17 ms·

So Francesco says they refuse to do technical interviews and says their CV and Github are proof enough. The CV shows experience as a freelance engineer at Appl

So Francesco says they refuse to do technical interviews and says their CV and Github are proof enough. The CV shows experience as a freelance engineer at Apple for a bit, then an engineer for Samsung which they were made redundant from. Their GitHub is 3 projects, a python script, a breakout board and then a beta libary. They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money. The author seems to not understand how key money is for the relationship between manager and employee. I have plenty of employee's who'll work on interesting stuff in their own hours, but I pay them so they stay around and do the boring bits like docs, DR, testing, support, bus-factoring.

dr-detroit 5y ago
Everyone I've ever worked with just does the tasks they want they way they want and if you twist their arm they will do things that advance the mission and benefit paying customers grudgingly.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
the_only_law 5y ago
I didn’t even know Apple or any of the other FAANG’s hired freelancers.
- doggodaddo78 5y ago
  All big corporations hire consultants when they can't hire (freeze or fast enough) but need specialized skills or extra hands.
- bserge 5y ago
  Quite a few "AI" companies hire their "AI" via intermediaries like Lionbridge and Appen heh
salil999 5y ago
Their GitHub profile has more than 3 projects - you might have only looked at the pinned ones. But overall, I somewhat agree with Francesco. I used to work at a large corporation where majority of the work was minor config changes and rolling out deployments for handsome pay (somewhat KTLO work). I left because I wasn't growing my career. As companies get bigger the money gets bigger as well but the interesting work gets much smaller. At the end of the day, once you have a solid product in place you need a lot more people to just keep it running vs. work on some very interesting technical work. I think applied research is the best way to go for very interesting technical work but I think the bar is pretty high for that.
- dragosmocrii 5y ago
  But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? I understand that one would like to switch from a boring but well paid job, in order to grow their career, but I feel this is for people who need to be told what to do. If you're not that type of person, you have so many opportunities for growth: study a new technology, join an open source project, identify a way to optimize/improve a process at your current boring job and convince management to do it... If you have the initiative, you can create the opportunities that you seek. But if you truly are bored of your current job, the people you work with, etc etc then yeah, there's no point staying even if the pay is great (reminds me of Tony Hsieh's Vesting in Peace moment he described in his book, or his job at Oracle) [Disclaimer: by using "you" I am not addressing you personally]
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    > But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? Depends on the environment I suppose. If its a classic but-in-seat, locked down, corporate environment, you're probably still constrained for a similar amount of time.
  - salil999 5y ago
    > But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? I actually used to think similarly. I might have worded it badly but when I mean the work becomes smaller I am talking about scope and impact - not necessarily the effort required. The example I can give is what I described above: config changes. At a high level it sounds pretty simple but when you delve deeper into how your company/team works with such technologies then there are many barriers in place which hinder you from getting work done efficiently. And processes are slow. In my old team it used to take ~a month to deploy our software world-wide. You are correct about financial security. At least for me, I am not comfortable enough taking a risk to start something on my own or make a big career change. I think the overall goal is that you SHOULD be told what to do - up to a certain extent. I am a software engineer so an example for me would sound like "design me a system that does this" or "a customer is asking for this feature request" and that's it. Everything else can and should be left upon the engineers to figure out. Good engineers will design a good system with respect to time for delivery and feature request compatibility.
arcturus17 5y ago
> They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money. Well if it's freelance work there are situations where the upfront time cost is not massive, especially if it's a task with a limited scope. I know this because I hire freelancers. But yea, I don't have a bag of small-scope, interesting and meaningful tasks lying around...
ftruzzi 5y ago
I completely understand your point of view and I would think the same if I were you, but that's probably the kind of work I'm trying to avoid. I only have one life, and I just don't want to be paid to "stay around and do the boring bits", or at least not full-time and in an office. Just as an example, having to stay in the office if there's nothing else to do for the day was absolutely soul-crushing for me. I might be happy doing that kind of work part-time and remotely (almost nobody offers part time work) or I might want to do that later in life. I read a post about Gumroad here on HN, and that's how I want to work. The way Gitlab does it is also very interesting. There must be other people who feel and think the same, and the post is just a way to try to reach them.
