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"Competitive pay" is not a number. Most companies just don't want to pay for the talent they claim to want so bad. Also, a lot of people are tired of the Agile

"Competitive pay" is not a number. Most companies just don't want to pay for the talent they claim to want so bad. Also, a lot of people are tired of the Agile stuff. Senior people in the range this person is looking for are likely to be among those who saw Agile come around and slowly turn into the weird joke that it is today. Places that are so dogmatic about it that they require TDD and pair programming experience are a red flag imo. Just some thoughts from a dev with 12 years experience.

ljk 11y ago
> Also, a lot of people are tired of the Agile stuff. also what i've seen from a lot of Senior people. just because you use jira, have daily status meetings doesn't make you "Agile"
- draw_down 11y ago
  In my opinion, it's worse here- they seem to be really serious and really dogmatic about Agile. (Capital A!) To me that conjures visions of being obligated to do pointless shit because process dictates it. Good people just want to get work done with a minimum of bullshit. I actually think it's fine if a place claims to be agile based on using jira and having standups. Because I have no interest or investment in "the real thing".
  - br3w5 11y ago
    The articles on modern agile seemed very prescriptive. Where I am right now the team does do scrum (yes it has its problems) but the team has figured out how to get it to work for them and so can get on with delivering and over time cutting out the parts of the process that doesn't work. Common sense should prevail when it comes to any software development methodology. I could be wrong and the practices described in the articles come out of a team working together over a prolonged period of time (based on obie's comment above it looks like these come out of good experience but they should still adapt to the team).
obiefernandez 11y ago
Made some adjustments to the article. Our minimum base pay for senior engineers is $125k, more than that for directors + sizable equity grants in a public company. Result is above market pay (in our opinion) although still less than what Google can pay. I am realizing that Agile might be much more tainted out there than I originally thought. We do Pivotal Labs/Thoughtbot style Agile, which means very strong emphasis on pair programming, TDD and CI -- but with directors given wide latitude on how to evolve process matters on their team. i've written extensively about it in my modern agile collection on medium https://medium.com/modern-agile https://medium.com/modern-agile
- programd 11y ago
  There's your problem. Your minimum base pay for senior engineers is far under market. Add about $40-$50K and you might get some interest.
  - AlexThorn 11y ago
    Definitely. It's hard to imagine a salary of $125k/yr being competitive for senior developers or directors in NYC, whether we're talking about a startup or a billion-dollar company. Moreover, people capable of working remotely can participate in job markets (and benefit from their corresponding pay rates) not only in NYC but also places like San Francisco and Boston. From a personal perspective, when job postings mention 'competitive' pay but won't establish a baseline expectation involving concrete numbers, I generally feel safe making the assumption that the salary on offer is on the low end of average; otherwise, mentioning it explicitly would be a great differentiator.
    - obiefernandez 11y ago
      I purposely said $125k minimum since that is the lower bound of our Engineer IV salary band. What we pay for director-level is entirely based on experience (e.g. a master craftsman might make more base than I do as an SVP) That said, it is possible that we still need to pay more.

ljk 11y ago

> Also, a lot of people are tired of the Agile stuff. also what i've seen from a lot of Senior people. just because you use jira, have daily status meetings doesn't make you "Agile"

draw_down 11y ago
In my opinion, it's worse here- they seem to be really serious and really dogmatic about Agile. (Capital A!) To me that conjures visions of being obligated to do pointless shit because process dictates it. Good people just want to get work done with a minimum of bullshit. I actually think it's fine if a place claims to be agile based on using jira and having standups. Because I have no interest or investment in "the real thing".
- br3w5 11y ago
  The articles on modern agile seemed very prescriptive. Where I am right now the team does do scrum (yes it has its problems) but the team has figured out how to get it to work for them and so can get on with delivering and over time cutting out the parts of the process that doesn't work. Common sense should prevail when it comes to any software development methodology. I could be wrong and the practices described in the articles come out of a team working together over a prolonged period of time (based on obie's comment above it looks like these come out of good experience but they should still adapt to the team).

obiefernandez 11y ago

Made some adjustments to the article. Our minimum base pay for senior engineers is $125k, more than that for directors + sizable equity grants in a public company. Result is above market pay (in our opinion) although still less than what Google can pay. I am realizing that Agile might be much more tainted out there than I originally thought. We do Pivotal Labs/Thoughtbot style Agile, which means very strong emphasis on pair programming, TDD and CI -- but with directors given wide latitude on how to evolve process matters on their team. i've written extensively about it in my modern agile collection on medium https://medium.com/modern-agile https://medium.com/modern-agile

programd 11y ago
There's your problem. Your minimum base pay for senior engineers is far under market. Add about $40-$50K and you might get some interest.
- AlexThorn 11y ago
  Definitely. It's hard to imagine a salary of $125k/yr being competitive for senior developers or directors in NYC, whether we're talking about a startup or a billion-dollar company. Moreover, people capable of working remotely can participate in job markets (and benefit from their corresponding pay rates) not only in NYC but also places like San Francisco and Boston. From a personal perspective, when job postings mention 'competitive' pay but won't establish a baseline expectation involving concrete numbers, I generally feel safe making the assumption that the salary on offer is on the low end of average; otherwise, mentioning it explicitly would be a great differentiator.
  - obiefernandez 11y ago
    I purposely said $125k minimum since that is the lower bound of our Engineer IV salary band. What we pay for director-level is entirely based on experience (e.g. a master craftsman might make more base than I do as an SVP) That said, it is possible that we still need to pay more.