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It's far more likely that their tech staff are simply not given sufficient resources, and are constrained by business leadership than that they "aren't good eno
by sidlls 7y ago
It's far more likely that their tech staff are simply not given sufficient resources, and are constrained by business leadership than that they "aren't good enough".
Walmart is notorious for having terrible compensation for their tech staff--staff who are motivated to look elsewhere due to poor compensation aren't going to do good work no matter how good they are.
- sokoloff 7y agoIf you play out the terrible comp, you are almost sure to get the “not good enough”. People work for a variety of things, but comp and colleagues are high on my list. If you give me crap for both and I have options to go elsewhere, you’ll be left with people who don’t have options to go elsewhere. They’re probably not going to end up being the cream of the crop.
- pixl97 7y agoEh, surprisingly enough if you give people power they accept lower compensation. Even a well paid person leaves their job if there is an ineffective structure at implementing change at a reasonable basis.
- kbenson 7y agoAnd if you make change to easy, you get weird Frankenstein technology stacks urdened with technical debt, so you need competent managers to hit a good middle ground. And you need competent executives that can set good goals and provide enough resources to achieve them. Basically, you need competent people at every level. That said, since the competence of a level is directly controlled by the level above it, I guess it does just boil down to bad execs now or at some point in the past (or a good strategy not just working. The world isn't that deterministic).
- realusername 7y agoThat's exactly why companies still don't understand that you get very crappy code by using cheap outsourcing companies. If they were better developers, they would just work at a company with better compensation. In this situation you only getting people who don't have any choice.
- sidlls 7y agoIf they were better developers, they would just work at a company with better compensation. This is not necessarily true. FAANG have great compensation and excellent reputations regarding the technical capabilities of their employees but people leave them or choose lower compensation offers at smaller companies over their offers all the time.
- pm90 7y agoI would want to know which of those developers have lower compensation because they joined a startup or something similar with the _possibility_ of a much bigger payout in the future. Or moved to a much lower CoL and accepted a smaller comp. My point is: your observation that FAANG developers do accept lower comp for work elsewhere is not very convincing.
- sidlls 7y agoI have just passed a FAANG interview, but I'm leaning towards another offer at about 70% of the offer likely from the FAANG interview for a number of reasons (commute and impact I can make are the top two). The offer I'm considering is at a company where two ex-FAANG were in my interview panel. It happens frequently enough.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoMm I would bet (from experience) that's it senior leaders in non tech (and some tech) companies still view the internet as something that is exactly like the old way of doing things. A lot of places see the website as just like a print media poster site to outsourced to the lowest cost provider and don't realise that it is now a core competence.
- pixl97 7y agoAnd I'm not even sure if that's the problem. My assumption is "move fast and break things" is not in their vocabulary. I'm going to assume even the smallest change to improve things requires a few months of meetings before its implemented. This quickly depresses anyone even halfway good at their job and they leave.