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Corp: "We only hire the very best" Programmer: "What's the salary?" Corp: "Market average. Also, we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money"
by asb 10y ago
Corp: "We only hire the very best"
Programmer: "What's the salary?"
Corp: "Market average. Also, we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money"
- ryandrake 10y agoI can't up-vote this article or comment enough! If you want to hire a top 1% employee, you need to offer a top 1% salary. Not a top 50% salary.
- leroy_masochist 10y agoWe want people who are motivated by the mission.
- LargeWu 10y agoIf the mission is feeding starving children, or curing cancer, or public service, then yes, I want people who are motivated by the mission. But usually the mission, the real mission, is to make the founders exceptionally wealthy, and forgive me if that doesn't get me out of bed in the morning.
- andybak 10y agoThis man speaks the truth. :-) I think it's a lost battle but I used to rage whenever I saw a company talk about their 'Vision'. Unless you're a poet, religious mystic or philosopher king - then you're being pretentious and grandiose.
- tenkabuto 10y agoAssuming that I am a cash-strapped philosopher king with a grand vision for my business, how might I sway people to take the vision seriously and work towards the fulfillment of the vision?
- LargeWu 10y agoI'm assuming the vision you're trying to sell is to make the philosopher king wealthy. (Your stated vision is probably irrelevant.) You need to make your employees' incentives align with that proposition.
- tenkabuto 10y agoOh OK. What if we assumed that the vision is not concerned with making me, the philosopher king, wealthy?
- crdoconnor 10y ago>If the mission is feeding starving children, or curing cancer, or public service You're typically expected to take a pay cut if you're doing any of these.
- jazzyk 10y agoPublic service pay cuts? Not really. This is for CA, but other states are not too far off. http://publicpay.ca.gov/ http://publicpay.ca.gov/ And don't forget life-long pensions at 80% salary. How many distinguished engineers make anywhere close to these amounts (whether public or private)? Close to zero.
- cortesoft 10y ago80k was the top bracket? I am pretty sure most developers in California make a lot more than that, especially top ones.
- jazzyk 10y agoSelect "100 top salaries"
- monknomo 10y agoBut those seem mostly like chief investment officers, CEOs, doctors, dentists and surgeons... I mean, public service can pay well if you are a commissioner or head of a for-profit part of public service. I'm not sure there is much of a comparison to be made for software developers, though.
- jazzyk 10y agoI was just pointing out that public service can pay as well as private sector - if not better (pensions at 80% pay!).
- 10y ago
- kisna72 10y agoEven if the mission is to cure cancer, thats the worst reason to not pay people well. Those are the most difficult problems, and you definitely need the best people to solve the hardest problems. If the idea is to pay people really poor because that problem is so difficult, I think its a bad idea and simply taking advantage of people, not to mention the best people will go solve other problems that pay them well.
- Loughla 10y agoThis is the problem with education (and all non-profits for that matter). 1. People work in education because they love the work, not the money. 2. We don't need to pay educators well because they're not the tops in their fields. 3. We can't recruit top candidates because the pay is shit. 4. Rinse, repeat.
- FireBeyond 10y ago"We want to change the world, by finding a more efficient way to bike courier organic Nicaraguan coffee beans to your doorstep in the Mission or SoMa."
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10y agoMy god, this is genius. Let me throw investment money at you. Just be sure not to pay the programmers more than $11/hour.
- fu9ar 10y agoHuman service workers, biomedical researchers, and etc. still need to make a living too. The problem is that a small sector of the people in the world are being ridiculously greedy.
- blisterpeanuts 10y agoYup, and if I get a nice block of stock options, then I'll be just as motivated as the founders! Been there.
- IndianAstronaut 10y ago>We want people who are motivated by the mission Startup hiring process in a nutshell.
- lanestp 10y agoThis drives me nuts! I don't know why I should be motivated by YOUR mission! Especially when your mission is to make as much money as possible in an easily exploited niche you found!
- vasilipupkin 10y agoNot all companies are the same. Sure, all companies exist to make money for shareholders, but some companies make cigarettes while other companies make life saving drugs. So, yes, it does make sense to take the company's mission into account when deciding whether to work there or not
- raverbashing 10y agoAh yes, "The Mission" Sure, some of them have a social aspect, something interesting, etc But for others I can't see how they manage to say it with a straight face
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoSo does ISIS.
