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Festicket | Festivals/Music/Ticketing | Mid Level+ Backend Engineers | London Central/NW | Onsite/Lots of remote days Django-Rest-Framework/Postgres/Redis/Cele

Festicket | Festivals/Music/Ticketing | Mid Level+ Backend Engineers | London Central/NW | Onsite/Lots of remote days Django-Rest-Framework/Postgres/Redis/Celery in AWS. Have a pretty cool in house Slack bot for orchestration, that we should probs open source at some point. I'm a backend dev here, and we're finding it hard to get good people through the door. Once we chat with them, we almost always convince them to work here, but its very difficult getting people through the door. We're paying pretty well as well for London rates, 50-80k GBP for mid-senior guys, could probs convince the CTO's to pay more for the right candidate. The office is nice, engineering is a big part of the decision making process. Feel free to send me an email either at sam.holmesatfesticket.com or the (personal) email in my bio. Happy to video or text or w/e with anyone to chat more https://www.festicket.com/about/ https://www.festicket.com/about/

Sholmesy 8y ago
Interview process: Phone call with CTO (15-30 minutes) -> easy as shit online assessment (30 minutes) -> On site chat with 2 Devs + CTO, minimal whiteboarding, no "gotchas" -> Offer.
- joshelgar 8y ago
  Are you looking for graduates at all by any chance?
  - Sholmesy 8y ago
    Honestly, at this point we would probably consider it, given the right graduate. Some graduates are better than people with 10 years exp. The lack of good talent is real. I hope this drives salaries up a bit!
danpalmer 8y ago
Just some feedback on why you might be finding it hard to get people through the door: - you say you hire guys, are you opening to hiring women or guys who don't want to just work with other guys too? (a little sarcastic, but language matters a lot) - referring to the coding test as "easy as shit" implies that candidates would be working with people who can only pass that level of test. I realise this may have been exaggeration, but it doesn't sell the job well. - there's no detail about what the company values, and the sort of people you want. - I find engineers are usually convinced by the product, tech, money, or culture. Your product sounds good in this respect (tell us more about it!), your tech stack sounds sensible, but probably not that likely to be the deciding factor, the salary is good, but not enough for those motivated by money, and you haven't got any details about the culture.
- Sholmesy 8y ago
  Hey Dan, Yes of course we hire women. Would love to hire more. We have a few on the team at the moment, but women are definitely under represented. You're right I probs should avoid gendered terms, but I'm Australian and "guys" has always meant "group of people" to me, rather than a gendered term, though I realise that's not the way the rest of the world views it. Should mention that I don't speak for the company, especially with regards to recruiting, and am just a backend dev after more people, and figured I could post here in a less than official capacity. To me, as an engineer, the things I am interested in are: - Salary - Who my boss is whether I trust them/think they are sensible. - Engineering lead business. I.e engineering is a big part of the decision making in terms of what are priorities. I feel that this company is decent in all these regards. https://festicket.workable.com/j/7D1A4FF76A https://festicket.workable.com/j/7D1A4FF76A Edit: Thanks for the feedback btw, I'll tidy this up for when I post next month. Appreciate it.
- gravyboat 8y ago
  What's crazy to me is that 80K GBP (about 100k USD) is considered a very good salary in the UK for mid-level/senior people. That's not even new grad levels in the states...
  - Sholmesy 8y ago
    Cost of living is a lot lower. 25-30 days holiday a year + 10 bank holidays. Far less grindy hours (obviously varies from place to place). The big money gigs are in London are in contracting, where people can make 500-1k a day for 3-6-12 month contracts. The market for that is far higher.

Sholmesy 8y ago

Interview process: Phone call with CTO (15-30 minutes) -> easy as shit online assessment (30 minutes) -> On site chat with 2 Devs + CTO, minimal whiteboarding, no "gotchas" -> Offer.

joshelgar 8y ago
Are you looking for graduates at all by any chance?
- Sholmesy 8y ago
  Honestly, at this point we would probably consider it, given the right graduate. Some graduates are better than people with 10 years exp. The lack of good talent is real. I hope this drives salaries up a bit!

danpalmer 8y ago

Just some feedback on why you might be finding it hard to get people through the door: - you say you hire guys, are you opening to hiring women or guys who don't want to just work with other guys too? (a little sarcastic, but language matters a lot) - referring to the coding test as "easy as shit" implies that candidates would be working with people who can only pass that level of test. I realise this may have been exaggeration, but it doesn't sell the job well. - there's no detail about what the company values, and the sort of people you want. - I find engineers are usually convinced by the product, tech, money, or culture. Your product sounds good in this respect (tell us more about it!), your tech stack sounds sensible, but probably not that likely to be the deciding factor, the salary is good, but not enough for those motivated by money, and you haven't got any details about the culture.

Sholmesy 8y ago
Hey Dan, Yes of course we hire women. Would love to hire more. We have a few on the team at the moment, but women are definitely under represented. You're right I probs should avoid gendered terms, but I'm Australian and "guys" has always meant "group of people" to me, rather than a gendered term, though I realise that's not the way the rest of the world views it. Should mention that I don't speak for the company, especially with regards to recruiting, and am just a backend dev after more people, and figured I could post here in a less than official capacity. To me, as an engineer, the things I am interested in are: - Salary - Who my boss is whether I trust them/think they are sensible. - Engineering lead business. I.e engineering is a big part of the decision making in terms of what are priorities. I feel that this company is decent in all these regards. https://festicket.workable.com/j/7D1A4FF76A https://festicket.workable.com/j/7D1A4FF76A Edit: Thanks for the feedback btw, I'll tidy this up for when I post next month. Appreciate it.
gravyboat 8y ago
What's crazy to me is that 80K GBP (about 100k USD) is considered a very good salary in the UK for mid-level/senior people. That's not even new grad levels in the states...
- Sholmesy 8y ago
  Cost of living is a lot lower. 25-30 days holiday a year + 10 bank holidays. Far less grindy hours (obviously varies from place to place). The big money gigs are in London are in contracting, where people can make 500-1k a day for 3-6-12 month contracts. The market for that is far higher.