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How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

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Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#21

Post by wbronitsky »

jasode wrote: post #14

>, I am to the point in my career where I have a LinkedIn profile that if you printed out in a PDF, it would be 5 or 7 pages. I have 10 or 12 GitHub repos out there that show what my code is. If you as a developer manager are not qualified to read through my GitHub Repo [...], and if you’re not qualified to look at my LinkedIn profile and see that I show a progression of responsibilities, That's great for him but it'…

I totally agree with your first point. He seems to be saying that you are no good to him if you have not worked on side projects or open source. He seems blinded by his 35 years in the industry, and seems to not understand two things: 1) That there are a ton of companies that give 0 time for open source 2) That some people just write code as a job, not as a hobby. Personally, I would want my employees to give me 100% of their effort on coding. If they are going home and coding, how much effort are they actually putting in at work?

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#22

Post by honest_george »

nadams wrote: post #19

I have so many comments on this article but this stood out: > I do not negotiate salaries. > I ask the person what do you need. That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Did you honestly tell your employer "oh I only needed $X to pay my bills and eat ramen"? > I’ve got a junior developer saying I need $100,000, that’s not reasonable Actually according to glassdoor[1] - salaries for a "junior developer" range f…

That link seems to be geolocation-specific. For me it returns salaries from 23 to 31k [1]

[1] https://imgur.com/cCq85nI

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#23

Post by serve_yay »

I worked remotely for a long time and am very much in favor of remote work. But I am uncomfortable with this idea that hiring remotely means you're going to get the best of the best, and not really pay for it, or rather pay for it by "letting" the developer work remotely. You're not getting someone on, I dunno, Yehuda Katz's level for $80k because they work at home.

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#24

Post by greggyb »

wbronitsky wrote: post #21
jasode wrote: post #14

>, I am to the point in my career where I have a LinkedIn profile that if you printed out in a PDF, it would be 5 or 7 pages. I have 10 or 12 GitHub repos out there that show what my code is. If you as a developer manager are not qualified to read through my GitHub Repo [...], and if you’re not qualified to look at my LinkedIn profile and see that I show a progression of responsibilities, That's great for him but it'…

I totally agree with your first point. He seems to be saying that you are no good to him if you have not worked on side projects or open source. He seems blinded by his 35 years in the industry, and seems to not understand two things: 1) That there are a ton of companies that give 0 time for open source 2) That some people just write code as a job, not as a hobby. Personally, I would want my employees to give me 100%…

>Personally, I would want my employees to give me 100% of their effort on coding. If they are going home and coding, how much effort are they actually putting in at work?

If you owned a restaurant, would you object to your cooks going home and making themselves a nice meal?

Note: This is more of an idle curiosity thing that popped into my head reading your comment. This is not a "Boom, roasted!" type of comment.

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#25

Post by serve_yay »

brandonb wrote: post #16

I'm not sure this is the person we should listen to on engineering management. This quote is a huge red flag to me: "I advise developers, anytime they’re looking at job ads, serious developer positions, not front end developers..." How can he retain great front end engineers if he doesn't even think it's a "serious" position? I've done machine learning, kernel hacking, back end, mobile, and front end, and it takes ju…

You reacted too quickly - the front end part is important to the rest of that quote. Some people (not me personally) consider Photoshop and a small amount of photo editing (think cropping/resizing) as a legitimate part of front-end work. So it can make some sense to ask for that in a front-end dev. But it doesn't make sense if you're trying to hire someone to work on an API or something, to ask them to also be good with Photoshop.

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#26

Post by greggyb »

serve_yay wrote: post #23

I worked remotely for a long time and am very much in favor of remote work. But I am uncomfortable with this idea that hiring remotely means you're going to get the best of the best, and not really pay for it, or rather pay for it by "letting" the developer work remotely. You're not getting someone on, I dunno, Yehuda Katz's level for $80k because they work at home.

I think his point is not that remote is cheaper, but that if you want the best talent, you cannot limit yourself to the people who live within commuting distance.

The Venn diagram of "best developer talent" and "developers within commuting distance" have a very small overlap for most locations.

Edit: Typos.

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#27

Post by serve_yay »

nadams wrote: post #19

I have so many comments on this article but this stood out: > I do not negotiate salaries. > I ask the person what do you need. That is the most absurd thing I have ever heard. Did you honestly tell your employer "oh I only needed $X to pay my bills and eat ramen"? > I’ve got a junior developer saying I need $100,000, that’s not reasonable Actually according to glassdoor[1] - salaries for a "junior developer" range f…

To him a junior dev is not worth $100k, it doesn't matter what Glassdoor says.

The thing about not negotiating simply means that he asks you your number, and then makes a binary decision based on that number. As opposed to trying to get you to agree to a lower figure, your number is either acceptable to him or not. If so, hired; if not, not.

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#28

Post by wbronitsky »

greggyb wrote: post #24
wbronitsky wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with your first point. He seems to be saying that you are no good to him if you have not worked on side projects or open source. He seems blinded by his 35 years in the industry, and seems to not understand two things: 1) That there are a ton of companies that give 0 time for open source 2) That some people just write code as a job, not as a hobby. Personally, I would want my employees to give me 100%…

>Personally, I would want my employees to give me 100% of their effort on coding. If they are going home and coding, how much effort are they actually putting in at work? If you owned a restaurant, would you object to your cooks going home and making themselves a nice meal? Note: This is more of an idle curiosity thing that popped into my head reading your comment. This is not a "Boom, roasted!" type of comment.

That's fair. I guess it is more of a management issue then. I wouldn't want my chef cutting corners and rushing his/her work in order to prepare a 5 course dinner at home, but maybe I would want them to try out new recipes at home and bring them to the restaurant. Something to think about.

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#29

Post by [deleted] »

greggyb wrote: post #26
serve_yay wrote: post #23

I worked remotely for a long time and am very much in favor of remote work. But I am uncomfortable with this idea that hiring remotely means you're going to get the best of the best, and not really pay for it, or rather pay for it by "letting" the developer work remotely. You're not getting someone on, I dunno, Yehuda Katz's level for $80k because they work at home.

I think his point is not that remote is cheaper, but that if you want the best talent, you cannot limit yourself to the people who live within commuting distance. The Venn diagram of "best developer talent" and "developers within commuting distance" have a very small overlap for most locations. Edit: Typos.

[deleted]

Re: How to Find, Hire, and Retain Developers – Interview with Cal Evans

#30

Post by serve_yay »

mikemikemike wrote: post #8

"anytime they’re looking at job ads, serious developer positions, not front end developers... " Ouch. I guess I never should have dropped PHP for client side MVC apps.

Seeing a lot of knee-jerk reactions to that, and I agree it's poorly worded. But slow down and read what he's actually saying there - he is not saying front end devs aren't serious developers.
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