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On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

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Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#141

Post by morgante »

kmonsen wrote: post #127
morgante wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (1) Developers should be making more than what they are As a developer, I'd love to agree with this. In fact, I do. But in our experience this isn't directly related to the talent shortage (again, we have never been unable to make a compelling offer to a candidate). > (2) Why should startups be entitled to cheap labor? I don't think they should be. All our senior devs have generous compensation which easily adds up…

150k is pretty bad for a senior dev in NYC fyi. Perhaps you have answered your own question. Banks will pay at least 2x more and large tech companies closer to that than what you are offering. Note I'm not talking about truly great developers, merely good senior ones.

I'm not sure I agree, especially when you factor in substantial equity. We have interviewed numerous people from banks and large tech companies and our salaries certainly don't seem out of whack.

For reference, $150k is right on target according to AngelList data: https://angel.co/salaries

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#142

Post by morgante »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #129
morgante wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world isn't nearly as binary as that. I'm not a VC or founder. I'm a developer just like you, trying to deliver cool products—but doing so requires more developers. If my company was trying to suppress wages, or refused to pay above market, then I'd agree with you that we have no right to ask for more talent. But we're perfectly willing to pay for talent—we just can't find any. I wouldn't be surprised if the numb…

I'm going to concur with selmnoo, but be less rude about it: sorry, but those are the rules of the game. However hard a time you're having finding senior developers, the incentive to produce them domestically gets skewed downwards, making the problem worse in the long term, if we let you "patch" the issue temporarily with immigration rather than signaling higher demand to the market with rising salaries. Of course, y…

Training is part of the solution, but I truthfully don't think that can be driven by startups. We might not even be around years from now to receive the rewards from our investment in junior developers.

More practically, I wouldn't feel right hiring junior developers when I don't think we'd be giving them the best training given our current staffing levels and product needs. Since we already have too few senior devs, I'm not sure I could justifiably ask the team to take on the additional burden of mentoring junior developers (though I do hope we can start a robust training program once the dev team is a bit larger).

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#143

Post by pm24601 »

morgante wrote: post #84
sosuke wrote: post #2

Just on the subject of programmer salaries, I was talking with someone who had much more experience in the computing industry than myself and he pointed out something I'd never known. He said that programmer salaries from pre-bubble days was six-figures, and that we're still in that range, and not higher is proof that salaries have been kept low. Six-figures today is not what six-figures was worth in 1998. Inflation…

In principle, I agree with most commentators on HN that if there were actually a shortage we'd expect to see salaries rising. Yet, in practice, it does seem that there's simply an absolute shortage of experienced developers. I've been hiring developers at my job for most of the past year, yet we have never had an offer turned down. Rather, we see only a trickle of applicants, very few of whom are event remotely quali…

I suggest looking outside of NYC for a developer that would be willing to move to NYC.

In Silicon Valley, the talent pool is very picked over. I suggest to anyone in SV to look outside the immediate area. Post ads in Kansas or Michigan. Some place where getting paid a NYC salary seems great.

You have to get creative.

Even if there was a dramatic increase in engineers - there is no guarantee that they would be interested in cafe.com.

I did look at your job postings and I do have some suggestions:

1. List your tech stack - not as a requirement but just to let applicants know what they are signing up for. 2. List your tech stack for SEO purposes- I can't think of any google search that would put the cafe.com jobs high on the list. 3. What are you doing to market the job - be aggressive with linkedin, github, stackoverflow. Every single week I get interview requests by all three channels.

If you are not aggressively recruiting people who are not actively looking then you are missing the boat.

The last time I actively looked for a job was a decade ago. Most job connections come to me via friend/network/etc.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#144

Post by morgante »

no_wave wrote: post #138
morgante wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two major problems with listing salaries publicly. 1. We don't really want to make the huge salary discrepancies obvious to our non-tech employees. While it's theoretically true, publicly listing the difference wouldn't be great for morale. 2. There's a huge range, and where a particularly candidate falls in that range requires qualitative judgement. We consider everyone from talented new grads to senior de…

You don't have to just post a range. The listing just needs to communicate that you're paying well above market, which is a step beyond competitive (and I've never seen "above market" in a job listing). Of course, this is only if your company really is committed to doing so! I don't have a clever solution for 1. This is definitely a broader cultural issue - non-lawyers at a law firm would completely expect to make le…

> Given that nobody's turned an offer down, there's something that your job postings are missing that people are learning during the interview process.

You are quite correct—I haven't yet figured out how to convey the interesting product/technical challenges we're working on in a mass way: especially not well enough to overcome must developers instinctual reaction to "publishing."

If you have a minute, I would love to hear your thoughts on how we could better communicate through our listings: http://www.cafe.com/careers

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#145

Post by morgante »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #134
morgante wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (1) Developers should be making more than what they are As a developer, I'd love to agree with this. In fact, I do. But in our experience this isn't directly related to the talent shortage (again, we have never been unable to make a compelling offer to a candidate). > (2) Why should startups be entitled to cheap labor? I don't think they should be. All our senior devs have generous compensation which easily adds up…

>I don't think they should be. All our senior devs have generous compensation which easily adds up to $150k+. I once got messaged on LinkedIn by a Bloomberg/banking guy looking for me to contract with them in New York at a rate of $144,000/year, and I'm comparatively junior. A properly senior developer, someone with something like 7-10 years of experience in industry, should definitely be making a bunch more than som…

> I once got messaged on LinkedIn by a Bloomberg/banking guy looking for me to contract with them in New York at a rate of $144,000/year, and I'm comparatively junior.

We have successfully hired people from Bloomberg and finance (including competitive compensation).

One thing to keep in mind is that contracting is very different from full time. $150k is low for senior contractors but normal for senior developers (annualized, I expect senior developer consultants to be making more than $200k if they're based in NYC).

