7 ms·

It's basically both. When I graduated with my CS degree, I was _thrilled_ to be offered 50k. Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC. So hard not to say that t

It's basically both. When I graduated with my CS degree, I was _thrilled_ to be offered 50k. Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC. So hard not to say that the market hasn't adjusted somewhat. At the same time, part of the reason companies even have to pay so much is because they've made interviewing so damn hard. I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change, but they are too afraid to interview. They feel they got lucky and got through the process once and are unlikely to be able to repeat it, and they might be right. The industry has taken "false negatives are better than a false positives" to an absurd extreme and then complain there's a shortage. It's one or the other. If you're saying "a false negative is ok" you are implicitly saying "it's totally fine if we fail to hire good developers", and you can't say that then turn around and complain it's too hard to hire good developers. Which is _exactly_ what all my recent employers have done.

pm90 5y ago
There are very good reasons why developer compensation has swelled to the levels that we are seeing today. Technology firms have grown astronomically. They’ve also built processes and systems to onboard new developers and enable them to generate a lot of value. Developers are being compensated higher to reflect the efficiency gains made my technology firms. Is it unfortunate that firms that are unable to generate that much value suddenly can’t hire developers? Must be for those firms. But there’s nothing wrong with compensation growing astronomically and nothing moral in it being low.
- trhway 5y ago
  absolutely. Google generates $1.5M/employee/year in a high margin business. Considering that the engineers is the main revenue producing asset it is not surprising that Google pays $600K+/year to the best engineers they can get to continue generate those $1.5M. >Is it unfortunate that firms that are unable to generate that much value suddenly can’t hire developers? Must be for those firms. yep. Our BigCo generates paltry $350K/employee/year. Looking at our salaries - we're relatively cheap engineers, and the company wastes our time in a myriad ways, and it is no wonder that we can't hire anybody here really - one can say we do experience the shortage of engineers. In SV we regularly lose people (who get 2-3X increases at new places, and only morons like me (even when i got an offer from Google it was just L5 and a very low one, basically just a match of what i have here) are still sitting here), and we're able to hire only in cheap remote locations.
anchpop 5y ago
> Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC As a new grad, was I supposed to feel lowballed at getting an offer quite a bit less than that? I know senior devs who make less than that. Is this just for stanford/mit grads?
- electrondood 5y ago
  Last I checked the median salary for a fresh Stanford CS Master's grad was $105k, but that was a few years ago. I think the 200k figure is inflated by FAANG companies, basically.
  - nv-vn 5y ago
    I think you may be comparing salary to total comp here, though I'll admit I haven't looked for the source for your $105k figure.
- verall 5y ago
  It's a hyperbole and its not the best advice for a noob to compare to. It's easy for people to remember special cases and then assume it is the norm.
- cole-k 5y ago
  I think it's hyperbole. Not that I doubt there are jobs which pay this, but from what I've seen of the market, if money is all you're concerned with you should not be turning your nose up at a 200k TC offer.
- ditonal 5y ago
  Yes, a new grad "feeling lowballed by 200k" was hyperbole because I waste too much time on Blind. But FAANG new grad TC is pushing that number, which is a stark contrast to my new grad numbers ~2010. But it was probably confusing for me to phrase it that way.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    Cost of living is also wildly different since 2010 though too.
bern4444 5y ago
IME, yes people are hesitant to leave sometimes out of a fear of the interview process, but I think this is no different than other industries where people generally are hesitant to take action that has a chance of of 0 payoff with a lot of upfront investment. I don't think that's unique to software engineering, and I don't think its more pronounced in our industry. The standard tenure of most engineers is about 3 - 5 years, a very short amount of time. People try and leave all the time. How long it takes someone to leave is likely a good proxy for their risk aversiveness. But people do switch a lot.
- efnx 5y ago
  I had a VP of Engineering tell me once that 17 months is a standard tenure and that we should be happy with that. I think turnover was part of the strategy at that point though...
  - ivalm 5y ago
    I don’t quite understand, switching is good for the employee but in what world is it good for the employer? On-boarding/institutional knowledge/etc all suffer.
    - jhatemyjob 5y ago
      He didn't mean "we should be happy with that" literally. It's a colloquialism.
    - rightbyte 5y ago
      Ye it is really strange. Maybe it is some kinda of rationalization. Or people believe in that new people bring new ideas or something. My experience is that even the best engineers wont catch up for a year or something, to an mediocre one with years of experience in the project/field, if the project is somewhat complex and not routine. In 17 months it is really hard to do anything magnificent.
netheril96 5y ago
> When I graduated with my CS degree, I was _thrilled_ to be offered 50k. Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC. It might have something to do with increasing property prices.
- jasonshen 5y ago
  While property prices have definitely risen, consider that every other industry has not seen the same level of income growth. We are still privileged to command this kind of salary as tech employees. (Yes we worked hard etc but I also try to remember that the median household income in NYC, where I live, is $63k).
  - throwaway210222 5y ago
    > the median household income in NYC, where I live, is $63k. What's the median NYC houshold income for investment bankers and radiologists?
    - pmiller2 5y ago
      How is that relevant to anything?
      - throwaway210222 5y ago
        Software engineers should not compare themselves to a basket that includes (presumably) labourers, tradesmen, etc. SEs are educated, highly-skilled individuals and should thus be compared to the VALUE the NYC society places on other highly skilled, in-demand individuals. Be assured that NYC lawyers, radiologists, and bankers don't compare their remuneration to an average that includes dustmen, baristas, and hot-dog salesmen.
        barry-cotter 5y ago
        Software engineers did ten years ago. That you think the proper reference class for SEs is higher professionals, not the general population, or even engineers generally speaks volumes about how things have changed in the past decade or so. There are lots of actual engineers being outearned by boot camp grads with two years experience. That’s nuts, and it’s quite new.
Peekhakhachu 5y ago
There is no shortage of software developers. It is a rumor created to bring more people in https://youtu.be/6X-SG6bA4Zg?t=77 https://youtu.be/6X-SG6bA4Zg?t=77
