Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month • Hacker News Board

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#231

Post by emodendroket » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 8:28 PM UTC

screaminghawk wrote: post #228

emodendroket wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree, but I think the argument against is basically that when you put a range, candidates' eyes go toward the high end and employers' eyes go toward the low end and then nobody ends up happy.

Then don't put a high range and put what you are actually expecting to spend on your new hire? It sounds to me like the argument for not putting a salary is because the business doesn't actually know what they are looking for.

But the OP is saying that they might genuinely consider a huge range depending on who applies.

Honestly I think he'd be better off just listing multiple positions in this case.

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#232

Post by johnwheeler » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

marktangotango wrote: post #224

Chris2048 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask what the difference is? What didn't you know?

Less is more, focus on results, not code. Two things off the top of my head. I just hired onto a subsidiary of a big corp, a cadre of 5 of started on the same day: 39, 41, 42, 45, and 55. Companies are paying top dollar for experience now, from what I'm seeing.

>> Less is more, focus on results, not code. Two things off the top of my head.

bingo. same here.

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#233

Post by nommm-nommm » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 11:57 PM UTC

tdb7893 wrote: post #215

nommm-nommm wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can but there's some downsides. Not everyone likes drinking beers and parties with coworkers. For those people it does the opposite of improve morale. The best way to improve morale is ample vacation time and good work-life balance.

That's something I learned while interviewing at tech companies. They all have tons of perks but when I talked with the employees 2/3 of the people I talked to (I actually counted) complained about work/life balance at some time. I would rather work a sane amount of hours a week and have more vacation than have a rock-climbing coffee bar at work or whatever the perks are now.

When I was 22 free food at work sounded amazing. Now? I eat once a day and I want that meal to be with my family. My priorities have done a total 180.

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#234

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 3:01 AM UTC

b212 wrote: post #135

Can you do another good deed and require your posters to include salary range in their job ads? It's the norm in the UK and we successfully forced this in Poland (though posters almost NEVER post salaries here). How? The companies need IT staff so much that almost all IT job boards (at least the most popular ones - like FB groups or https://nofluffjobs.com ) started requiring the salary range. I think your idea is pr…

[deleted]

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#235

Post by pmoriarty » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 3:21 AM UTC

b212 wrote: post #135

Can you do another good deed and require your posters to include salary range in their job ads? It's the norm in the UK and we successfully forced this in Poland (though posters almost NEVER post salaries here). How? The companies need IT staff so much that almost all IT job boards (at least the most popular ones - like FB groups or https://nofluffjobs.com ) started requiring the salary range. I think your idea is pr…

Whenever I've seen job ads mention a salary range, it's almost always been ridiculously low (huge red flag for an dysfunctional company trying to get something for nothing) or way too high (red flag that it's probably a recruiter trying to do a bait-and-switch).

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#236

Post by ptero » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 3:35 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #229

ptero wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my 2c -- I'm in the US and I disagree. For example, many of the jobs allow for a very broad experience. For example, in my current job, we are often looking for a smart, energetic people to work on X. Someone with a BS just out of college? An engineer with 10 years of matching experience? Tech lead wo just built X elsewhere? We will take either (if we like them) and adjust responsibilities instead. This approach…

It sound weird to me that a company that has a role to fill will take anyone from "just graduated and can type" to "experienced tech lead". Doesn't sound like a role that is clearly thought out. If you have stuff for a junior hire to do and stuff for a senior hire to do, and you end up hiring the junior hire, what happens to the "senior" work? Same question if you end up hiring the senior guy.

We work on applied R&D and the seniority boundaries are fuzzy. In practice if we take a junior engineer we can get a senior engineer or two off lab work (who in principle should not be spending any time in the lab, but does a little). If we hire a lead it frees folks doing high level concepts (and powerpoint) for more hands on stuff.

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#237

Post by altitudinous » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 5:45 AM UTC

Sir, a fine website, one that I cannot take advantage of because I am in Australia. However a minor point - I do have some difficulty seeing the pale green highlight around the positions, I believe it may be to do with my red/green colourblindness, common amongst men, it is almost impossible to see against the bold blue. If you are feeling creative maybe you can change the colour of the highlight to a different less pale green or another colour. Thanks again for your site and congrats on your success. Cheers.