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#146

Post by morgante »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #130
selmnoo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given that it's impossible to produce more senior developers in a 1-2 year timeframe, what alternatives do people suggest to immigration? Why do we operate under the assumption that these companies are entitled to as many unicorns as they want? Why shouldn't they just go out of business? After the whole collusion ordeal when it became abundantly clear that on one side there are VCs, founders, and C-levels who work…

On the one hand, everything you've said is more-or-less correct. On the other hand, there's an additional problem: as long as cities suppress the construction en masse of affordable housing, every attempt to raise salaries mostly just ends up raising rents, leaving employees only a tiny bit better-off than before.

Agreed 100%. Honestly, saner housing regulations in SF & NYC would do a lot more to ease the tech shortage than allowing in more H1Bs.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#147

Post by inourtime »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #129
morgante wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world isn't nearly as binary as that. I'm not a VC or founder. I'm a developer just like you, trying to deliver cool products—but doing so requires more developers. If my company was trying to suppress wages, or refused to pay above market, then I'd agree with you that we have no right to ask for more talent. But we're perfectly willing to pay for talent—we just can't find any. I wouldn't be surprised if the numb…

I'm going to concur with selmnoo, but be less rude about it: sorry, but those are the rules of the game. However hard a time you're having finding senior developers, the incentive to produce them domestically gets skewed downwards, making the problem worse in the long term, if we let you "patch" the issue temporarily with immigration rather than signaling higher demand to the market with rising salaries. Of course, y…

Using that logic, you could say immigration laws are actually what are making the problem worse in the long term - by temporarily keeping salaries higher than what they otherwise would be.

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#148

Post by morgante »

zevets wrote: post #132
morgante wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that our biggest challenge is in getting people to apply in the first place. What do you think is the highest value of deploying monetary and other resources to make that happen, given that publicly listing salaries is a non-starter?

Does your employer use the lots of startupland hiring phrases, like "we're looking for passionate rockstars who believe in our mission to change the world through payroll software"? A lot of the phrases in vogue right now seem to indicate companies that want employees that work 80 hour weeks and pay entry level salaries. Have you tried "competitive compensation" or some other non-numerical indicator that you guys pay…

I think our job listings are quite fair and free of "startup" phrases. We emphasize the actual problems you'll be working on and try to communicate that we pay professional salaries for professionals.

Then again, I wrote them. So you can see for yourself: http://www.cafe.com/careers

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#149

Post by waterlesscloud »

morgante wrote: post #144
no_wave wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to just post a range. The listing just needs to communicate that you're paying well above market, which is a step beyond competitive (and I've never seen "above market" in a job listing). Of course, this is only if your company really is committed to doing so! I don't have a clever solution for 1. This is definitely a broader cultural issue - non-lawyers at a law firm would completely expect to make le…

> Given that nobody's turned an offer down, there's something that your job postings are missing that people are learning during the interview process. You are quite correct—I haven't yet figured out how to convey the interesting product/technical challenges we're working on in a mass way: especially not well enough to overcome must developers instinctual reaction to "publishing." If you have a minute, I would love t…

Yeah, those career listings are pretty bland. Not much sense of what you'd actually be doing, or even what the company is hoping to do in a bigger sense. If nothing else, more specificity in both those areas would help you stand out. Especially since, as you say, it's publishing and techies are kind of skeptical about their role in that.

And "competitive compensation" to me signals "eh compensation". It's a pretty weaselly word.

Also, I didn't see any technical people mentioned on the About page? Are they not part of the team?

Here's what I'm getting at- sell people on the vision and what their specific role in it would be. What impact are they going to have, both in the company and in the world? As a startup, you've got the vision thing, or at least you damn well better, and it's your advantage. :-)

Re: On Immigration, Engineers Simply Don’t Trust VCs

#150

Post by morgante »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #137
morgante wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle, I agree with most commentators on HN that if there were actually a shortage we'd expect to see salaries rising. Yet, in practice, it does seem that there's simply an absolute shortage of experienced developers. I've been hiring developers at my job for most of the past year, yet we have never had an offer turned down. Rather, we see only a trickle of applicants, very few of whom are event remotely quali…

What makes you think that immigration is going to result in an increase in high-quality applicants to your company? This sounds an awful lot like "If you build it, they will come." While I don't doubt that you see a lot of candidates who aren't remotely qualified for your positions, one of the harsh realities of this market is that it's hard to attract "great" people, even if you're at or above market in terms of com…

> What makes you think that immigration is going to result in an increase in high-quality applicants to your company?

I don't think immigration is a panacea (in fact, my primary point in this thread has just been to rebuke the argument that salaries aren't rising so therefore there isn't a tech shortage). That being said, we do have some overseas contractors who I'd love to bring in-house if the immigration system didn't make doing so incredibly byzantine and challenging.

> Chances are there are other startups competing for the same talent that seem to be working on more challenging problems and have better prospects than you.

I do think this is truthfully a big part of the challenges. Despite the fact that our CEO has a great track record (two successful exits, last one for $545M+) and that we're actually building some cool technology (using data & technology to make it easy for writers to understand how their content flows across the web and to adapt their writing accordingly) many are turned off by the fact that we're working in "publishing."

Unfortunately, at this point it seems almost impossible to hire good developers unless you're Google—even if you have a viable business model and interesting/new technology (microservices, graph analytics, etc.).

> Unless you can pay stupid guap or are working on something really, really objectively interesting, one of the best and most underutilized techniques for finding great employees is to hire decent folks with potential and develop them into great employees.

We're very big on hiring based on potential, but there is a certain baseline. Particularly because our engineering team is small as it is, bringing on junior devs would be somewhat unfair to our existing developers—increasing their workload.

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