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Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

truzzi.me

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Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#331

Post by ipaddr »

moritonal wrote: post #7

So Francesco says they refuse to do technical interviews and says their CV and Github are proof enough. The CV shows experience as a freelance engineer at Apple for a bit, then an engineer for Samsung which they were made redundant from. Their GitHub is 3 projects, a python script, a breakout board and then a beta libary. They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hir…

Don't hire a developer if you want a tester or a support agent or a document writer. Developers cost so much more why not target your task to an expert in that area?

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#332

Post by agentultra »

jorvi wrote: post #165
exikyut wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random idle/curious question: "a factory" doesn't describe the roughness of the working conditions, but assuming a baseline of a mildly industrial context, how did you mitigate the risk of dropped or damaged iPads? (As an aside, it's kind of a pity that there isn't a standard drop-proof tablet out there that can be deployed without thought in these kinds of situations.)

Probably iPads encased in rugged cases / mounts.

That was what most of our customers did for on-the floor tablets.

They would also use mounted TVs and have their scrum around our app's dashboard page which was something none of the developers had thought of.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#333

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

pzduniak wrote: post #205
KptMarchewa wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just going to comment on that. Not sure how reliable is this info, but Glassdoor suggests that salary in Milan could be slightly lower than what I would expect from average software engineer in Poland. https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/milan-software-engineer-s...

I'd imagine that what you get for $25k/yr in Poland is way better than the ROI on $30k/yr in Italy. Depends on the stack though. Most corporate Java people earn peanuts here. It's also likely that they replaced a well compensated engineering firm responsible for setting up the project with a cheap team handling maintenance.

$25k/yr is a junior level pay in Poland (at least in larger cities). You can double that with a few years of experience, and you'll likely top off at triple that unless you work remotely for a US company. Most of the local work is the typical satellite office stuff though.

That being said it quickly puts you in a very comfy financial situation, with very little risk and standard working hours.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#334

Post by emrah »

cletus wrote: post #160

So there are two issues with this: 1. If I were looking to hire someone and read this, I would immediately be turned off. Why? Because part of being an engineer (or any employee really) is doing a bunch of stuff people don't enjoy doing. This includes: - Writing documentation - Writing tests - Fixing bugs - Talking to partners about a change/launch - Talking to lawyers - etc So I would be wondering: if you're signali…

Writing just tests is not ideal, but writing tests in general can be very challenging and interesting given that you need to understand what the code under test does and figure out (edge)cases to exercise/break it.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#335

Post by rad_gruchalski »

Tycho wrote: post #321
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #318

There is something in the second paragraph that made me read it four times, I think, until I was able to read the rest of the post. The author somehow manages to turn around the fact of being laid off into freeing themselves from the "golden handcuffs finally". No matter how I read that paragraph, I can't help the feeling that the author misses the point: the author did not make that decision, the author had no choic…

Golden handcuffs means to leave would mean giving up too much money. I think it’s understandable behaviour. It would be financially irresponsible to quit a job that pays very well, especially if you’re not sure of landing another one. Being laid off, however, takes you out of the dilemma, so feels like a relief.

That's right. Thank you, I know what the phrase means. Don't get attached to me simply using their words to make my point.

The point is: instead of making a change, they waited until laid off. So in the end, it's somebody else's fault, like this: "I don’t want to talk too much about it, but let’s say my boss didn’t care about doing good work and didn’t know what good work looked like."

Maybe the post leaves too much in the unclear. It's not obvious if this is the author reflecting on the past and making up with their inner self or if it is simply taking out on the world. The post doesn't answer any of that.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#336

Post by ipaddr »

username90 wrote: post #267
sidlls wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had a good chuckle at this. I’m skeptical, to say the least. I don’t have direct experience. But I do work at a company that has poached several FAANG employees this past year and whose thoughts...differ from yours.

Likely you were able to poach them since they didn't thrive in that environment. Or you got them from the more traditional top-down Microsoft, Apple or Amazon.

Or he paid more, had more interesting work, clear path leadership was present, wfh options, family vibe, stock options, less corporate culture, etc..

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#337

Post by pschuegr »

mlboss wrote: post #114
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #25

Anything is interesting if you engage with it. And being bored is a state of mind. It's a fallacy to say "that's boring". The bored-ness is in your head, not in the task.

Not sure why you were downvoted. I totally agree with you. One of my past manager told me that the trick of making a boring job interesting is to introduce a layer of abstraction to the task. For example, if you have to right a lot of boiler plate code then write a code generator.

"The trick to making a boring job interesting is to make it more complicated". This is IMO terrible advice for building software.

Edit: your example seems like a good instance of applying this _well_, but I would not tell anybody this as general advice.

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#338

Post by rad_gruchalski »

mekal wrote: post #323
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #318

There is something in the second paragraph that made me read it four times, I think, until I was able to read the rest of the post. The author somehow manages to turn around the fact of being laid off into freeing themselves from the "golden handcuffs finally". No matter how I read that paragraph, I can't help the feeling that the author misses the point: the author did not make that decision, the author had no choic…

"But what's not landing with me: when the author had the choice....nobody cuffed the author to the desk". Golden handcuffs: a phrase first recorded in 1976, refers to financial allurements and benefits that have the objective to encourage highly compensated employees to remain within a company or organization instead of moving from company to company (or organization to organization) (opposite of a golden parachute).…

> Surely you can relate to someone taking a job they might not love because it pays more right? I think the main point he's trying to make is think twice before doing a job you hate, just because it pays more. Life is short, your job takes up a lot of your time, so consider doing something you enjoy...even if it pays less. That part at least is good advice I think.

That's correct. I can relate to someone. I repeat from the sibling comment: Maybe the post leaves too much in the unclear. It's not obvious if this is the author reflecting on the past and making up with their inner self or if it is simply taking out on the world. The post doesn't answer any of that.

Because of that, it's not possible to make a judgement why the author did not consider their own advice while at that previous job. If life's too short, why sticking up for until being laid off?

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#339

Post by therealdrag0 »

yongjik wrote: post #260

A generic advice: 15 years ago I might have felt similarly, but now I think it's the other way. If you want interesting work, demand higher pays and try to get into such positions. When you're highly paid you will get more interesting work, because the company will see you as a valuable asset that should be working on "hard" things. When you're being paid a penny, the company will think you're worth a penny and will…

It's not just about pay it's also about earning respect (by delivering good and making valuable contributions to the team) and your relationship with your manager. My manager literally asks me, "What do you want to work on?"

Re: Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

#340

Post by Tade0 »

minblaster wrote: post #330

I think the author is getting stuck in tactics, not strategy. Problem: OP does not have the freedom to pursue what he finds interesting. Tactic: Given existing work arrangements, attempt to negotiate a setup where he can just work on what he wants. If the employer changes its mind, OP gets to restart the cycle. Strategy: Avoid having this problem in the first place. Pursuing the strategy means taking a high-paying jo…

A sound tactic but there's one issue: high-paying jobs, in time, often turn into a sort of "golden cage", which makes you unemployable and vulnerable to lay-offs.

Anecdata:

A friend of mine worked in banking where the pay was amazing, but the tech used mostly outdated(think Java 6 in 2018). At some point he got fed up with all that and tried to switch roles, but to no avail, because no one would hire him.

He's still there but should a recession come he'll be in a very tough situation.

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