Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

resumeskills.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 810 posts

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#571

Post by TallGuyShort »

m463 wrote: post #417
stickfigure wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it creates an information asymmetry. They now know what you (are willing to) work for, but you don't know what they're willing to pay, or what everyone else in the company makes. It does not benefit you to disclose the information, even if you think your number is high . They might assume you are lying, or they might already be anchored at an even higher number - you don't know.

I kind of wonder about these things, but I'm not in sales. I've heard two stories about car dealers that each say different things. One story was about a car dealer that told its salesmen the actual wholesale price of the cars they were selling. The salesmen would deal from that price upwards and would always sell the cars close to that price. They changed to only telling them the retail price of the car and then sal…

Trouble is you can't sell yourself 4-5x as often as a total job length without that starting to reflect poorly on you. You don't get paid per job. Maybe a valuable lesson for contractors, though: there's value in simplicity if it leads to volume.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#572

Post by TuringNYC »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #343
rubicon33 wrote: post #208

I feel like a broken record, but I'm going to say it anyways. There is NOT a shortage of software developers. That myth was developed by big tech, and pushed all the way up the ladder, to the top of government. The goal? Reduce labor costs. Big tech has always been 1 step ahead of the employee, just like coal, and metal working was. They saw the huge need for developers and realized their costs would increase unless…

I’m so tired of feeling constantly at war with the industry to justify my own existence. The business people desperately need you but they hate you for what they have to pay. They’re always thinking what if? What if we could outsource this to some magic 3rd world slave mine? What if we could hire some recent graduates or interns instead? What if we could get someone on an H1B and chain them to the desk? It’s the natu…

I've been at a Fortune 50 firm that thought they could do this. They went through two rounds of offshore firms, got burnt each time (large contractors delivered nothing, L1 workers cycled through every 4 months as they job hopped, etc., slick talkers did the sales and left the company holding a bag full of barely-legible-English workers actually trying to deliver the promised work)

After two cycles, they started treating their local employees well. This was a big firm with much momentum. A small firm could be ruined by this. Sometimes the firm just needs to see the grass isnt necessarily greener on the other side. I got paid well and my business counterparts always know that when I said 3mo, I meant 3mo.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#573

Post by megaremote »

burtonator wrote: post #5

I 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…

> Why in the heck would I turn down a bird in the hand for 1x in the bush?

It is a startup. That is what they do. They offer low comp but with more stocks. How is this a surprise to you?

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#574

Post by jackcosgrove »

If you are conscientious and have some passions beyond making money, you will always be a sucker to the cluster B personalities that run many businesses. I don't think you can beat this system - the only way to win the game is to give up who you are. The main advantage of being careful and sticking to your guns is that you repel a lot of cluster B's, who do the filtering for you. You will be happier ending up with those who remain.

"Sucker" is a pejorative that implies you can beat the system if you're smart enough. You can only beat the system by breaking rules and becoming what you hate.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#575

Post by Dylan16807 »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #554
WalterBright wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

> 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.

You may not "want" the discrimination, but if you don't allow everyone to say the magic words that get them treated fairly, "I was paid the market rate", you're encouraging the discrimination.

I think it's pretty easy to make a moral defense for telling a lie about what group you're in purely to avoid discrimination.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#576

Post by mooreds »

around_here wrote: post #546
mooreds wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We switched from a random set of questions to a take home coding assignment (that we compensate for) and a discussion of said coding assignment. It's pretty clear what kind of work someone will do when you can look at work they've done.

The question is when do you give the assignment? I'm starting to hear of a lot of candidates that get it before they even hit a phone screen.

We give it after the initial screen and after we mutually decide that fte is a good path (as opposed to contract to hire). We don't pay until after the code review.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#577

Post by chrisweekly »

systemBuilder wrote: post #534
owldimoon wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, uh. So, I'm going to be graduating with a B.Eng soon. Any tips on how to realize my own worth? I have a tendency to let myself be taken advantage of... I mean, I'm currently doing a research internship at a computer vision lab at my uni for very little compensation (grant + departmental top-up). I told myself I was doing it "for the experience." I... I feel like I might be a candidate for the behavior you descri…

If the company is pre-ipo then look for top 10 venture capitalists as investors (Kleiner Perkins etc). This signals a company with good prospects! You do research - if you have to, pay the money to join CrunchBase - and figure out what each share is worth in the last funding round in dollars. Sometimes it's published in news articles and sometimes in Delaware Corp filings ($$$ to retrieve; crunchbase is easier). Thei…

+1 I like your metric, $ as sq ft / yr.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#579

Post by wjossey »

rajangdavis wrote: post #485
wjossey wrote: post #8

I’m interested in trying to solve this problem by helping people express how they have relatable skills, rather than direct experience. In particular, I believe that the opportunity is to highlight during person to person conversations during an interview a person’s relevant, but perhaps not directly related, skills. Interviewers often just ask, “have you written in X” as an example, and candidates don’t know how to…

I did this with an interview recently and I think it was the only reason why I got an offer. I think the challenge is that you need to have related experience in order for this to work; if you don't, you will be scrambling for an answer. I didn't even realize I was doing this when I started directing the hiring manager to my related experience until after the interview. It worked out that I didn't have direct experie…

I recently had a mentoring session with a person going for a lead position, but they haven’t been an “on paper lead” before. I had to talk them through it but I think they understood at the end how to position themselves.

I do not find most people know how to adequately fill in the dots for people on the other side of the table because businesses aren’t always terribly forethcoming about what they are looking for. If you’re not an excellent communicator (which many people in IC roles are not) it can be easy to not pull sufficiently the information needed to position oneself sufficiently.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#580

Post by lewdev »

pm90 wrote: post #264
fma wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've posted this elsewhere (forgot here or reddit). I'm gainfully employed. A former colleague who is now in a hiring position at a new company reached out to me. Said they have several openings and are having a hard time hiring good people. It would be a much longer commute, working/rewriting some older tech to be cloud ready (I did that at my current and previous employer). We started talking about salary. I told h…

> I told him what I made. Never make that mistake. Never ever disclose your salary information to someone that you potentially could work for. I think a situation where we were required by law to disclose, or a company where such a thing was common (GitLab) would be exceptions. But otherwise, I've found it to be a huge mistake to disclose your exact salary or numbers to anyone.

Given what I've been reading in this thread, it seems like if some employers are going to think that you're going to lie, there's no point in sharing your salary. And the salary that should only matter is the one you'd accept to change companies.
Post reply on HN