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Cardiff tech firm: 'We'll pay £100k, but can't get staff'
- leed25d 8y agoCan't get staff? What a shame. Would you consider starting some kind of training policy?
- dazc 8y agoSame for almost every industry, training is only paid for if it's to fulfill some legal requirement such as health and safety courses and such.
- choot 8y agoI wonder if training works for developers. I've never seen any company offering developer training, so i assumed training developers doesn't work.
- ashelmire 8y agoIf there's a junior in the job title, it means they train developers.
- crispyambulance 8y agoTraining? These days? Not gonna happen. If it does, it is in elite organizations under the wing of highly principled bosses who are able shield their staff from project-management and organization-wide performance-metrics bullshit.
- mhd 8y agoTheir career page says 60k, though. If it weren't out of area of expertise, Wales is quite beautiful. And I almost understand Rhod Gilbert.
- maaark 8y agoI wouldn't be able to stop myself from saying "way-als" in a mocking accent. Just like how I can't stop myself saying "moo-ney" when I hear it from a Dubliner.
- consp 8y agoThis reads like an advertorial. Does the BBC have some interest in getting tech workers to Wales?
- dazc 8y agoNo, the BBC has an anti-Brexit agenda.
- growlist 8y agoWell I gave you an upvote, because it's true.
- martiuk 8y agoThey didn't mention it in the article but I wouldn't be surprised if it crossed their mind.
- matthewmacleod 8y agoThat’s a ludicrous statement. Do you have any evidence whatsoever to back it up?
- dazc 8y agoEvidence you'd accept, probably not, although you can simply observe the kinds of stories they choose to promote and arrive at a reasonable conclusion.
- matthewmacleod 8y agoIn other words, no. Since the BBC is routinely and equally criticised for being both pro- and anti-Brexit, it’s reasonable to assume that it’s more likely to be neither.
- dazc 8y agoOK, you have no evidence either so let's accept it's a point of opinion?
- joezydeco 8y agoMyPinPad needs 100 software engineers in Cardiff to roll out a new product Roll it out, or actually get it written? What kind of product needs 100 additional engineers to launch?
- bulatb 8y agoThey just raised £15 million in series B, enough to pay those 100 engineers £100k each for... 1.5 years, assuming zero overhead and no other expenses? Edit: also assuming no revenue, so I don't know. Is that normal startup math? Double edit: Crunchbase revenue estimate is $20.9M.
- dagw 8y agoThe kind of product that needs a lot of bespoke customization for each customer.
- swarnie_ 8y agoAs a tech worker who started close to Cardiff i've slowly moved down the M4 as my career has progressed. Jobs over 60k are rare outside of London - > Bristol and all towns in between.
- mattlondon 8y agoIn the article they say they are offering London salaries. Fine. But Cardiff is not the same as London! London is huge comapred to Cardiff. Cardiff has about 500,000 people in its urban area compared to 10,000,000 in London, and Cardiff is about 30 square miles compared to almost 700 square miles for London [1]. As such London just has a lot more going on - theatre, museums, nightlife, restaurants, sports, shopping, meet-ups, career-possibilities, transport, galleries... you name it there is more of it in London, and its also generally all very good or even world-class quality. Sure Cardiff has some stuff going on and has its own cultural & social activities, but it is in no way even in the same league as London by any stretch. As a result you're not going to lure someone to Cardiff by just matching London salaries - who would give up London to go to Cardiff to get the same salary but a culturally and socially moribund (by comparison) experience? You have to offer them something above and beyond. Not everyone likes hiking & nature, and I'd wager that most people in these salary ranges aren't that badly impacted by high property prices in London. Perhaps offer salaries that are more than London and then see if the applications start rolling in? 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiff & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London
- celticninja 8y agoAlso Cardiff doesn't have London's high cost of living and ridiculous property prices. So if you get a London equivalent wage then you have a lot more disposable income if you live and work in Cardiff.
- zimpenfish 8y ago> who would give up London to go to Cardiff to get the same salary but a culturally and socially moribund (by comparison) experience? Me. But then I'd much prefer to have lots of open space around and orders of magnitude fewer people.
- calyth2018 8y agoOr this is the same kind on insanity that you see with the Bay Area? Or hell, even Vancouver. Everyone's rushing there for the same reason, with all the cultural things that's suppose to be going on in the big city, only to find that the high CoL make life actually quite a bit more difficult to enjoy. It gentrifies the area quickly, the commute is either long (in the case of the bay area) or being one of the sardine in the Tube. The disposable income ends up being lower, so there's less money to actually enjoy the things that actually attracted people to the cities.
- jfindley 8y agoI am continually amazed at the cynical attempt by hiring managers to try to pretend that the laws of supply and demand shouldn't apply to non-exec level staff. If you can't hire the people you want for what you're offering that should be a signal to pay more, not to whine that you can't force your idea of a reasonable wage on others.
- petermcneeley 8y agoYes but you missed out on why they are doing this. This "whining" is actually about changing public perception such that business can take action to widen its access to a larger pool of skilled workers. The more competitive the talent market the more they can keep a larger share of their profits.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- BurningFrog 8y agoTrue. On the other hand, there are hard limits to what companies can afford to pay their employees. Related to the same supply and demand laws.
- petermcneeley 8y agoI think your following the logic of the minimum wage laws. In this case however the wages are not fixed but purely determined by the market. Given that markets are optimizers of capital allocation, if a company cannot be profitable at the current values (relating to input and output) then it should not exist.
