We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage • Hacker News Board

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

#631

Post by dangero » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #329

dangero wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to give a slightly different perspective on this as a cofounder of a startup. First of all it sounds like there was some really dishonest communication and there is no excuse for that. As far as salary goes, I absolutely cannot afford to compete and hire at market rate prices so I rely on: -People who are motivated by other factors than money (everyone at our company took a pay cut to join). We have schedule f…

How do you reconcile this statement: First of all it sounds like there was some really dishonest communication and there is no excuse for that. With this one: People who are unaware of their market value

As an employer it is not my job to assess and pay an employee their market value. I’m not a career counselor. I have positions I need to fill and those have salaries associated with them. Someone who is overqualified might accept a role when I think they could do better, but that’s me projecting a vision onto them. The employee has mobility to reject my offer, or leave and seek a better job.

Also people are complex I don’t necessarily know why the engineer accepted the job for 70% of what I think they could earn elsewhere. It could be an intangible reason.

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

#632

Post by maxxxxx » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #522

sidlls wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are not normal base salaries even for senior programmers in the bay area. The 60th percentile for senior software engineers is around $180k per year in the Bay Area. Total compensation is commonly $200k or more, easily, but not base. Outside of the Bay Area, even in NY, Chicago, etc., base salaries are lower. In most places they're much lower--below $100k.

His statement that: > $150/hr for consulting gigs is also normal if you're good. Is fairly ridiculous. I was pulling in that rate in 1995 for hourly consulting. Now in 2019 anyone competent as an independent expert in a specialized field should be pulling down $600/hr at a minimum. You'd be a fool to work for less. Sounds like this guy is simply not all that.

8*600 is $4800 per day. What kind of expert in what specialized field do you have to be to make that much? Can you give a specific example?

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

#633

Post by antoinevg » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:22 AM UTC

marktangotango wrote: post #498

antoinevg wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between promising a unicorn and having a proven track record. That you are too lazy to verify the background your potential hire is providing you is 100% your problem. Bite me.

How would that background verification work exactly? Your groomed references are providing objective evaluations? Bite you indeed.

This seems to be a common theme on HN where folk who purport to be senior level profess their ignorance as to how one goes about performing one of the very basic tasks their role would require of them.

If you don't know how to do background verification on people then you have far bigger problems than your fears of being gamed.

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

#634

Post by ravenstine » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:23 AM UTC

pascalxus wrote: post #60

But HR isn't the only problem. In my experience having worked for a company that hired heavily for several years, it was the engineers who lacked the talent necessary to conduct proper interviews. Great candidates were being rejected by the truck load. Us engineers, we're great at engineering but many of the junior and mid-level ones don't have much experience interviewing people and usually no training whatsoever. S…

Interviews in their traditional form hardly need to exist at this point. There's no good reason that members of a team can't pair in person or remotely with a candidate on a realistic coding task(even completing an actual ticket) to assess their aptitude and ability to work with others. Instead, engineers are still subject to "where do you see yourself in 5 years" bullshit, yet it the reason companies are struggling to find talent continues to go right over their heads.

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

#635

Post by Aeolun » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

enjo wrote: post #144

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it strange, as software developers, that we discuss the effects on automation all the time, but no one seems to understand that automation has made searching for new employees incredibly inexpensive and efficient compared to the past. So in technical roles there are a lot of companies that are always hiring. Recruiters work for free until they find you someone and placing job listings online is so inexpensive…

This isn’t right. The cost of finding an employee at my current company (which Is considered an excellent company in the games industry) is near $70k. The reality is outside of very early resume screening very little of the process is automated. Recruiting spends most of their day contacting people on sites like linked-in trying to find talent as not nearly enough shows up at our door. My colleagues at FAANG companie…

I think the talent is intent on showing up. They’re just absolutely atrocious at detecting it even when it is right in front of them.

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

#636

Post by ravenstine » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:26 AM UTC

throwaway713 wrote: post #392

pascalxus wrote: post #60

But HR isn't the only problem. In my experience having worked for a company that hired heavily for several years, it was the engineers who lacked the talent necessary to conduct proper interviews. Great candidates were being rejected by the truck load. Us engineers, we're great at engineering but many of the junior and mid-level ones don't have much experience interviewing people and usually no training whatsoever. S…

I worked at a non-tech company in the southeast before my current job at a FANG company, and the lead data scientist at this company wrote up the most ridiculous interview questions I've ever seen. WAYY harder than FANG questions, and this company honestly needed business analysts far more than it needed ML researchers. The salary was like $100k for a junior data scientist position. Some of the questions were things…

I would have told the interviewer to go become a professor and teach his highfalutin causality mumbo jumbo at some university and stop wasting everyone's time.

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

#637

Post by Malician » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:27 AM UTC

sidlls wrote: post #616

droithomme wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His statement that: > $150/hr for consulting gigs is also normal if you're good. Is fairly ridiculous. I was pulling in that rate in 1995 for hourly consulting. Now in 2019 anyone competent as an independent expert in a specialized field should be pulling down $600/hr at a minimum. You'd be a fool to work for less. Sounds like this guy is simply not all that.

$600/hr is the equivalent of about $1.2M/year salary. That's exceptionally rare. Unless you're being cheeky with "should be", I think you have beliefs that are misaligned with reality.

Hourly billing rate has to cover all the hours you can't bill for, PTO, health care, everything..

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

#638

Post by allendoerfer » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:29 AM UTC

kraig911 wrote: post #602

b212 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I apologize because I've worked for people who truly think eastern europe is nothing but goat farmers etc. Literally I think american corps in some aspect are trying to scrape talent from places (they think) are 3rd world countries.

Those people are overpaid and should not work in any corporate setting, since they are clearly missing basic highschool level education about how society works. Eastern Europe is/was very obviously the second world and is kind of defining what's the 3rd world (neither team East nor team West).

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

#639

Post by petre » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:30 AM UTC

nkingsy wrote: post #220

d4mi3n wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule number 1, IMO, never discuss salary. I find listing your salary requirements before starting a process weeds out a lot of silly interviews. If you know your worth and have a goal for your salary, it is the most effective way I know to avoid dumb offers.

I recently explicitly gave my salary requirements up front, went through an arduous process and got an offer of about 2/3 of what we had BOTH agreed upon in the first informational interview. This from a very profitable mid-large sized established tech company in the US.

If the rule is to get 2/3 of what is asked for, then maybe we should ask for 3/2 to be offered that amount.

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

#640

Post by lazyasciiart » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 4:30 AM UTC

meddlepal wrote: post #188

b212 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't know about the EU business culture, but in the US you are expected to negotiate. You really have to fight for every penny you want...

Thats not always what's happening. I've turned down jobs that came in beneath the expected salary range I gave them and then tried to sound offended when I said it wasn't good enough, they weren't interested in negotiating.