- nickpsecurity 10y agoAnd you see what results they get in the U.S. markets. Maybe more rational management and pay of experienced professionals would've helped them. They said they weren't mission-oriented and lacked "culture fit," though. So, their numbers are all over the place, goals aren't being met, and competition is all over their territory. Now ISIS and other startups in that sector can feel free to continue being idiots. The locals need to avoid making the same mistakes, though. ;)
- CaptSpify 10y agoI see a similar effect that drives me nuts: Corp: "We only hire the best, but we can't find any good people. There must be an industry shortage of good engineers!" Me: "What about $candidate that we interviewed last week, I thought you liked him?" Corp: "He was great! But he wanted too much money" Me: "..."
- dccoolgai 10y agoAnd almost always these places pay their conference-calling-bullshitters top dollar. But it's like the apocalypse if you try to get more money for the people that actually do things.
- dsr_ 10y agoThe thing about salespeople is that you can objectively determine their value over any given time period. That's how they should be paid: a very small base salary that wouldn't cover their mortgage, coupled with a clear and unambiguous bonus structure that gives them a reasonable amount of money when they hit the targets that make the company profitable. Salespeople "actually do things". The problems come when you make a stupid compensation plan or don't fire the ones who consistently underperform.
- joncrocks 10y agoThe counter-point is that without something to sell, the sales people wouldn't make any money. They don't make the company any money, they're middle-men. The value comes from the product. I would argue it's equally hard to objectively measure the value of a salesperson, but as there's already specific figures one can latch onto, it's easy to think it's easy.
- arethuza 10y ago"The counter-point is that without something to sell" Never met a salesperson who was deterred from selling something by the trivial detail that it doesn't actually exist. ;-)
- VLM 10y agoWith a typical side dish of substandard working conditions (open office, cheap chairs, no parking or no transit or even "better" none of both), substandard tools, substandard personnel policies (vacation, insurance, 401K, etc) and last but not least a very low "Joel Test" score preferably zero. I'm sure the best will be naturally attracted to that. Sorta an "opposites attract" strategy. There are historical analogies to the dating world where if you're trying to find a complete dumpster fire of a person for whatever crazy reason, just look for the loudest proclamation that they only date 10/10s. Actually dating 10/10s is a different issue, I specifically mean loudest proclamation. Generally this works pretty well. Both for finding dumpster fire people and companies.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- slig 10y agoThis reads like a Dilbert comic strip.
- busterarm 10y agoAlso that "market average" is usually below market average.
- angelbob 10y ago"Market average" is generally based on salary surveys, which kind of have to trim the extremes. So it's the median (ish), which is often lower than the mean.
- busterarm 10y agoI'm specifically talking about the companies that have told me they pay "market average" in New York City and are offering $45-55k and want a mid-level developer. Then act like their tenth of a point of worthless options are a winning lottery ticket.
- coredog64 10y agoI've found that there are other ways to scam those surveys. My employer uses an unreasonably low threshold of years of experience for a so-called senior level. We hire a lot of H1B candidates, so I'm convinced that the point of the scam is to depress wage scales for the LCA.
- askyourmother 10y agoThe worst are the new "tech companies with internal recruiters, tech tests prior to interview, twenty stages to offer, who moan they can't attract the best. Of course not! The minute you said tech test, I said goodbye, the minute you said internal recruiters, I laughed as I slammed down the phone. The best companies that can and do attract the best, still keep it simple - direct face to face interviews, max two stages to offer, no fucking around with shitty tech tests, and making the time and effort for the interview.
- danvasquez29 10y agoI send out a test in between phone interview and face to face but it's very subjective, not really meant to weed out people who fail. The purpose of it is to create some technical talking points for the face to face interview in lieu of putting someone on the spot on the whiteboard. "I see you refactored this, but not this. Can you explain your thinking? Why did you decide this pattern fit the solution?" There can be many right answers, and especially many right reactions to wrong answers, and I like that conversation more than putting people through a whiteboard. Also, agree on the 2 interview max. Technically we do 3, but the first is a 3 minute basic screen by the recruiter, not really an interview.
- pmiller2 10y ago> ...3 minute basic screen by the recruiter.... Exactly. The recruiter call should be primarily to gauge interest and to get some idea if the candidate has any skills and experience whatsoever. I've gotten calls from recruiters who were clearly not technical people asking fairly deep technical questions. That's an instant turn off to me.
- strictnein 10y agoI'm pretty sure we've all experienced this classic: "Tech" Recruiter: "I saw that you have 7+ years of Java experience! That's great, we're looking for a senior Java dev!" Me: "I have 7+ years of JavaScript." "Tech" Recruiter: "Same thing, right?" Me: ...
