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Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

neomindlabs.com

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Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#201

Post by mumblemumble »

game_the0ry wrote: post #23

I agree with the author's point about using popular tech stacks to alleviate the ramp-up time for new hire productivity, but that is not the optimal solution. The optimal solution is for management to not let high-productivity talent from leaving - increase their comp to whatever offers they might get in the open market. That's how labor economic works - it's a market. Investment bank and management consulting figure…

Somewhat related to this point: A large conglomerate I worked for managed to kill one of their major products by making the mistake of assuming that programmers are easy to replace with any other skilled programmer. So they moved a product team to a new office, knowing that the highest-paid people on the team would not choose to relocate, and assuming it would be easy to backfill them with inexpensive new hires at the new location.

Except, in this case, the programmers in question had decades' worth of hard-won domain expertise that was absolutely critical to their job function. And, this product targeting a niche industry, it was relatively uncommon domain expertise. So much so that the only people on the job market who had it were these folks whom they were ousting. All of whom had found positions at competitors within a day or two.

So then the company lost their ability to maintain the product in any meaningful way, and, within a year or two, customers started moving on as well.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#202

Post by treeman79 »

nitrogen wrote: post #63
treeman79 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opposite opinion. You should never need more then a day to knowledge transfer. If that. I always try and cross train people enough that I can quit at any point and it’s not an issue. All processes are kept automatic where no one is crucial to keep it running. Mostly it’s useful for vacations. In the past I went on a cruise. And I wasn’t sure the company will be online without me to baby them through. After that I got…

I agree with making things automatic. But sometimes you have to let team members specialize. It's less efficient for everyone to know everything. But, it is good if everything is known, at least in part, by at least two people.

A Company got down from 20 to 3 people. Completely different tech stack each. Many warnings that company was in major trouble if any of left. Other 2 had no way to support.

Oh It was so painful when it happened.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#203

Post by throwaway_8145 »

LordKano wrote: post #62
paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

Approximately 10 years ago, I was really unhappy with my work situation and was checking job postings. I found one that sounded right up my alley and I reached out to the agency that posted it. They told me that because I was working for another one of their clients, they wouldn't submit me for the job because they felt it was unethical. I responded that I wasn't owned by my employer and just as they were free to let…

I have an even worse expirience.

I was a SWE for a large corp for a while, and after that transitioned to a role of manager.

As I was very eager to build a good team, and the company HR looked slow and unefficient I tried doing recruting myself, at least the part of meeting people and talking them into come to work for us.

What I could decide (up to a point) the salary and benefits but people had to go thru testing with the people from HR (IQ tests, personality tests etc)

Anyway I was pretty successful in finding experienced engineers but the thing fell apart when it came to HR testing. "He/She is not a good fit for the company" they would told me.

This was going on for months. I did more than 300 interviews in my free time in maybe 5 months and only about 5 people where "ok".

At some point a guy from HR told me: 'you must stop sending employees from companies X,Y,Z to testing, we have a deal with them that we don't take each other's people' 0.o

The deal was not only no to stop "poaching" but when someone form those companies applied to a job posting they would call up the other companies HR and told them about it.

And there was more than 10 of companies they told me about that where forbidden.

Imagine all the people that applied for job at some company not knowing that their boss, the HR etc. would know about it.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#204

Post by JackFr »

paulgb wrote: post #130
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reasonable for them to want to avoid conflicts of interest. They act as an agent of the employers and don't want to get into scenarios where they can't do a proper job of representing their client's interests. It's seems counterproductive to blacklist them for behaving ethically just because it worked against you in one scenario. No recruiting agency is ever going to act in your best interests because you aren't…

In the instance that LordKano reached out to them, they were acting as an agent of the company he was applying to, not the company he currently worked for (even if they had an ongoing relationship with that company). By discarding a qualified applicant, they unethically prioritized their relationship with another client over the company they were supposed to be acting as an agent of in that instance.

Unless you have special knowledge of the contracts signed, you really can't say that. It's likely the second company was well aware of the restriction. And it seems like the OP felt he was wronged more than the second party.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#205

Post by ISL »

codegeek wrote: post #168
sjburt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really fail to see the distinction. If someone is willing to pay 600k for something, then the value of that thing on the market is 600k. That is what a market is.

I would argue that FAANGs have the ability to overpay in many cases and still acquire talent which skews market wages. A FAANG can possibly pay 200K to an average developer who would otherwise may be make 120K in a regular company. So now the developer thinks they are worth 200K everywhere.

That is how a market works.

I think the S&P is overvalued today. The market thinks otherwise. No matter how much I would like to purchase reasonable stocks at P/Es of 15, by and large, I can't. If someone else wants to buy them at P/Es of 21, they are going to attract every single seller.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#206

Post by fractionalhare »

JPKab wrote: post #86
paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

The thing that hits me is the "$500k+/year in the valley". Is this really a thing? Am I a giant dumbass for staying in Colorado? Even factoring in my stock grants, I'm nowhere close to that number.

Yeah, that's top end of software engineer comp for E5/L5 at Facebook/Google, and middle of the road for levels E6/L6. For reference, E5/L5 is achievable with 5 - 10 years of experience, though without a specialization you'll most likely get $400k instead.

Netflix median engineer pay is around $400 - 500k, because they only really hire engineers who would be E5/L5 or above. Apple and Amazon also pay this at the titles which map to E5/L5, as does Microsoft, Uber, Square, Snap, Pinterest, etc.

This does not include stock appreciation, but stock appreciation certainly helps inflate the comp even further.

Going further out from FAANG: if you include non-liquid compensation, many pre-IPO companies pay comparably (or better, with the tradeoff of uncertainty); including Airbnb, Stripe, and Snowflake.

Source: I earn about that myself, I have friends at almost all of these companies, and I have worked at or received offers from some. Also, see levels.fyi.

I can't tell you what you should do, but from a cost of living perspective: people who make at least $300k in SFBA or NYC will very often come out ahead compared to making maybe half that in a significantly cheaper area, despite the higher cost of living.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#207

Post by catwind7 »

> Everything gets a lot easier if you select the right software and framework, primarily if you use Ruby on Rails. Rails itself is a full-stack framework that has a best practice for every piece of a web application. If you are committed to doing things “the Rails way,” you cut the total cost of ownership by A LOT.

Rails has an incredibly large community but I think this statement would be equally true for any tool you're well versed in

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#209

Post by vmception »

paulgb wrote: post #3

> never underestimate the amount of money the FAANGs have to poach your talent. I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's a loaded word with negative connotations, but what it really means here is "offer someone a better situation than you offered them". Employees have agency, they aren't wild elephants who need your "protection" from "predators" who just want to pay them more.

That's gonna be a "no" from me dawg

Headhunters, poaching, they are clearly idioms because we don't live in the safari or a conflict zone with hostile tribes (because we won.)

Pull request rejected and closed.

Re: Developer won’t get hit by a bus, they’ll get hired by Netflix

#210

Post by [deleted] »

Aunche wrote: post #171
game_the0ry wrote: post #23

I agree with the author's point about using popular tech stacks to alleviate the ramp-up time for new hire productivity, but that is not the optimal solution. The optimal solution is for management to not let high-productivity talent from leaving - increase their comp to whatever offers they might get in the open market. That's how labor economic works - it's a market. Investment bank and management consulting figure…

Not all companies need $500k engineers or can afford them. An optimization at Netflix that improves performance by 1% may save them millions of dollars. The same optimization at a medium-size company may only save them a few thousand. Also, it's much more difficult to quantify the impact of a software engineer compared to investment bankers and consultants. The latter two are directly making money for the firm.

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