- rorykoehler 5y ago
  Brilliant!
- natoliniak 5y ago
  wow! what an excellent commentary that stretches well beyond India - this is Silicon Valley level comedy :)
- Salgat 5y ago
  Shortage of developers or shortage of senior level skilled developers?
jjav 5y ago
> It's one or the other. If you're saying "a false negative is ok" you are implicitly saying "it's totally fine if we fail to hire good developers", and you can't say that then turn around and complain it's too hard to hire good developers. This is it in a nutshell, good summary. So many of these companies have built an arbitrary interview process that takes pride in rejecting nearly everyone, regardless of actual skill in building products. So with that criteria, yes, it is hard to hire anyone. Which doesn't mean there aren't tons of perfectly competent people available, it's just that none of them can pass the silly interview because they haven't spent 10,000 hours memorizing leetcode. Typically someone will say "the bar is high", but that's not at all the case. The bar is in the wrong zip code. Because that kind of interview process measures nothing relevant to job performance. So the best developers, who are busy building successful products, will inevitably fail because who has time to spend on irrelevant interview prep. Interview for the job based on actual experience and you'll find, like I do, that it's not hard to hire competent people.
josephg 5y ago
> At the same time, part of the reason companies even have to pay so much is because they've made interviewing so damn hard. I don't agree at all. Pre pandemic I worked as a professional software engineering interviewer for a largish recruiting company. I did 400+ ~2hr interviews over about a year. We did not put forward the vast majority of people I interviewed. Lots of people on HN, and certainly lots of people who get rejected time and time again seem to have the perception that: - Most candidates (their friends in collage) all have reasonably similar aptitude - Doing programming interviews doesn't offer a lot of signal, and there are lots of false negatives. - The hiring bar is too high Aka, "I passed all my CS classes! Why will nobody hire me!? It must be something wrong with interviews, not me!!" All of these points are wrong. There is a massive difference between strong and weak programming candidates. Weak candidates can barely program at all, no matter what their background would suggest. We did multiple quantitative assessments. The various assessments all end up strongly positively cross-correlated. So we can tell we're getting a clear signal through our interviews. Weak candidates generally wouldn't fail just one part of our assessment; they'd fail all of them. And most strong candidates would demonstrate that in almost every section of our interview. We passed / failed based on a ML system which tried to guess who we could place. After a couple of months I was calibrated enough to be about 95% accurate at guessing what the AI would say. Its surprising how little ambiguity there is. Only about 1/10 people were "on the fence". Almost everyone I interviewed was either a clear yes or a clear no. If I interviewed you and I didn't recommend moving forward with the hiring process, its probably not because I didn't like you, or because the interviewing process is broken or the hiring bar is wrong. Its probably because your programming skills just aren't strong enough yet. My notes were filled with "This person is amazing and I love them to bits. But we can't move forward because when push comes to shove, they just aren't very good at programming." The harsh version of this is: The hiring process is fine. If you keep failing job interviews, the problem is probably you. I think there's two real issues with interviewing. One is that some candidates get massively stressed out, and can't perform under pressure. Secretly my job was all about trying to help candidates relax. After 1 year I still wasn't good at it. I bet most interviewers at most companies are terrible at this. The other issue is that most companies have no interest in hiring junior people and training them up. They can't afford it. You could hire a junior, spend 9 months paying them a (low) salary while they're net-negative to your company's productivity only to have them leave and work somewhere else as soon as their skills are up to snuff. Companies are incentivized not to bother doing that at all - which in turn narrows the funnel of people who can make it to high quality mids and seniors. > I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change, but they are too afraid to interview. You know you can start a job hunt before leaving your current role, right? I personally recommend everyone interviews around every 6-9 months, no matter how much you like your job. There's a huge peace of mind from knowing how much you're worth at other companies, and keeping your resume and interviewing skills fresh. As covid shows, you never know when you might need to look for a new job.
nasalgoat 5y ago
I spent nearly a year interviewing at various companies and never landing a job despite decades of practical, relevant experience. It was extremely demoralizing and worrisome, and I believe the majority of the issue was extremely difficult interview processes. The size of the company didn't matter - in fact, the smaller the company, the more difficult and onerous the process was. One place with six employees asked for a full day's work (offering $150 compensation). One place turned me down because I didn't have enough Scrum experience and the Scrum Master - a real job title apparently - didn't think I'd be a good fit. So, "false negative" is right.
- d12345m 5y ago
  No offense meant, but if you are surprised about the existence of Scrum Masters, then that interviewer is not at all wrong for wondering if you have enough Scrum experience.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    Unless you are being hired as a Scrum Master, “not enough scrum experience” should not be a hiring consideration. On the other hand, it being a hiring consideration is such a negative signal that mossing out on a job because of it is almost certainly dodging a bullet.
  - splithalf 5y ago
    It’s true too that 4 out of 5 scrum masters will lament the bothersome dearth of experienced scrumee programmers. Never a shortage of scrum masters, or ceos or vc or debt. But labor you can arbitrage for 10x profits are always hard to find domestically.
  - sizzle 5y ago
    Maybe it was not enough experience working in Agile if you don’t know scrum ceremonies and stuff
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Maybe it was not enough experience working in Agile if you don’t know scrum ceremonies and stuff You don't get experience with Scrum ceremonies, or other any kind of “ceremonies” unless they happen to be in the application domain rather than the dev process, working in a place that values “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.
pedrosorio 5y ago
“ I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change, but they are too afraid to interview. They feel they got lucky and got through the process once and are unlikely to be able to repeat it” Is this just a perception issue or have they actually tried interviewing a few times with negative results?
- kixiQu 5y ago
  I mean, there's a real investment in prep that most people seem to agree is necessary, so it's expensive to test.