- the_only_law 5y ago
  I have no problem whatsoever with staying around and doing the boring bits. But if those are exclusively the job, that’s when I take issue.
- arcturus17 5y ago
  > I read a post about Gumroad here on HN, and that's how I want to work. The way Gitlab does it is also very interesting. But surely they do a lot of boring work at those companies too, as in all tech companies?
  - ftruzzi 5y ago
    Of course, but if it's part-time and full remote then it doesn't take away most of your day/life and I would have no problem with that. I also do translation work which can be tedious at times but I really enjoy it because I can do it from anywhere and just a few hours per week. The "needs to be interesting" part is more tied to the "pay what you want" thing.
- munk-a 5y ago
  > Just as an example, having to stay in the office if there's nothing else to do for the day was absolutely soul-crushing for me. The only times this ever happened to me was while I worked in the gaming industry and I absolutely still had work available - but we had some pretty rough overtime expectations that lead to constant overtime even if a different department was behind. On principle I would just sit there and relax as best as I could in the office if my team wasn't behind. But, keep in mind, that this was also all unpaid overtime at the employee's expense because thank you EA lobbying and a terrible industry. I occasionally lost money on these evenings since transit would shut down and I'd need to cab home. Now that I've left the gaming industry I doubt I'll ever be in that position again and I continue to have oodles of work in front of me, though, due to ADD and such - I often have trouble with motivating myself to do the boring bits they are part of the job and go with the good.
op03 5y ago
That depends on your job title and where it falls on the explore-exploit spectrum. If your job is to keep the gold mine running all your underlings are working on the mine. If they go do something else its a waste of your time and resources. If your job is to explore the jungle for new mines, then the story is very different. Its more about finding as many curious cheap chimps as you can and sending them out in every direction. In such cases imaginative managers use all the chimps they can find.
PascLeRasc 5y ago
The ATX breakout board looks great, thanks for pointing it out! I think that's a good example of an interesting/fulfilling project, since those generally don't exist and the author talks about how it was a direct request from regular people, not some corporate directive.
dontchooseanick 5y ago
Your comment reminds me of https://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-07 https://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-07 :)
defaultname 5y ago
"but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money" The most arduous hiring processes are often little more than an illusion of selection, yielding a process that is more the rolling of dice. Most hiring processes hire based upon interview skills that have extraordinarily little correlation with job performance. Google has such a famous interview process that everyone tries to clone it. For that they get employees with an average tenure of 3.2 years, made worse that internal project-to-project migration is endemic. They have a tiny core of institutional knowledge, and then a passing army of travelers. This industry would be far more robust if it hired quickly and fired fast, because the only way you know how someone will do in the role/team/org is by actually having them in the role/team/org. Everything else is just loose proxies that do little. Iterate through people and just punt out the ones that don't work. That shouldn't be a big deal.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Interviews aren't the only cost of hiring. Onboarding is very expensive for knowledge workers.
  - defaultname 5y ago
    Onboarding is expensive at dysfunctional organizations. Further, the reality that churn is high among better employees [1] offsets the concern. But regardless, going through an extensive vetting process is an illusion. It has extraordinarily little correlation with actual work fit or productivity, but the more "rigorous" the process, the more likely you are to stick with a poor fit. [1] - low performers will hang around forever. The fundamental of the hire slow/fire slow reality is that eventually every organization is 80% dead weight. If you want to avoid onboarding costs (versus dealing with the issues that make onboarding expensive, which is almost always institutional liabilities), hire the worst candidates and they'll be with you forever.
    - SilurianWenlock 5y ago
      perfectly said +1
hintymad 5y ago
I'd also add that interesting or meaningful work itself is a scarce resource. One has to work on finding such work, instead of waiting for someone to give that work. One also has to compete for such work. Salary is a small factor in the equation. Indeed, salary sometimes is a signal in this case instead of a barrier. For a meaningful project, free is probably more expensive than an above-market pay.
ipaddr 5y ago
Don't hire a developer if you want a tester or a support agent or a document writer. Developers cost so much more why not target your task to an expert in that area?