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#238

Post by altitudinous » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 5:52 AM UTC

altitudinous wrote: post #237

Sir, a fine website, one that I cannot take advantage of because I am in Australia. However a minor point - I do have some difficulty seeing the pale green highlight around the positions, I believe it may be to do with my red/green colourblindness, common amongst men, it is almost impossible to see against the bold blue. If you are feeling creative maybe you can change the colour of the highlight to a different less…

I have since posted this directly under the medium article.

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#239

Post by Annatar » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:13 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #192

Annatar wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'm not clear on what you mean: they think that the old guy will write the specification and architect everything, or they think he will hack stuff together with them?

I think the implication is they think he'll be a slow-moving dinosaur before they even talk to him.

I guess that's probably correct. The old guy will appear to be slow because he'll want to think things through before digging his fingers into the keyboard, where the young guys are just fury of a tornado, but absolutely no plan.

And planning is 50% of the work.

However, I'm not being completely fair: my experience working in Silicon Valley with 20-somethings was extremely positive. At first, they were suspicious that it was taking me an entire day what they normally do in two hours, but they did it by manually hacking. What I was doing is writing a program which, based on data, generated another program to actually perform the work. I could just tell that they thought I was full of crap, because programs which program sounds completely esoteric.

What they didn't know was that the subject of programs which program, and data driven programming, is ancient history for old guys like me: open any European computer enthusiast magazine (64'er, Dator, anyone?) from the '80's and you're almost guaranteed to find at least one treatise on the subject in almost every issue, in one form or another.

But I digress; after that one day, their jaw dropped when I would perform the same amount of work that would take them two hours to an entire day... in three minutes. Every time.

Next they wanted to know how I did it. AWK and shell. Say what?!? What is AWK?

And this is where our story really begins: I always purposely kept enough free space at my desk, and an extra chair, so that anyone from all over the company could just pick up their laptop, walk over to me and plop themselves down next to me with whatever problem they were trying to solve. I also gave them homework. Pretty soon everyone was walking around with Aho, Weinberger, and Kernighan's little Grey AWK book and used it as a reference. Then it was ANSI C 2nd edition's turn. Throughout it all, I kept teaching. There were whiteboard 1:1 classes on data structures. Then on algorithms. I loved it. And because this is regular work, I thought the exact theory that they needed to implement in order to solve the problem they were working on.

When it came time for some of the guys to switch jobs, go back to school, or go home, there were tears on both sides. I had had really devoted, bright young students, eager to learn, and I loved to teach; enthusiasm can be contagious given one is surrounded by right people. It was such a wonderful experience, and I think it was so for both sides.

Re: Thank HN: From Google form to $1k in revenue in one month

#240

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Oct 21, 2016, 6:36 AM UTC

goatherders wrote: post #165

tracker1 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will usually just flat out ask up front.. and if it's a cagey response, I'll kindly decline.

I usually decline to interview people that ask my recruiter too early about salary. We work hard to post very clear job descriptions and requirements so if you read it and apply and get through the initial screening, then that's a pretty good indicator that we are in range on salary even if we've never discussed it.

I ask because most of the approaches that I get, or even when I approach (I'm actively looking) tend to fall short of where I've been in terms of income for the past several years. And culture, cool tech, and neat opportunities only count for so much. Until companies return to a cradle to the grave mentality (like IBM of old), then I'll reconsider.

Until then... I like technology and have some preferences, but for the most part, I'm a mercenary for hire, looking for the highest payout. There's some wiggle room for a cool company, working with cool people and dealing with cool technology, but more than a 20% cut in pay isn't something I'm likely to go for.

In the Phoenix area, a "Senior" or "Lead" developer can range from $40/hr or $75k/year on the low end to $80/hr or $150k/yr on the high end... I've been at the higher end, and have no intention of hitting the lower end. That's a very large gap for equivalent titles and job descriptions... so yeah, I ask.

Alternatively, if it was more like parts of Europe where I'm working 30-35 hour weeks, and getting a month and a half a year off, it might be different.