pm90 5y ago

There are very good reasons why developer compensation has swelled to the levels that we are seeing today. Technology firms have grown astronomically. They’ve also built processes and systems to onboard new developers and enable them to generate a lot of value. Developers are being compensated higher to reflect the efficiency gains made my technology firms. Is it unfortunate that firms that are unable to generate that much value suddenly can’t hire developers? Must be for those firms. But there’s nothing wrong with compensation growing astronomically and nothing moral in it being low.

trhway 5y ago
absolutely. Google generates $1.5M/employee/year in a high margin business. Considering that the engineers is the main revenue producing asset it is not surprising that Google pays $600K+/year to the best engineers they can get to continue generate those $1.5M. >Is it unfortunate that firms that are unable to generate that much value suddenly can’t hire developers? Must be for those firms. yep. Our BigCo generates paltry $350K/employee/year. Looking at our salaries - we're relatively cheap engineers, and the company wastes our time in a myriad ways, and it is no wonder that we can't hire anybody here really - one can say we do experience the shortage of engineers. In SV we regularly lose people (who get 2-3X increases at new places, and only morons like me (even when i got an offer from Google it was just L5 and a very low one, basically just a match of what i have here) are still sitting here), and we're able to hire only in cheap remote locations.

anchpop 5y ago

> Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC As a new grad, was I supposed to feel lowballed at getting an offer quite a bit less than that? I know senior devs who make less than that. Is this just for stanford/mit grads?

