5 ms·

It's amazing how employers seem to think they're exempt from supply and demand. The real problem is that employers in those areas can't find employees in those

It's amazing how employers seem to think they're exempt from supply and demand. The real problem is that employers in those areas can't find employees in those areas at the rates they want to pay—and not just in monetary terms. Employers outside California often demand onerous non-compete agreements, and claim they're "standard." Employers outside California often lowball candidates, and claim "that's the average pay here, besides that the cost of living is lower!" Guess what? If you want to hire now, you're competing with employers in an area with beautiful weather, high pay, AND state law prohibiting non-compete agreements that actually gets upheld regularly in court. That means you need to actually make at least as attractive an offer just to keep up.

balls187 10y ago
Generally speaking, we don't advertise the salary range for positions. So when we find it difficult to fill a role, it's not because we're not going to pay a competitive salary. It's more likely because the candidates that are applying aren't the right fit. When that happens, we revamp our sourcing approach: change the JD, tweak the keywords we filter on, etc. > Employers outside California often lowball candidates, and claim "that's the average pay here, besides that the cost of living is lower!" With websites like Glassdoor and Payscale it's pretty trivial to determine the market rate in a given location. It's probably a variety of factors, but I believe one factor is a lot of the companies (at least in Seattle) are companies you haven't really read about in Techcrunch, Re//code, or even HN. While the big-cos: facebook, msft, Amazon, Google, have their share of open job recs, they at least have the brand name recognition to recruit engineers. Silicon Valley probably has their share of off-brand software companies, but by and large, there are many more house-hold names there.
- tomp 10y ago
  > Generally speaking, we don't advertise the salary range for positions. That's your clue, right there. Many people (myself included, but this is not me saying that I would clear your bar or be the right fit) won't even consider applying to "competitive salary" job ads, because that claim is just as easy to make and just as empty as "miraculous weight-loss dies pills".
  - balls187 10y ago
    I just quickly checked Netflix, they also don't advertise salaries. (disclaimer my own thoughts here) It's not my policy, but I suspect it has to do with finding people who want believe in what we're doing vs those who are only applying because of the salary. We usually ask candidates to tell us their salary requirements before continuing the interview process with them. I personally haven't had a candidate come with an requirement that we couldn't accommodate.
    - scarface74 10y ago
      If you are a for profit company, I "believe what you are doing" is trying to make money. Why would you think I would want to do any less?
      - balls187 10y ago
        You're making a straw man argument. We (like many other Seattle companies) pay competitive salaries, we just don't advertise them in our job postings. My goal is to maximize my job satisfaction, and salary is only a part of it.
- deciplex 10y ago
  Define 'right fit.' (Asking the question in earnest, not to be snarky.)
  - lostcolony 10y ago
    Usually the candidates being seen don't measure up or match the intended position. As an example, "we want to hire a devops person"; okay, you start getting people who do a lot of on premise stuff with Ansible/Chef/Puppet, and have to be told explicitly what to do. What you really wanted was someone familiar with AWS, setting up cloudformations, autoscaling, VPC configuration, etc, and who could be given an app, said "here's how it runs", and then figure out what needs to be done on their own.
  - balls187 10y ago
    Right fit usually means one of two things: 1. culmination of all non-technical skills in aggregate Example: general disposition, humility, collaboration, confidence, hygiene, professionalism, and so forth. Collaboration being the highest weighted one. 2. JD is poorly written and is too broad, and the technical skills the candidates have don't match what we're looking for.
jordanb 10y ago
FWIW: Employee laws are nearly as engineer-friendly in Illinois as they are in California. Non competes: http://www.lawpmh.com/are-non-compete-agreements-legal-in-illinois http://www.lawpmh.com/are-non-compete-agreements-legal-in-il... Side Project intellectual property: http://ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2238&ChapterID=62 http://ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2238&Chapte...
- tptacek 10y ago
  I'd love for this to be true, but my sense is that it isn't. Regarding non-competes: they have enough teeth in IL for a claim against you to be difficult to dismiss, which is pretty much all the teeth they need. Lawsuits are riotously expensive. Regarding side-project IP: even in California: I'd read everything 'DannyBee has to say in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484852 (DannyBee is, among other things, an IP lawyer).

