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

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

#891

Post by grog454 »

leetcrew wrote: post #144
oblio wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple is not easy. The vast majority of people like to spend. Who can blame them? You can take your money to your grave, but what use is it then?

you might as well ask what's the point of insurance if you never wreck your car. I have some nice things, but none of them bring me as much peace as having a deep buffer for unexpected problems. if I learned that I would die in a month, I wouldn't be sad that I hadn't managed to burn all my money.

>if I learned that I would die in a month, I wouldn't be sad that I hadn't managed to burn all my money.

I'd probably feel that way too. But I have to ask - how much thought have you really given it? I vaguely remember reading a surprising number of posts from HNW people that regretted not trying certain hobbies / activities when they were young enough fully enjoy them. That saying that no one on their deathbed says their biggest regret is that they didn't work harder, is probably a trope for a reason.

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

#892

Post by Bootvis »

jack_riminton wrote: post #668
mcv wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Financial transactions by phone? To me, that sounds inefficient, expensive, error prone and insecure. All banks I know provide an app and a website to their users. Having to talk to a person to handle your money is something from the 1980s. Of course for very specific high-value transactions, it may be useful to talk to someone, especially when it's something that also involves advice, but most people only do that ki…

Lol, if you say so!

He’s right. If customers are not able to do this themselves through an app, the required headcount would boom and no retail bank would be profitable.

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

#893

Post by exdsq »

comp_throw7 wrote: post #886
exdsq wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. This is really my point. People share these rumors of a small minority making huge sums and normalize it as what anyone can do, which just does harm to the industry and to individuals. People actually in the sector/area know it’s not true yet there are those just sharing things they heard like facts.

Entry-level SWE comp for top-end finance shops in Chicago & NY is 400k+, so, ah, no. See levels.fyi.

We're going from "It's easy to earn $500k" to "Top-end financial shops in Chicago and New York". And if someone gets a good offer they'll be more likely to put it up on Levels.

SBF earned what... $22B in the last three years in crypto by the age of 29? If he posted his earnings on Levels.fyi at Alameda Research can I start suggesting people can earn $1B by 30 by moving to Hong Kong and working for top crypto trading firms because out of the massive amount of people trying to do that, it happens to people from time to time?

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

#894

Post by elihu »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #778
llamajams wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im going to have to disagree based on personal experience at my huge ass fortune 50 megacoprp. They JUST started adopting agile...JUST, I kid you not many teams are still officialy waterfall, even officially agile teams are effectively waterfall. It's going to take another 5 years for anything to stop looking like waterfall. And let me tell you, as much as people hate agile, the old way is not working, it may even ta…

Yeah, Agile is not the OP's problem. Some director made some comments about a direction, and zoom! Off all the middle managers went, trying to kiss up to him, and implement what he said in the most dramatic way, in order to get that next promotion, or at least more headcount. And now it's, "Just the way we do things around here. Like it or leave." His problem, as with all these types of things, is management. Of all…

> Yeah, Agile is not the OP's problem.

Agile might not be my problem, but even so what the comment you're replying to kind of sums up the situation:

> I remember when my employer adopted agile. One of the first things they did was lay off their team of technical writers.

We had a big round of layoffs a few years back. I don't know if technical writers were affected more than others, but we did have a team whose main job was to run training sessions; how to write better code, how to be a more effective technical organization, that sort of thing. That whole team was laid off.

Management may be the problem. It's hard to point the finger at any one person in particular when everyone is just trying to do what they need to do to ship product, and the underlying problem seems to be a sort of emergent behavior that you end up with if you get a bunch of generally smart, helpful, friendly people together and apply all the wrong incentives.

Stock incentives might be part of the problem, but I expect that's more of an issue for the upper layers of management. Lower-level manager can't individually do much to affect the stock value one way or the other. I think maybe a mandatory long vesting term could help. Like, if you're a CEO your stock doesn't vest for ten years. (Maybe "vest" is the wrong word, since that implies you lose it all if you move jobs before it vests. I'm thinking of a system where if you leave you still get the stock eventually.)

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

#895

Post by askafriend »

BoorishBears wrote: post #876
askafriend wrote: post #874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you this is not true. It's common at top companies - they are all competitive with FAANG comp. You will easily pull in $400-500k in total compensation as a mobile dev at sayyyy an AirBnB or similar. Roughly even split between base and equity.

Isn't your comment confirming what I said? If 400k (where I am with 250k base) to 500k (where I'd be with a 50:50 split) is the entire range you're mentioning, that's the same as saying "250k - 350k RSUs with 250k base is uncommon" isn't it? - It might be relative to my situation: I have 8 YOE experience, I'm in mobile, and most people I can talk to candidly about salary are similar. So the numbers I hear directly mi…

Yeah I think that's fair, maybe I misread your comment. I find that base maxes at $250k but equity has a much higher ceiling as the eng levels get higher.

