3 ms·

My company does this, but our pay is somewhat under market rate - our developers make not much compared to what is bandied about here. But then again, I run a c

My company does this, but our pay is somewhat under market rate - our developers make not much compared to what is bandied about here. But then again, I run a company in a desirable field, the rules are pretty lax, and we invest a ton of money in employees. You might find the inverse relationship, unfortunately. High salaries often come with high expectations and low time to develop employees because of your high salary. That's been my experience, and I've worked for a fair number of large and small tech firms.

wolfgke 7y ago
> You might find the inverse relationship, unfortunately. High salaries often come with high expectations and low time to develop employees because of your high salary. That's been my experience, and I've worked for a fair number of large and small tech firms. This is surely correct. I just ask myself whether this is just a very different formulation of what zck wrote: > I suspect this is like baseball before Moneyball -- what if you can get people who are undervalued and make them better? If we identify "undervalued" with "salary below market rate", one obtains the statement above: By moneyballing, look for great developers who are paid below market rate (and will thus accept a salary far below the one of "rockstar developers") and hire them.
- icelancer 7y ago
  >> If we identify "undervalued" with "salary below market rate", one obtains the statement above: By moneyballing, look for great developers who are paid below market rate (and will thus accept a salary far below the one of "rockstar developers") and hire them. Yeah, I don't disagree with this at all. My software architect was writing JCL COBOL full-time before he took this job and has a degree in Computer Science from a no-name private school. He knew nothing of our tech stack, but he was a hard worker and a good culture fit, so I hired him and gave him two months (EDIT: on salary) to teach himself - bought him all the courses, books, and such he could stand. Within 3 weeks he was pushing to our repo.
- zck 7y ago
  > If we identify "undervalued" with "salary below market rate", one obtains the statement above: By moneyballing, look for great developers who are paid below market rate (and will thus accept a salary far below the one of "rockstar developers") and hire them. This is very close to what I was thinking, but there's a slight difference. I was thinking less about people who are _underpaid_ relative to how well they are performing, and more about people who are _underperforming_ relative to how well they could be. I imagine this to be the most powerful kind of sports scouting -- you look for the people who could do well in the majors, no matter how well they're doing now. It's trivial to say "LeBron James would be a good #1 pick"; it's harder to recognize people like Kurt Warner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Warner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Warner), an NFL quarterback who went undrafted, but was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. I'm talking about people who have more potential than they're showing.
UK-Al05 7y ago
Tbh it has been the opposite experience for me. Small companies had little onboarding process, little to no training budget, and everything had be deployed yesterday. Plus a lower salary. Large companies had formal onboarding, training budgets which they encouraged you to use, and didn't mind spending more time get the thing right before releasing and a higher salary.
- icelancer 7y ago
  The only large company I worked at where this was true was Microsoft. I have literally nothing bad to say about my experiences there, even the fact that I was caught up in the massive layoffs after the Great Financial Crisis. They handled it all with class and encouraged us to abuse their educational resources. This hasn't been true most other places I've done contracting work for, or heard from friends who are full-timers. It probably just runs the gamut depending on personal experiences. I guess my point is that it's hard to find a really high salary and expect to be trained up, and that seems logical enough to me.
quanticle 7y ago
High salaries often come with high expectations and low time to develop employees because of your high salary. The strangest thing I've noticed about my experience in the tech industry is the utter and complete disconnect between salary and expectations. I've worked for a wide gamut of firms, from startups with single-digit numbers of engineers to FAANG companies with thousands of engineers. I have never noticed a clear correlation between salary and expectations. The job where I was under the most pressure and where I had the most asked of me was actually my lowest paid position. I graduated in 2009, on the tail end of the financial crisis, and I counted myself fortunate to find a job at a local firm that was hiring. This was in the Midwest, so I counted myself fortunate to have a job offer at all, regardless of the salary. I very quickly found out why that firm was perpetually hiring. The work environment was so high pressure (and the wages so far below market rate, even during the recession) that people would leave as soon as they could find an opportunity (any opportunity) elsewhere. I held out for about 8 months before finding another role that paid significantly more and had significantly less expectations around how fast I would ship.