- optimiz3 10y agoIf someone says to you: "we're looking for people who aren't just motivated by money" You should counter: "there's no shortage of meaningful problems; I'd be irresponsible if I didn't work on the one that improves my family's standard of living the most"
- StavrosK 10y ago"I'm sorry, I'm looking for employers who aren't just motivated by work."
- HemanHeartYou 10y agoBrutal
- nraynaud 10y agoactually they are motivated by money it's just a transfert.
- kstrauser 10y ago"Money is the measure of how valuable my work is to you. Are you saying you don't value my work as much as your competitors do?"
- sliverstorm 10y agoNo, it's a piece. Vacation days, for example.
- st3v3r 10y agoA place that says "We want people who are motivated by more than just money" isn't going to be the place that is going to take kindly to someone using up their (probably meager) amount of vacation each year.
- sliverstorm 10y ago
- jazzyk 10y agoDid we mention the perks like our "unlimited vacation policy"?
- softawre 10y agoHeh. Man I'm glad I talked my VP down from the cliff. He honestly thought it was a Good Thing. I currently have 7 weeks off/year plus 10 holiday days. No way I'd take all of that with the unlimited plan.
- citizens 10y agoWow. Are you in the US?
- busterarm 10y agoI'm in the US, at a law firm, and after the first year, every year is 7 weeks vacation + 10 holidays just like this. I'm glad, because they told us we had an unlimited vacation policy that I do not use and on the books in the first year we're only supposed to get 7 days.
- jdquey 10y agoHa! Hubspot got thrown under the bus because of their "unlimited vacation policy" - http://nypost.com/2016/04/03/millennials-are-being-dot-conned-by-cult-like-tech-companies/ http://nypost.com/2016/04/03/millennials-are-being-dot-conne...
- st3v3r 10y agoI gotta say, after watching his chat at Google IO, I want to read that book now.
- aplusbi 10y agoI worked at a company with "unlimited vacation" and I took on average 5 weeks of vacation per year - so it does sometimes actually work.
- venomsnake 10y agoCorp: "We only hire the very best" Programmer: "Too bad, I consider myself mediocre, bye"
- mdpopescu 10y agoCan't upvote this high enough. Yep, I also consider myself mediocre. (My "world" has people like Eric Lippert, Anders Hejlsberg and Jon Skeet in it - there's no way in hell I can say I'm among the best with a straight face.) I am safely in the middle :)
- gotchange 10y agoCorp: "We only hire the very best but we're willing to pay the very least possible"
- anotherhacker 10y agoYep. I called BS on Chris Dixon on this on Twitter and he blocked me. It was when he and Paul Graham were arguing that "not enough (good)engineers exist for startups, so we need to import more". I was arguing that plenty of great engineers exist, you just have to pay for it.
- JOnAgain 10y agoYou mean Google will pay me 3x in total comp and I (mostly) get my evenings and weekends off? I also get job security beyond the next funding round?
- st3v3r 10y agoBut.. But startups are special! They can't pay for stuff! We can't treat them like an actual business!
- Loughla 10y agoThat's honestly something that has always confounded me as an outsider to the glitz and glam of coastal tech life. How are technology start-ups any different than say, a new butcher shop in the midwest in terms of obligations to their employees?
- kstrauser 10y agoPart of the reason for going into a startup is that you're buying a lottery ticket. There's a very strong chance the company will evaporate and "all" you'll get out of it is an intensive year or two of building things up from nothing and putting them out in front of customers. However, there's also the nonzero chance that Facebook will buy your team for $9B. I love startups because it's exciting and genuinely fun to be scrambling alongside a team who's as into their work as you are yours. In practice it's also very low risk, because I know that if my company laid me off tomorrow then I'd be unemployed for approximately a weekend before hopping onto another team. FWIW, sane startups also take really good care of their employees. Mine has good pay and great benefits, and that's pretty common. You don't hear about those places on the front page of Hacker News, though.
- anandjoseph 10y agoGoldman sachs makes a loud claim of hiring the best tech talent[1]. The Paysa [2] Companyrank shows who actually hires the very best. Companyrank[3] paints a very different picture. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-tech-cohead-duet-on-recruiting-2016-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-tech-cohead-duet-on-r... [2] https://www.paysa.com/ https://www.paysa.com/ [3]https://www.paysa.com/company-rank#!companies=Google:::Goldman+Sachs::::::&startDate=2000-01-12 https://www.paysa.com/company-rank#!companies=Google:::Goldm...