

If the prices had been allowed to rise, supply would have equaled demand very quickly, and the shelves would have been stocked as ever. Of course, some people wouldn't have been able to afford them, so we needed some external, non-market mechanism (rationing) to keep prices lower.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#236

Post by pxx »

monktastic1 wrote: post #208
phillipcarter wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, but X over 4 years instead of X over one year is a pretty big difference. I suspect a lot of the ex-FAANG folks know this and are trying to push for it thinking they'll get that deal.

At some of these companies, vests happen monthly (at least, after the first year). It's effectively cash, adding 200k+ annually to a salary of 200+.

There's not even a one-year cliff anymore at Meta or Google.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#237

Post by mr-ron »

rhelz wrote: post #70
h02 wrote: post #14

And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...out of a thousand applicants--who presumably had college degrees/and or years of experience programming for other companies--there just has to be some who would have been successful at your company. I mean, if you lined up 600 random people grabbed from off the street, you'd find 6 to 10 of them with a genius level IQ. In fact, you'd have a good chance of finding somebody smar…

My take is the reason why there is such an emphesis on specific experience (and not just being smart) is modern web apps today are very sensitive with a slew of libraries and frameworks built on top of each other, in a multiservice environment each with different flavors of technologies. Someone coming in fresh without any experience with all of the libraries and tech are just not going to success.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#238

Post by resource_waste »

hayst4ck wrote: post #62

I remember being a naive college student and hearing about a "software engineer shortage." I was too young and dumb to understand that meant that the owners of companies that needed software engineers wanted cheaper labor and that I was to play a part in the devaluation of engineering labor by helping supply exceed demand, thereby allowing company owners to commodify software labor to ultimately pay wages proportiona…

> I remember being a naive college student and hearing about a "software engineer shortage."

This is real and it still is real, these positions don't pay over 200k for a 4 year degree because there is an abundance.

>I was to play a part in the devaluation of engineering labor by helping supply exceed demand, thereby allowing company owners to commodify software labor to ultimately pay wages proportional to hours worked rather than offering a share in company ownership, which allows for compensation proportional to company success.

Wow slippery slope fallacy. The medical field has no commodity workers and they aren't given ownership.

Anyway, seems like an axe to grind rather than the reality of things.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#239

Post by resource_waste »

rlawson wrote: post #202
edgyquant wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe radiologists somehow are more deserving than high level engineers?

Ha! I have a son who is a radiologist and what docs have to go through makes the worst sprint of your life look like a walk in the park. And they train that hard for years . Patients can die if he messes up. The worst thing when I mess up is the product is a few days late. I have been coding for 25 years, make half of what he does and he deserves every penny of the difference.

I used to make airbags. People could die if I mess up. Heck, literally hundreds of thousands of people. (see Takata)

One time, I saw someone cook raw chicken at a restaurant. A $10 an hour worker can cause people to die if they mess up.

Don't let the Physician cartel make you think they have some magical powers because they have the AMA and ACGME working to limit the supply of Physicians.

The fact that you are treated by 1 Physician instead of a team of Physician is something Physicians greedily imposed on us.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#240

Post by DinaCoder98 »

rhelz wrote: post #235
feedforward wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent much of 2020 trying to find things like bread in US supermarkets. It's funny how people harken back to Russia 40 years ago as if I was not walking through empty supermarkets four years ago.

There was only a shortage because it wasn't a free market, i.e. nobody wanted to make the dick move of raising the price of bread or toilet paper, because it would cause hardship. If the prices had been allowed to rise, supply would have equaled demand very quickly, and the shelves would have been stocked as ever. Of course, some people wouldn't have been able to afford them, so we needed some external, non-market me…

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