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The basic mechanism of capitalism is supply and demand. When you write: "it's pretty much impossible to match day rates", you mean that your company doesn't wa

The basic mechanism of capitalism is supply and demand. When you write: "it's pretty much impossible to match day rates", you mean that your company doesn't want to pay the market rate. There is no secret strategy. You either pay market rates or hire less capable developers who will work for the rates you are willing to pay.

badpun 6y ago
From what I’ve seen, you can attract these people by offering them attractive (to them) work. In the case of my employer, we’ve had one very strong guy taking a perm offer because he only wants to work in Scala, and there are very few Scala contracts in town (he also can’t move).
aurbano 6y ago
To add to this: If your company doesn't have the funding for expensive engineer salaries you can compensate with stock options and an exciting product people can believe in. It means your career page needs to become a pitch, and your interview is most definitely going to be a two-way one where you need to convince the engineers. Not everyone is after the money alone, a lot of people want to work on something with a mission they can get behind.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
This. I'm a senior engineer. I'm passing good at what I do. When I left my last company, I started looking for work in a culture that has changed significantly since the last time I'd looked for work (I was at that company for 27 years). It was a shock. The naked and unapologetic disrespect and ageism has been pretty crazy. I threw in the towel, after a few months, and I'm now working with a nonprofit, for no money, and loving it. You couldn't drag me back into the rat race with wild horses. I'm quite aware of the value of my skills and experience. I was actually willing to work for half that, if the work was interesting. I have my retirement set. I don't need to work, if I don't want to, but I love to work. When I die, the coroner is gonna have to rub "QWERTY" off my cheek. I'd suggest that having a culture of basic respect for folks with experience would go a long ways towards your goal. Maybe less of the "cultural fit" stuff, and the "Draw Spunky" tests. Experienced people can make things happen, which is what we are really after. I ran a shop with experienced C++ programmers for 25 years, and got used to doing really difficult stuff, and regularly shipping our work. One of the shocks I encountered was how rare that kind of thing is. Many folks in the consultant market are there, because no one wants them as employees, or insist on treating them badly, when they are employees. These are folks that can write their own tickets. They don't need to be treated badly, and would often drop their gigs in a heartbeat, if they found a culture that valued and respected them. Here's a suggestion: Hire them at market rate. Make their experience with you a joy. Down the road, say "We can't afford to keep paying you this rate, but we'd be beyond honored to have you on our staff at half that rate." You'd be surprised. I got one of my best and most loyal senior engineers that way. There's the old story about the retired engineer that was brought back in as a consultant to look at a problem that no one could solve. Engineers on the payroll had been looking at it for weeks, with no solution. They looked at the system for five minutes, said "There's your problem. Just do this...", and the issue was solved. They then invoiced the company $10,000. The company responded, saying "You only worked for ten minutes! How can you expect us to pay that much? Please resubmit the invoice with specific line items." The engineer resubmitted the invoice: 1. Finding the problem: $10 2. 38 years of experience, six years of school, so I could find your problem in five minutes: $9,990
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- GianFabien 6y ago
  Aegism is a really big issue. Not only in the form of your $10,000 invoice example. Persons with a certain amount experience, such as yourself, call out BS when they see it. And that is not welcome. Employers seem to prefer young 'uns who don't question anything and just do as they're told. This becomes particularly bad with "consulting firms" who charge by the hour to stuff it up and then charge by the hour to get a new team to fix it and then another team to fix the fix and so it goes. One of thousands of examples is the $6M payroll project in Queensland that blew out to $1B+. My lawyer tells me that I can't name the firm.

badpun 6y ago

From what I’ve seen, you can attract these people by offering them attractive (to them) work. In the case of my employer, we’ve had one very strong guy taking a perm offer because he only wants to work in Scala, and there are very few Scala contracts in town (he also can’t move).

aurbano 6y ago

To add to this: If your company doesn't have the funding for expensive engineer salaries you can compensate with stock options and an exciting product people can believe in. It means your career page needs to become a pitch, and your interview is most definitely going to be a two-way one where you need to convince the engineers. Not everyone is after the money alone, a lot of people want to work on something with a mission they can get behind.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

This. I'm a senior engineer. I'm passing good at what I do. When I left my last company, I started looking for work in a culture that has changed significantly since the last time I'd looked for work (I was at that company for 27 years). It was a shock. The naked and unapologetic disrespect and ageism has been pretty crazy. I threw in the towel, after a few months, and I'm now working with a nonprofit, for no money, and loving it. You couldn't drag me back into the rat race with wild horses. I'm quite aware of the value of my skills and experience. I was actually willing to work for half that, if the work was interesting. I have my retirement set. I don't need to work, if I don't want to, but I love to work. When I die, the coroner is gonna have to rub "QWERTY" off my cheek. I'd suggest that having a culture of basic respect for folks with experience would go a long ways towards your goal. Maybe less of the "cultural fit" stuff, and the "Draw Spunky" tests. Experienced people can make things happen, which is what we are really after. I ran a shop with experienced C++ programmers for 25 years, and got used to doing really difficult stuff, and regularly shipping our work. One of the shocks I encountered was how rare that kind of thing is. Many folks in the consultant market are there, because no one wants them as employees, or insist on treating them badly, when they are employees. These are folks that can write their own tickets. They don't need to be treated badly, and would often drop their gigs in a heartbeat, if they found a culture that valued and respected them. Here's a suggestion: Hire them at market rate. Make their experience with you a joy. Down the road, say "We can't afford to keep paying you this rate, but we'd be beyond honored to have you on our staff at half that rate." You'd be surprised. I got one of my best and most loyal senior engineers that way. There's the old story about the retired engineer that was brought back in as a consultant to look at a problem that no one could solve. Engineers on the payroll had been looking at it for weeks, with no solution. They looked at the system for five minutes, said "There's your problem. Just do this...", and the issue was solved. They then invoiced the company $10,000. The company responded, saying "You only worked for ten minutes! How can you expect us to pay that much? Please resubmit the invoice with specific line items." The engineer resubmitted the invoice: 1. Finding the problem: $10 2. 38 years of experience, six years of school, so I could find your problem in five minutes: $9,990

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
GianFabien 6y ago
Aegism is a really big issue. Not only in the form of your $10,000 invoice example. Persons with a certain amount experience, such as yourself, call out BS when they see it. And that is not welcome. Employers seem to prefer young 'uns who don't question anything and just do as they're told. This becomes particularly bad with "consulting firms" who charge by the hour to stuff it up and then charge by the hour to get a new team to fix it and then another team to fix the fix and so it goes. One of thousands of examples is the $6M payroll project in Queensland that blew out to $1B+. My lawyer tells me that I can't name the firm.