dr-detroit 5y ago

Everyone I've ever worked with just does the tasks they want they way they want and if you twist their arm they will do things that advance the mission and benefit paying customers grudgingly.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

the_only_law 5y ago

I didn’t even know Apple or any of the other FAANG’s hired freelancers.

doggodaddo78 5y ago
All big corporations hire consultants when they can't hire (freeze or fast enough) but need specialized skills or extra hands.
bserge 5y ago
Quite a few "AI" companies hire their "AI" via intermediaries like Lionbridge and Appen heh

salil999 5y ago

Their GitHub profile has more than 3 projects - you might have only looked at the pinned ones. But overall, I somewhat agree with Francesco. I used to work at a large corporation where majority of the work was minor config changes and rolling out deployments for handsome pay (somewhat KTLO work). I left because I wasn't growing my career. As companies get bigger the money gets bigger as well but the interesting work gets much smaller. At the end of the day, once you have a solid product in place you need a lot more people to just keep it running vs. work on some very interesting technical work. I think applied research is the best way to go for very interesting technical work but I think the bar is pretty high for that.

dragosmocrii 5y ago
But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? I understand that one would like to switch from a boring but well paid job, in order to grow their career, but I feel this is for people who need to be told what to do. If you're not that type of person, you have so many opportunities for growth: study a new technology, join an open source project, identify a way to optimize/improve a process at your current boring job and convince management to do it... If you have the initiative, you can create the opportunities that you seek. But if you truly are bored of your current job, the people you work with, etc etc then yeah, there's no point staying even if the pay is great (reminds me of Tony Hsieh's Vesting in Peace moment he described in his book, or his job at Oracle) [Disclaimer: by using "you" I am not addressing you personally]
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? Depends on the environment I suppose. If its a classic but-in-seat, locked down, corporate environment, you're probably still constrained for a similar amount of time.
- salil999 5y ago
  > But if the work becomes smaller, and they pay bigger, doesn't that mean you now have more time on your hands and more financial security to do something that piques your interest? I actually used to think similarly. I might have worded it badly but when I mean the work becomes smaller I am talking about scope and impact - not necessarily the effort required. The example I can give is what I described above: config changes. At a high level it sounds pretty simple but when you delve deeper into how your company/team works with such technologies then there are many barriers in place which hinder you from getting work done efficiently. And processes are slow. In my old team it used to take ~a month to deploy our software world-wide. You are correct about financial security. At least for me, I am not comfortable enough taking a risk to start something on my own or make a big career change. I think the overall goal is that you SHOULD be told what to do - up to a certain extent. I am a software engineer so an example for me would sound like "design me a system that does this" or "a customer is asking for this feature request" and that's it. Everything else can and should be left upon the engineers to figure out. Good engineers will design a good system with respect to time for delivery and feature request compatibility.

arcturus17 5y ago

> They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money. Well if it's freelance work there are situations where the upfront time cost is not massive, especially if it's a task with a limited scope. I know this because I hire freelancers. But yea, I don't have a bag of small-scope, interesting and meaningful tasks lying around...

ftruzzi 5y ago

I completely understand your point of view and I would think the same if I were you, but that's probably the kind of work I'm trying to avoid. I only have one life, and I just don't want to be paid to "stay around and do the boring bits", or at least not full-time and in an office. Just as an example, having to stay in the office if there's nothing else to do for the day was absolutely soul-crushing for me. I might be happy doing that kind of work part-time and remotely (almost nobody offers part time work) or I might want to do that later in life. I read a post about Gumroad here on HN, and that's how I want to work. The way Gitlab does it is also very interesting. There must be other people who feel and think the same, and the post is just a way to try to reach them.