- skybrian 8y agoJob offers aren't a liquid market. Publicity is still needed or people won't find out about the job. It can be hard to tell whether the problem is with the job offer or word not getting out. Getting a story in the BBC and on Hacker News might help, though.
- 8y ago
- otras 8y agoOnboarding and dividing work between 100 engineers is hard. Makes me think of Brooks' law: "Adding human resources to a late software project makes it later." [0] MyPinPad's careers page [1] lists four positions (Android developer, iOS developer, senior devops engineer, and services developer) with the same "salary up to £60,000 per annum, depending on experience" for each position. The higher salary makes for a good news article (and a good advertisement for their recruiting team), but I wonder if they could increase their application rate by showing the same salary as the one they advertised in the article. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law [1]: https://www.mypinpad.com/careers/ https://www.mypinpad.com/careers/
- nhkssol 8y agoBrooks' Law: "nine women can't make a baby in one month."
- flashgordon 8y agoWhen firing duds, no women will ever get pregnant!
- ericcholis 8y agoOn a similar note, putting "Pay based on experience" also limits your application pool. Tell people what you are willing START the pay rate at.
- BurningFrog 8y agoDepends on how your work and code base is organized. In my pair programming jobs, we've usually been able to onboard people to be fully productive in a few weeks.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoIf you are laid off in London your next job will be in London and you don't have to move house. If you are laid off in Cardiff the next job is in Bristol, Birmingham or Milton Keynes. Property prices don't figure into the equation so much because no one is going to buy in a town where the tech scene is small.
- edem 8y agoMaybe you should allow remote work?
- martiuk 8y agoUp to 60k p/a[0] for a Senior DevOps engineer is not exactly London wages when the exact same job can start at or above 80k. [1] Have they also thought that not every engineer lives in (or wants to move to) Cardiff? What is their remote working policy? Do they even have one? [0]: https://www.mypinpad.com/careers/ https://www.mypinpad.com/careers/ [1]: https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/jobs/permanent/senior-devops-engineer/in-london?Sort=4 https://www.cwjobs.co.uk/jobs/permanent/senior-devops-engine...
- CryoLogic 8y agoBad Title. Actual article says "up to 100k", as in maximum. I assume most people don't get that offer.
- EnderMB 8y agoTheir job posts say "up to 60k", so it's not just a bad title. It's a blatant lie. The main question, for me, is what point the article is trying to prove. The cynic in me believes that it's an effort to drive down permanent developer salaries by saying "we already tried to offer above market rates and it didn't work, so we're bringing them down again". From a .NET perspective, I think you'd be lucky to get £100k a year in a contract role, let alone as a permanent employee. With that said, if you want to earn more than £50k in the south west, your only choice is large multinational company (which are mostly in London), management, or contracting.
- EnderMB 8y agoSo, has MyPinPad actually tried raising their salary offering to £100k? I find it very hard to believe they have, because that would be well-above the average for the area. In relation to standard Web Developer roles, it'd be over double what I could expect in Cardiff for a mid-to-senior level role. Their website currently says "up to £60k", and in my experience companies that say "up to" will rarely go to that number unless the candidate is very/over qualified, in which case that candidate has zero potential for growth and will have a hard time getting an annual raise unless things go brilliantly. MyPinPad look like a reasonably large company, so their salary offering right now is probably average or above, but the article itself is absolute crap. If MyPinPad were to offer £100k for their Services Developer role I'd beat their door down for an interview. It's double what I'm getting in Bristol right now, I have C# and non-CLR expeirence, and the commute would be worth it. Hell, for that money I could drive in, pay an obscene amount for parking and still be ahead! I don't buy for a second that they have failed to get devs in when offering £100k. Either they're full of shit, or they are terrible at advertising roles.
- bshimmin 8y agoI agree with everything you're saying, apart from the very last clause - they made it to the "Most Read" on the BBC News web site, so I think they must be pretty good at advertising themselves!
- pjungwir 8y agoThere was an article last year titled, "I’d Pay You $500k a Year, but You Can’t Do the Work". It said they were looking for "React/Redux specialists, Unity developers, data scientists, and data engineers (proficient with TensorFlow), technical project managers (who used to do the above, but have evolved into managers), and technical account executives". So $500k for React programmers. (Also note the hero image.) But there was no careers page, no call-to-action to apply, or as far as I could tell any way to contact them at all. Here's what I wrote then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14248550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14248550 It sounds like today's company is similarly interested in getting some press and maybe influencing immigration policy, not in getting applications.
- digianarchist 8y ago
- CalRobert 8y agoSo.... pay more then. Does the city say "we'll pay 100k but can't get quants"? Or do they pay market rate? If they can't pay more, perhaps other people have found ways to make more profitable use of their engineers' time, in which case their business is not viable.
- poulsbohemian 8y agoI see articles like this and they always seem to overlook the solution: hire remotely. Oh sure, it isn't what they want and yes it introduces complexity they might not want, but it is the answer. People want to live where they want to live. Some might be lured by more money. Some will recognize that there are clusters of jobs in certain urban areas and be unwilling to move to other locations as a result. Not in one of those prime tech clusters? Just accept that you need to hire where the people are, not where you want them to be. Furthermore, there's an irony of tech firms making money over the internet, but believing all their staff must be physically located together.
- londons_explore 8y agoEngineers willing to move for their job would normally move to silicon valley and get offered $150k, and much lower taxes. Even at £100k (and ~45% tax!), you're only going to get people who either already live in Cardiff, or are happy to relocate to Wales, but not to relocate to the USA (not all that many people).