[HN Gopher] Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market ... ___________________________________________________________________ Employers bow to tech workers in hottest job market since the dot- com era Author : belter Score : 258 points Date : 2021-08-01 19:58 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.latimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com) | LAC-Tech wrote: | I've really got to focus my efforts in breaking into the US | market. | | Anyone in the ag-tech sector state side? | d3ntb3ev1l wrote: | Flock Freight. What a joke | yaitsyaboi wrote: | What's wrong with them? | | > Flock Freight's algorithms help companies move products more | efficiently, combining small shipments into a shared truckload | (like a carpool for freight). | | This sounds cool to me. Certainly more than all the ad tech and | blockchain companies out there. A job here could mean | revolutionizing logistics with AI, slashing greenhouse gas | emissions, this stuff is core to our economy and modern life. | gigatexal wrote: | This sucks. I'm finally at a company that I like with a team that | I like but I KNOW I am underpaid compared to what the market is | paying. And yet I know I should be looking elsewhere. | nickpp wrote: | Choosing your employer based on only one criteria | (compensation) is akin to choosing your life partner based also | on a single criteria (beauty/money/etc). | | Look at the whole package. | dh303 wrote: | Sometimes it's not worth it, especially if you're with a good | company/team. | rootusrootus wrote: | I'm planning to get back out in the market, but I sure do hate | the interviewing routine. I'd love to make a bit more money | (sure, I dream of the 500K just like everyone else, but half that | would be a pretty serious upgrade, I'm not in SV). I'm solidly | into middle age, but I did add another credential at least | (thanks OMSCS), now I just have to convince folks I don't suck. I | actually don't suck, but whiteboard coding and leetcode questions | suuuuck. | y04nn wrote: | Is this situation specific to the US? Has anyone experiences in | other countries? | MattGaiser wrote: | Canada. Am regularly bombarded with recruiters, although mostly | for the US market. | abledon wrote: | are they all wanting your to lift-and-shift your life to US? | or are they Remote positions | MattGaiser wrote: | Half and half. A pile of them are for Kaiser, so I assume | that is some high turnover pit. | | I haven't been actively following up through to figure out | which ones are permanently remote. | cloudedcordial wrote: | Also in Canada as well. I have been regularly courted by | recruiters from both US (remote) and Canada. | | I have started a new job a few months ago. My now former | manager was trying to come up with a counter offer, but my | new offer is too far off from my old compensation package. | tiagod wrote: | Lisbon, Portugal. Haven't seen anything like this before. | Anyone going through some frontend bootcamp will be hired | immediately with much higher salaries than any comparable job | with the same barrier to entry. | llimos wrote: | Israel is pretty hot as well now. Lots of approaches landing in | my inbox, and they're good ones too. And as in the article - | some haven't embraced remote, and I feel like they're losing | out. | mmarq wrote: | Same in London, everybody I know got a 20-25KPS rise in the | past 12 months. | blacha wrote: | New Zealand, with our borders closed my company has had | multiple job ads open for intermediate/senior developers for | over a year. | | Every candidate we do interview, generally also has multiple | other job offers. | dpaleka wrote: | No one is reaching out in Switzerland right now, but I guess | they should. Let's try my luck again: | https://danielpaleka.com/docs/cv-daniel-paleka.pdf. (EU | citizen.) | dt3ft wrote: | Switzerland has plenty of code written in vb/c# and tech like | wpf is sought after. I highly recommend you look into that | and do a few sideprojects using this "old, uncool" tech, if | you want a job there. (Source: I lived and worked in CH for 6 | years) | thr1236 wrote: | Hard to know what is a good or high total comp in the current | market. | | I'm at $175k in central FL. I see a lot of people posting much | higher pay on various forums and I often wonder if I'm underpaid. | Now more than ever. | | Outside of FAANG (and similar) I've only found companies paying | around ~200k total for senior level engineers. | | These places still have rigorous interviews but not quite FAANG | difficulty. | | Still, the motivation to even interview for such a small bump is | not really there for me (wife and 2 kids). | echelon wrote: | > I'm at $175k in central FL. | | For total comp that's really low. I'd expect that to be paired | with RSU equity grants of $150 - $200k/yr. | | Any publicly listed "tech company" that isn't penny pinching | like Amazon will probably offer similar rates. | | Maybe look for a tech company that is hiring remote? Negotiate | a good total comp package if it isn't in line with what you see | on glassdoor, etc. | stakkur wrote: | This seems...extremely California-centric. Anecdotally, in the | Portland area I don't see this at all. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | Us in the midwest are told to go back to the office still. | Management certainly cannot handle change here whatsoever. | stickyricky wrote: | Any tips on getting a remote FAANG SWE job? Is it really all | LinkedIn profile + attracting a recruiter? | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Get a referral from someone who works at the companies. | stickyricky wrote: | I'm in Miami. Its hard to meet FAANG employees here. | iamricks wrote: | Me too, it's hard to meet any SE here. | lostcolony wrote: | That might get you a recruiter call, but it's not at all | helpful in actually getting the job. | | Best thing is to build a solid LinkedIn profile. I've had | multiple FAANG recruiters reach out in the past based on my | LinkedIn profile, but my own applications have never received | attention. | spike021 wrote: | For the latter question, "maybe"? | | I have a LinkedIn but I don't really keep it actively updated. | But for my current FAANG job I was sourced via LinkedIn. | Received a random recruiter inbox message there and eventually | was hired. | morpheos137 wrote: | I see it more as inflation than anything else. | okareaman wrote: | If companies want to tap and underutilized work force, hire older | workers. Put out job offerings with "30 years C programming | experience required." Yes I get it that every company wants 10x | Ninja Rockstar programmers, but those programmers are not going | to take your sh*y back end Java/PHP jobs. | paulpauper wrote: | yup, similar the 2008 financial crisis, the biggest losers of the | Covid crisis and its recovery are the untalented, whose jobs are | pay little and are replaceable and interchangeable like cogs. And | the biggest winners, similar again to the post-2008 recovery, are | the talented, whose wages exceed inflation and whose | contributions are valued and are harder to replace. | | Some tech jobs may feel like a dead-end, but better than low- | paying and dead-end retail/service jobs. | spec-obs wrote: | This is not happening for me, but then again I am doing zero to | market myself, so that' not a complaint. I would have thought I | would have a few headhunters after me , oh well :( | nemo44x wrote: | You probably haven't been picked up in the selection algorithm | for whatever reason. Fatten up your LinkedIn and spam it with | keywords for the skills part. Make your recent experience | impressive. | tcbumperino wrote: | Once you're coasting in the 400-500k FAANG range, what's the | optimal move to get 700-800k+? Seems there are too many | graybeards to get a Principal title. Better to switch to manager | role? Or VP eng type at some startup and hope your stock hits? Or | maybe VP at some non tech company? | MikeTheRocker wrote: | Wish I knew | JMTQp8lwXL wrote: | I told myself I'd be fine at 300k. Now I'm there, and I've | picked up more hobbies. Doesn't stop me from looking for new | gigs, from time to time. Going super deep into optimizing for | one thing might be a good short-term, but bad long-term | proposition. A lot of getting to 700k, I imagine, is luck. So | long as you're competent, it's right place, right time. You | can't force that situation to happen, so it's wasted energy to | invest further. | gavinray wrote: | You would abandon your company and current position for a | slight pay increase? | | Do you not actually care about the company you work for and | you're just there for the pay? | | You make so much money already -- what is the thought process | here | | Man imagine trying to hire people and knowing they would all | leave in a heartbeat for a slight pay increase. | | What ever happened to working somewhere because you believe | in what you're building and the people you're around bring | you joy? | zinclozenge wrote: | Is this a joke? No I don't care about the companies I work | for in the slightest. A company is only as good to me as | their last paycheck, to paraphrase from The Sopranos. | gavinray wrote: | Why do you work for a company you don't care about, | instead of one you do? | | Don't you feel hypocritical -- you're supposed to treat | others the way you want to be treated. | | I assume if you were hiring people, you wouldn't want | them to do that to you. | | So why do it to others? | the_only_law wrote: | > Why do you work for a company you don't care about, | instead of one you do? | | Because they don't exist? | JMTQp8lwXL wrote: | I wouldn't leave my job for a "slight" increase in pay, | though that's subjective and we haven't defined concrete | amounts, other than 300k and 700k in my previous comment, | and such a jump (more than double) could not be | characterized as slight-- it's substantial. | | I need to be paid a risk premium for the new gig having | potentially worse colleagues, poorer WLB, or whatever | things I find after the interview process. With my current | job, I know all of these things. So jumping from 300k, to | say, 325k would be unwise and immaterial (8.3%). I might | jump for 350, definitely for 400. | tcbumperino wrote: | Imagine caring about your employer who employs 100k+ other | people and who would fire you without hesitation. (Or glee | even.) | gavinray wrote: | Why would you ever work for a company that employs that | many people and would treat you like shit? | | For the (slightly more) money? Well then that's your own | doing, innit? | | The great thing about having any sort of skills is that | you can pick and choose what you want to do with them. | | If you choose to work for someone like that, you're | willingly subjecting yourself to misery, and to | (probably) wasting some of the best years of your life | working on things you don't give a flying fuck about. | | For people who also don't give a flying fuck. There are | no fucks to be given -- the organization is, for lack of | a better term, Fuckless. | | Working in a Fuckless org does not, as Marie Kondo would | say, "Spark Joy". | | If you have to choose between: - $150k | Salary @ small startup working on something you're | passionate about with a close-knit team - $250k | Salary @ $BIGCO to be COG_IN_WHEEL_#3356 | | The tradeoff you're making there is pretty clear | | I'm not a judgmental person and don't ride moral high- | horses. Personally, I value happiness, mental wellbeing, | and have a fulfilling life more than slightly more money. | | If you don't and you choose to subject yourself to all | that awful stuff for the money, that's well and good, but | you also can't turn around and complain about it or act | like it's the only/a normal choice. | MathYouF wrote: | How many companies are building something worth believing | in? | | The ones who are (few) defintiely don't worry about this | problem as much. If a company is having problems with it | it's probably that their estimation of their own moral self | worth is what's incorrect, not the attitude of their | employees. | gavinray wrote: | So, so many. The world is full of them. | | I work at my current job because I used their OSS tool at | a past position and felt like I had my life changed. Then | wanted to share it with every other developer. | | So I got in contact with them and told them how I felt, | and now that's what I do. | | If I ever feel like the tool doesn't represent the same | quality as when I started or the company values have | changed, welp, then it's quittin' time and on to the next | thing I go I suppose. But I don't see that happening -- | or at least I really hope so. | | Nobody's integrity and happiness should be compromised or | up for sale, unless that's what they want. | | I've slept under bridges and I'll go back to it again | before I sell myself out, tell lies, or pretend to be | someone I'm not. | | Here's some examples of things I think are genuinely | valuable and jobs I would do: | | - Software for addiction treatment centers and | rehabilitation | | - Bioinformatics and genomics for disease, especially | making information accessible to regular people. Genomics | for fitness/sports performance. | | - Software reform in partnership with state/governmental | agencies for criminal justice | | - Anything to do with LLVM. LLVM is fucking cool. | | - GraalVM is fucking cool. | | - Music software -- production (DAW's), plugins, | education software to make music theory accessible | | - Software to make learning programming accessible. Stuff | like repl.it, Codesandbox, Scrimba | | I could go on and on. The world has so many serious | issues, and interesting problems/challenges to work on -- | just pick one you like and relentlessly hunt companies + | people down + study (if you need to, to learn the domain) | until you get a job. | | If I can claw myself out of poverty, drug-addiction, and | homelessness as a highschool dropout, into a white-collar | career then I'm pretty sure most people with less | disadvantaged life scenarios can too. | | --- | | Not to pull the cliche, stupid "by-your-bootstraps" | argument. But look, humans are driven and intelligent | beings that drive the force of history. | | Don't tell me that there's no company in the world doing | something you believe in, and you can't get a job doing | what you like, etc. | | That's really pessimistic and defeatist. | dragonwriter wrote: | > What ever happened to working somewhere because you | believe in what you're building and the people you're | around bring you joy? | | Capitalism. | gavinray wrote: | What kind of a fairy tale is this -- 400, 500, 800k? | | I make ~110k, and I have no hobbies but code + contribute to a | variety of OSS projects in my freetime. | | What sort of software do you have to be writing besides magic | money printing machines for it to be worth that amount of | money? | sparker72678 wrote: | Not sure what level you're at but 150+ is pretty widely | available for fully remote SWE positions. | the_only_law wrote: | > What sort of software do you have to be writing besides | magic money printing machines for it to be worth that amount | of money? | | My understanding is that you have to get into FAANG or be in | certain roles at certain HFT firms. I'm also pretty sure | these are TC numbers are large chunks of those numbers are | stock options. | barrkel wrote: | RSUs - way more liquid than options, they're practically | cash in the bank when they vest, but watch out for cliffs | (i.e. vesting schedule). Amazon is particularly bad (tail | weighted), Google is particularly generous (every month). | gavinray wrote: | Even in FAANG I have a hard time understanding how any | developer is worth that amount of money though. | | I know a solid number of FAANG and ex-FAANG devs -- the | stuff they work on (from what I've heard) isn't much | different from the sorts of software I assume most people | in SaaS startups work on. Outside of scale (which is | significant). A lot of it is internal tooling though, which | never hits absurd amounts of scale. | | I do know that there are x100 devs at FAANG that put out | the groundbreaking projects that change landscapes -- but | that's generally these well-known outlier developers for | which there are a tiny handful in the world. | | HFT and quants I understand, that's money-printing | business, FAANG I don't. But also, I've never worked or | applied at FAANG, so I can't really form a valid opinion I | suppose. | bxji wrote: | Scale is certainly a part of it. | | I work in one of the data platform teams at a social | media company. Between our 3 HDFS clusters, we're storing | more than an exabyte of data. At our scale, we have to | tune our workloads carefully to make sure that problems | of scale are not noticeable to internal customers (data | scientists, analysts, etc.). | | We basically have an entire org of highly paid engineers | focused on making sure people can use that data | efficiently. So we have a team of people working on | storage, on Spark, on Presto/Trino, on data ingestion, | and so on. | | So my understanding is that we're investing in engineers | to improve data science productivity, so that they can do | analysis without having to understand the internals of | all our systems, so that executives can make informed | decisions backed by data to continue printing money. Or | something like that... | lotsofpulp wrote: | >HFT and quants I understand, that's money-printing | business, FAANG I don't. | | According to 10-K reports, they print far more money. The | net income per employee figures are never before seen for | organizations of that size, for so many years: | | https://seekingalpha.com/comparison/9e-FAANG-Stocks | | For Amazon, you have to strip out the non tech employees, | but similar numbers exist at AWS. That is the beauty of | near zero marginal costs, winner take all markets, and | extremely high barriers to entry. | AQuantized wrote: | Google and Facebook are making hundreds of thousands of | (almost endirely advertising derived) dollars per | employee. They have functional monopolies on search and | social media advertising respectively, so every company | in the world looking to use those advertising vectors is | at their mercy. Maintaining that extremely lucrative | position is worth paying an excess to achieve even small | advantages in staying ahead of the curve. | chucky_z wrote: | Currently at a medium-large company. I've saved the | company 10 years worth of my salary in the first 6 months | of my position and continue to make decisions to multiply | spending power on things like research. | | I also try to make damn well sure everything we use is | contributed too financially and we open source as much as | possible. | the_only_law wrote: | I think with FAANG it's mostly just down to them having | insane valuation and being able to give out those stock | options. The base salaries don't seem particularly high, | until maybe the highest levels. | bredren wrote: | Yes. When I hear a valley person mention salary, they | usually bundle in stock compensation. | | The cash and other benefits are still ludicrous by any | normal assessment but stock makes it unreal. | simpleguitar wrote: | If you look at FAANG earnings, their annual gross revenue | (before expenses), is at least $1M _per employee_. Last | time I looked Apple does $1.5M including all their Apple | store employees. | | It's not just insane valuation. If the employees are | bringing in $1M per head, you can afford to spend more on | those who are making stuff. | baby wrote: | Personally, I never understood how you could even pay | someone 100k TC... it's just that some companies make a | LOT of money, so much that's it's just impossible to | fathom. | gavinray wrote: | > Personally, I never understood how you could even pay | someone 100k TC | | I grew up fairly poor (what Americans consider "poor"), | home was a double-wide trailer, best my mum could do for | food was peanut butter and crackers. | | Got better in later years towards the end of childhood. | | But a combination of: the above, being homeless for a | while, and working a lot of jobs like manual | labor/landscaping, dishwashing, food service, retail etc | for minimum wage gave me perspective. | | I honestly don't have any clue why I get as paid as much | as I do. | | I'm not complaining. Employer, if you're reading this, | don't take my money away lmao. I'm finally not poor | anymore. | | But my life was fucking miserable for $8/hr and in tech | now I make (what feels like) ludicrous money for work | that isn't even hard. | | World is real backwards in a lot of ways. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Would you rather more money go to management and stock | holders? Folks doing the work and making the world more | productive deserve a _larger_ share of the pie, not a | smaller one. | gajjanag wrote: | A developer is worth whatever the local market pays at | the time to retain them. If you have a look at housing | costs in the bay area/Seattle (close to work 2000 sq ft ~ | 2 million US dollars), you will understand why anything | below 200k makes almost no sense in these areas for an | experienced dev, and why 400k+ is fairly common. | | I agree with you - hence why it is very hard for early | stage startups to give meaningful offers in the bay area. | abledon wrote: | you could do performance optimization for a team on already | established services inside GCP/AWS... you are literally | saving Millions of $ a year if you optimize the services used | by tens of thousands of other companies. | tcbumperino wrote: | FAANG are magic money printing machines. That's why they can | afford so many bs side projects that don't make any money. | And I write software that consumes 50-100x my salary in | resources, so I'm probably underpaid. | ketzo wrote: | If the primary goal is compensation, management is pretty much | always gonna be the answer; that, or lots of very lucky equity. | sokoloff wrote: | If you're in that range, VP Eng at a startup is probably a | lower expected value than staying put, unless you have very | credible reasons to think that an exit is 9-18 months away. | derwiki wrote: | > But now, these technical interviews are often being waived | | Huh? First I've heard of that | dilap wrote: | Not sure I'd want to work somewhere that didn't do tech | interviews (or something equivalent, e.g. project). | MattGaiser wrote: | Does any site list how various companies interview? I | personally find take home projects very interesting, as I | usually get to play with a new technology. | EastSmith wrote: | If the company pays well, it seems to me that not asking | bubble sorting questions during interview does not matter? | lazypenguin wrote: | Yes this was not my experience in recent interviews (past few | weeks). I suspect that maybe this is only the case for the | select few with "gold-plated" credentials (I.E. FAANG on the | resume). | yellow_lead wrote: | Most companies' hiring processes don't vary on per-candidate | basis though. | rejectedandsad wrote: | I have FAANG on my resume and this is definitely not the case | lol. Then again, it's Amazon which most people regard to have | the dumbest engineers so... | throwaway_45 wrote: | It really should be FG. Facebook and google pay way better | than any of those other companies. | [deleted] | rejectedandsad wrote: | I know :( I make around $200k and I feel like dying | constantly because I'm not a "tech chad" as they say. | chronic2703 wrote: | Amazon is absolutely a red flag on the resume. | | Many hiring managers (like myself) do not want to import | the toxic, backstabbing, PIP culture from Amazon into our | org. | | Also I've noticed the quality of Amazon engineers is lower, | on average, compared to Google, ByteDance, FB, Stripe, etc. | | My advice is to work somewhere not-Amazon for a year or | two. Then you'll get more bites. | chrisseaton wrote: | > the toxic, backstabbing, PIP culture from Amazon into | our org | | I don't think it's fair to blame this culture on | individual line engineers. | walshemj wrote: | I think that is pretty much all big companies at this | point | grp000 wrote: | I don't think most people at the IC/engineering level | would choose that culture, but once they're in and | inundated into that environment, how many are going to | propagate it out of habit? That's the risk. | arcticbull wrote: | I agree, however you do end up participating in it, you | get used to it, and you bring it with you. That's the | fear anyways. I think it's a little bit true. Facebook | has similarly nutty PIP ("PSC") culture, and you see it | from ex-Facebook folks who run other organizations once | they leave. | | I have seen recruiters red-flag FB/IG managers, depending | on why they're leaving FB/IG for this reason. Engineers | less so but it definitely comes up in the interview | process. It comes up the other way too, when I interview | - particularly senior - FB engineers, their first | question is "tell me about your PSC culture." | momodadragon wrote: | I've seen recruiters red flag Uber engineers as possibly | sexist (and to a lesser extent racist). | dbish wrote: | This almost seems like a trolling comment but I'll | respond to add some info from a different POV. FWIW (and | as an ex Amazon manager) I haven't seen this at all for | many of the engineers who are my friends and former | coworkers. Good engineers from Amazon are in high demand | and are getting offers frequently. If you're an Amazon | engineer, you can have a lot of experience running live | services at massive scale and that's invaluable. I also | haven't seen any recruiters who mark Amazon as a red | flag, but hey, maybe there are some very particular | companies I don't know about who have a vendetta | bestcoder69 wrote: | What's your company? Just to save time for those who | might apply if not for this comment? | dbish wrote: | Yes, would love to know the company. Happy to help steer | Amazon engineers away during the current engineer | shortage so they don't waste your recruiters' time | neilv wrote: | Apparently I'm not plugged into _all_ the industry | chatter. | | All of the big, well-known companies have imperfect | reputations. (And I suspect my own ideas about which | companies are better wouldn't quite fully agree with an | HN sentiment index.) | | When interviewing someone from a company that you believe | to be a concern/ambiguous, it might be very valuable to | ask, "So, why did you first go to ___?" "What do/did you | like about it?" "Why don't/didn't you like about it?" | That might answer any concerns pretty quickly. | | (But if they give interview-prep-book answers, or seem to | be trying to tell you an answer that you in particular | will agree with, that's also valuable information, IMHO.) | spike021 wrote: | Is this true? | | Since joining Amazon 2 years ago the rate of recruiters | hitting my inbox has increased around 3x and I regularly | get contacts from Google, Facebook, and MS recruiters, | plus recruiters from random small shops in the Bay Area. | | I suppose you are exaggerating. | dbish wrote: | I've seen phone screens skipped more frequently recently but | not full loops. | rejectedandsad wrote: | This used to be fairly common actually. Facebook interns got | automatic Google onsites for a long time. Not Amazon or | Microsoft interns though - apparently we aren't worthy. | bestcoder69 wrote: | G skipped my phone screen coming from A. | rejectedandsad wrote: | Did you pass hiring committee previously? | hhjinks wrote: | A friend of mine had job offer with a 24-hour deadline on hand. | A past colleague of ours gave him a referral at his company, | and he received an offer with ~80% higher TC an hour later | after a quick phone screen. Happened in Norway. | kilroy123 wrote: | I got a new job about ~5 months ago and this was not my | experience at all. | | It was leetcoding questions for days. If you didn't ace it, | you'd get ghosted quickly. | | One place, I did 3 rounds of interviews, an all day take home | assignment. I still got ghosted! | | So I call BS on this quote as well. | Salgat wrote: | I fucking hate leetcode. It takes me about a month or two of | practicing to get caught up and proficient with leetcode, but | there's 2 issues with that. The first is that that is a lot | of personal time and effort to invest to prepare for | interviews. And second, my professional skill does not | increase at all from practicing leetcode. Leetcode beyond the | concepts of easy/medium questions is programming trivia and | reflects rote memorization more than anything else. And worst | of all, leetcode distracts from far more valuable skills like | design patterns and how to properly architect and design | software. | | In the end, the only companies that should be doing leetcode | beyond the easier level questions are companies with an | insane number of applicants where they can afford to turn | away a lot of good talent. | nicoburns wrote: | My experience is that this is wildly inconsistent between | companies. I've worked for crappy companies for low pay that | had ridiculous long multi-week interview processes, and good | companies for much better pay where the interview was a | single 30 minute phone call where they offered me the job. | vbtemp wrote: | Was this a FAANG or FAANG-like company where it's likely | you'd have TC of $350K plus, or a sub-FAANG company where | your TC would likely be in the $100-200K range? | kilroy123 wrote: | Lol not at all. It was regular run of the mill startups and | small companies. TC like ~$150k-180. | vbtemp wrote: | It's interesting to me. When the carrot is TC of | $350K+++, sure, anyone is willing to jump through that | grinder. But for ordinary run-of-the-mill companies, | there are so many that _don't_ have a hazing-like hiring | process, I don't know how the ones that do make it. | hogFeast wrote: | They don't. That is what the article is about. | ipsocannibal wrote: | Same here, applied to a medium sized company and got the | standard hackerrank garbage test totally unrelated to the | position right off the bat. At least now I know who I don't | want to work for. | polishdude20 wrote: | A bit of my experience: | | I recently switched careers going from teaching to tech and the | job I now have, during the interview, didn't ask me to do any | coding tests. They asked me a bunch of questions in zoom about | my experiences doing certain things relating to the job and I | was able to answer them with examples of how I did those things | with a previous project I worked on. Got the offer the next day | and I'm very grateful it turned out to be such a smooth and | stress free experience. | chrisseaton wrote: | At a certain level of seniority people get the 'white glove' | treatment where the interview is more about convincing them to | take the job. | | Makes sense to me - if someone already has a reputation and | track-record, and it's you that reached out to them, then why | are you asking them to prove themselves to you? Most important | thing is to prove yourselves to them! | nemo44x wrote: | Experience and reputation play a big part in this too. As | your colleagues branch off to other opportunities they'll | bring your name up when the new company is looking to fill a | role. At this point you're being contacted by VP's or | Directors to gauge your interest. | ml_giant wrote: | I recently went through the hiring process for a few companies | and while most of them required several technical interviews, | one of them never once had me do a coding test. I essentially | kept going through the process just to see if they would make | me an offer after three conversations (They eventually did make | an offer). | mahathu wrote: | So I'm a recent computer science grad from Germany with some side | projects. Nothing spectacular. I haven't actually graduated yet | because I fell sick just before my last exam, so I had to | reschedule it to some time later this month. | | It's been a few years since I've been on the "I'm gonna move to | the US after graduating and become a techbro" train. So I'm not | up to date on the latest H1-B regulations etc. Does this mean it | might be easier for foreign workers to find a job as well? | | I don't want to stay in the computer science industries and have | made plans to go to uni again for something entirely different, | so I'm mostly just looking for a job for a year or two max, until | then. | thereare5lights wrote: | Meanwhile we got guys like this defending the leetcode regime | | https://twitter.com/polotek/status/1420960218469388290 | dbish wrote: | Even if you think you're well paid, now is the time to look | around. I've had a lot of friends, mentees, and coworkers get | huge bumps on total compensation even as relatively senior | engineers and managers. Pay is jumping and companies aren't doing | a great job keeping that up for their people who have been around | for a few years. As an employer, that should be the top worry, | keep comp up, don't lose your people because you've become | complacent on pay and don't understand that the market is | changing right now | skeeter2020 wrote: | We just gave our devs relatively modest increases, and only one | raised any objections and ended up with a more than a 15% | increase. I worry about all those devs who won't say anything | (why should they have to?) and will just go somewhere else for | a 20% bump. | mmaunder wrote: | Exactly this. We just gave all our devs a significant raise - | way above the norm, and way way earlier than we would. We're | acknowledging the reality of demand, scarcity and wage | inflation. My co-founder (also my wife) and I immediately felt | our blood pressure drop once we did that. | | Market conditions are making it hard to retain and very hard to | hire. We've done a bunch of other stuff to recruit - which I | described in another comment here - and it's making a huge | difference. Employers who don't respond to these market | conditions are in for a rough ride. | apozem wrote: | That is very smart. | | My old employer gave me a 3% raise in January and tried to | make it some big gift. I left anyway in April for a 50% bump. | New company, same level of responsibilities. | | The old employer underpays everyone, so that percentage is | higher than it otherwise would be, but still. | rubicon33 wrote: | Kudos for doing the right thing. I hope (and expect) that for | you and your business, it is the right thing. Hopefully those | devs are quite skilled, and worth keeping around, and will | stay and help the business grow! I feel like a lot of times | employers think devs are expendable, and while that's true to | some extent, devs also can be quite worth paying extra to | keep around especially if they've accrued quite a lot of | domain knowledge that pertains to your business. | MattGaiser wrote: | A past organization of mine just had a big data breach. It | would not surprise me if the near complete loss of domain | knowledge and institutional knowledge was a contributing | factor/cause. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | On the flip side - I tell recruiters immediately they have to | AT LEAST match my current comp. Every single one of them so far | has said they can't even get close. | | If you work at FAANG - your RSUs (most likely) have doubled in | about a year. You could easily already be getting paid more | than the max offer for the level above where you're currently | at. | mabbo wrote: | I've actually seen the opposite. I'm at a FAANG, but based in | Toronto. For the first time, recruiters are saying to me that | yeah, they can do better than that total comp. Often much | better. | | I like my boss and team, but if someone offers me enough | money and a fully remote job, well, it's going to be hard to | say no. | varjag wrote: | FAANG outside of USA/SV is basically any other tech | company, this is not surprising. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | My understanding is that FAANG pays very well in India | and Japan and Canada. Is this not true? | khazhoux wrote: | Always remember: your manager is right now looking for a | new job too. | bradleyjg wrote: | Even leaving aside golden handcuffs the number of companies | paying top of market seems relatively small. That's | especially true once you get past entry level positions. | ditonal wrote: | I feel the opposite. A decade ago, it was pretty much | Google, Facebook, and some elite trading firms that could | pay a ton. Now so many startups have grown up, there's a | huge list of them on levels.FYI that will pay 400k+ for | senior and 600k+ for staff. I recently have interviewed for | a ton and got rejected a bunch, but I joked with my spouse | that there's so many that by the time you're done | interviewing at all of them you've "cooled off" at the | original one and can re-interview, so there's an "infinite | loop" of 500k opportunities for experienced SWEs. Despite | 90% interview fail, I just accepted a 500k all-liquid | offer- despite me not even being at staff level at the | company. Hard to say that's not top of market, and it's not | at a FAANG either. | | FAANG is also a horrible acronym for the top paying | companies since two of those companies don't even pay that | well. Companies like Airbnb, Pinterest, Lyft, LinkedIn and | many others will outpay FAANG companies and their equity is | fully liquid. | sparker72678 wrote: | Omg I need to up my reqs in my interviews. | arthurcolle wrote: | Yes. Ask for 620 though, then they come back at 575 and | you just minted half of a 150k salary for being shrewd | hehe | inter_netuser wrote: | Bay area? | noleetcode wrote: | I'd love to, as I'm really tired of my current employer, and | they're definitely taking advantage of me, but I resolved to | never waste my time with leetcode garbage again... which means | I either stay where I'm at, or exit the industry entirely. | gentleman11 wrote: | I see a ton of jobs posted for seniors right now but almost | none for juniors. Are companies being shy about talent risks | right now? | MattGaiser wrote: | For my current job the posting said 4 years of experience. I | had 1 at the time. | | Officially, my company is only hiring seniors, but if a | decent junior applied (at least a year of experience | inclusive of internships), I could see us taking them, | especially with the right tech stack. | | So, apply anyway. | giantg2 wrote: | My experience is that this is an ongoing problem. For years | there have been relatively few junior positions. No company | wants to train people. | bpicolo wrote: | You need senior engineers in order to scale training | people, so it's a catch-22. | giantg2 wrote: | It's only a catch-22 if you don't have the senior people. | At least in my experience, companies have 80%+ senior and | midlevel developers. The issue is that companies want to | be cheap by letting other companies do the training and | then taking them. | _dark_matter_ wrote: | Honestly at this point as a staff level eng, not having | junior levels to work with is a big turn-off. I love | being able to break down projects in to tasks and not | have to carry out every single one of those. Convincing | one of my senior-level peers to work on a project or task | can be near impossible, while the junior level folks will | jump on them. | hdhjebebeb wrote: | Lol I've seen this in action, lots of staff devs being | architecture astronauts or diving super deep on a hot new | technology, and meanwhile some intern is building the | stupid webapp that actually gets used and makes money. | Macha wrote: | I work for a company that has been pretty strong on | pipelining in people as junior engineers and progressing them | within the company, but even the direction we had while | working remote from covid is that training in juniors while | out of office is something that higher ups don't want to deal | with (even if they would have little involvement in the | process, such is corporate bureaucracy), so they're reticent | to open positions to more junior level developers, and grads | are pretty much right out unless they've interned with us | previously. | mgh2 wrote: | Non-paywall please | davidw wrote: | Yep. I got burned out, quit, took some time off and then got an | offer that's a nice raise. | | I think it's healthy for all of us to reflect on how fortunate | we are in this field, sometimes. | bitcoinmoney wrote: | Got some RSU vesting November. Should I wait? | dbish wrote: | Maybe. It might be worth looking, tell any folks with an | offer how much you'd lose, and either leave early if they add | to it, or accept an offer with a start date after the vest. | justahuman74 wrote: | If that's a 1 year cliff, yes | throwawaysleep wrote: | For those of you who have done this, how do you maximise your | compensation? Tips appreciated. | toomuchtodo wrote: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25092246 | throwawaysleep wrote: | > That means doing getting multiple offers within the same | time period before you accept one. | | I need help on getting to the salary negotiation part with | multiple companies at the same time though. | | This is the instruction booklet for landing a lunar lander | on the Moon. I need the one for the Saturn V. | grepfru_it wrote: | Accept offer A. Receive offer B. If offer B > offer A, | let company A know something has come up and you cannot | continue employment. Accept offer B. | | Lather, rinse, repeat for each offer. The better offer | may be salary, perks, or just better work conditions. I | once left a company after working there for 9 days | because I got an offer working with my friend. I didn't | even get a better salary and my friend ended up leaving | after 3 months.. | axpy906 wrote: | That's not how to do it. You get offer A and B then push | them to bid on you. Having competing offers gives you | leverage, use that to get the best employment terms. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | A lesson I did not learn: I dedicated each lunch hour | every day for a couple of months ringing up companies and | agencies. I moved jobs three times and doubled my salary | in that year - which seemed good. | | Then I attended a seminar - the question was asked who | used agencies and who used their "network" for new jobs / | freelance work. | | I was the _only_ hand up to go used agencies and the | traditional job hunt. | | So it's the old saw - keep a profile up - blog, project, | podcast whatever, so you can use that as an excuse to | stay in touch with ex-colleagues so that they might think | of you when they are hiring in 3 years. | | As I said not a lesson I have learned but people who earn | more than me recommend it | nemo44x wrote: | You can always ask but another way is to come armed with a | job offer. Considering you aren't classified as "acceptable | attrition" you'll likely get a match or better from your | existing employer. Hiring new talent is difficult and | expensive so your manager has a lot of incentive to keep you | around if you're good performer. | | But be warned that if your current company decides to let you | go then you probably need to commit to the new company. | lostcolony wrote: | Ask for it. | | Seriously. | | I interviewed with one company, things went well, I was | interested, but they came out of the gate with total comp | that was lower than I was looking for. They were looking at a | stock grant of X over 4 years. That would have worked, | provided that I was basically guaranteed a refresher each | year for X (so that by year 4 I'd making X per year in RSUs). | I found out that refreshers were usually not for that amount, | and not guaranteed (barring performance issues). I indicated | I was looking for X per year in RSUs (given the salary and | bonus they were looking to offer). The recruiter was a bit | shocked, but went and asked anyway...she came back with an | offer granting 4X RSUs upfront, meaning, yeah, I'd be getting | X every year, starting from year 1. And I'd still be eligible | for refreshers and whatnot each year. | the_only_law wrote: | I learned to ask for things just a bit too late. For my | current role, the job description explicitly noted there | would be no relocation assistance. I ended up paying for my | move out of pocket. | | They were actually looking for two people for the role I | was applying to. After starting, I met the other guy that | was hired a few months before me. He had moved from even | further than I had. After talking, he mentioned he was | given relocation assistance. When I asked him about the | explicit mention that that would not be offered. He simply | told me he noticed it, but asked anyway and got it. | lostcolony wrote: | Expensive lesson, but a useful one. A good candidate who | is willing to sign is too valuable to pass on just | because they're asking for 5-20k in one time expenses. | | Even if they stuck with no relo, they might have extra | budget for sign on, which is equivalent. For whatever | reason, companies tend to be sticklers for budget | allocation, even if total amount equates, even to their | bottom line. Relocation assistance might be frowned on as | an 'unnecessary' overhead cost ("can we not find good | people already in the area?!"), but a higher sign on | wouldn't ("it's a competitive market"), despite also | being overhead. | zackify wrote: | I don't even do a call with the recruiter without listing | the salary range or what I want to make. Saves a lot of | time. | jseliger wrote: | https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ | | (I've not done this as such, but I'm a technical writing | consultant and the way you get more money from clients is | similar.) | grepfru_it wrote: | 1. Look on glassdoor, indeed, whatever site you want to use | to find out salary expectations in your role/area | | 2. When asked, give this number as your desired target, but a | lot of times they ask about old pay. if the old pay differs | greatly, avoid the topic by pointing out how 'the old job | requirements are different, benefits are different, etc. But | if they press on this number, tell them, don't lie or | completely avoid it | | 3. Assume the hiring manager has 15% over the offer amount. | this amount may also impact your future raises, so it may be | better to cap your ask at 10%. but don't be afraid to go ham | asking more for starting bonus, longer vacation, golden | parachute, etc | | 4. Good luck! | dbish wrote: | Don't use Glassdoor for tech. They are almost always | incorrect since they are salary focused. Use levels.fyi | which understands total compensation | chana_masala wrote: | Blind can be another good resource | taurath wrote: | Correct. And assume levels is old data at this point. And | don't be shocked, people really make that much. | [deleted] | gentleman11 wrote: | That site names salaries almost 50-100k higher than what | I see on other salary sites in Canada. Does the site only | aggregate top paying companies, or is the Canadian tech | sector actually way more robust than I thought? | surajama wrote: | The Canadian tech sector has completely changed over the | past 5 years (which is when I first came to Canada). When | I first got here, $100k+ salaries were rare unless you | were very senior or at a select few companies. I am now | looking for a job in Toronto after working for a FAANG | for a few years and often see companies offering over | $200k for mid-level positions. However I will say that | level.fyi is a little unrepresentative because it's | mainly people with impressive TCs posting on there. | nuclearnice1 wrote: | Nice list. Check if asking about salary history is banned. | It is in 21 states. https://www.hrdive.com/news/salary- | history-ban-states-list/5... | yellow_lead wrote: | Some of these bans only affect state agencies, the city, | or special cases. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Even if a company asks, you can say no. I've never | revealed this info and never will. You are giving them a | free negotiating card. It doesn't serve your interests at | all. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | > a lot of times they ask about old pay | | Been in the industry 25 years and never once agreed to | disclose my previous pay. Don't do it. Ever. It's none of | their business and will only be used against you. | handrous wrote: | They can just get it through a one of the many private | spy/surveillance agencies (one of the credit bureaus, for | instance) if they really care. | grepLeigh wrote: | https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ | aleksiy wrote: | Just to add my own data point. I studied leetcode for 6 | months during covid. Sent about 30 applications interviewed | at 10 companies and received 8 offers. | | 2 of these offers where double my current TC through | negotiation. It's not just FAANG but startups making very | good offers. I have 3 YOE. | | For negotiation: | | Always ask for at least 20% more + a signing bonus | | Have competing offers | | Interview well | | Be willing to walk away. If they can't do it there's another | company that will. | ramraj07 wrote: | Could you give rough range of these offers? Would be | interested in understanding absolute numbers | tibbetts wrote: | Understand who you are negotiating with. It's not usually the | hiring manager or recruiter who has final say over pay. | Figure out who does if you can, and figure out what they care | about and need to see or hear. Then equip your contact with | the information they need to advocate for paying you what you | want. Like if they need a clearer statement about your years | of experience, or your other offers, or your alignment with | the role. | warent wrote: | This may sound weird but it's easier to do this when you | don't _need_ it. When we 're negotiating, people can smell | desperation. If you can easily walk away from a | negotiation/offer, you're suddenly in a much more powerful | position. | | Once you're there, figure out how much sounds like a lot and | ask for even more. Either they'll surprise you and accept the | terms, or you will negotiate "down" to the amount that | sounded like a lot. Worst case scenario, they don't take the | deal and you reject them to go find a new negotiation until | you get what you want | yosito wrote: | This negotiation tactic works fine if you don't have to do | full day coding challenges to get to that phase, while also | working a full time job. | warent wrote: | These days I just immediately turn those down without a | second thought. It's a joke of an interviewing system and | your time is way too valuable for that. | | Happy to do coding questions, but not 8 hour long take- | home projects. Those have screwed me too many times | Rapzid wrote: | Teleport has a comically large test. Think 20-40 hours. | sirmike_ wrote: | This is very, very true. I refuse to do coding based | interviews. I'm flexible on certain homework. Hell will | freeze over before I have to sit through a multi-hour | panel and coding session. Like for free? Hit the bricks. | Who can just take 4-6 hours out of your normal work day | to swing into something like that? Not even germane to my | role. | | The fastest way to avoid companies like that is to set | boundaries on what you will do and will not do. Good | recruiters LISTEN and respect this. I do not want my time | wasted and likewise for the recruiters and companies I am | talking too. | indymike wrote: | If that is the process, and you've survived the gauntlet, | you have the leverage. | lr4444lr wrote: | I think just the opposite: the best time to pounce on | them with salary expectations is as late as possible, | after they've already invested the interview time on you | and seen you excel. | JMTQp8lwXL wrote: | If they already have their budget in mind before the | interview process began, it won't buy you any leverage | waiting until the very end. They won't care that they | burnt the money/time/energy considering your candidacy, | even if that costs them more in the long run. | | I've ended up wasting a lot of my own time with this | strategy. I'll get to the point where they want to extend | an offer, I name my number, and then we have an awkward | 15 minutes on the phone (e.g., "the VP couldn't ever | approve that amount") and then I say I'm not interested | 24 hours later. | lostcolony wrote: | "If they already have their budget in mind before the | interview process began" | | This is impossible to know though, as is its breakdown. | Many places have very fixed limits on salary and bonus, | for instance, but RSUs and sign on they have a lot of | freedom. | | Even the places that have fixed budgets all around may | have multiple openings of varying levels; a strong | interview showing may cause them to bump the level they'd | look to hire you at, just to meet your comp expectations | (I've seen this happen numerous times as a manager when a | candidate came back asking for more). | | If they bring it up at the start, great, it saves a lot | of time for both of you. If -you- bring it up at the | start, though, you're just closing off opportunities. | sokoloff wrote: | If you're closing off opportunities that you wouldn't | take anyway, it's just another form of time savings. I | make sure we're at least in the same chapter if not the | exact same page on comp before spending more than a | 25-minute intro. | lostcolony wrote: | As I mentioned elsewhere, I upped my RSU comp 4x what was | initially offered by bringing it up at the end, for a | position I -was- interested in. Had I come out of the | gate saying I expected that, I'm quite certain the | response would have been "we can't do that" and moved