electrondood 5y ago
Last I checked the median salary for a fresh Stanford CS Master's grad was $105k, but that was a few years ago. I think the 200k figure is inflated by FAANG companies, basically.
- nv-vn 5y ago
  I think you may be comparing salary to total comp here, though I'll admit I haven't looked for the source for your $105k figure.
verall 5y ago
It's a hyperbole and its not the best advice for a noob to compare to. It's easy for people to remember special cases and then assume it is the norm.
cole-k 5y ago
I think it's hyperbole. Not that I doubt there are jobs which pay this, but from what I've seen of the market, if money is all you're concerned with you should not be turning your nose up at a 200k TC offer.
ditonal 5y ago
Yes, a new grad "feeling lowballed by 200k" was hyperbole because I waste too much time on Blind. But FAANG new grad TC is pushing that number, which is a stark contrast to my new grad numbers ~2010. But it was probably confusing for me to phrase it that way.
- bradlys 5y ago
  Cost of living is also wildly different since 2010 though too.

bern4444 5y ago

IME, yes people are hesitant to leave sometimes out of a fear of the interview process, but I think this is no different than other industries where people generally are hesitant to take action that has a chance of of 0 payoff with a lot of upfront investment. I don't think that's unique to software engineering, and I don't think its more pronounced in our industry. The standard tenure of most engineers is about 3 - 5 years, a very short amount of time. People try and leave all the time. How long it takes someone to leave is likely a good proxy for their risk aversiveness. But people do switch a lot.

efnx 5y ago
I had a VP of Engineering tell me once that 17 months is a standard tenure and that we should be happy with that. I think turnover was part of the strategy at that point though...
- ivalm 5y ago
  I don’t quite understand, switching is good for the employee but in what world is it good for the employer? On-boarding/institutional knowledge/etc all suffer.
  - jhatemyjob 5y ago
    He didn't mean "we should be happy with that" literally. It's a colloquialism.
  - rightbyte 5y ago
    Ye it is really strange. Maybe it is some kinda of rationalization. Or people believe in that new people bring new ideas or something. My experience is that even the best engineers wont catch up for a year or something, to an mediocre one with years of experience in the project/field, if the project is somewhat complex and not routine. In 17 months it is really hard to do anything magnificent.

netheril96 5y ago

> When I graduated with my CS degree, I was _thrilled_ to be offered 50k. Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC. It might have something to do with increasing property prices.

jasonshen 5y ago
While property prices have definitely risen, consider that every other industry has not seen the same level of income growth. We are still privileged to command this kind of salary as tech employees. (Yes we worked hard etc but I also try to remember that the median household income in NYC, where I live, is $63k).
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  > the median household income in NYC, where I live, is $63k. What's the median NYC houshold income for investment bankers and radiologists?
  - pmiller2 5y ago
    How is that relevant to anything?
    - throwaway210222 5y ago
      Software engineers should not compare themselves to a basket that includes (presumably) labourers, tradesmen, etc. SEs are educated, highly-skilled individuals and should thus be compared to the VALUE the NYC society places on other highly skilled, in-demand individuals. Be assured that NYC lawyers, radiologists, and bankers don't compare their remuneration to an average that includes dustmen, baristas, and hot-dog salesmen.
      - barry-cotter 5y ago
        Software engineers did ten years ago. That you think the proper reference class for SEs is higher professionals, not the general population, or even engineers generally speaks volumes about how things have changed in the past decade or so. There are lots of actual engineers being outearned by boot camp grads with two years experience. That’s nuts, and it’s quite new.

Peekhakhachu 5y ago

There is no shortage of software developers. It is a rumor created to bring more people in https://youtu.be/6X-SG6bA4Zg?t=77 https://youtu.be/6X-SG6bA4Zg?t=77

rorykoehler 5y ago
Brilliant!
natoliniak 5y ago
wow! what an excellent commentary that stretches well beyond India - this is Silicon Valley level comedy :)
Salgat 5y ago
Shortage of developers or shortage of senior level skilled developers?

jjav 5y ago

> It's one or the other. If you're saying "a false negative is ok" you are implicitly saying "it's totally fine if we fail to hire good developers", and you can't say that then turn around and complain it's too hard to hire good developers. This is it in a nutshell, good summary. So many of these companies have built an arbitrary interview process that takes pride in rejecting nearly everyone, regardless of actual skill in building products. So with that criteria, yes, it is hard to hire anyone. Which doesn't mean there aren't tons of perfectly competent people available, it's just that none of them can pass the silly interview because they haven't spent 10,000 hours memorizing leetcode. Typically someone will say "the bar is high", but that's not at all the case. The bar is in the wrong zip code. Because that kind of interview process measures nothing relevant to job performance. So the best developers, who are busy building successful products, will inevitably fail because who has time to spend on irrelevant interview prep. Interview for the job based on actual experience and you'll find, like I do, that it's not hard to hire competent people.

