I wonder how many people in the survey interpret "opportunities for professional growth" as "opportunities to get rich". To me that makes the survey data more understandable. People, myself included, basically want more money for less hours (AKA work/life balance).
Completely, I just asked in my open office space what "opportunities for professional growth" means and everyones said raise or promotion.
Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
21–30 of 408 posts
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#22Ofcourse professional growth is the winner as more often than not is directly proportional to one`s salary.
As a s/w engg. "professional growth" is a hybrid of bunch of things - learning new tech, Cloud knowledge(k8s, docker etc.), and well summarized in the lines below by the author:
> In short, software engineers of all stripes want, more than anything else, to develop their abilities as engineers. They want it more than pay, more than work/life balance, and more than autonomy.
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#23Author of this article here. As long as this initial data-dive came out, there are still a bunch of things we’d like to look at. Does location (say, NYC vs Silicon Valley vs affect these preferences? Does which track (generalist, front-end, mobile) a candidate takes through our process? How does this link with how candidates actually behave when given an offer? Our data set has enough information that we can investig…
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#24I want to repeat myself and restate that most recruiting platforms work on a transaction processing fee on a per placement basis. It's erroneous to try and draw the wrong kind of conclusions from data points gathered from enabling this transaction, especially when it's just 1. When a candidate receives multiple offers that they're interested in, it's very likely that they'll make a holistic judgment based on a combination of factors, and their gut. Is the company "good" or "sketchy?" Do they feel chemistry with the people they'll be working with? Are they stimulated by the work the team will be doing over the next year? The truth is, for most talented engineers at early stage companies, any company that makes a desirable product and has substantial growth left in building and scaling its product will allow for growth in literal terms. The limiting factors there will likely be the team, if anything. If there's juice left to be squeezed from building further product edge, and the team is good, the org is good, and the leadership is good, it's very likely that an engineer will receive more than one opportunity that is "good enough" -- good enough for them to exercise the upper limits on how far they can grow.
It's easy to pay lip service to offering growth, but it's hard to actually do. In many cases, companies shouldn't be trying to offer that with a straight face. In growth stage startups, growth as an engineer is bound to the combination of the growth of the company and the growth of the product. In most cases, if you want to hire any kinds of the best employees, you need to offer growth. But, your business model, company growth and stage of company and culture all have to offer that. That's the hard part. It's something that needs to come from the executive level as well as good timing and a ton of foundational work.
If you can offer growth, that's great. It will make it easy to hire the best. But, most companies are not in the position, and the ones that are certainly don't need this advice. So, this isn't really useful. Offering growth is not something you can turn on and off. You need to build a great company and build a great product that people want and which a great business can or is built around. If you can do that, expanding the engineering team becomes a matter of logistics instead of intractables.
I think TripleByte is a great idea, and it's at an interesting point right now. But to use your data to answer this question requires looking at things longitudinally, and that could be hard unless TripleByte becomes more of a career management platform as well as a two sided hiring marketplace. Having used Hired, Angellist and TripleByte before on both sides, I'm definitely really curious about seeing where things evolve.
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#25Author of this article here. As long as this initial data-dive came out, there are still a bunch of things we’d like to look at. Does location (say, NYC vs Silicon Valley vs affect these preferences? Does which track (generalist, front-end, mobile) a candidate takes through our process? How does this link with how candidates actually behave when given an offer? Our data set has enough information that we can investig…
As a Houston developer, that chart of motivating factors describes exactly what I'm looking for. I won't work on an ancient Java codebase that has no tests or no deployment pipeline, because doing that is death. Gotta keep moving forward or find yourself sliding backwards. I would say your analysis is spot on and I could have written the same article myself. Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" an…
Why are we as professionals (myself included, I'm not immune) so obsessed with shiny new things?
Updating a product's tech stack just to attract new talent and not because the product needs it is objectively strange. Imagine if roads were torn down and rebuilt just because civil engineers wanted to try out some new road laying thingy.
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Completely, I just asked in my open office space what "opportunities for professional growth" means and everyones said raise or promotion.
It seems like tricky wording used by businesses to pay people less. Tell people in your job description that you offer "opportunities for career growth" and they hear "opportunities to get rich". Then when they're actually working there you just change the meaning to some kind of title inflation or meaningless training or additional responsibilities for the same pay.
FWIW, and I say this acutely aware that I'm of the "don't give them what you don't owe them" tribe, additional responsibilities for the same pay are how I got the broad skillset that got me to the point where I'm a principal developer with a hand in every part of our project--which is, in addition to no-complaints compensated, genuinely a lot of fun. I took on those responsibilities as an investment in myself; admittedly the key was finding high-value, high-leverage responsibilities, but it was for me more than for my current employer.
Few enough people are going to pay you to learn something on their dime if you don't already show a ton of promise. Broadening your skillset is, IMO, how you get to the next job.
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#27Author of this article here. As long as this initial data-dive came out, there are still a bunch of things we’d like to look at. Does location (say, NYC vs Silicon Valley vs affect these preferences? Does which track (generalist, front-end, mobile) a candidate takes through our process? How does this link with how candidates actually behave when given an offer? Our data set has enough information that we can investig…
As a Houston developer, that chart of motivating factors describes exactly what I'm looking for. I won't work on an ancient Java codebase that has no tests or no deployment pipeline, because doing that is death. Gotta keep moving forward or find yourself sliding backwards. I would say your analysis is spot on and I could have written the same article myself. Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" an…
I can already do that, regardless of my job, and I won't owe my employer anything for it. If I can explore and experiment while working, the work feels less like work.
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Houston developer, that chart of motivating factors describes exactly what I'm looking for. I won't work on an ancient Java codebase that has no tests or no deployment pipeline, because doing that is death. Gotta keep moving forward or find yourself sliding backwards. I would say your analysis is spot on and I could have written the same article myself. Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" an…
> Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" and not entirely necessary, like moving to a newer tech stack, might be worth it as it will make it easier to attract new talent. Why are we as professionals (myself included, I'm not immune) so obsessed with shiny new things? Updating a product's tech stack just to attract new talent and not because the product needs it is objectively strange. Imagine if roa…
Funny how it has everything to do with style, and far less to do with engineering.
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a Houston developer, that chart of motivating factors describes exactly what I'm looking for. I won't work on an ancient Java codebase that has no tests or no deployment pipeline, because doing that is death. Gotta keep moving forward or find yourself sliding backwards. I would say your analysis is spot on and I could have written the same article myself. Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" an…
I also don't need classes. I'd like learning new (to me) things to be part of my job , and not tacked on after the fact with third-party seminars and after-hours classes. I can already do that, regardless of my job, and I won't owe my employer anything for it. If I can explore and experiment while working , the work feels less like work .
Most recruiters don't realize how easy it is to change gears like that.
I wouldn't be interested in taking outside classes, either. I can already do that for free online.
Re: Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth
#30I wonder how many people in the survey interpret "opportunities for professional growth" as "opportunities to get rich". To me that makes the survey data more understandable. People, myself included, basically want more money for less hours (AKA work/life balance).
A company that grows 20% like google offers high cash low stock. But a company that grows 100% every year can make you a millionaire in a couple of years.
Its true startups lotteries are not great for employees in general, but who would have bet that UBER wouldn't IPO in 2014? or some other companies like Airbnb, etc.