Great developers are raised, not hired • Hacker News Board

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#191

Post by enraged_camel » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 8:48 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #184

pro-duct wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part of engineering isn't the ability to glue packages and microservices together. Those tasks are literally done by entry level, bottom of the totem pole engineers. You're saying that all bankers do is run models and spit out valuations, and all a chef does is put stuff in a pan. I'm not speaking toward your argument of a bubble bursting, but engineering isn't going anywhere. And where else would an entry l…

$300K to live on the west coast is really not that appealing to someone who is living in a major city, with the stereotypical house in the burbs in a good school system with 2.1 kids where on the higher end you can make $150K to $160K as an architect/team lead/principal. Especially if you are married with two incomes where you can easily put the lower income completely toward increasing net worth or cash flowing your…

I think you are perhaps too focused on the immediate salary, and not thinking long-term.

Yeah, $300k in the Bay Area isn’t that much. But if you work for a Tier 1/2 company for a few years, it can have a drastic impact on your future employment prospects and salary levels. Furthermore, the street cred can open many doors that otherwise would remain closed to you.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#192

Post by swiftcoder » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

dbancajas wrote: post #187

salarycommenter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation. And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentile for individual income. The harder I push on comp the more I get each time. I am not going to lie and say that it didn't take years to build to this point in terms of skill, work record, professional network, and interview ability. It took three FAANG companie…

how do you negotiate? do you give your current salary?

No. If you give your current salary during a negotiation, the other end is going to come right back with that salary +5% (at best).

Hidden information is your friend in any negotiation, but especially here, since the hiring folks also know how variable industry salary ranges are. You want to put the first move in their court - decline to give your current salary at all costs, and ideally also avoid offering up your preferred compensation number until they've made a first offer.

The only point where quoting your current salary makes sense is if the company offers less than you are currently making, and you are in such a bad situation at your current where you'd be willing to absorb the pain of changing jobs for no additional money.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#193

Post by blackflame7000 » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 8:49 PM UTC

dfrage wrote: post #106

salarycommenter wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very wary of making this about respect or the individuals in the company who didn't grant you better compensation. It's toxic for yourself and if other people find out you think that way it can spoil relationships. Never underestimate how the people you work with at your old jobs can end up being stepping stones to bigger and better things later on. I believe no one in my management chain could have done signifi…

The bottom line the US is that respect is ultimately measured in dollars. I won't argue there isn't some toxicity to that, but a company that doesn't reward the vastly increased value of its developer employees as they move from entry level to journeymen to experts will suffer greatly from it, often fatally. If employers can't afford market salaries, they should think very hard about the issue and see if they can't a…

It kind of reminds me of the Brain Drain Microsoft experienced in the mid 2000s and saw them fall behind apple and google as the top of the tech food chain.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#194

Post by enraged_camel » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

ergothus wrote: post #156

msluyter wrote: post #20

I officially mentored someone at my previous company and helped him move from a support tech role into a software dev position. It was incredibly rewarding. But to play devil's advocate for a moment, isn't there something of a natural disincentive to level up one's employees in such a tight labor market? To follow the author's analogy, by mentoring someone, we're effectively "adding a fish" to the pond, and if someon…

> if someone else "catches" the fish, that effort is largely wasted Not only is this a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you don't invest in your employees, the level of waste is larger. I recently posted an article on LinkedIn about this very topic: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/most-common-web-dev-hiring-mi... Note: I shamelessly plug one of my new-developer friends at the end.

>>Not only is this a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you don't invest in your employees, the level of waste is larger.

In the long-run, yes. The issue is that most companies optimize for short-term. Managers and executives can receive significant bonuses for keeping their costs down, and by the time the disadvantages of that approach (i.e. people leaving) become obvious, they too have bailed for the next gig.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#195

Post by defen » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

luminati wrote: post #88

salarycommenter wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently switching jobs for a personal record 57% increase in total compensation. And I was NOT poorly compensated before. I was already in the 99th percentile for individual income. The harder I push on comp the more I get each time. I am not going to lie and say that it didn't take years to build to this point in terms of skill, work record, professional network, and interview ability. It took three FAANG companie…

Off topic - but your username and the vast majority of your commenting history is primarily on salaries. Curious - is there some backstory to it? Feel you got severely underpaid? To each and his own, but bay area engineers pissing about making ONLY 300K has always come off as being a bunch of spoilt brats - especially considering the vast majority just gem/npm/pip install this and that and glue all the code together.…