josephg 5y ago

> At the same time, part of the reason companies even have to pay so much is because they've made interviewing so damn hard. I don't agree at all. Pre pandemic I worked as a professional software engineering interviewer for a largish recruiting company. I did 400+ ~2hr interviews over about a year. We did not put forward the vast majority of people I interviewed. Lots of people on HN, and certainly lots of people who get rejected time and time again seem to have the perception that: - Most candidates (their friends in collage) all have reasonably similar aptitude - Doing programming interviews doesn't offer a lot of signal, and there are lots of false negatives. - The hiring bar is too high Aka, "I passed all my CS classes! Why will nobody hire me!? It must be something wrong with interviews, not me!!" All of these points are wrong. There is a massive difference between strong and weak programming candidates. Weak candidates can barely program at all, no matter what their background would suggest. We did multiple quantitative assessments. The various assessments all end up strongly positively cross-correlated. So we can tell we're getting a clear signal through our interviews. Weak candidates generally wouldn't fail just one part of our assessment; they'd fail all of them. And most strong candidates would demonstrate that in almost every section of our interview. We passed / failed based on a ML system which tried to guess who we could place. After a couple of months I was calibrated enough to be about 95% accurate at guessing what the AI would say. Its surprising how little ambiguity there is. Only about 1/10 people were "on the fence". Almost everyone I interviewed was either a clear yes or a clear no. If I interviewed you and I didn't recommend moving forward with the hiring process, its probably not because I didn't like you, or because the interviewing process is broken or the hiring bar is wrong. Its probably because your programming skills just aren't strong enough yet. My notes were filled with "This person is amazing and I love them to bits. But we can't move forward because when push comes to shove, they just aren't very good at programming." The harsh version of this is: The hiring process is fine. If you keep failing job interviews, the problem is probably you. I think there's two real issues with interviewing. One is that some candidates get massively stressed out, and can't perform under pressure. Secretly my job was all about trying to help candidates relax. After 1 year I still wasn't good at it. I bet most interviewers at most companies are terrible at this. The other issue is that most companies have no interest in hiring junior people and training them up. They can't afford it. You could hire a junior, spend 9 months paying them a (low) salary while they're net-negative to your company's productivity only to have them leave and work somewhere else as soon as their skills are up to snuff. Companies are incentivized not to bother doing that at all - which in turn narrows the funnel of people who can make it to high quality mids and seniors. > I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change, but they are too afraid to interview. You know you can start a job hunt before leaving your current role, right? I personally recommend everyone interviews around every 6-9 months, no matter how much you like your job. There's a huge peace of mind from knowing how much you're worth at other companies, and keeping your resume and interviewing skills fresh. As covid shows, you never know when you might need to look for a new job.

nasalgoat 5y ago

I spent nearly a year interviewing at various companies and never landing a job despite decades of practical, relevant experience. It was extremely demoralizing and worrisome, and I believe the majority of the issue was extremely difficult interview processes. The size of the company didn't matter - in fact, the smaller the company, the more difficult and onerous the process was. One place with six employees asked for a full day's work (offering $150 compensation). One place turned me down because I didn't have enough Scrum experience and the Scrum Master - a real job title apparently - didn't think I'd be a good fit. So, "false negative" is right.

d12345m 5y ago
No offense meant, but if you are surprised about the existence of Scrum Masters, then that interviewer is not at all wrong for wondering if you have enough Scrum experience.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  Unless you are being hired as a Scrum Master, “not enough scrum experience” should not be a hiring consideration. On the other hand, it being a hiring consideration is such a negative signal that mossing out on a job because of it is almost certainly dodging a bullet.
- splithalf 5y ago
  It’s true too that 4 out of 5 scrum masters will lament the bothersome dearth of experienced scrumee programmers. Never a shortage of scrum masters, or ceos or vc or debt. But labor you can arbitrage for 10x profits are always hard to find domestically.
- sizzle 5y ago
  Maybe it was not enough experience working in Agile if you don’t know scrum ceremonies and stuff
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Maybe it was not enough experience working in Agile if you don’t know scrum ceremonies and stuff You don't get experience with Scrum ceremonies, or other any kind of “ceremonies” unless they happen to be in the application domain rather than the dev process, working in a place that values “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.

pedrosorio 5y ago

“ I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change, but they are too afraid to interview. They feel they got lucky and got through the process once and are unlikely to be able to repeat it” Is this just a perception issue or have they actually tried interviewing a few times with negative results?

kixiQu 5y ago
I mean, there's a real investment in prep that most people seem to agree is necessary, so it's expensive to test.