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We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
551–560 of 810 posts
Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, the recruiter told me the whole hiring team thought I was bullshitting about my salary. It was a problematic company from the get go. I was cold called and the recruiter was very insistent. Their engineers were very unprofessional during the technical interview and complained A LOT about technical debt left by past co-workers during the interview. Now, when I tell recruiters my minimum salary I refer recruiters…
IIRC it's becoming illegal to ask about current salary. IMHO it should be irrelevant. The question is, what is the market rate for someone w/ your skills and experience?
> illegal
The inevitable result of that is the people making bank will be sure to tell you, and ones making low salaries will not. The employer will therefore still know if you're making above or below the usual salary.
Businesses don't like risk (just like employees don't) and hiring a new person poses a lot of risk. It's expensive, and the employee may not work out at all. The more risk there is in hiring someone, the lower the salary offer will be to compensate. Salaries are a proxy for one's value when hiring. Removing that piece of information increases risk, and hence will lower the salary offers.
Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
A 50th percentile base salary for a senior engineer in the Bay Area is around $150k-$160k per year. Most companies offer a cash bonus (10%-15% of base); including this puts a typical cash compensation total for a 50th percentile senior engineer is between $165k and $184k per year. Most companies offer stock, but the grant and value of these varies wildly. Public companies' stock is actually worth something but you ha…
Base salary is a ruse. Median total compensation for qualified experts in the bay is currently $450-750k at reputable firms. Everyone knows this. Any company offering less is simply not in the running and is staffed by absolute morons and won't make it. So sad to be them.
What's your bar for "qualified expert" in this context?
Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same thing happen to me a couple times. Long and tiring process. Blackboard, make a project, lots of dirty laundry about "long gone incompetent developers" that made the current system a giant mess. Lots of red flags but lots of promises including a large maximum salary, including bonuses and stock options. The final offer, however, was 60% of my current pay. Lower than the average for someone with my exper…
> they assumed I was lying about my current salary and I was just bluffing That's commonplace, I've heard many engineers say they overstated their current salary. When I'd apply for jobs, I'd include a copy of a paystub, because I knew the companies knew about the practice and would discount the offer accordingly.
I like the balance California now strikes: while employers can't ask about salary history, if a candidate voluntarily shares the information unsolicited, they can verify it and make the offer conditional on the verification passing.
So, California employers won't be able to avoid a complaint if they press for a current (as opposed to desired) salary number and disadvantage or reject the candidate on that basis, but they can still check for honesty.
While I definitely don't want to discriminatorily let low salaries have a bad knock-on effect at subsequent jobs, I also don't want to hire or work with liars.
Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find perceptive junior employees extremely useful in judging candidates. The way people act with someone they perceive as inferior is very telling about their personality and how they'll work with others. People are in my experience a lot more likely to drop their guard and show their true selves when they think no one important is watching. Soft skills matter and someone senior is both capable of providing great v…
That belief can be true, but its not enough to make me want to have a guy 2 years in interviewing candidates. I wouldn't want experienced developers walking away.
In general, I prefer to lose potential candidates than hire someone bad since bad hires tend to become expensive. Moreover, if an experienced engineer walks because they got interviewed by someone junior then I view that as a bullet dodged. Assuming the junior engineer has been coached in the questions to ask and so on. It should be an easy win interview that will teach you a lot about the company since junior engineers tend to be worse at knowing what not to talk about.
Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#556I've been applying to jobs for about 5 months now and I haven't even managed to get a single technical interview, let alone a job offer. Can somebody please take a look at my linkedin and tell me if I'm stupid (www.linkedin.com/in/niyeturner)? Honestly if I'm completely out of my league and just need to quit making software I just want to hear it from somebody, rather than just all of a sudden being ignored. I guess there's also the possibility my web traffic is being attacked by my house mates
Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same thing happen to me a couple times. Long and tiring process. Blackboard, make a project, lots of dirty laundry about "long gone incompetent developers" that made the current system a giant mess. Lots of red flags but lots of promises including a large maximum salary, including bonuses and stock options. The final offer, however, was 60% of my current pay. Lower than the average for someone with my exper…
Is this an American thing? I live in Eastern Europe and make decent buck here (close to 5000 EUR/mo after taxes in a country where you can cover all expenses under 1000 EUR/mo). I never had any trouble getting quality work in my country but a few times I got approached by companies from the US and oh boy, weeks of tiring recrutation process and the pay was ALWAYS worse than local. I feel like they do it on purpose ma…
> What’s wrong with the American market?
Well, here in SV, everyone kinda knows what other companies pay. You just didn't have friends in SV to tell you before the interview how much that company pays.
In general, there are top-tier companies, FAANG + Uber + Lyft + AirBnB, that pay X. Then there are lower-tier companies and startups that pay roughly X / 2. So, you're unlikely to get FAANG total comp at a no-name startup.
Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like an incompetent recruiter. Recruiters make money as a percentage of your hiring salary, why on earth would they try to place you somewhere that you are making less? They should be shopping you to whoever will give the most money.
It was an HR recruiter that works for the company, not an independent recruiter. I agree about the incompetence part, though. Terrible waste of time for everyone involved.
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Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#559I had a recruiter call me a year ago with what sounded like a really amazing offer. Working for a well funded startup on a problem in which I happen to be a domain expert. They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set and they said the right things to get me to interview (compensation won't be a concern). Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview wit…
I don't do the 4-5 interview thing any more either. If you cannot make a determination in 1 or 2 interviews in person - in combination with my work history and references then you are wasting my time and yours.
My girlfriend had 10 or maybe even 11 interviews at Stryker without getting an offer. That's pretty twisted
Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage
#560I had a recruiter call me a year ago with what sounded like a really amazing offer. Working for a well funded startup on a problem in which I happen to be a domain expert. They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set and they said the right things to get me to interview (compensation won't be a concern). Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview wit…
I had the same thing happen to me a couple times. Long and tiring process. Blackboard, make a project, lots of dirty laundry about "long gone incompetent developers" that made the current system a giant mess. Lots of red flags but lots of promises including a large maximum salary, including bonuses and stock options. The final offer, however, was 60% of my current pay. Lower than the average for someone with my exper…
> The answer: they assumed I was lying about my current salary and I was just bluffing. Recommended me that I lie in my next interview.
My first interview for a job after law school, first interviewer. Guy begins to look at my resume, tosses it aside, and says “I don’t read resumes. Everyone lies in their resume. Hell, I lie on my resume.” After that, the whole time I’m thinking to myself “what kind of moron lies on a legal resume? The bar calls every employer you’ve ever had since high school.”