> To each and his own, but bay area engineers pissing about making ONLY 300K has always come off as being a bunch of spoilt brats

I think your entire attitude is wrong. Not in the sense of "you're being mean"; rather, in the sense of your orientation toward engineer pay. Any money that doesn't go to salary will generally go to the owners of the business. If engineers can get more, why shouldn't they? Imagine someone saying professional sports stars make too much money and should be perfectly happy to make $1 million per year. What you're actually arguing for is that even-richer people (the team owners) should make EVEN MORE money than they already do.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#196

Post by rajeshp1986 » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

I love the point the author raised in this article. Companies are spending a ton of money on recruiting and paying commissions to recruiters. If some of that money and effort is channelized toward mentoring, a company can notice a significant change in quality in its workforce. That said, this article fails to address 2 major issues or provide any solutions for that:

1) Every decent size company spends for providing resources like books, learning portals etc. for their employee to grow their skills. There is an entire industry running which caters to provide companies learning tools, for example - safari online books etc. Mentoring is also used a buzzword in these companies. There is a difference between providing tools & books vs creating an environment where people can grow. Mentoring is very inter-personal. Unless companies create incentives for senior engineers to help mentor other engineers there won't be any real change to the way things are now.

2) If your teams or Orgs are always battling to meet the next deadline, how will mentorship happen? You can't expect people to put more than 40 hours of work and expect them to personally mentor other engineers(They still do btw).

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#197

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 9:06 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #192

dbancajas wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you negotiate? do you give your current salary?

No. If you give your current salary during a negotiation, the other end is going to come right back with that salary +5% (at best). Hidden information is your friend in any negotiation, but especially here, since the hiring folks also know how variable industry salary ranges are. You want to put the first move in their court - decline to give your current salary at all costs, and ideally also avoid offering up your p…

This advice functionally doesn’t work. They’ll just intentionally lowball the first offer and then say well they can’t read your mind so you need to tell them what you want.

A better strategy is to really research competitive wages and anchor high by honestly saying what you want. If they can’t come close, then walk away. If they ask you to compromise, tell them you’re not going to negotiate against yourself by stating any specific compromises, that you arrived at what you stated by considering what you’re worth, and that you’re happy to consider any kind of offer they would like to make, but that to accept an offer you have to believe it is competitive for the value you can add.

Any arguments about salaries at different cohorts of companies, or salary bands based on years of experience, just outright ignore and tell them if it’s a dealbreaker, you understand but aren’t going to compromise just because of their pay bands or random assertions about market analysis.

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#198

Post by TheHegemon » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 9:07 PM UTC

chillacy wrote: post #124

madrix999 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cant lower the CEO's paycheck 8) (mostly serious sarcasm)

Put yourself in the shoes of the board of directors and you'll find they too don't want to overpay for CEOs. But paychecks are market driven, and lowering the pay means you'll end up with a less experienced or worse CEO.

Except the fact that higher paid CEOs actually perform worse [0].

[0]https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highe...

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#199

Post by pyrale » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 9:08 PM UTC

msluyter wrote: post #20

I officially mentored someone at my previous company and helped him move from a support tech role into a software dev position. It was incredibly rewarding. But to play devil's advocate for a moment, isn't there something of a natural disincentive to level up one's employees in such a tight labor market? To follow the author's analogy, by mentoring someone, we're effectively "adding a fish" to the pond, and if someon…

I believe there is a story along the lines of "Would you rather train people to see them leave, or not train them and have them stay?"

Re: Great developers are raised, not hired

#200

Post by troels » Fri, Apr 12, 2019, 9:09 PM UTC

swiftcoder wrote: post #192

dbancajas wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you negotiate? do you give your current salary?

No. If you give your current salary during a negotiation, the other end is going to come right back with that salary +5% (at best). Hidden information is your friend in any negotiation, but especially here, since the hiring folks also know how variable industry salary ranges are. You want to put the first move in their court - decline to give your current salary at all costs, and ideally also avoid offering up your p…

This is the "common knowledge" thing to do, but I don't think it's always applicable. If you have an advantage in the market (e.g. are sought after), you can simply present a high figure and either they accept or you move on to the next. By playing the let-them-go-first game, you're implicitly signalling that you don't know where the ceiling is. On the other hand, if you say a high figure with confidence, they may accept it even if they weren't really prepared for that to begin with. Information asymmetry can also go the other way.