In my experience, one of the key ways to get an engineer interested in a role is to tell how much it pays up front, and make sure that number is appropriate for the experience level you're targeting.
When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
501–510 of 694 posts
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#502If you only start thinking about selling a candidate when you _meet_ one then you missed the bigger opportunity to build a corporate reputation of supporting developers in their careers (e.g. with open source, developer blogs, etc.).
With that in mind, focusing on the bits highlighted here doesn't make sense. Attract smart/experienced/motivated candidates and your boring hiring process or your flawed onboarding process doesn't matter as much.
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#503"When hiring senior engineers, the company doesn’t choose the candidate, the candidate chooses the company."
That's totally true. I also choose the environment where I will be working and what conditions will be.
I prefer working remotely and have flexible working hours. It keeps me motivated.
"Your job posting probably sucks". I agree with it too. Because some recruiters write me that their company offers free alcohol in their office for stressful situations. I told them it looks unprofessional and seems that they just drink at their office. She said to me that people hate boring descriptions and I'm wrong.
But you know that more people like a healthy lifestyle. Especially in Silicon Valley. Do you agree?
So, if you sell your company, find more information about a candidate (their interests, lifestyle, values). Instagram, Facebook, Twitter show you who a person is. It helps you to write the best offer to a candidate.
Currently, I'm using three ways to find a job: FB groups, Networking, and Freelance Marketplaces. I used to get projects on Upwork but right now I check job boards. BTW, if you want to save your time searching for projects, I found a service on Reddit comments that aggregates freelance projects from job boards (https://periodix.net/). I like it because it doesn't sell me bad projects.
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#504While I agree with a lot of the suggestions in this post, I disagree with the "you’re not buying, you’re selling" part. It's just not that one-sided.
I think the proces of hiring or applying works best when it's a conversation between equals. Both the employer and applicant have something of value to offer, and both expect something of equal value in return.
Many employers and applicants act like the other side should be happy to talk to them (they're granting them a favor). If you really think the other side has more to gain from talking to you than yourself, why did you decide to have the conversation in the first place?
Sure, markets are not perfect, so the most popular employer in a city and the best engineer with nowhere-to-find expertise might both be able to act as a buyer. For the rest of us: We're buying, and we're selling.
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only people that say that a CS education doesn't make you a better programmer are people without a CS education.
CS is not programming just like 99% of musicians don't have music theory degree.
It's probably a great analogy because the best musicians all know basic music theory, whether they learned it in school or on the bandstand. As for the advanced theory that they teach in graduate programs, it isn't even applicable to most genres of music.
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny. I agreed with the author. It's relatively easy to gauge technical ability vs those who can pretend. I only use a simple take-home problem when I truly can't tell which type they are. The really great part is that I usually tell a faker from the resume. Maybe I should blog about this.
If you're right, demand 2x your salary, because the industry's track record on this is abominable.
There's a company that turns up here on HN sometimes that claims to find the best engines. They were looking for part time remote screeners/ evaluators. I figured I'd apply. Filled out some stuff online, and then their system wanted me to take a test on java script or something - not my language. It was then that I knew they don't really know how to interview people, so I stopped the application process.
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi, author here, thanks for your feedback. I think you might be right, thinking about rewriting that paragraph a bit. For me it's been really obvious in interviews whether someone knows what they're doing or not. But probably I've just been lucky in this so far. Looking forward to reading your post about it. Haven't read it yet, but if it's not in the post, could you give a few examples of what people said, that turn…
I think your key point is less that testing is easy than you should let the candidate prove their worth in their own way . This sounds key to me. Your original quote is… yeah, “easy” happens, but it’s not always elementary. Testing a candidate is actually very candidate-dependent, I found out; however, it is a lot less hard when you let the candidate pick their own approach (and you supplement it subtly). I found it…
Hey, thanks for your detailed response. I agree with a lot of what you said, really helped me put my thoughts together.
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may not be realizing that half or more of the compensation at the big SV tech companies is not salary. Total compensation of $300k or more is pretty standard for the public companies. Check levels.fyi to see examples. The benefits are also much better than I’ve seen elsewhere. I moved to SF from Raleigh because even after cost of living I earn significantly more (ie. put a lot more in savings every year) Housing…
And that’s only true at four or five companiess at the most.... Especially if you’re married, I know a lot of developers whose spouses income goes straight into savings, investments, etc. but it’s another example of HN Silicon valley thinking that software engineering starts and stops at four companies. Married dual income couples especially can make out like bandits in any of those cities. I live in one of those cit…
I think the thing here is that cities are a better deal if you can command a top salary, and worse in most other situations. For example, talking about FANG, a senior position at Google (the lowest terminal level) comes with an average salary of $360k. Whereas someone who can get a senior position at Google is looking at your $135k (I get the feeling you're quite senior) or maybe a bit more in lower CoL areas. Even adding in a significant other that doesn't see a bump moving to the Bay, you're likely looking at 2x in the high CoL case.
On the other hand, if you can't get one of those top positions in the Bay you're probably looking at closer to $150k-$200k in a senior position, which makes a $100k or so low CoL position look awfully nice.
This gap widens as you go up the salary scale. I don't think I've ever seen even $300k in a low CoL area, whereas in the expensive areas 7 figures is possible (although quite rare).
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like I said elsewhere in this discussion, I disagree. Of course, salary is very important, but I (and many people I know) would easily choose (and have chosen) a lower salary for any combination of these perks: - Work fewer hours - Work from anywhere - Work in a specific location - Work in a certain environment - Work in a specific kind of organization - Work with specific technologies - etc. People are very differen…
For me it is: - the product is SW - great colleagues - challenging problems - cool technology - having users - good salary - good tools - max 40 hours a week - minimal bureaucracy - working remote when needed https://henrikwarne.com/2013/03/26/what-do-programmers-want/
Interesting article, thanks for posting.
Re: When hiring senior engineers, you’re not buying, you’re selling
#510A lot of this post seems pretty reasonable. But: In my experience, it’s fairly easy to judge technical skill. A friendly conversation about technical interests and recent projects can often be enough. Bullshit. Sounding credible in technical interviews is a skill, not the same skill as actually being a good programmer, and might even (statistically, in the large) be close to orthogonal to it. We found this out the ha…
I recall an interview I was brought into early in my career to talk with someone being brought into be a senior architect... in my mind this meant this dude must be crazy smart right. Everyone in room had all basically made up thier minds and loved the guy. I gave a variable like a = [1,2,4,8,9]; And asked if he could write a loop and print out the values of each element. He embarrassingly could not. I always ask thi…
I work with a fantastic developer who types with his index fingers only, hunt and peck style. It boggles the mind.