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I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

cushychicken.github.io

751–760 of 927 posts

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the saving rates are the same, the higher salary in a higher COL wins because you can always move before retirement. However, today’s high inflation rates make all these computations iffy, and if you rely too much on inflation beating stock market returns, you won’t be able to ratchet down on risk as you get closer to your preferred early retirement date (a crash can dump you back in the workforce at a bad ti…

Why do you assume a LCOL area is a downgrade. Those asian countries have still have pretty cheap private healthcare.

Many people in HCOL areas think LCOL areas are a downgrade, and…they are cheap for a reason. If it’s just lack of jobs, for a retiree that’s fine, but high crime bad weather poor infrastructure bad schools bad scenery are also possible. You don’t want to stop living in retirement, especially if you retire early.

Desirable places to retire like Santa Fe are already getting expensive.

Cheap private healthcare works for small things, but you are paying out of pocket for everything and if something big comes up you might not even be able to access the care you need. Guam might work instead, but they aren’t cheap and are pretty far away from anything.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software developer, if anyone asked me something like "Should we hire this person, who has had 5 jobs in 10 years?" I would suggest caution. Not immediate rejection, but at least caution. Especially, if all they talk about in the interview is, how they introduced new tech xyz at previous employer. Even more so, if it is about some frontend framework of the month. For me 5 jobs in 10 years would still be some kin…

This post really strikes me as ignorant. Most of the developers stay around 2 years in a company, because the companies usually do not make market price adjustments to the salaries and you start to lag behind if you stay too long. For example, after 2.5 years, I am looking for a new job, as the company is simply refusing to make adjustments based on the market prices, even after a promotion, I am making 20 percent le…

You are making a good point on one hand, but on the other hand you seem to have misunderstood me. Let me elaborate:

> For example, after 2.5 years, I am looking for a new job, as the company is simply refusing to make adjustments based on the market prices, even after a promotion, I am making 20 percent less than I should be making right now, and this is not an isolated incident.

OK, that is just one job change. It is not like 5 in 10 years. It becomes increasingly unlikely, that every company you work in behaves like that, the more years and job changes you add. As in 6 jobs in 12 years makes that explanation more unlikely than 2 jobs in 4 years. I think everyone is fine with a few quick job changes. Just don't let it become a pattern. And even then I mentioned, that I would not immediately reject, but caution. I am not seeing, what is ignorant about that, tbh. So yes, if the company does not want to adapt, or pay for experience, then I would not argue against job change. However, also one should consider, that most people make way less money in the job market and that they are not in the position to ask for a raise every so and so many years, just because those years have gone by. Software developers already earn good wages usually, in many areas, and I am not merely talking about the valley or stuff like that. Just compare your wage with nurses and similar.

I am also not arguing about wanting to get paid a proper wage. Maybe I would argue a bit against always wanting more, because you can have more elsewhere. That does not really entitle anyone to "have a right to get paid more". Of course you are free to aim for money rather than solidity, but if you do it frequently, you will one day have to face the consequences. Those being, that people might have a hunch, that you will be gone at the first sign of higher pay elsewhere. (Exaggerating here, ofc.)

But now to the points, where I think you misunderstood me:

> Staying at a company for 10 years either means that the company is the perfect place (then, why are you trying to leave?), [...]

Well, I did use the conjunctive form there. I am not.

> [...] or you just acquired tons of skills in your job that are not transferable to your next job, which both do not look good.

And those are the only 2 options you see? That either skills are not transferable or that it must be the perfect place? Sorry, this is waaay to black and white. It is also possible, that you learn many skills on your job, which are indeed transferable. That is a possibility you do not consider.

> Especially, when the job market is so hot right now, it's either that you can not find a new job after withering your skills, or something unpleasant happened in your perfect company and you are looking your way out.

Why do you automatically assume, that everyone who works somewhere for a longer time has "withered their skills"? It's non-sense in that generality.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#753

I just hired an IC dev away from google at a ~%50 pay cut, no benefits and no equity. I run a fledging ‘startup’ in a highly speculative field requiring massive upfront investment and risky enough to scare away VCs. A lot of what we talked about during the interview was why he would want to give up so much money. His view was that he didn’t need the money, he is a 25 year veteran, pre 2001. He was sick of incessant m…

Why no equity?

