Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent • Hacker News Board

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#41

Post by maxaf » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #32

neebz wrote: post #26

I loved remote work and did a lot of effort to ensure that we adopt a remote-friendly culture. However I will never get over the fact that we found some of our engineers ended up doing freelancing work, over-estimating work and basically just slacking around in the freedom of their homes. I would love to hear if anyone had similar experiences or how they prevent such in remote environments.

That is an interesting point. Personally, I think remote work should be freelance work.

Are you saying that remote employees should be deprived of full-timer benefits and legal protections, however meager? All because of trust issues that grew out of experience with a bad apple which isn't representative of remote workers in general?

Empirically speaking, effective remote employees are more trustworthy and less prone to organizational politics. I can even tell you why: these people have a system of values outside of work that in turn values their professional activities as something that helps enable this desirable lifestyle. In return, work is treated with diligence and virtue.

I'm sorry that you or the person you're replying to have had a negative experience with remote workers. As usual, a few bad apples don't spoil the whole bunch.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#42

Post by aianus » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:18 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #40

aianus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're getting $$$k in salary, you're also almost certainly getting top notch medical insurance. Also, you don't need private insurance when you're 67, that's what Medicare is for.

And you pay for Medicare after you are eligible for it. My dad just hit Medicare age and was surprised to find out he gets to pay for it.

It's not $8,000 a month though. I'd still take a developer career in the US over Europe any day.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#43

Post by badpun » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:22 PM UTC

muse900 wrote: post #39

Nursie wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK mostly pays developers a derisory salary. Australia seems to pay roughly on a par with the US, or did when I lived there. But most of the UK is dreadful - software folks are paid poorly and treated like drones. Unfortunately there are enough people that will take the bad salary, have mediocre performance and deliver mediocre software slowly, that a lot of British companies now expect to pay peanuts and get mon…

Completely agree with you. In the London area it’s white expensive to live due to how expensive housing is. Contracting might be a good thing for a tech guy with a specific skill but a lot of people like me like to have something standard and be more secure in a way that they won’t need to search for another gig in 3 months. I guess the more contracting you do the more reliable you become and you constantly close dow…

In my experience, most contracts in enterprise Java typicaly last 6-24 months, some even longer. 3 months and gtfo is not standard.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#44

Post by rsp1984 » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:26 PM UTC

curiouscat321 wrote: post #3

People who espouse remote work seem convinced that it’s the end-all way to work. I don’t care if I have to go into an office. I like offices. What I care about is that you don’t mind if I work from home every once in a while. I care that it’s okay for me to leave early or come late.

My opinion as an employer: Sure, feel free to take your work hours as you like and WFH every once in a while.

Just make sure that overall your total hours are what we agreed to in the employment contract.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#45

Post by skypanther » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:28 PM UTC

neebz wrote: post #26

I loved remote work and did a lot of effort to ensure that we adopt a remote-friendly culture. However I will never get over the fact that we found some of our engineers ended up doing freelancing work, over-estimating work and basically just slacking around in the freedom of their homes. I would love to hear if anyone had similar experiences or how they prevent such in remote environments.

I've worked remote for over a decade. At the best jobs, I was made to feel fully part of the team. I was included in decision making, kept updated with changing plans, had a means to communicate & stay socially and professionally involved with the team. In those cases, I was fully dedicated to the job.

On the other hand, I've worked other jobs where I was essentially ignored for weeks, even months at a time. I was left out of decisions, etc and just handed work to do. At those places, I definitely drifted off into my own stuff.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#46

Post by humanrebar » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

chx wrote: post #15

What this doesn't talk about enough is work impact -- mentioned yes but doesn't emphasize it. These are shitty years and it eats me I am working for an enterprise gardening their websites instead of literally making the world a better place. I mean, sure, it pays and challenging and whatnot but I miss NowPublic dearly because we made a god damn difference. We ran one of the biggest Katrina missing person boards. We w…

> These are shitty years and it eats me I am working for an enterprise gardening their websites instead of literally making the world a better place.

It's a peculiar quirk of the tech industry that "changing the world through X" is a reasonable expectation. Bus drivers don't wonder how they can make a difference through bus driving. They do their shifts and then go volunteer at the hospital, food bank, homeless shelter, etc.

Point being, you have an urge to help people. Then help people.

Now, you'll obviously add the most value to organizations that need Drupal, but free technical help is usually not "free as in beer" as much as "free as in puppies". Setting up someone with a slick technical solution almost always comes with some required maintenance fees, organizational knowledge, operational costs, etc. That is, it's hard to give away tech in a way that's sustainable. Even tech training has limited use if you're not prepared with next steps for the trainees (college applications, concrete job prospects, immediate personal benefit, etc.).

