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Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

blog.whoishiring.io

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Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#81

Post by TrickzOnU »

kowdermeister wrote: post #71
ryandrake wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, the tired old "Shortage of Engineers" meme is bound to come up in any discussion about tech hiring that ignores compensation. Saying there is a shortage of something in a market only makes sense given a price. Sure, there is probably a shortage of Bay Area engineers if you're paying $70K, but I bet there is no shortage if you're paying $400K.

$70k is a splendid salary if you live outside the US :) It's probably more than I ever earned in my lifetime.

Yes, i'd take a $70k salary while living in North Carolina. But the "shortage" being discussed here is for the Bay Area. I'm here, let me break down my costs: - $17k taxes - $3k health care premiums - $7k college loans - $36k rent - almost nothing left for savings, retirement, down payment, engagement ring, any means to get out of my situation

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#82

Post by xxpor »

Apocryphon wrote: post #72
wrong_variable wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Per capita Toronto/Vancouver is a lot higher than London, its just that London is 8 million people while Toronto is barely 3 million.

I'm always amazed that Montreal hasn't taken off yet as an alternative to the two.

The language laws are a huge impediment, both for operations and hiring international people.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#83

Post by macjohnmcc »

TrickzOnU wrote: post #81
kowdermeister wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$70k is a splendid salary if you live outside the US :) It's probably more than I ever earned in my lifetime.

Yes, i'd take a $70k salary while living in North Carolina. But the "shortage" being discussed here is for the Bay Area. I'm here, let me break down my costs: - $17k taxes - $3k health care premiums - $7k college loans - $36k rent - almost nothing left for savings, retirement, down payment, engagement ring, any means to get out of my situation

You couldn't afford to get married if you can't afford an engagement ring.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#84

Post by branchless »

kowdermeister wrote: post #78
Dangeranger wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

70k is a good salary even in many places within the US, the problem is that the cost of living in SF and NYC makes that salary very hard to live on. Rent in some locations within SF and NYC can meet or exceed 70k.

I get that, it's just so unreal to see these numbers for the same thing as I do. This is a really good reason why remote work is going to level the market. I'm a bit surprised that it's not already around 50% of hires.

Remote working on this scale in several major industries would precipitate a second banking crisis far larger than 2008 I suspect.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#85

Post by [deleted] »

TrickzOnU wrote: post #16

I loved this line from the article "With unsolved US VISA problems for STEM workers, IT companies might have to get creative to hire potential employees." -- Yeah, creative...like paying a living wage for the location. Pay salaries that will allow someone to rent their own 1B (not bunking) and the "shortage" will magically disappear.

[deleted]

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#86

Post by dagss »

dschiptsov wrote: post #24

Remote is still rare, it seems, because usual sweatshops are traditional habitat for pointy haired bosses and other parasitic "management". For remote, the way Linux kernel or BSDs are being developed, one needs nothing but git, emacs and browser (well, in case of Linux also a working mail) and no management at all. How could, say, Amazon, even hypothetically switch to remote? More seriously, there is no market for c…

Much (most?) code is trivial to write, the work is figuring out what code to write -- posing the problem correctly is half the job.

Then inevitably as you work on solving the problem you will (if, and only if, you know the business domain well enough) discover that the problem description needs refining as the code is refined.

If there was a market for code I would not participate since it takes me less time to just write the code than to write a spec you could use to deliver something good. Non-programmers cannot do that, but if they are in the people you wanted to avoid, they would likely make a spec that would create a mess, regardless of how good the code driving the mess is.

I don't see how remote vs not has anything to do with managers or not...how would you get the "orders for code" written in the pure-code marketplace?

The trick about open source is mainly that the programmers ARE the end-users too and very well able to understand the problem domain and also are often scratching their own itch. So the problem of making good problem descriptions and make the code match it disappears. That is much more important than remote vs non-remote.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#87

Post by carlob »

Great post! A couple of nitpicks on the data presentation for the sake of making it even better:

1. You don't have enough data to warrant 5 significant digits in the percentages, and even if you did, is it really relevant?

2. The points in your plot are interpolated using some sort of spline, why? If the answer is: because it looks better than jagged edges, then you should probably remove the spline, because you're effectively adding extraneous information. On the other hand a linear trend line could be nice here.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#88

Post by chris11 »

Bahamut wrote: post #73
RKoutnik wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400k is market rate for top-quality bay area engineers, depending on specialty [0]. You don't see job ads for those folks, because hackers like that don't read them. [0] And even for lower-paying specialties (like UI/UX), 400k isn't even 2x market rate.

Can verify - I turned down an opportunity for lead frontend work a year ago for $350k-400k (a lot of compensation in stock/bonuses, so it was variable), and that wasn't even at a big tech company. (For the curious, I opted for tremendous work-life balance instead)

Where are you currently in your career? I'm kind of curious, because I never hear of compensation packages normally going up that high. So I'm wondering what skills companies are looking for at that price.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#89

Post by rco8786 »

TrickzOnU wrote: post #69
jedberg wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for companies that pay good salaries there is a shortage. If you look at the H1B filings, you'll see for example that the average Netflix H1B salary is just about $300K a year. That being said, a lot of companies are abusing H1B and the system needs a huge overhaul so that the people who want to come work here can, the people who want to hire foreign works can, and we don't have a few companies using imported wo…

I'm familiar with these opportunities. They are not entry-level positions, they are highly technical positions which require extensive architectural experience...the sort that individuals often have mid-career (often with children, braces, school tuition, medical co-pays, etc.) So yes, $300k for a mid-career position is clearly not enough in the Bay Area. Could you raise a family in a 1BR, yes you can! But there is a…

You can do a lot better then a 1Br on a 300k salary in the Bay Area. Even in the most expensive parts.

Re: Hacker News' “Who is Hiring?” thread, part 2, remote and locations

#90

Post by thefastlane »

macjohnmcc wrote: post #83
TrickzOnU wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, i'd take a $70k salary while living in North Carolina. But the "shortage" being discussed here is for the Bay Area. I'm here, let me break down my costs: - $17k taxes - $3k health care premiums - $7k college loans - $36k rent - almost nothing left for savings, retirement, down payment, engagement ring, any means to get out of my situation

You couldn't afford to get married if you can't afford an engagement ring.

not sure what you mean?
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