5 ms·

After conducting countless interviews at my current small company (< 35 employees) with a structured & data-driven interview process, I'm seeing how acutely of

• bulatb 10y ago
  Please forgive my bluntness, but my takeaway is that you're simply being outcompeted. If the company pays less than others and its candidates are taking better offers, why should that mean it's a job-seeker's market? Whether one particular employer can find workers at some arbitrary rate is not the same as whether there's a shortage, especially if that employer's rate is not in fact competitive. If having trouble hiring while paying less than others indicates a seeker's market, what would an employer's market look like?
  • ryandrake 10y ago
    Exactly. I can't find a new BMW for $5000. Therefore there is a shortage of BMWs.
  • Bahamut 10y ago
    We're much better than our competitors on just about everything else - the company just can't compete on pure cash against the likes of Google/Facebook/Netflix/Apple/etc., but I know from prior job searches/recruiters that not too many other companies can match what we offer for people who aren't completely money-driven, which we attract a lot of candidates of that profile, and a good number of them being talented. The reasons that any candidates we offer turn us down rarely comes down to money, and more the specifics of each individual. If it really was an employer's market, I wouldn't be getting up to 10 emails/messages/phone calls/tweets/etc. a day from recruiters trying to entice me to leave, even floating compensation up to $400k as inducement to action. I have walked away from exorbitant offers myself. Some of my friends/acquaintances in the industry also have shared similar experiences - the desperation of employers is obvious & almost ubiquitous, and you don't see that sort of desperation on employers' parts in an employer-sided market. You see them leaning in with aggressive tactics to accept what is given, which you see with some candidates that they deem weaker, but not with anyone half decent because the time & money cost of attracting people is significant. Very few companies can claim to offer it all, but for the rest, they have to strategize as to what type of potential employees do they want to attract. Most cannot compete with the likes of those big companies mentioned prior because they have some negative that those don't have - for example, while the financial industry is known for sometimes paying very well, it also has a negative stigma to a not insignificant portion of engineers, as well as a reputation for poor work-life balance. Government work often comes with good work-life balance and is often well-regarded, but the reputation is also a two-edged sword (i.e. NSA being famed for their use of mathematicians, but also facing blowback after their overreach was revealed), pay isn't as competitive, and the level of bureaucracy is legendary in some cases. Startups/small companies offer a huge amount of responsibility & impact, but also offer varying levels of work-life balance (most are terrible, but some can be phenomenal) & lower compensation than one can often get in the open market with all industries considered. A company can try to pay more to attract the very top quality engineers, but in software at least, it can get very expensive & comes with a massive cost for a business, especially when competing against the very top revenue generating machines. Therefore, if a company isn't at that level, it needs to compete on other areas - it doesn't make sense to compete on the money realm, because that is a game that those big giants win at. Being a pro-job seeker market is more than about cash. It's about negotiating power due to being able to easily find an opportunity they can weigh yours against if it doesn't satisfy the seeker.
• ThePawnBreak 10y ago
  I've been looking for a remote job lately. Despite having interned at Microsoft and Google, almost nobody seems to be interested, and even if they are, it's for a salary like $30k. I'm in Eastern Europe, but still, that's a really low wage. So if you're so desperate for engineers, why not hire remotely outside North America, the most competitive market in the world for engineers? I realize it's much more comfortable having everyone in the same timezone, but sure it's preferable to hiring nobody? Also you can probably pay 30% less and still get great engineers.
  • morgante 10y ago
    In my experience, it's simply too hard to separate the wheat from the chafe in off-shore hiring. The chance of ending up a with a complete dud is much higher when hiring someone remotely from a foreign country. Of course, it might also be simple racism. Otherwise I do admit to having difficulty explaining why I, as an American engineer, can make >$100k/yr even when working from outside the US while others make a fraction of that.
  • wayn3 10y ago
    Companies can usually not "just hire offshore". There are a bunch of legal and tax laws preventing them from doing so.
    • ThePawnBreak 10y ago
      Not even as a contractor? So I would send an invoice and they pay it. I deal with the tax stuff.
      • wayn3 10y ago
        Hiring contractors is easy, but you can't retain them forever, or else the IRS will get bitchy about it. Or so I've heard.