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

#896

Post by Dave3of5 »

ridaj wrote: post #848
Dave3of5 wrote: post #821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true for companies that have a large talent pool e.g. FAANG companies. For some small 30 person business in the back of nowhere that wants you in the office 5 days a week they cannot be anywhere near as picky.

I tend to think it's even more true for smaller companies that do not have the margin for too many mistakes. FAANG do not have an all-A cast. They have enough buffer to weather the odd mishire; and they also have enough projects going on that they can find better projects for people based on their strengths. At a small company on the other hand, the wrong hire can be existentially problematic for the business.

Mistakes can be fixed if they are small scale i.e. one bad hire stand out at a small company and can be fired much more easily. What you're missing is that for these small companies they are excluding the best candidates with this process. In terms of bad hires at large companies they are harder to notice and large companies have more process that tends to make firing people harder.

This is why these big companies do it, because it is actually quite hard to be fired from someplace like google whereas at these small companies you'll be working directly with the owners.

Also people will do all these take home tests and 5 rounds of algo interviews and CCAT tests ... etc for large well known companies as it is prestigious to work for them. They literally won't do them for small companies. For small companies unknown companies all you'll get is desperate people you are actually filtering out all the decent candidates. I went through this process last year it's very hard to hire as a small unknown company.

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

#897

Post by javier2 »

hguant wrote: post #8

There comes a point where the money just isn't a motivating factor anymore, and companies are struggling to figure out how to work in that environment. This bit from the author hits the nail on the head: >Is an extra $10k per year worth learning a new org, a new skillset, a new set of expectations, a new set of coworkers, and a new boss? For many engineers, the answer is: “No.” Yes I could quit and get a ~20k raise b…

To add to this. I am already in the 49% tax bracket. So a 10k raise would not be worth learning a new organization and the risk of getting a worse boss.

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

#898

Post by Aeolun »

jsiaajdsdaa wrote: post #384
Aeolun wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS didn’t want to hire me as a cog. I was mildly insulted.

Maybe you didnt STAR hard enough to be considered a dedicated, fanatic cog :)

When I saw they had like 14 principles I was like ‘yeah, peace out’. I can deal with 3-5, but 14? You can’t see the forest for the trees.

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

#899

Post by jack_riminton »

Bootvis wrote: post #892
jack_riminton wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, if you say so!

He’s right. If customers are not able to do this themselves through an app, the required headcount would boom and no retail bank would be profitable.

You might want to look at the profitability of the 'app only' banks vs the traditional ones

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

#900

Post by mcv »

decafninja wrote: post #740
ridethebike wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked in several banks. "We are not bank, we are tech company with bank department" - was mentioned occasionally in each of them. What was also common - red tape, outdated software (tools, libraries, frameworks), restricted access to workstation, processes focused around pushing approvals around (instead of automation). That's why my response to "we are not a bank" sentiment above is "it's a bank, alright".

Saying that they are a tech company is popular amongst the big banks these days. Technically that's true - they (and most businesses these days) are driven by tech and would fall apart without it. But tech is most definitely a cost center entity at such firms and tech employees likewise treated as second class citizen. As my old engineering manager at a bank told us - "if a trader tells you to jump and dance like a m…

Banks definitely should be tech companies, and understand and embrace the important of tech for their business. But you're absolutely right; the banks where I worked definitely tried to be technologically progressive (sometimes even a bit too much in my opinion[0]), but it was undeniable that much of the company was slow and bureaucratic, and despite all the "empowering developers", we often got stupid decisions handed down to deal with. Often they were aware of the stupidity, but changing something was still a very slow process.

At one bank, I was in a team that straddled the line between the international and domestic sections of the bank, which used to be more independent from each other, but we had to deal with both. Getting a simple firewall opened up between two systems on either side took 6 months.

[0] One bank that arguably took the tech company most seriously, wanted to be a bit too much on the cutting edge in my opinion. They were very active in the Angular community, which was absolutely great, but they also wanted to do CICD, which just didn't fit with all the security checks necessary at a bank. Parts were moving very fast, and parts were moving very slowly.

At that same bank, we also had a very clear mandate that we could say no to business. At some point, after we felt we put too much in production in rapid succession with insufficient testing, we had to block a next thing that a business guy really wanted to see in production. Really pissed him off, and he threw a tantrum I hadn't seen before or since at any workplace, but we insisted and our manager backed us up, so that was definitely good.

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