on. | | Fair enough if you only want to work for a company that | offers your target comp -without- negotiation (since even | if they're open to negotiating at the start, you're doing | so when your hand is weakest), but otherwise there is | nothing to be gained by bringing it up at the start. | [deleted] | Tade0 wrote: | A while ago I switched to a role that was interesting, but | involved a decrease in compensation, but not a month had passed | and I was included in a company-wide pay increase. | | Overall currently I don't hate my job anymore _and_ the salary | is slightly better. Best decision I made this year. | mixmastamyk wrote: | How much should one ask for from a contract with Uncle Sam with | zero benefits? One hundred an hour for senior dev work sounded | good to me, but maybe that is old-fashioned in an inflationary | environment. The taxes get nasty at that point, so not certain. | wintermutestwin wrote: | Here are some "dot-com era" flashbacks from a veteran greybeard: | | Near the end of 1999, I moved from SV to smaller hot tech market | with more affordable housing. I moved totally cold with no | contacts or job lined up. The week after I arrived, I had 3 job | offers. I picked the smallest web tech startup. After a couple | months they got acquired by a SV megacorp and I was pissed! I | wanted nothing to do with being a small fish in a big ocean of a | company. But I had just bought my first house and my wife was | pregnant. I planned to stick around long enough to vest some | options. Then the big crash hit and the majority of web startups | were gone and my megacorp's stock had cratered. I had the feeling | of winning at musical chairs - Pyrrhic though that victory was. | | Am I predicting some future tech industry crash? No, but maybe it | is plausible. It does remind a bit of the shoeshine boy stock | tip. Maybe the world will finally push back against ad-tech | stalker capitalism? Haha - I wouldn't bet on that... | nemo44x wrote: | The thing about the .com crash is all the investors were mainly | right, besides some ridiculous things. They were just too early | as the web didn't have critical mass until 10 years later and | today's web makes the one of 10 years ago appear quaint. | Because of that critical mass I think a similar crash is | unlikely across the entire sector. | ProjectArcturis wrote: | I don't know, I thought pets.com was stupid then, and | chewy.com is stupid now. The main difference is the Chewy | guys were smart enough to cash out before the bubble burst | again, rather than spending their cash on stadium naming | rights. | dntrkv wrote: | Pets.com had a lifetime revenue of $6M. | | Chewy.com did $7.1B last year. | | That's the difference between 1999 and today. | _dark_matter_ wrote: | I have no skin in the game, but I buy things on Chewy | because I trust them more than Amazon to not surface cheap | crap, and their reviews are better. I checked and it looks | like they're revenue positive with >500M cash on hand. They | may not be worth their current stock price but I imagine | they're going to survive as a company just fine. | quesera wrote: | > The thing about the .com crash is all the investors were | mainly right ... They were just too early | | And that made them _wrong_. :) | | No one will argue that holographic display VR is a bad idea. | | Some people will try to get you to invest today. | the_only_law wrote: | I hate that the market is so great right now because I really | can't take advantage of it. | | I would love to start the process, to try and get a salary | increase anywhere from 30%-100% but unfortunately I've stagnated | sharply skills wise. Don't qualify for the jobs I see I think I'd | enjoy, and don't even qualify for the jobs that meet my salary | preferences that I'd otherwise dislike. I also would have to be | looking at immediately remote roles which just makes things | harder. I also am about 90% I could not perform on interviews at | most places. Digging myself out of the aforementioned stagnation | and prepping for interviews is likely to take years at this point | and who knows what the market will look like at that point. | caeril wrote: | > I've stagnated sharply skills wise | | I'm sorry, but what does this even mean? | | Nothing has changed in a significant way since 1996, other than | ops per second and memory bandwidth. If you're an old school C | programmer who knows how pointer arithmetic and memory | allocation works, you're better than 99% of the total trash | new-school Node.js/Django/Rails/React developers who think JSX | is some sort of "innovation". | | Having "stagnated" is definitely a hiring plus. It means you're | less likely to slow down my systems with eight quadrillion | layers of dynamic dispatch and abstraction, and you're not | going to agitate for infecting my systems with Kubernetes | _specifically because_ I now need to orchestrate ten times more | production machines to run the ensuing inefficient bloatware. | | I can't imagine anyone being more highly sought after than a | "stagnating" programmer. | mixmastamyk wrote: | While there's truth to this, I'm gonna guess it's a minority | viewpoint. | dasyatidprime wrote: | Do you have any recommendations on how best to sell yourself | from such a position? I have a significant C99-era/close-to- | the-assembly fundamentals background, but I see a lot of "if | you haven't already AWS'd all the AWS at your last company in | production at scale, then there's someone behind you who | has", and that kind of thing has both been a notable lacuna | in my experience and something that's notably less fixable | independently than e.g. "plow through a React tutorial to | familiarize yourself with the basics". In particular, it | seems like in the heavily external-service-integrating style | of development, a lot of experience comes in along the lines | of "remembering the pitfalls you ran into with particular | vendors under particular loads" and the fundamentals don't | get you as far. But I hear a lot of conflicting things about | this. | | I'm someone who's (supposedly) quite good underneath but has | stagnated a lot over the last few years (and on and off | before that, sadly) as other issues drained away my ability | to work. I'm gradually stabilizing things and trying to find | the best way to maneuver, and I'm pretty worried that | everything's going to pass me by because my experience isn't | of the right kind and I'm not legible enough. The people who | are getting the jobs with all the traits I want are the ones | who got a Real (that is, close to culturally archetypical) | Job in 2018 and did their time in the salt mines with the | three verifiable contiguous recent years of experience. | | If what you say is true, then it's possible what I mostly | have is a marketing problem, and it may be that e.g. some of | the "actual demonstration of ability" is more readily | solvable with "pull some stuff out into public repositories | and freshen it up" than I've been imagining. | runawaybottle wrote: | Well, the thing is, the people you described are the ones | doing the technical interview. They hire people similar to | them. | the_only_law wrote: | Hey, by stagnating I mean I've barely written code in over a | year, and haven't done any significant greenfield work my | whole career. The work I have done has been mostly in legacy | or obsolete technologies, and by that I mean mostly old | version of stuff that's still out there. | | So by stagnating I don't only mean not up on all the new hype | tech, but also the caricature of a "code monkey". Certainly | on paper at least. | | > you're not going to agitate for infecting my systems with | Kubernetes specifically because I now need to orchestrate ten | times more production machines to run the ensuing inefficient | bloatware. | | Sadly this seems to be the sort of thing that most employers | want. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Start a new project on the side, using the skills you'd | like to develop. | the_only_law wrote: | How do you balance this on the resume. I got plenty of | cool project ideas, but outside of entry level, it just | seems odd to list them on the resume (which I presume is | the only way they'll be seen by anyone giving the | consensus on LinkedIn and personal sites). o feel it'd | just look weird when you have projects and skills that | seemingly have no relevance to your work experience | especially when applying to roles that are mid level or | senior. | | It seems that a lot of things are just no possible to | learn on the side as well. For example, doing anything at | a large scale. That could be HPC stuff or just designing | and building systems that need to handle high throughput | without slowing or failing. I can't afford to have the | sort of projects that would allow me to learn those | things. | | The exception I can imagine is working on high visibility | OSS projects and is a huge time sink and might as well be | a second job. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Too negative an outlook, imho. You do the research and | add the keywords, maybe project to your resume. If | grilled you say I have some experience but am not an | expert. | | Also, you'd be surprised how much you can get done on a | modern PC with vms or containers, it isn't the nineties | or aughts any longer. We used to run a full vfx company | on what amounts to a single souped $10k PC today. | | Or, rent a heavy-duty cloud vm for $100 a month, small | investment but clock ticking will get you motivated. | sirmike_ wrote: | Why are you saying crazy self-fulfilling prophesies? Do you | hate money? | | Take the leap into something you WANT. Skills, Sschmills! You | can learn can't you? Life means learning new stuff all the | time. Learning never takes a time out. | | The military was a bastion of learned lessons for me. One key | takeaway: You are your own best advocate. Everything in an | interview or negotiation related to you springs from that | viewpoint. That's one of the most basic you will repeat | infinitely. Use it boldly, not arrogantly. | the_only_law wrote: | > Take the leap into something you WANT. Skills, Sschmills! | You can learn can't you? | | It's just about time really. I could skill up but what's the | market going to look like by the point I'm ready. | robotresearcher wrote: | Get the job and then learn the skill. The value proposition | you present is that you can learn stuff. | | This is not a flippant reply! I'm totally serious. | devoutsalsa wrote: | You didn't qualify for the first job you got. The only | difference now is you have more experience and less hubris. | What I do is cut my teeth in a few bad interviews, polish off | the rough edges, and then I do fine. It's all about attitude | and confidence. | chana_masala wrote: | 15 years at Oracle? I doubt it's as bad as you think. Go for | breadth and see where you're weak. Practice leetcode, system | design and do mock interviews on pramp | Redoubts wrote: | Meh, honestly just shoot for it. The worst they can say is no, | and a lot of job reqs are just long wishlists anyways. | | Hell, pick a dumb company you'll never want to work for, like | Uber, if you want real-world practice. Then you at least know | what real-world failure looks like. | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: | I'm back in the job market and it doesn't even seem like HR | has a clue what programmers do. My favorite was: "Must be | fluent in: C#, .NET, and .NET Framework..." | ddek wrote: | You stagnated because you don't have a job that stretches you. | | Even if you think the best you can do is the same job you have | right now, but in a different place, you'll see a significant | bump. But it's highly likely you can do better than that. | | Why not try? | the_only_law wrote: | > Even if you think the best you can do is the same job you | have right now, but in a different place, you'll see a | significant bump. | | Because I doubt I could get the bump I'm looking for doing | the same thing I do now with current restraints | | > Why not try? | | Time sink, especially with people talking about 4-5 stage | interviews. Without some level of confidence I'd rather not | use all my PTO or try to schedule hack at the moment. | hnuser847 wrote: | > I've stagnated sharply skills wise | | I felt the same way over the past few years and decided to | switch to a Technical Product Owner role at the beginning of | this year. I used to be your typical HN user who was extremely | passionate about programming, learning new frameworks, | functional programming, etc, but at some point over my 10 year | career I kinda stopped caring about tech entirely. Switching to | a product owner role was great for me. I still get to leverage | my technical knowledge without having to worry about the actual | implementation too much. I also get to develop my soft skills | like planning, communication, and conflict resolution, which is | frankly a lot more interesting and satisfying than programming | ever was. | quickpost wrote: | Could you talk more about how you made this pivot? Was the | transition to product owner a step down initially? | hnuser847 wrote: | It was a lateral move within the same company, so my | compensation is identical to what it was before. Honestly I | credit my manager and the company in general for allowing | me to make the move. My manager was extremely supportive | when I expressed interest