balls187 10y ago

Generally speaking, we don't advertise the salary range for positions. So when we find it difficult to fill a role, it's not because we're not going to pay a competitive salary. It's more likely because the candidates that are applying aren't the right fit. When that happens, we revamp our sourcing approach: change the JD, tweak the keywords we filter on, etc. > Employers outside California often lowball candidates, and claim "that's the average pay here, besides that the cost of living is lower!" With websites like Glassdoor and Payscale it's pretty trivial to determine the market rate in a given location. It's probably a variety of factors, but I believe one factor is a lot of the companies (at least in Seattle) are companies you haven't really read about in Techcrunch, Re//code, or even HN. While the big-cos: facebook, msft, Amazon, Google, have their share of open job recs, they at least have the brand name recognition to recruit engineers. Silicon Valley probably has their share of off-brand software companies, but by and large, there are many more house-hold names there.

tomp 10y ago
> Generally speaking, we don't advertise the salary range for positions. That's your clue, right there. Many people (myself included, but this is not me saying that I would clear your bar or be the right fit) won't even consider applying to "competitive salary" job ads, because that claim is just as easy to make and just as empty as "miraculous weight-loss dies pills".
- balls187 10y ago
  I just quickly checked Netflix, they also don't advertise salaries. (disclaimer my own thoughts here) It's not my policy, but I suspect it has to do with finding people who want believe in what we're doing vs those who are only applying because of the salary. We usually ask candidates to tell us their salary requirements before continuing the interview process with them. I personally haven't had a candidate come with an requirement that we couldn't accommodate.
  - scarface74 10y ago
    If you are a for profit company, I "believe what you are doing" is trying to make money. Why would you think I would want to do any less?
    - balls187 10y ago
      You're making a straw man argument. We (like many other Seattle companies) pay competitive salaries, we just don't advertise them in our job postings. My goal is to maximize my job satisfaction, and salary is only a part of it.
deciplex 10y ago
Define 'right fit.' (Asking the question in earnest, not to be snarky.)
- lostcolony 10y ago
  Usually the candidates being seen don't measure up or match the intended position. As an example, "we want to hire a devops person"; okay, you start getting people who do a lot of on premise stuff with Ansible/Chef/Puppet, and have to be told explicitly what to do. What you really wanted was someone familiar with AWS, setting up cloudformations, autoscaling, VPC configuration, etc, and who could be given an app, said "here's how it runs", and then figure out what needs to be done on their own.
- balls187 10y ago
  Right fit usually means one of two things: 1. culmination of all non-technical skills in aggregate Example: general disposition, humility, collaboration, confidence, hygiene, professionalism, and so forth. Collaboration being the highest weighted one. 2. JD is poorly written and is too broad, and the technical skills the candidates have don't match what we're looking for.

jordanb 10y ago

FWIW: Employee laws are nearly as engineer-friendly in Illinois as they are in California. Non competes: http://www.lawpmh.com/are-non-compete-agreements-legal-in-illinois http://www.lawpmh.com/are-non-compete-agreements-legal-in-il... Side Project intellectual property: http://ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2238&ChapterID=62 http://ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=2238&Chapte...

tptacek 10y ago
I'd love for this to be true, but my sense is that it isn't. Regarding non-competes: they have enough teeth in IL for a claim against you to be difficult to dismiss, which is pretty much all the teeth they need. Lawsuits are riotously expensive. Regarding side-project IP: even in California: I'd read everything 'DannyBee has to say in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11484852 (DannyBee is, among other things, an IP lawyer).