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#754

Author here. Questions, comments, vitriol - all gratefully accepted.

Honestly, stop with the E*on and whatnot. It just makes the article annoying to read. He doesn't care about any possible SEO "juice" you think that your blog post would give him, and it just makes the thing look unprofessional, IMHO

https://en.meming.world/images/en/7/74/No%2C_I_don%27t_think...

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG employees, particularly on the West Coast, are an anomaly, even within the US. People also often include stock grants in listed comp, so be sure your comparing apples to apples. DC/Mid-Atlantic salaries at an established (non-FAANG) company are more like $85-$100k for a recent grad, $130-$170 for senior developer positions. Most of those jobs are in the suburbs, where a nice house is in the $500-$1million range…

Important to note that "senior dev" here means title, not actual seniority, e.g. ~5 yrs experience gets you in that range even at an early-stage startup in the Midwest.

Correct. At my employer, Senior Developer is the 3rd (of 6) title in the developer hierarchy. Also the first where promotion upwards isn't mostly automatic. Though the comp ranges for Senior and up have a lot of overlap between levels - to earn beyond 150ish, you'll have to be really good, regardless of title.

A Senior Dev would be expected to operate mostly independently on day-to-day tasks, capable of contributing back to their immediate team (mentoring, working with product manager, etc), work directly with customers and leadership as needed, and be recognized as somebody with answers to problems within their immediate area.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#756

Author here. Questions, comments, vitriol - all gratefully accepted.

Enjoyed it, I just jumped ship 6 months ago for basically all the reasons you specified. Only thing I can add is that due to the difficulty hiring, you can attract mid-level talent with more money (they're more likely to be underpaid). I'm sure the efficacy of that approach is diminishing as steady-state is reached by people in that experience level.

I think that's true up to a point.

I wouldn't take an extra 10k for being able to take my dog for a nice walk at 2PM every day.

Would my mind change for an extra 20k? Probably not.

For an extra 50k? ...maybe, let's talk.

For an extra 100k? ...where do I sign?

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#757

I’ve gotten 7 recruitment emails since Sunday and none of them have come close to sufficiently explaining what the company or job is for me to even consider responding. It’s bizarre how secretive they are. I imagine the recruiters are looking out for their own interests. Recruiters are in the way.

It’s because if you apply directly, they don’t get paid for their work. So they hide the details until you talk to them. I’m a software engineer that started a recruiting company. The current state of the industry is pretty bad. We are trying a different approach- we are transparent. We share all the details about the company right out of the gate. Including salary info. We refuse to work with companies that won’t le…

Very cool site. The salary filter is a little unintuitive: the minimum filter appears to apply to the _lower_ end of the listed range, and be non-inclusive. For instance there is a job listed at Netgear with a range of $300k-400k, if I set the filter to $300k, it is not shown. I would probably expect it to show until I set the filter to $401k or more.

Edit: I see now that it is filtering on salary (which is visible if you look at the listing details), but the summary is showing total comp.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#758

Author here. Questions, comments, vitriol - all gratefully accepted.

Why not Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_...

I think they are closely related. Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose strike me as strategic, thirty thousand foot values that correlate heavily with career satisfaction.

I think the desire for Technology, Intellection, and Certainty are more tactical considerations that engineers want in their day to day duties. I find that those tare things that engineers can easily visualize themselves having access to in a new role. These feed into a feeling (or the hope of feeling) a sense of Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose in their career as a whole.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#759
post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this emotion. We have spent years and countless hours investing in documentation and automation as we re-engineered a very large legacy application into cloud based technology (AWS). The application and supporting CI/CD pipeline is far better documented and supported than most and all of the underlying technology is within 5 years current. There are video based tutorials on nearly every aspect of the platfor…

> video based tutorials there's your problem.

Seriously. I hate "video tutorials" on how to do technical stuff. I read faster than videos can explain stuff, and with text I can go back and forth to the stuff I need without trying to forward and reverse a video to a certain time.

Re: I think I know why you can't hire engineers right now

#760

The biggest reason companies can't hire right now is that there is more demand than supply. No matter how much you improve pay or working conditions, in the short term that only leads to talent moving from one company to another. If there is not enough people to do the work, there is nothing an industry can do to fix that.

Better in-house training would allow companies to increase their potential candidate pool.
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