in product management and was | quick to throw my name into the hat when an internal job | opening popped up. I think it helps that I work for an | extremely large company. I doubt I would have been able to | make the switch if I was still working at a startup. | jvilalta wrote: | What about the CTO/VP/Sr. leadership roles? Is anyone | seeing/experiencing something similar? | miketery wrote: | Is there a good open source data on this? I know companies use | things like Redford, but I believe they're incentivized to under | estimate the averages. | vbtemp wrote: | Besides personal networks, are there any particular services | where anyone is finding good leads? | | I found my current job through Stack Overflow, which was great | (I'd prefer to avoid LinkedIn and the spammy ones). However, | there aren't as many hits on Stack Overflow as there used to be. | arthurcolle wrote: | LinkedIn | ProjectArcturis wrote: | My personal experience has been quite different. I got a bit | burned out on my job and sent in my resume to 10 new places. All | remote, some a bit of a stretch, others I was well qualified for. | (Data science management and senior DS IC, respectively). | | I got zero hits. Not a single phone screen. | | Honestly I was pretty lazy about it, and didn't write cover | letters or anything. That might be a contributing factor. That, | or remote jobs are far more competitive. | paxys wrote: | No one cares about cover letters, but you do have to put in | some effort towards marketing yourself. Have an up to date | LinkedIn profile. Reach out to the company's recruiters and ask | to schedule a call (instead of just applying online). Try and | get an internal referral through friends (or friends of | friends, friends of friends of friends). | lumost wrote: | There could be a couple factors here. The first is that | recruiting at most companies prefers to reach out to candidates | then the other way around. My suspicion has been that they get | inundated with unqualified resumes via direct applications and | just don't want to spend the time looking through it. You | should try going back through linkedin over the last 6 months | and messaging recruiters who did cold outreach or directly ping | a recruiter at a company you want to work for. | | The other area is that DS means something a bit different at | each company you could work for. Some may want SQL experts, | others want SWE's with some ML and still others expect 100% | modeling all the time. You may get filtered out if you don't | have the appropriate buzzwords/skills listed on your resume | e.g. AWS, BigQuery, Java, python, Tensorflow etc. | monkeybutton wrote: | As someone that was educated in computer science and moved | from software engineering to working in the data science | world, I find applying to DS positions to be much harder and | more painful than CS jobs. | | CS is easy: Do you know the languages they want, know some | algorithms, are you familiar with the same tools and | libraries, how's your experience working with people on big | projects? | | DS: The field is so broad and so deep, you need know | everything and if you don't, be prepared to be shredded. Your | interviewer may have a PhD in physics, or a master's in | economics, or maybe they're just a math major that did a | bootcamp course. Do you know NLP and how to build a pipeline? | I feel like I get whiplash when I look at DS job postings | they're so all over the place. | adnmcq999 wrote: | I can't capitalize on my interviews but I get a few through | recruiters. Just get into one system - like CyberCoders or | teksystems and you will get bombarded as resume gets passed | around. They have a relationship w the companies so they | forward you directly | adnmcq999 wrote: | Easiest way would be to just find a recruiter on LinkedIn and | message them | vmception wrote: | nah don't do cover letters, but let a recruiter shop you | around, they have backchannels into a lot of companies that | otherwise don't really check their inbox | | consider setting your linked in to "looking", which might cost | money, but this gets the attention of even internal recruiters | akamaka wrote: | Reaching out to 10 companies is not enough for remote | positions. They might be flooded with hundreds of resumes from | around the world. | | Check out what people in other industries go through, for | context: | | https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/b5sfbh/my_... | yosito wrote: | Consider the fact that many desirable jobs get hundreds of | applicants. It's entirely possible that even if your resume is | top notch it got lost in a huge pool of candidates. You need to | send your resume to hundreds of companies. I have a top-tier | resume, and when I job search, I aim to send my resume (and | cover letter/email) to 10+ companies per day. | | On the other side, last time I was hiring, I was shocked at the | low quality of a lot of applications. Applications that weren't | complete, didn't have a resume, cover letter and work samples | of some kind got immediately sent to the trash. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | Why do you care about cover letters? I haven't written one of | those in probably 20 years. If I'm hiring and a candidate | includes one, I usually ignore it (when hiring for an | individual contributor, engineering role). | sparker72678 wrote: | I trash every application that doesn't include one. Because | most likely they're just spamming openings, and didn't read | anything about the position. | | Every applicant that included a cover letter was way above | median quality, and worth interviewing. | | I might miss some decent people this way, but it's been a | very helpful first-level filter of applicants. | caoilte wrote: | I suspect most of us have had semi-competent recruitment | agents doing the first stage filter for us. | | When I look at a CV ahead of a 2nd or 3rd stage interview | I take it for granted that they are serious about the | role and qualified for it. | naasking wrote: | I've only paid attention to cover letters for junior | positions, mainly to evaluate communication skills. | the_only_law wrote: | This is kinda of discouraging. I want to bring my income up | soon and was wondering since people say the markets so good if | I could spend some months skilling up and then trying to send | out some resumes. Also I don't really have the resources to | move and was mainly going to target remote roles. | zdragnar wrote: | I think data science roles are not nearly as in-demand as | software roles are. Remote positions for software seem to me | at least to be pretty easy to come by. If you are in the data | side of things but really need a new job, adding software | skills would be a relatively easy lateral move (at least | compared to switching to a non-technical role or field | anyway). | throwanem wrote: | Find a good recruiter and put a solid profile on LinkedIn. The | difference is night and day. | ativzzz wrote: | Seconding linkedin, got my current job passively through | recruiters reaching out to me and taking interviews with ones | that sounded interesting. | throwanem wrote: | Same, for both my current and previous. The two before that | were via a recruiter relationship. Before that was through | a friend who works there, and before _that_ was a de facto | apprenticeship, also via a friend already there. I have | never gotten a job in this industry by submitting a resume | cold. From this I conclude that the point is not to need | to. | | You need the LinkedIn profile to look good both to humans | and to robots, and a worthwhile recruiter will give you | substantial help tuning both that and your resume because | these will both help them place you, which is how they get | paid. Make sure a new recruiter clearly understands this | and is happy that _you_ clearly understand it, too. Those | who fail this test are not the ones you want to work with. | | It will be harder to work with top-tier recruiters if | you're working your way up and not yet established. That's | not fair, but it's the way of the world, and as always you | mistake the ought for the is at your peril. If you're smart | and capable, just not yet tested and proven, the ideal is | to find a recruiter who will invest in helping you develop. | This is tricky and I lucked into it. The best advice I can | offer there is, bigger firms with deeper pockets are more | likely able to support that. | | The unequivocally good news is that there is a _lot_ of | interest, money, and good roles sloshing around the market | right now. While that 's less good for a newer junior than | for a proven senior, it is still good for us all. | | Don't wait. The article compares the tech industry labor | market to the housing market, which I think is accurate. It | also compares now with the boom before the 2000-2001 crash, | and I think that is accurate too. We can reasonably predict | another crash. We cannot reasonably predict _when_. So get | while the getting is good. | danShumway wrote: | > Find a good recruiter | | I'm going to throw my voice into the ring on this specific | line; recruiters get a bad name (often deservedly), but I | found my current job (coming up on 3 years) through a local | recruiter that contacted me. The whole job search once they | got involved turned into an incredibly fast, easy process; | they were great about finding companies that matched up with | my skills/conditions, they even did some salary negotiation | (which I am terrible at). | | It was a really positive experience. I'm not going to say | every recruiter would be like that, I'm sure many (even the | majority) are not. But if you're looking for a job and having | a lot of difficulty just finding places to apply, think about | finding a recruiting firm to help. | | Do make sure: | | - A) that you aren't required to apply through them for every | job. My recruiter let me keep applying for my own jobs on the | side while they scouted out. | | - B) that they actually have some domain knowledge about the | industries you're applying to. | | - C) that they're actually meeting with you and putting in | some effort to understand what your goals are, not just | trying to pressure you into taking every job offer that pops | up. | | I think if you're already a qualified programmer, recruiters | can fill in a lot of the groundwork of finding out who's | hiring and getting your resume in front of companies, and | that just increases the number of options you have. I | expected to completely hate the process and instead I came | away feeling like it had made my life a lot easier and a lot | less stressful. | verhaust wrote: | do you have any tips for finding a good recruiter? I've never | actually searched for one. I get recruiters contacting me on | LinkedIn and they are pretty bad in my opinion. The ones I've | followed up with know very little about the job they are | hiring for and trying to get useful answers back from them is | a giant pain. | caoilte wrote: | Keep searching and hang on to the ones who are funny and | genuine. I've failed to get a job with an awesome recruiter | and ended up getting placed with them for a different role | 12 years later. | | None of them know tech but a few of them are smart enough | to understand that they don't know tech and to focus on | mastering the social market. | throwanem wrote: | Select the best-looking roles from the contacts you get, | then audition the recruiters. Depending on your experience, | this may mean relying on your gut. It also means meeting in | person if possible, or at least on the phone. You want | synchronous communications and the highest semantic | bandwidth you can get. If they won't give you half an hour, | that alone is a huge red flag. There's some other pointers | in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28029857 | rito_ wrote: | Will you please DM your LinkedIn URL to @AllesistKode on | Twitter? | | That is, if you don't want to post it here. | MattGaiser wrote: | Maybe not all tech is benefiting as evenly? My company is | mostly data science. We don't seen to have an issue filling | those spots. Software engineering job postings have been open | for months and as far as I know, nobody has been interviewed. | ianai wrote: | If someone's going to hire you remote shouldn't you demonstrate | your ability to communicate well in text and elaborate on what | makes you a good choice in a well written, directed cover | letter? | jka wrote: | What makes you assume that they didn't, out of interest? | ianai wrote: | GP: "Honestly I was pretty lazy about it, and didn't write | cover letters or anything" | novok wrote: | In my entire decade+ career in bigtech, I've never used or | looked at a single cover letter. | | Cover letters are a waste, and rightfully ignored. | phenkdo wrote: | yeah the cookie-cutter cover letters are useless, but i've | hired people who write: _" i love you are working in | machine vision, i've worked with x,y and z tech to build _. | I could augment your efforts in these fields..."