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Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

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Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#451

Post by brailsafe »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #163
Redoubts wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, honestly just shoot for it. The worst they can say is no, and a lot of job reqs are just long wishlists anyways. Hell, pick a dumb company you'll never want to work for, like Uber, if you want real-world practice. Then you at least know what real-world failure looks like.

I'm back in the job market and it doesn't even seem like HR has a clue what programmers do. My favorite was: "Must be fluent in: C#, .NET, and .NET Framework..."

The best I've seen is (verbatim) "Excellent Javascript(ES6) and CSS skills with minimum 10 years of Java (enterprise) for services/apis development experience, 5 years experience in ReactJS/redux or similar, 5 years nodejs"

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#452

Post by flippinburgers »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #439
lazypenguin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this was not my experience in recent interviews (past few weeks). I suspect that maybe this is only the case for the select few with “gold-plated” credentials (I.E. FAANG on the resume).

I have coming up on 10 years at Google, and a 20 year career total, and the few times I've dipped my toes into the interview water in the last couple years I've pulled it out promptly after being told I'd have to do one of these "leetcode" style interviews. I won't do them. Not worth the stress, I already get paid handsomely and treated with respect. If I'm going to go somewhere else it will because it's less stress…

Hopefully you are enjoying the position you are in because most people, myself included, have no other choice if we want to find better salaries. It is an awful experience in my opinion.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#453

Post by hilbertseries »

the_only_law wrote: post #168
gavinray wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in FAANG I have a hard time understanding how any developer is worth that amount of money though. I know a solid number of FAANG and ex-FAANG devs -- the stuff they work on (from what I've heard) isn't much different from the sorts of software I assume most people in SaaS startups work on. Outside of scale (which is significant). A lot of it is internal tooling though, which never hits absurd amounts of scale. I…

I think with FAANG it’s mostly just down to them having insane valuation and being able to give out those stock options. The base salaries don’t seem particularly high, until maybe the highest levels.

They’re not stock options, they’re RSUs or restricted stock units. And you can sell them whenever you want, inside the quarterly trading windows. It’s basically cash, it’s just tied to the company’s performance.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#455

Post by giantg2 »

starky wrote: post #415
giantg2 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think junior average salary at my company is around $75k now. Seniors are around $115k. A $40k gap is pretty big. I don't know. I feel like most dev compensation is kind of random. Like does that senior really produce $40k more in value per year?

It should be easy for a senior to provide $40k more value than a junior employee, especially considering that a lot of the value a junior employee creates can be due to mentorship and working with senior employees.

But how do you evaluate value on a multi person and even multi team project? Is the tester or security person valued as much as the senior dev? Without them the devs work might do more harm than good, right? How do we put value on those intangibles?

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#456

Post by noleetcode »

mooreds wrote: post #312
noleetcode wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to, as I'm really tired of my current employer, and they're definitely taking advantage of me, but I resolved to never waste my time with leetcode garbage again... which means I either stay where I'm at, or exit the industry entirely.

What? Do you have former co-workers who have moved on who'd love to have you at their new place? If so, I bet they can help you get past the coding tests.

Unfortunately the people I have (had?) a good enough relationship with where I feel like I could ask for favors like that just moved on to other big tech companies that all do the same leetcode hazing. Definitely would have been something I'd have tried otherwise though.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#457

Post by giantg2 »

mooreds wrote: post #425
giantg2 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think junior average salary at my company is around $75k now. Seniors are around $115k. A $40k gap is pretty big. I don't know. I feel like most dev compensation is kind of random. Like does that senior really produce $40k more in value per year?

Actually, to me that senior salary feels low. I am on a Colorado slack and check out the salaries in the job postings (yay, Equal Pay Transparency Rule). I see a range from 100k 175k for "senior" developer positions.

Yeah, my company is cheap and it's in the Philly region. I think the range extends up to about $150k. That's just base salary, so you could roughly estimate another 10-15% in other comp. Most senior devs seem to fall towards the low end, possibly due to the way they hire and perform merit increases.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#458

Post by nuclearnice1 »

wyclif wrote: post #437
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if a company asks, you can say no. I’ve never revealed this info and never will. You are giving them a free negotiating card. It doesn’t serve your interests at all.

Agreed. It doesn't matter at all if asking is banned. Just learn how to talk around the question (not difficult), and always refuse to reveal previous salary.

I like that advice.

It appears to matter in practice. Perhaps some people are struggling to talk around the question.

> A study published in June 2020 from researchers at Boston University’s School of Law found that, following the implementation of salary history bans, workers who changed jobs saw their pay increase by 5 percent more than comparable workers who changed jobs in the absence of a ban, with even larger benefits for women and African Americans.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2021/0...

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#459

Post by giantg2 »

mooreds wrote: post #412
giantg2 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see it that way. Training people is more expensive than hiring a senior dev for the simple fact that you have to use a senior dev's time to train the new person anyways.

> Training people is more expensive than hiring a senior dev for the simple fact that you have to use a senior dev's time to train the new person anyways. For the first N months, sure, but then, you have a senior and a trained junior, who is hopefully on their way to being a mid. So it's less of an expense and more of an investment in my eyes. But like any upfront investment, there is a time when the costs outweigh t…

"So it's less of an expense and more of an investment in my eyes."

Too bad companies don't see it that way.

Re: Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot-com era

#460

Post by noleetcode »

inter_netuser wrote: post #323
noleetcode wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to, as I'm really tired of my current employer, and they're definitely taking advantage of me, but I resolved to never waste my time with leetcode garbage again... which means I either stay where I'm at, or exit the industry entirely.

what is it about leetcode that makes it a waste of time?

Absolutely no relation to my technical abilities for any job I'd be looking at (besides, of course, passing an interview to begin with).

Please don't get me wrong: if it was just a few days of practicing, I'd just get it over with and do it. But realistically, with the leetcode arms-race that's gone on for the past few years, where you're expected to solve multiple hard-level problems back-to-back, with no assistance, and as quickly as possible (ie: under 30 minutes), I'm staring down the barrel of probably 3+ months of full-time grinding to memorize as much of them as possible.

Just not worth it. I'm terribly depressed as it is already, and that would just make it much worse.

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