wolfgke 7y ago

> You might find the inverse relationship, unfortunately. High salaries often come with high expectations and low time to develop employees because of your high salary. That's been my experience, and I've worked for a fair number of large and small tech firms. This is surely correct. I just ask myself whether this is just a very different formulation of what zck wrote: > I suspect this is like baseball before Moneyball -- what if you can get people who are undervalued and make them better? If we identify "undervalued" with "salary below market rate", one obtains the statement above: By moneyballing, look for great developers who are paid below market rate (and will thus accept a salary far below the one of "rockstar developers") and hire them.

icelancer 7y ago
>> If we identify "undervalued" with "salary below market rate", one obtains the statement above: By moneyballing, look for great developers who are paid below market rate (and will thus accept a salary far below the one of "rockstar developers") and hire them. Yeah, I don't disagree with this at all. My software architect was writing JCL COBOL full-time before he took this job and has a degree in Computer Science from a no-name private school. He knew nothing of our tech stack, but he was a hard worker and a good culture fit, so I hired him and gave him two months (EDIT: on salary) to teach himself - bought him all the courses, books, and such he could stand. Within 3 weeks he was pushing to our repo.
zck 7y ago
> If we identify "undervalued" with "salary below market rate", one obtains the statement above: By moneyballing, look for great developers who are paid below market rate (and will thus accept a salary far below the one of "rockstar developers") and hire them. This is very close to what I was thinking, but there's a slight difference. I was thinking less about people who are _underpaid_ relative to how well they are performing, and more about people who are _underperforming_ relative to how well they could be. I imagine this to be the most powerful kind of sports scouting -- you look for the people who could do well in the majors, no matter how well they're doing now. It's trivial to say "LeBron James would be a good #1 pick"; it's harder to recognize people like Kurt Warner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Warner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Warner), an NFL quarterback who went undrafted, but was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame. I'm talking about people who have more potential than they're showing.

UK-Al05 7y ago

Tbh it has been the opposite experience for me. Small companies had little onboarding process, little to no training budget, and everything had be deployed yesterday. Plus a lower salary. Large companies had formal onboarding, training budgets which they encouraged you to use, and didn't mind spending more time get the thing right before releasing and a higher salary.

icelancer 7y ago
The only large company I worked at where this was true was Microsoft. I have literally nothing bad to say about my experiences there, even the fact that I was caught up in the massive layoffs after the Great Financial Crisis. They handled it all with class and encouraged us to abuse their educational resources. This hasn't been true most other places I've done contracting work for, or heard from friends who are full-timers. It probably just runs the gamut depending on personal experiences. I guess my point is that it's hard to find a really high salary and expect to be trained up, and that seems logical enough to me.

quanticle 7y ago

High salaries often come with high expectations and low time to develop employees because of your high salary. The strangest thing I've noticed about my experience in the tech industry is the utter and complete disconnect between salary and expectations. I've worked for a wide gamut of firms, from startups with single-digit numbers of engineers to FAANG companies with thousands of engineers. I have never noticed a clear correlation between salary and expectations. The job where I was under the most pressure and where I had the most asked of me was actually my lowest paid position. I graduated in 2009, on the tail end of the financial crisis, and I counted myself fortunate to find a job at a local firm that was hiring. This was in the Midwest, so I counted myself fortunate to have a job offer at all, regardless of the salary. I very quickly found out why that firm was perpetually hiring. The work environment was so high pressure (and the wages so far below market rate, even during the recession) that people would leave as soon as they could find an opportunity (any opportunity) elsewhere. I held out for about 8 months before finding another role that paid significantly more and had significantly less expectations around how fast I would ship.