That being said, information can be given away effectively, as you learned after Katrina. Maybe some community is just missing certain information presented well. Drupal is great there. Other people are great at writing middleware for CAN buses. They probably have fewer opportunities to apply tech to help humanity than you do. They'd be better off pitching in at Habitat for Humanity, and maybe you would be too, just to start.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#47

Post by matwood » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

jakobegger wrote: post #13

freyfogle wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is if they give you your special deal, they have to give everyone their own special deal which becomes an absolute nightmare to manage.

And here's an opportunity for smaller companies. I have a small company, and I can't offer my employees the prestige or high salary that larger companies offer. But I can offer to accommodate whatever other special wishes people have. Want to work just 4 days a week? Fine. Want to work from 12pm to 8pm? Fine. Want to take a day off on short notice? Fine with me. Larger companies have all kinds of rules and policies i…

This is basically what we do. I think we offer competitive salaries, but also give tons of work flexibility. We judge on work produced, not hours in seats (within reason for meetings or time critical items like customer support) or any other useless metric.

Since each person has to be thought of individually, I can see where it would be hard to scale in a really large environment. Some employees also have a hard time without strict policies in place (weird I know). We make sure to let people know in the interview that responsibility comes with the freedom.

One last thing, we treat every position in the company this way and not just the developers.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#48

Post by matfil » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

kreetx wrote: post #22

adjkant wrote: post #2

I usually hate posts about top job, top tech talent, etc. This post was a lot of great stuff. The idea of pairing talented people of different levels is crucial. A senior lead with shit backup can only do so much. The right balance I think can turn two mythical 10x devs into 100x total instead of 20x. Of course, make sure those people are also compatible, as half the 10x devs I know are loners who don't mix well and…

Agreed, this post gets a lot of things right IMO. An idea I've had on 10x developers (or whatever the multiplier..) is not that they can code and solve problems this much faster, but in the long term they steer the code base as a whole in a direction such that the impact is that large. (But of course recognizing this, or being able to compare it to the other would-be ways the code could have gone, is a non-trivial ma…

It's unfortunate that we try to measure this kind of thing on a single dimension. There's certainly a type of developer/mentor who does do a good job of setting helpful directions in a large-team setting. At the other extreme, there are people who don't necessarily thrive in a "team setting" at all, but on the other hand can build big things (or, better yet, small things than solve big problems) remarkably quickly. Both "high multiples", but quite different skills.

(There does seem to have been a fair amount of devaluation of solo-working over the last few years, which perhaps leads to less appreciation of the second kind of high-multiple than was once the case).

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#49

Post by humanrebar » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

rsp1984 wrote: post #44

curiouscat321 wrote: post #3

People who espouse remote work seem convinced that it’s the end-all way to work. I don’t care if I have to go into an office. I like offices. What I care about is that you don’t mind if I work from home every once in a while. I care that it’s okay for me to leave early or come late.

My opinion as an employer: Sure, feel free to take your work hours as you like and WFH every once in a while. Just make sure that overall your total hours are what we agreed to in the employment contract.

> Just make sure that overall your total hours are what we agreed to in the employment contract.

What's the justification for monitoring total hours and not something more directly tied to business success? End users and profit margins (assuming your engineers are salaried) don't care about whether your engineers had consistent 40+ hour work weeks.

Re: Turning a Job Opening into a Dream Job for Top Talent

#50

Post by matfil » Sat, Feb 03, 2018, 1:36 PM UTC

pleasecalllater wrote: post #33

weeksie wrote: post #27

I really wish we'd start using a term like journeyman to talk about what people insist on calling "senior developers". A person with 3-6 years of experience isn't senior. That's preposterous on its face. Nor is a 3-6 year developer a junior, but we are woefully inept at using meaningful terms for developers.

This always makes me sad. 3-6 years of experience, and you are senior. 20 years of experience, and you are too old for the "young and dynamic team". I'm slowly hitting 20 years soon... and even now I have troubles with getting a job. I didn't have the problem when I had 3-6 years of experience. A surgeon with 3-6 years of experience is usually too inexperienced to operate on her own. 20 years of experience, and you c…

20 year programmers fairly often get to "lead teams of programmers".

In some ways, it's staying hands-on that can be difficult. At least if you want to be recognised and valued as someone who's experienced and can take on challenging problems without a lot of support.