_. | | Call it what you will a cover message or note perhaps. | grepfru_it wrote: | Now if you want a job outside of FAANGM (bigtech), a well | written cover letter will make you the shoe-in candidate. | | YMMV | autotune wrote: | I've literally never had to write a cover letter in my 6+ | year career in tech outside of FAANGM. Complete waste of | time imho. | grepfru_it wrote: | And i'm explaining from my 22 year career, my best | positions came with a cover letter | catillac wrote: | I hire and pay top of market and I definitely look at | cover letters, at least scan them (some are huge tells | that they don't even know what we do, so it weeds out the | candidate), and often they're the thing that | differentiates the various candidates who have similar | backgrounds. I've also hired lots of people without cover | letters. I don't think spending a few minutes writing a | paragraph like another poster stated above is a waste of | time. | Macha wrote: | HR strip cover letters before they get to the engineers | where I work. | EGreg wrote: | Alright I'll bite, and ask the obvious question: | | Can anyone here share the links to where we would start to apply | for such jobs? StackOverflow Jobs? Indeed? FlexJobs? Or some | smarter approach, like putting google keywords when they search | themselves or something? | | Last time I worked doing FTE in the industry I was making | $175,000 a year in NYC, and due to the pandemic, working from | home. Say I wanted to do better salary-wise, where would I look | for such jobs? | | I have a distaste for full-time employee setups, btw, I much | rather prefer to work on projects for businesses, bring my own | team and solve their business problems directly. But the steady | paycheck does attract a lot of people. | | PS: At our company we experimented with alternatives to full-time | compensation: https://qbix.com/blog/2016/11/17/properly-valuing- | contributi... | monkeybutton wrote: | There's definitely some ripple effects happening, even in Canada | there's a shortage of software engineers in my province*. I just | accepted an offer that the HR minion described as "competitive" | that is a 20% bump in salary. Many large companies here have tons | of openings. I feel like the market here has detached itself from | reality. | | * https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/the-good-the-bad... | giantg2 wrote: | Maybe for some, but I doubt I'll see anything. In fact, I think | my merit increase will be less than inflation. | homie wrote: | Interesting. Lately it feels like I might as well have thrown my | applications into a black hole. | cxx wrote: | Not my experience at all. | | For context, I'm a L6 at FB right now and have more than a decade | of experience. I've never seen tech interviews become as stupid | as they are now. In the last 3 months I've applied to a few | places, including one where I literally built from scratch what | the hiring team wanted to do (and got promoted for it at FB), and | I've never seen the difficulty of the programming rounds so high | as now. In the company I mention I got asked 5 LC hard questions | between the 2 phone screens and the first 4 interviews of the | zoom "on-site". No relevance whatsoever with what I did before or | would've done on that team. I don't know if I passed the first | day, but I told them right after I finished I wouldn't be doing | the next day of interviews. Other places while not as extreme | were more or less the same, they expect the optimal solution in | 20-30 minutes max with no hints so that they can ask you a more | difficult follow-up question. Many places say they want to know | about your "thought process" but it's complete bullshit. Changing | jobs is literally a dice roll, depending on who you get as an | interviewer: do you get a stickler who's gonna ask you a tricky | mathematical problem and expect picture-perfect compilable code | because he has a chip on his shoulder and nobody told him it was | a stupid way to hire a generalist, or do you get someone who's | asking a reasonable problem and mostly looking for signals that | you're a well rounded engineer, like choosing tradeoffs, being a | team player, helping people around you, and so on. In my | experience lately it's been mostly the first type. I don't know | if it's simply bad luck or something else, but despite having a | pretty good track record these companies are telling me I don't | know how to program. | | I know it's pretty much impossible for a no-name peon to change | the current state of hiring in tech, so in the interviews I | conduct I now only ask the hardest possible questions I can find | and always put no-hire if the code is not perfect. I've blocked | or helped block every single interview loop I've been in except | when I knew this person was supposed to join our team directly if | they passed, then we just had an reasonable problem and a good | talk. My goal is to make hiring slow down to a crawl, make it so | hard to find anyone that it hurts the company and is forced to | change it. Maybe this is the kind of interviewer I've been | finding, someone also fed up with the status quo In that case, I | applaud you. The current way we do tech interviews is just | idiotic and is absolutely not finding good engineers, it's | finding people that lucked out to be in the intersection of | "problems they practiced" and "problems you can get asked in an | interview". | ahmadss wrote: | Im curious to hear what types of companies an L6 / E6 at FB is | applying to. Without mentioning company names, what types of | opportunities are out there that convince you to leave this | type of comp [1] | | [1] https://www.levels.fyi/company/Facebook/salaries/Software- | En... | cxx wrote: | To put it simply, I used to have hobbies before working at | FB. Now I don't have time for anything besides work. While | the pay is really good the job is a non-stop, grueling grind | with no downtime allowed. I enjoyed my time but I'm done with | it. Also I can't say I'm proud of working there. There's | people inside that are really great to work with and the job | was challenging and interesting, but I don't care for FB the | company and what it's doing in general. | | With that said, and I know it's a first world problem, I'm | looking for a place that aligns with my views and in some | specific fields that I find interesting. I'm fine taking a | pay cut depending on the company and the position, I don't | care so much about money anymore as an employee. | pega3902 wrote: | Have the exact same experience at another FAANG company in | a security org. Endless grind, incredible politics, | employees endlessly backstab each other. Great salary, but | really nothing else as a positive. Depressing. | | Going to be hard going from 500+ back down to 150-200, but | I imagine doing something I'm actually passionate about | will be worth it. | nuclearnice3 wrote: | > My goal is to make hiring slow down to a crawl, make it so | hard to find anyone that it hurts the company and is forced to | change it. | | Hmm. I agree 100% on the intersection of practiced and asked as | a key indicator for modern tech interviews. | | Have you done any estimates of how long it is going to take | Facebook to notice your efforts? I looked and they hired 15k | people since 2019. Even if you block three a week, you're only | a couple percentage points of drag. | | Maybe you need to consider collective action? | cxx wrote: | Yeah I know it's a drop in the bucket but for now it's all I | can afford to do. I've talked to my SWE friends (inside & | outside FB) and have convinced a few to do the same. Others | simply don't care or feel it's disloyal to the company, which | is fair enough. | bredren wrote: | How does performing this effort make you feel? | mixmastamyk wrote: | Just say no to those kinds of interviews. Of course you'll need | to be senior with a small nest egg first. | kevinventullo wrote: | I am baffled by your approach toward "improving" coding | interviews at FB. | | If you want them to change, you should be taking positive steps | towards that change, by getting involved with things like | debrief/candidate review, mentoring new interviewers, or making | a proposal for a new interview type that could be A/B tested. | Large changes to things like interviewing practice do happen, | but they don't come from out of nowhere, and they certainly | don't come from a single engineer passive-aggressively tanking | all their interviews. | JMTQp8lwXL wrote: | You could change the process by being the person who rubber- | stamps everyone, regardless of how silly the "process" is. If | the person didn't get the PhD algorithm perfect, yet still did | a good job, let them in. Anyone who is good enough to be | considered for an interview at FB or G is good enough to do the | job. That's the truth of the matter. Be the change you want to | see-- this somewhat reads as a 'stick-in-mud' approach which | may not get your desired outcome. | nostromo wrote: | Most companies track how many people you green light and if | you do it too often you may not be given any more interviews. | neilv wrote: | If an applicant gets an interviewer who _doesn 't_ do the | current frat pledge rituals that some CS students (with | little/no industry experience) 20 years ago thought would be a | good way to gatekeep who could work in industry... | | I'd say that the interviewer seeing past that is a very good | sign you might want to work with that person. And that person's | implicit endorsement of the company is also a good sign for the | company. | | Separately, responding to something else in the comment... if | an interviewer is actively sabotaging their own company's | process.. Is the company very broken in this and possibly other | regards? Is the company not able to fix itself, to the point of | guerilla insurgencies, rather than constructive dialog and | processes? Why is this person still there? Why do they think | that sabotaging an applicant's individual aspirations is a good | idea? Is the company so bad that discouraging the applicant is | deemed almost certainly in that person's interests? Or does the | person not care how this affects the individual applicant? | baby wrote: | The programming interviews are getting ridiculous. It is really | an immense pain to go through an interview for a senior | developer role nowadays, and it is super arbitrary. I did like | 5 at the end of last year and I was just sooo tired. Got mixed | results as well even when I felt like I understood the problem | better than some interviewers. On the other hand, I got two | companies that gave me take home assignments which both took me | an entire day to complete, but it was fun as hell at least! | | BTW I also did a developer interview at FB to transition role | (after writing code for two years at FB) and failed. It's just | really random. | cxx wrote: | Yeah I agree, also with the home assignments. Personally I | prefer home assignments infinitely more than leetcode | interviews and they are much more realistic to what you do on | the job. The problem is that some companies are doing both, | first the assignment and if they like it the standard 4-8 | interviews. | version_five wrote: | An interesting corollary is that certain types of business are no | longer economically viable. If I have a business that competes | with advertising companies for niche talent, my business model | has to be able to generate the same outsized returns on that | talent if I want to be able to afford them, so this limits the | work I can do. | | I don't think people should work for below market wages, only | observing how it can change what kinds of products and services | are available. And in the case of tech talent, salaries are being | driven up by a few key industries that arguably are not where | society would like to see tech product and r&d investment | concentrated. | lima wrote: | Many people are indeed willing to work below market wages in | exchange for working on something meaningful to them. | echelon wrote: | Game developers are a classic example. They're paid trash | salaries and treated like vermin. | benhurmarcel wrote: | Those would be viable if done by an organization outside the | US. Comp is still quite low in many countries, including in the | "first" world (like western Europe). | walshemj wrote: | Old school "media" agencies (all the big names) just don't get | this this isnt the "mad men" days of the 1960's | tikhonj wrote: | There are a lot of ways to compete _besides_ salary, but my | experience is that companies paying below-market-rate salaries | tend to be _less_ competitive on other axes too--with the | exception of fields like research that have no trouble | attracting far more superb candidates than the field can take. | | In my experience, autonomy, impact, psychological safety, | remote work and flexible hours can all make up for | _substantial_ differences in pay, and would make the team more | productive to boot. These are all aspects of the job a company | can directly control; I 'm not even talking about things like | prestige, "mission" or super-deep technical problems. And yet, | it seems like these aspects are all positively correlated with | pay: higher-paid positions also come with more respect and a | better work experience. | | What's keeping companies from changing this? Trust and respect | go a long way. Of course, everyone and their dog claims they | have a great culture, so a team would need a way to _show_ | rather than _tell_ , but that's an eminently solvable problem. | | I've seen this work first-hand. For the same level of pay, | hiring people on a Haskell project was markedly easier than | other projects at the same company: people actively want to use | Haskell and it also acts as a real signal that the team