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Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

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Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#51

Post by jakejake »

I think a good team has a balance of rock stars and junior devs. I don't find it usually the case that a rock star will do 10x the work of a junior dev. In fact they will often do less work - however the work they do is easily 10x or 100x smarter and better for the company long-term. Junior devs tend to work very hard but also can cause a lot of havoc if a someone is not helping to guide them. Many times in fact the work that junior devs do winds up being a mess that the senior has to fix or re-do entirely. Junior devs can also suck up a lot of time from the senior devs, so in fact they may at times be reducing productivity. On the positive side the junior guys tend to bring a lot of enthusiasm and fresh ideas. They keep the senior guys on their toes. And they will grow into senior devs, hopefully giving you a few years of solid work when they reach that point.

"rock star" status to me is somewhat based on age and experience. But in fact some rock stars are young and some mediocre devs are older. I think it has to do more with personality and motivation on the part of each individual.

Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#52

Post by slurgfest »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #6

Are they really talking about Ninja-Rockstar engineers, or "only" developers at the 10x end of the Mythical Man Month spectrum? Because you can hire a junior engineer close to that end of the spectrum. It's just harder to know whether they are really that good without seeing a track record. From the article: >The rationale you'll typically hear is along the lines of "a great developer is 10x as productive as a medioc…

You don't actually know that the developers you want are all people employed somewhere else, that is just a heuristic you use to make recruitment easier.

Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#53

Post by tocomment »

vbtemp wrote: post #45
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Why wouldn't they move somewhere else then? They LIKE living in DC?

No, he's not serious. Actual salaries are double-to-triple what he's saying.

Wow, where would you find triple? I've never heard of a developer making 180K in DC.

Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#54

Post by ericb »

dsolomon wrote: post #34
doktrin wrote: post #7

There are certainly some important take-aways in this article. What certainly hit home was the reference to high turnover. In my experience, attracting and retaining (perceived) top 1% developers is no small feat. It's damaging to a project when a "rockstar" developer builds out a product set in her chosen (often bleeding edge) framework / language, and then departs at the sign of another "fun" opportunity elsewhere.…

Personnel retention is easy - just demonstrate on any level that the contributions of the workforce is appreciated. Since I'm in the DC area too, with clearance, the number you're throwing around are a bit of a stretch. We've got junior developers in the high $30K range and senior in the mid $60K range.

Are these junior developers actually interns?

Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#55

Post by slurgfest »

modoc wrote: post #30

Are we really STILL talking about those terms? I don't mind those terms myself, because what I think everyone ACTUALLY means is they want a A++ player, someone who's deeply involved in the specific tech, a cut above your average senior dev cube dweller. These are the best sort of people for startups where your small size and large goals mean you can't afford any dead weight. Who cares what term you're using?

'A player' is another one of those obnoxious, means-nothing words like 'ninja' and 'rockstar'. In practice it means 'my kind of guy' - and someone acculturated to the same self-promotion ideology - more than it means anything about qualifications.

It's funny that EVERY company says it will be crippled unless it hires only people who are far above average. Because if developer quality is even close to normally distributed, about half of the actually employed population is below average (let alone top 1%).

Big companies, of course, need people with years of deep specialization. So if you aren't deemed to be "crushing it" in the top 1% and you don't have 10 years of experience in some extreme specialization - regardless of what you can actually do - you are COMPLETELY useless to the industry and will save your time if you just start mowing lawns and waiting tables.

Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#56

Post by jtbigwoo »

freyr wrote: post #40
dsolomon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personnel retention is easy - just demonstrate on any level that the contributions of the workforce is appreciated. Since I'm in the DC area too, with clearance, the number you're throwing around are a bit of a stretch. We've got junior developers in the high $30K range and senior in the mid $60K range.

> We've got junior developers in the high $30K range That seems incredibly low, especially for a major metropolitan area. You must give great benefits.

It's not that surprising to me. My friends and I compared offers out of college and then didn't talk at all about salary for over a decade. A couple years ago, I started asking around when I was considering a job offer. I found out that we were making anywhere from 60k to 115k! We all had the same years of experience (~12 years). We all had different specialties, but that didn't really seem to matter. The guys who stuck with one job at a small-to-medium company seemed to do the worst--five percent raises don't exactly cause your salary to skyrocket. Those of us who worked at big companies did better, probably because the big companies make an effort to do salary surveys and pay competitive wages. Those of us who worked for consulting firms or changed jobs a few times did the best.

Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#57

Post by modoc »

slurgfest wrote: post #55
modoc wrote: post #30

Are we really STILL talking about those terms? I don't mind those terms myself, because what I think everyone ACTUALLY means is they want a A++ player, someone who's deeply involved in the specific tech, a cut above your average senior dev cube dweller. These are the best sort of people for startups where your small size and large goals mean you can't afford any dead weight. Who cares what term you're using?

'A player' is another one of those obnoxious, means-nothing words like 'ninja' and 'rockstar'. In practice it means 'my kind of guy' - and someone acculturated to the same self-promotion ideology - more than it means anything about qualifications. It's funny that EVERY company says it will be crippled unless it hires only people who are far above average. Because if developer quality is even close to normally distrib…

Okay so what term(s) are acceptable to you?

I've worked at many large F500 companies, and trust me they can and do employ a much larger group of average and below average people, including developers. There are tons of people at F500s that if I brought them into a small startup, would KILL the startup because they simply can't produce.

Not sure what you actual work experience is but there are absolutely a range of skills/productivity/involvement. If you don't call them A/B/C or Ninjas or whatever, you have to call them something. Having worked with a wide range of folks, I have my preferences:)

Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#58

Post by doktrin »

dsolomon wrote: post #34
doktrin wrote: post #7

There are certainly some important take-aways in this article. What certainly hit home was the reference to high turnover. In my experience, attracting and retaining (perceived) top 1% developers is no small feat. It's damaging to a project when a "rockstar" developer builds out a product set in her chosen (often bleeding edge) framework / language, and then departs at the sign of another "fun" opportunity elsewhere.…

Personnel retention is easy - just demonstrate on any level that the contributions of the workforce is appreciated. Since I'm in the DC area too, with clearance, the number you're throwing around are a bit of a stretch. We've got junior developers in the high $30K range and senior in the mid $60K range.

Personnel retention is easy - just demonstrate on any level that the contributions of the workforce is appreciated.

I think you may be painting a simplistic picture, and are making an implicit statement about my experience.

I have never worked for a software company that didn't value it's developers or their contributions. Quite the contrary, in fact. Benefits, high salaries, flexible hours, work from home all on top of routine praise and a very supportive work environment. None of these will guarantee that a top employee won't be attracted to possibilities and challenges elsewhere.

We've got junior developers in the high $30K range and senior in the mid $60K range.

It is frankly unimaginable that a highly qualified developer would be paid $60k in the DC metro. The cost of living is easily on par with many parts of the SF Bay Area. It's quite possible that our standards for "senior developers" are different, but I'm quite confident my numbers are correct.

As far as $30k for junior engineers - frankly I know data entry technicians in Virginia who are paid that much or more.

Re: Startups: Stop Trying To Hire Ninja-Rockstar Engineers

#59

Post by dsolomon »

vbtemp wrote: post #45
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Why wouldn't they move somewhere else then? They LIKE living in DC?

No, he's not serious. Actual salaries are double-to-triple what he's saying.

Yes, I am serious. Welcome to the world of being a contractor working for the government.
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