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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

#531

Post by mooreds »

giantg2 wrote: post #459
mooreds wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well, I've been part of companies that have seen it that way, so they're out there!

But I agree, too few companies have that perspective.

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

#532

Post by CrimpCity »

cxx wrote: post #522
VirusNewbie wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I've never seen someone admit to being that much of an asshole on HN in all my years. People are literally spending months studying for interviews hoping they can get hired at FB and you are sabotaging their chances. You're admitting you aren't even trying to evaluate if they would be someone you want on your team or an asset to the company, and instead just wasting people's time and hurting careers as a protest…

Do you realize that when seen from the outside there's literally no difference between what I'm doing and me being a "bar raiser" or "preventing false positives"? I'm simply using the system against itself within its own rules. When someone comes in and is able to solve the 2 hardest problems I have cold there's no way I can reject this candidate in a debrief. There's people out there who are able to do this, either…

Wouldn't your approach have the unintended consequence of making other interviewers pick up your slack by increasing their false positive rate or by weighing other less measurable qualities? aka going by ivy or "feeder" schools?

It seems like your over-reaction is in fact counter productive and may make the whole thing less meritocratic.

My big assumption here is that FB and other places need to hit some numbers every year in terms of new hires especially with FBs no promotion by X years then you're out process.

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

#533

Post by depressedpanda »

joe-collins wrote: post #472
robotresearcher wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get the job and then learn the skill. The value proposition you present is that you can learn stuff. This is not a flippant reply! I’m totally serious.

Can I ask for a reality check, then? I've broadly tech-savvy, and I can do some programming. I taught myself Lua for the sake of making game addons, I've dabbled in Java and Javascript (and tiny bits elsewhere). Most of my projects of note, outside of gaming, are simply little utility scripts for my own curiosities, nothing shared. My career thus far has been a decade of retail, but at least I'm currently in an entry…

Go for it.

> Most of my projects of note, outside of gaming, are simply little utility scripts for my own curiosities, nothing shared.

Put this stuff up on GitHub or similar.

I was recently involved in recruiting a junior dev at my company, and I was baffled by how lackluster people's portfolios were. Many people didn't have one. Those that did, had one or two school projects, or had a bunch of empty 0-commit forks.

Even one single passion project will make you stand out from the rest.

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

#534

Post by WaitWaitWha »

inter_netuser wrote: post #248
ditonal wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the opposite. A decade ago, it was pretty much Google, Facebook, and some elite trading firms that could pay a ton. Now so many startups have grown up, there’s a huge list of them on levels.FYI that will pay 400k+ for senior and 600k+ for staff. I recently have interviewed for a ton and got rejected a bunch, but I joked with my spouse that there’s so many that by the time you’re done interviewing at all of the…

Bay area?

Usually refers to San Francisco, California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

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

#535

Post by 100-xyz »

chana_masala wrote: post #102
dbish wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t use Glassdoor for tech. They are almost always incorrect since they are salary focused. Use levels.fyi which understands total compensation

Blind can be another good resource

I discovered Blind recently and agree it's an awesome resource.

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

#536

Post by aynyc »

In the US, do you really see a higher comp range now for senior IC like 20 years in? I don't. Other than the usually FAANG and buyside shops. I just went thru several interviews, while they all want me, the comp (10-20%) isn't enough for me to take the job over my existing ones. A lot of recruiters want me to take management roles which I don't want to at all.

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

#537

Post by FractalParadigm »

hinoki wrote: post #435
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that FAANG pays very well in India and Japan and Canada. Is this not true?

Salaries in Japan are 65-70% of SF Bay Area (for FAANG, local is much worse) London, U.K. is about the same as Japan. I don’t have experience with India, and my knowledge of Canada is too far out of date to be useful. All those salaries are very good for the local market, but are also much lower than SF.

> my knowledge of Canada is too far out of date to be useful

All I can say, is in personal anecdotal experience, I make about the same money (with better hours!) in my current factory job than I would have if I finished my degree and went into software, and with none of the stress or crunch time or deadline associated. For example, looking at Glassdoor they have Google's Toronto office reporting starting salaries of ~$90-100k - while my base pay is only ~$62k ($29.50/hr) we get double-time overtime after 40 hours, I can (and have) clear(ed) well over $130k/yr with minimal effort.

They're offering decent salaries compared to other tech jobs in the area, but it's average-at-best if you start comparing unskilled labourer salaries in as a comparison.

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

#538

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

yosito wrote: post #520
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care about cover letters? I haven’t written one of those in probably 20 years. If I’m hiring and a candidate includes one, I usually ignore it (when hiring for an individual contributor, engineering role).

A cover letter is an introduction. It's easy, and polite. Skipping it communicates low effort and poor communication skills. I don't want to work with low effort, poor communicators, even if they're genius programmers.

To me they just seem copy-and-pasted and therefore of very low value, almost noise. I want to know if you can get the job done, and that is what a resume and interviews are for.

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

#539

Post by naasking »

yosito wrote: post #518
naasking wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only paid attention to cover letters for junior positions, mainly to evaluate communication skills.

Do you not consider communication skills important for senior positions? Some of the worst companies I ever worked at didn't value communication skills for senior positions, and I couldn't leave those roles fast enough!

I haven't hired for senior positions, but I would say that communication skills matter most at the top and bottom, less so in the middle.

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

#540

Post by shawabawa3 »

dom96 wrote: post #517
mabbo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've actually seen the opposite. I'm at a FAANG, but based in Toronto. For the first time, recruiters are saying to me that yeah, they can do better than that total comp. Often much better. I like my boss and team, but if someone offers me enough money and a fully remote job, well, it's going to be hard to say no.

I wish this was the case in London. I'm at a FAANG and have recently done a few interview loops with non-FAANG companies based in London (as well as a few that are based in SF but hire remote in London) and all were offering Starting to wonder if there is simply no chance of getting even close to the FAANG TC and whether I'm stuck for the 4 years at my current job.

Tech compensation is weird in London.

Local/non-FAANG companies pay around $50-130k USD equiv total comp (£35-100k) for junior -> senior software engineer

FAANG pay $150k at least for junior positions. If you're a senior engineer in London you can get a 50% pay bump for becoming a junior at a FAANG company. (I personally went from senior non-fang to mid-level fang for roughly triple my total comp)

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