is | willing to do things differently. The latter might actually be | more important! | throwaway1556 wrote: | I've been talking to a few companies about VP Eng roles -- as got | nowhere getting VC interest in a new project I've been kicking | around | | 3 companies I've had detailed discussions with so far all want | someone to hire 200-400 new devs in UK/DE this year -- and I've | seen several other posts with similar aspirations in diff sectors | | So that's 1K-2K devs needed that I know (from management/investor | 'needs', I'm not convinced the engineering requirement really | needs anywhere near that) ... all in same space ... all same job | spec ... some willing to pay whatever is required | | Much of that in the new fast groceries sector -- I don't think | people understand how disruptive that is going to be (in more | ways than just wrecking current physical grocery sector) | simonbarker87 wrote: | I have personally experienced this (with two job changes in the | pandemic) however I am noticing new career switchers devs are | still struggling as always. | | I've run a mid level successful coding Instagram account for 10 | months now and still hear the same problems from many new devs or | just getting noticed. | | I think this is reflected in my book addressing the problem | hitting number 7 on product hunt last week. | | Moral of the story, still give genuine advice to newbies as they | aren't always feeling the same love from the market. | adithyasrin wrote: | I see the number of daily job postings increasing almost every | day on my job board. It's mostly dull in Germany because of the | summer holidays but still, it was a surprise to see a lot of job | postings. | nine_zeros wrote: | If companies (specifically management) were actually competent, | they would know that it takes $20k-$40k to fill one position, | $80k-$100k for that individual to optimistically ramp up to an | existing employees productivity. All this takes at least 1 year. | | Instead of the time and money spent, they could easily boost the | compensation of an existing employee by $25k and not lose money | or time. | | But of course, nobody ever claimed that management is competent. | yaitsyaboi wrote: | I've always assumed a bean counter somewhere crunched the | numbers and when you adjust for people who don't leave because | of the stress of interviewing + friction of switching + | uncertainty of new manager, it works out better for them to not | do this. | nine_zeros wrote: | It only works out because existing employees are squeezed of | every drop of productivity, leading to them to quit. | Ultimately, the end game for the hiring manager herself is to | get poor ratings and quitting. | | There's a reason why FIRE is so popular in tech industry. It | is led by incompetent fools in positions of making arbitrary | decisions without consequences, until it's too late to | salvage anything. | dbish wrote: | Yes, companies need to be way more aggressive in keeping | current folks and changing their pay bands quickly in these | situations. The problem for much of big tech is that the | managers hiring have no real control over the pay bands so it's | left to folks who tend to not be in the software engineering | group and do pay 'studies' that take a long time to show they | are competitive in calculating their pay bands. This works | until it doesn't, then by the time you realize you lost people | and can't hire fast to replace them, you've fallen behind your | competitors | kyledrake wrote: | I can't help but feel I know a lot of people this article refers | to. | | I've worked at some great companies with some great people and I | certainly will again in the future. But my experience also | contains burnout amounts of internal politics, radioactive code, | Kylo Rens, "I'm just the ideas guy", et cetera. People love to | glamorize it with foozeball tables and free pop machines, but in | the end it's pretty stressful work for a lot of people and comes | with few guarantees of employment stability or sanity. I'm not | even going to get into what's happening at Blizzard right now, | why would I want to work there? Do I want to listen to my friends | yell at me because I work for the social network turning their | grandparents into anti-science zealots? Do I want to be forced to | live in a city I don't want to live in? These aren't salary | problems for me. | | A perfectly reasonable person may take their chances on a | different profession, or downsizing their life, moving to a less | expensive place and requiring less income, working on a small | startup with their friend. Or living in a van and hiking a lot, | which is a lot cheaper and probably also a lot more gratifying | than an expensive apartment in a suburb of Expensive Tech Town. | Perhaps the chaos, uncertainty, and mortality of the last year | has simply made people re-consider their lives and professions. | It's what a large percentage of my tech heroes ended up doing (I | miss you all, but I understand). | | From my experience, I would recommend these companies focus on | creating environments that work for and reward sane people on a | long term basis, rather than just try to coat over their problems | with money. It's a far more better strategy for the people one | would actually want to hire than trying to dump raw salary on | people for six months until they're too broken to show up to | work, then hiring new people that don't understand the code to | clean up the mess. When I do startups, being a place people want | to work is the only choice we can provide because we just can't | out-compete most groups on salary anyways. | hereforphone wrote: | As someone who's been shot at and had people try to blow him | up, I question how frequently the PTSD label is given out by | therapists these days. | kyledrake wrote: | Do you think I was being literal about the radioactive code | too? | hereforphone wrote: | I don't understand, so you didn't literally get diagnosed | with ptsd? Edit: I see you edited your post. | kyledrake wrote: | I was not literally diagnosed with PTSD and I apologize | if usage of the word was offensive. A better, more | literal description is probably "burned out" and I'll | change it now. | pshc wrote: | It isn't helpful to engage in one-upmanship when it comes to | people's individual trauma. It's alright for people to share | their suffering and receive compassion without having | experienced the absolute worst possible torture. | [deleted] | hereforphone wrote: | "People often tried to kill me." vs. "I worked at a job | that paid a wage of 98% above the global mean but had a lot | of stress." There's a difference I think, and if it's a | matter of one-upsmanship, then we all have PTSD (btw, I | don't). | | Also he edited his post later so I'm guessing you didn't | see the original context. | epicureanideal wrote: | I'm guessing the GP meant something closer to burnout and was | being a little hyperbolic. | | Although I think there's something to be said for very long | term (years to decades) of high stress possibly qualifying | for something similar to PTSD, but of course I'm not an | expert on this. | adnmcq999 wrote: | Well I guess I really suck a lot | zz865 wrote: | I'm really not sure should I be looking now, in the Fall or early | next year? It feels like salaries will go up from here so is | better to wait, but I guess you can switch again. | sokoloff wrote: | Why not look now and just set your threshold for "I'm excited | by this new place" slightly higher than normal? | mmaunder wrote: | This is very real. I run Defiant Inc (at defiant.com) which makes | Wordfence (at wordfence.com) - a popular firewall and malware | scanner for WordPress. We're hiring PHP devs that are senior | level only. The job demands it because we deploy code weekly to | over 4 million sites on a wide range of environments and configs, | many of which are mission critical. | | We started hiring in 2015 and have always been 100% remote. We | have a team of 38 now with around 25 full time US based | employees. Hiring has always been a breeze for us because we've | always been 100% remote. Until Covid hit and the word 'remote' | started being used by basically everyone, even companies that are | hybrid or are going to go back to in-office at some point. | | There's another factor, and that is growth in the tech sector. | There is just a shortage of great engineers right now and very | high demand. | | In response, we raised the salaries of our developers that are | already part of the team significantly. Then we raised the | advertised pay range for our PHP devs to $120K to 150K, we added | a $20K signing bonus to all developer roles, and we started using | recruiters for the first time. These changes have made a huge | improvement to the candidates we're seeing. Keep in mind that | these are 100% remote roles and always will be, with candidates | based anywhere in the world - not confined to large tech hubs. | Our benefits are incredible and we have 21 days PTO - just for | additional context. | | I think the only viable solution for employers is to respond to | changes in market conditions, and do what we've done. Pay your | people more, increase your hiring salary range, consider a | signing bonus that isn't bullshit, but actually is a huge | additional tangible benefit for talented engineers joining your | company. | | I don't think the kind of pressure tactics described in the | article, like "exploding job offers" are the answer. You're just | playing silly games and wasting a candidate's time and your own, | plus potentially trashing your company's brand in the hiring | market. | | I've have worked as an ops engineer and dev for a long time | before building a successful tech business, and I've lived | through a hot hiring market several times, as a talented engineer | working to maximize my earnings potential. I'd strongly encourage | you to look around and get a sense of what the market can offer | you. Have conversations with a few recruiters. Don't let your | company use meaningless enticements to make you stay. And don't | get enticed by pressure tactics or things that don't actually | help you earn more and have a better quality of life. Focus on | the fundamentals when evaluating options - base salary, actual | starting days of PTO, medical, 401K if you're USA based. And take | action now, because this probably won't last. | | It's a great time to be a talented engineer, pretty much | globally. | throwanem wrote: | > He likened it to what's happening in the real estate market. | | In other words, make your moves now, and with an eye toward the | crash that's coming. | Macha wrote: | Alternatively, being the most expensive and newest might be a | poor position to be in when the crash comes? | throwanem wrote: | You always want to pick your risks with care, sure. I didn't | say that earlier in so many words because I assume it doesn't | need saying, but if it does, now it has been. | | If where you are is stable, you can expect it to stay that | way through a crash, and you're at least confident of being | able to come out of it when things settle down again not | looking like you've been standing still, maybe don't make a | move at all. | | But if you're already thinking of doing that, it's not wise | to assume you have unbounded time in which to act, or that | said bounds are as broad as they ordinarily would be. | [deleted] | kaczordon wrote: | We're technically in a new bull market now. | throwanem wrote: | I'm an engineer, not an economist. So the best I guess I can | say to that is, I hope it's true, and that it means what it | sounds like it does. | autotune wrote: | Can't it be argued that the crash came and went with the | pandemic already? | throwanem wrote: | Maybe. Would you like to give it a try? | [deleted] | robryan wrote: | There won't be a crash. Possibly a period of stagnant wages | because the market got ahead of itself, but I don't think any | of the underlying demand is going away. | [deleted] | throwaway321654 wrote: | Does anyone have any info/data/anecdotes for the UK job market. | (or infact any non-US market) | | My story (hence the throwaway account)... Last year we got no pay | rises and were told "no increases this year because covid | uncertainty". This year it's a rather megre 2% percent that | doesn't even beat inflation, even more so when viewed over two | flat years. | | I'm obviously looking around and can likely get some small | increase, but I'm not seeing the crazy increases or behaviour | this article talks about. | | The whole remote work move also seems like it would apply | downward pressure to some of the top locations. For example I can | now compete for remote jobs based in London and would be quite | happy being paid a lot less than a typical local London salary | given I live significantly further north where salaries are much | lower. And potentially if any US tech firms are open to remote | workers from the UK they'll find they can get top quality devs at | a fraction of the price. So why is remote work being blamed for | driving salaries up, shouldn't it have opened up the talent pool | for hiring companies just as much as it's opened up the potential | choice for applicants. | | It feels like the US job market is so hugely skewed in comparison | to the rest of the world that it's slightly insane. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-01 23:00 UTC)