the_only_law 5y ago
I have no problem whatsoever with staying around and doing the boring bits. But if those are exclusively the job, that’s when I take issue.
arcturus17 5y ago
> I read a post about Gumroad here on HN, and that's how I want to work. The way Gitlab does it is also very interesting. But surely they do a lot of boring work at those companies too, as in all tech companies?
- ftruzzi 5y ago
  Of course, but if it's part-time and full remote then it doesn't take away most of your day/life and I would have no problem with that. I also do translation work which can be tedious at times but I really enjoy it because I can do it from anywhere and just a few hours per week. The "needs to be interesting" part is more tied to the "pay what you want" thing.
munk-a 5y ago
> Just as an example, having to stay in the office if there's nothing else to do for the day was absolutely soul-crushing for me. The only times this ever happened to me was while I worked in the gaming industry and I absolutely still had work available - but we had some pretty rough overtime expectations that lead to constant overtime even if a different department was behind. On principle I would just sit there and relax as best as I could in the office if my team wasn't behind. But, keep in mind, that this was also all unpaid overtime at the employee's expense because thank you EA lobbying and a terrible industry. I occasionally lost money on these evenings since transit would shut down and I'd need to cab home. Now that I've left the gaming industry I doubt I'll ever be in that position again and I continue to have oodles of work in front of me, though, due to ADD and such - I often have trouble with motivating myself to do the boring bits they are part of the job and go with the good.

op03 5y ago

That depends on your job title and where it falls on the explore-exploit spectrum. If your job is to keep the gold mine running all your underlings are working on the mine. If they go do something else its a waste of your time and resources. If your job is to explore the jungle for new mines, then the story is very different. Its more about finding as many curious cheap chimps as you can and sending them out in every direction. In such cases imaginative managers use all the chimps they can find.

PascLeRasc 5y ago

The ATX breakout board looks great, thanks for pointing it out! I think that's a good example of an interesting/fulfilling project, since those generally don't exist and the author talks about how it was a direct request from regular people, not some corporate directive.

dontchooseanick 5y ago

Your comment reminds me of https://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-07 https://dilbert.com/strip/2016-08-07 :)

defaultname 5y ago

"but the real cost of an upfront hire is my time, not money" The most arduous hiring processes are often little more than an illusion of selection, yielding a process that is more the rolling of dice. Most hiring processes hire based upon interview skills that have extraordinarily little correlation with job performance. Google has such a famous interview process that everyone tries to clone it. For that they get employees with an average tenure of 3.2 years, made worse that internal project-to-project migration is endemic. They have a tiny core of institutional knowledge, and then a passing army of travelers. This industry would be far more robust if it hired quickly and fired fast, because the only way you know how someone will do in the role/team/org is by actually having them in the role/team/org. Everything else is just loose proxies that do little. Iterate through people and just punt out the ones that don't work. That shouldn't be a big deal.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
Interviews aren't the only cost of hiring. Onboarding is very expensive for knowledge workers.
- defaultname 5y ago
  Onboarding is expensive at dysfunctional organizations. Further, the reality that churn is high among better employees [1] offsets the concern. But regardless, going through an extensive vetting process is an illusion. It has extraordinarily little correlation with actual work fit or productivity, but the more "rigorous" the process, the more likely you are to stick with a poor fit. [1] - low performers will hang around forever. The fundamental of the hire slow/fire slow reality is that eventually every organization is 80% dead weight. If you want to avoid onboarding costs (versus dealing with the issues that make onboarding expensive, which is almost always institutional liabilities), hire the worst candidates and they'll be with you forever.
  - SilurianWenlock 5y ago
    perfectly said +1

hintymad 5y ago

I'd also add that interesting or meaningful work itself is a scarce resource. One has to work on finding such work, instead of waiting for someone to give that work. One also has to compete for such work. Salary is a small factor in the equation. Indeed, salary sometimes is a signal in this case instead of a barrier. For a meaningful project, free is probably more expensive than an above-market pay.

ipaddr 5y ago

Don't hire a developer if you want a tester or a support agent or a document writer. Developers cost so much more why not target your task to an expert in that area?