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

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

#231

Post by MattGaiser »

tom-thistime wrote: post #151
MattGaiser wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still see it as an important distinction simply because developers also have an interest in not getting hit by a bus. But they are quite happy to leave for Netflix and given turnover rates in tech, are almost guaranteed to leave in a few years.

It would be an important distinction, except that "hit by a bus" always primarily meant being hired away. (For me "always" means "since the mid 1990s".)

Fair, but an organization should still be able to survive a literal bus hit too.

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

#232

Post by jefftk »

crispyambulance wrote: post #142
cptskippy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's intentional language used by employers because it has preconceived notions and they succinctly communicate a story that benefits the employer. When you hear poached, you think illegal and victims. It makes you think that the employer has been wronged in some way and that the employee was both participatory in something illegal or at least underhanded and at the s…

> The reality is that the employee was being taken advantage of by the employer and received an offer more closely aligned with their actual value. It is also possible that the "poacher" has such a ridiculous amount of money at their disposal that they're able to suck a talent pool dry with "so-much-money-you-can't-refuse" offers. I think, however, that enough employees are getting wise to the fact that a FAANG offer…

For what it's worth, I've been at a FAANG since 2012, and "competitive hellscape of Type-A 20-somethings" sounds completely alien to me. My coworkers and I generally work about 40 hours a week, and don't feel like we are in competition with each other.

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

#233

Post by gremlinsinc »

catwind7 wrote: post #207

> 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 y…

Having worked w/ rails/laravel, I'd say you could say the same thing and it may even be 'more' true about laravel (see: built in queues, authentication, etc), with rails you need devise, and 3rd party packages for a lot of the normal boilerplate.

However, lately I'm thinking more about performance so would love to work more with rust or golang, though I find rust harder to grok mentally. Golang is nice though, and easy to follow most code samples.

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

#234

Post by pb7 »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #122
thelean12 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like people try to tell themselves this, but money is BY FAR the most important factor. And FAANGs pay a ton. Maybe this can be true if you're going from like $250k to $270k from FAANG to FAANG. But most of the time we're talking about something like $180k to $250k when getting poached to a FAANG. It would take a huge amount of perks or otherwise to make that gap worth it. (Of course this isn't true for everyo…

I feel like people tell themselves the opposite so they can justify continuing to run the SV rat race. Sure you might be able to sock away an extra $10k/yr but the valley is gonna eat most of your raise and leave you miserable if you don't drink the kool-aid.

Is it? Or is it because you can sock away way more than $10K/year extra and have a very enjoyable life both at and outside of work?

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

#235

Post by loxs »

benburleson wrote: post #127
thomascgalvin wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The reality is that the employee was being taken advantage of by the employer and received an offer more closely aligned with their actual value. In the vast majority of cases, I agree. If someone is working at CompuTech for $100K per year, and gets an offer from TechuComp for $110K per year, that's market forces working in favor of the developer. This is a good thing. But there is the possibility for entities the…

It really depends on the perspective. If we're considering this a zero-sum situation, we have to conclude that your situation is good for developers in general because it will cause all developer/engineer salaries to rise to meet the (possibly inflated) salaries that the market has deemed required to recruit talent. On the other hand, does it mean that some employers won't have money to hire talent? And will that res…

Some employers/enterpreneurs going bankrupt is the definition of capitalism. If that wasn't the case, it wouldn't work for the betterment of everyone (as people wouldn't strive to create healthy businesses). This is increasingly becoming skewed though (with government subsidies).

On the other hand, capitalism has this great thing where going bust is not the end of the world (or life), compared to previous eons.

A system which allows (and encourages) failing is great.

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

#236

Post by fragmede »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #93
cptskippy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish we'd stop using the word "poach". It's intentional language used by employers because it has preconceived notions and they succinctly communicate a story that benefits the employer. When you hear poached, you think illegal and victims. It makes you think that the employer has been wronged in some way and that the employee was both participatory in something illegal or at least underhanded and at the s…

> The reality is that the employee was being taken advantage of by the employer and received an offer more closely aligned with their actual value. In the vast majority of cases, I agree. If someone is working at CompuTech for $100K per year, and gets an offer from TechuComp for $110K per year, that's market forces working in favor of the developer. This is a good thing. But there is the possibility for entities the…

Facebook's stock price will keep going up (hopefully, for people holding them), but they're never going to appreciate in value in the same way an early state startup is going to. 100x returns between strike and exercise price exist. CompuTech can give the programmer more options to make up the difference, and while there's advice to value those options at $0, that's harder for an engineer to ignore once a salary threshold is met.

After the first $100k or so in salary - enough for living expenses, soft things like culture fit, are able to become more important to employees, and by offering services like on-site massages directly, employers are able to offer more value than employees could capture themselves. (On-site massages are also used to keep employees on campus longer, but once you start getting "free" massages, they're hard to give up!)

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

#237

Post by smilekzs »

WWLink wrote: post #126
JPKab wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel the same way about being a dumbass for staying in los angeles lol. Here I am getting low 100k and some linkedin recruiter tells me about a 400k job. Wait WHAT?! Man I'd happily take up one of those Google jobs, but being an embedded software guy, I'm not even sure what they'd want me for. It seems like a lot of silicon valley companies are a great place if you're a web dev, or use C#/Java all the time.

Or C++, which can be a great skill for an embedded dev to pivot into other fields, since almost all embedded devs work with C on a daily basis.

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

#238

Post by sbisker »

throwaway_8145 wrote: post #203
LordKano wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

That actually crosses the line from “unethical” into “unlawful collusion”. If you’re talking about a Valley company, they all got hit for this some time ago: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2014/03/01/tech... And if it’s not a Valley company, well, there’s likely a similar lawsuit to be had. Sorry to hear about your experience.

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

#239

Post by paulgb »

JackFr wrote: post #204
paulgb wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the companies had a contractual agreement that their recruiting agency would block each other's employees from applying, that sounds like a non-poaching agreement of the sort that Apple and Google were fined hundreds of millions for.

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

#240

Post by compthrowaway »

heyoo wrote: post #13

Are $500k+ yearly salaries in SV really that usual?

Yes as long as you're talking about total compensation; I've 7 years of experience in software engineering and my offers are in the 500-600k range of total compensation. Note this is equity value at grant; there is no appreciation (or depreciation) yet.

I recently took one of those offers from a FAANG, swapping a bunch of illiquid startup RSUs for liquid equity compensation.

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