201–210 of 341 posts
A “self-confident rockstar“ is just a developer who has been through this process of self-development and no longer requires the mentoring and extra effort to get them there. I appreciate that some companies value experienced developers and aren’t trying to nickel and dime by finding “broken toys” so to speak that they can force into their own moulds on the cheap
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$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.
I've seen quite a few people only focus on the $300k aspect in HackerNews (and made negative remarks) without thinking about the trajectory.
Go look at any big company job listings. There are many positions that have no "entry level" roles. The lowest level of experience will say "5 years of {x}".
If you're a company that does not take people without experience, where do you think they're getting the experience? You're relying on other companies to train your employees, and naturally you're not getting a chance to create the exact employee you need.
Hire people that are intelligent, humble, and willing to learn. Ignore credentials, and promote from within. In most situations, you'll get the right result.
Aside: The weirdest part is there are some positions that seem to not have entry-level jobs anywhere in the industry, you have to sneak into them. For example my girlfriend is a "Brand Strategist" at a web design agency. This is what she always wanted to be, but when she was applying it seemed that every Brand Strategist job required 2-3 years of Brand Strategy experience. So she applied to her company in a role she didn't really want and then basically talked her way into the new role. Obviously she's doing well and she will never face this barrier again. But that was a stroke of good fortune.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$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.
Consider the scaling factor for salaries; My salary is on the high end in my area, but would be on the low end of a living wage in the Bay Area. My salary is in the neighborhood of 120k; I'm a senior-level engineer with almost a decade of experience...
So think about the trade offs. If you’re young and single, the tradeoff between a one bedroom in a major city anywhere not on the west coast and the west coast and the difference in the salary you can make is well worth it.
In most major cities a junior developer will make $60K and can probably find an apartment for $900/month in a decent part of town. If they work on the west coast and get $250K and find an apartment for $2400K/month, that’s a tradeoff worth making.
10-15 years into your career, you may already be married with kids. That $120K he’s making can easily buy a 3000 square foot house in the burbs, brand new build, great school system and close to work for $350K. This is from personal experience (not the salary, the price of the house). Now that tradeoff between $150K and $300K-$400K doesn’t look so appealing when you can’t live nearly the same lifestyle on the West Coast that you could live on much less money
If he’s like me, he’s probably built a local network where any door he wants to open locally is probably already open to him.
In my case, I’m 45, but because of $bad_life_decisions, I only started taking my software development career seriously a decade ago. But I do have a great local network, skills that match what the market demands and the house in the burbs with the wife, the white picket fence and 2.1 kids.
I don’t really need new doors opened to me. As soon as the youngest graduates and I’m willing to travel, I am already in the position of being a high earning “consultant”. Not bragging, I have been working over 20 years, I should be able to consult somebody
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…
>To follow the author's analogy, by mentoring someone, we're effectively "adding a fish" to the pond, and if someone else "catches" the fish, that effort is largely wasted. Even more curious is that IT culture is basically that if you want to get paid what you're worth, you have to quit and go to another company. So these companies put all this effort into raising a better developer, and then refuse to pay them what…
There's nothing curious or special about the IT industry. It's the same effect as you getting gas at the local gas station rather than driving a few miles to the cheaper station.
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> CEO: What happens if we don’t and they stay?" It's quite simple, you lay them off. I've seen it happen more than once.
Maybe in US you do. In UK "laying off" a programmer for anything other than major breach of contract(like being caught red handed stealing) and without making the position demonstrably redundant, takes about ~6 months and it's not a pretty process. Laying off should be the option of last resort, purely because of how incredibly costly it is(not just financially - going through the right steps takes time from both HR…
No boss is gonna fight for someone who is getting the stink eye already. The lay-off lets then fire with cause without actually doing it. Kinda cowardly, but I’ve worked at places that cut proactively and things got even more toxic. Conversations speculating about who will get laid off next shouldn’t be a weekly thing. It’s paralyzing.
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Why don't you match their pay rise? Or give them projects they're more keen to work on?
I'd love to give everyone around me huge pay rises each year and only work on really fun new projects but unfortunately the boss doesn't agree. :)
Yes! This is something that is not just about developers and seems to be a huge gap in hiring. Go look at any big company job listings. There are many positions that have no "entry level" roles. The lowest level of experience will say "5 years of {x}". If you're a company that does not take people without experience, where do you think they're getting the experience? You're relying on other companies to train your em…
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 they get far I have a good reference or referral in my future. In the meantime I can offload some of my troubles onto them and worry about other things.
To put it another way, if you think good software requires vigilance, and you worry that there’s a shortage of it, these people aren’t competition. They’re allies.