121–130 of 192 posts
I've been using this for the past 6 months. It works really nicely and removes a lot of friction - it's just like sending money to another local account. I've paid people in Netherlands, Australia, Germany and they recently started allowing US$ paid to Ukraine, so I've been able to pay software developers there.
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While this sounds true and everyone likes to harp on it, there's another consideration. An immigrant is somebody who intends to stay forever, an expat is someone who plans to go back home eventually. There are also legal considerations. My US visa for example specifically says it's a non-immigrant visitor's work visa. Legally speaking, I'm an expat. Culturally ... I like to call myself a dirty immigrant. Riles people…
" I come from the border between Central and Eastern Europe. Some say Slovenia is one, some say another." Compulsory link, shirley? https://youtu.be/bwDrHqNZ9lo
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How much is the salary and what's the skill level like? I'm very interested in Eastern European developers, they seem to get shit done and rarely complain.
This kind of commoditization attitude of developers really fucks me off. "Shut up and code and don't complain". Nah, you can fuck right off mate.
I'm willing to pay top dollars if I could but right now I need to make my bootstrapped stuff stretch with every dollar. Once you take the helm of a business, it's painfully clear how expensive hiring people is.
I'm trying to build something like Patreon for open source developers where you get paid to work on open source projects the community requests.
I am actively trying to help people get paid, there's not much money that goes into my pocket, I'm doing this because I believe that 1) Open source is going to eat commercial software 2) Developers should be able to easily find side income or full time income without having to drive their wages to the floor on freelancer websites.
I've hired people from Ukraine, Romania before and they were every bit as good if not better in some aspects. The cost of living there is different and the USD goes a long way in many parts of the world.
I also think it's great to give people meaningful work all over the world, especially in places where they are rare due to structural economic issues.
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While I didn't quite see all of the possible mistakes pointed out by jpollock in a parallel comment, all of the mistakes I did see were nicely covered there. Another interesting data point was that only 2 of the 10 candidates had ever heard of FizzBuzz. That surprised me more than anything else.
Another interesting data point was that only 2 of the 10 candidates had ever heard of FizzBuzz. This is a good indication that the exercise is testing culture , rather than programming ability.
Having said that, we tend to pair program for our interviews. Our current interview system is to do a quick telephone interview and then follow up with a 4 pomodoro pair programming session. Usually we ping pong and offer to drive first so that the candidate has a chance to settle in. Generally we TDD a fun kata.
I've been surprised at how effective this is. For the people we've hired recently, the programming session really shows what the person is like to work with (to be fair, we actually pair program on most work so it is easy to judge the effectiveness of the hiring system). Apart from that initial telephone screening, we've dispensed completely with formal interview questions because more than anything it was biasing us away from hiring people with qualities that we cared about (being able to program, being able to pair, being able to TDD).
I've had the experience of cutting interviews short before, when it was obvious that the candidate was well out of their depth. We've stopped doing that. We go through all 4 pomodoros with each candidate. Even if we are sure it's a poor fit, it's important to give something back to the candidate who has taken time out of their day to come and visit. It sometimes turns into a 2 hour coaching session, but that's fine. Hopefully it helps the candidate sometime in the future.
It's kind of expensive, but trying to have an interview system that leaves a positive feeling should eventually lead to a good reputation in the industry. That, in turn, should make recruiting easier/cheaper. If you leave the impression, "those people are awesome -- I really want to work there", then it's worth the added expense, I think.
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And almost certainly better tech. You ever check out the OS your bank is running?
Honestly, I don't care whether I am driven over by a Porsche Cayenne or a Willys MB. And while I have not worked in the banking sector myself, lots of my friends did - and it was not cobol. They are catching up and they all know that their mainframe sw is dated and act upon it. I don't think the "quality" of the tech is of any relevance here. EDIT: Well, I actually know some guys who bit the bullet and learned cobol…
And if it was, personally, I wouldn't have a problem as a customer.
As the embedded video alludes, it's not that revolutionary an idea to pool transactions and use local resources to fulfill more cheaply if possible. That said, the world is full of wildly successful companies that just executed well on not very revolutionary ideas, and they provide real value that was largely absent before they grew to prominence. Sometimes it's not about doing something new, it's about doing it well…
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Hacker News 3-4 years ago you mean?
Shhh we have important articles on basic income and SF House Prices to argue about for the 400th time.
I remember a post made not long ago by the HN admins themselves where they said they'll try to reduce the political posts.
So far, it's not working out.
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sometimes you say? it is always about execution being passionate about things that nobody wants, and disrupting things nobody cares about will get you nowhere. a low margin grocery store fulfills a need and thats why they are everywhere.
Ideas are utterly worthless. Execution is everything. I freely give every single idea (some actually valuable!) I've ever had away for free. Because I know if someone is better at implementing it than I am, they are the ones who provided the world value. Not me for dreaming it up and then doing nothing about it - there are millions of me's, and ideas without execution are not interesting.
>I freely give every single idea (some actually valuable!)
A solid contradiction ;) But I understand your intentions.
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sometimes you say? it is always about execution being passionate about things that nobody wants, and disrupting things nobody cares about will get you nowhere. a low margin grocery store fulfills a need and thats why they are everywhere.
Ideas are utterly worthless. Execution is everything. I freely give every single idea (some actually valuable!) I've ever had away for free. Because I know if someone is better at implementing it than I am, they are the ones who provided the world value. Not me for dreaming it up and then doing nothing about it - there are millions of me's, and ideas without execution are not interesting.
I've done the teeth pulling NDA and noncompetes with a lot of people, just so they would tell me their original idea that I'm contractually bound not to copy for a limited time in a limited geographic area or tell anyone about. And I realized how unoriginal all of them are. If they weren't so concerned about people copying their idea they would have gotten feedback on it a lot sooner for the simple answer of "Hey, Spotify does this already, did you check the menu options?" running completely counter to their market research and conclusion that "nobody" is doing this and its "huge".
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Shhh we have important articles on basic income and SF House Prices to argue about for the 400th time.
off-topic I remember a post made not long ago by the HN admins themselves where they said they'll try to reduce the political posts. So far, it's not working out.