8 ms·

New data: What developers look for in future job opportunities

67 points by Amorymeltzer 5y ago

francisofascii 5y ago
> nearly 60% would be turned off if they were blocked from accessing Stack Overflow That number sounds low. Asking the other 40%, why would that NOT turn you off?
- nowherebeen 5y ago
  I was going to say that’s super high. I haven’t used Stack Overflow in years. The only time I come across it is when using JavaScript or some niche sql queries.
  - fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
    Yeah oddly enough I don't use it anymore, I just find myself reading the source code to understand the problem.
  - comp_throw7 5y ago
    Whether or not you use SO is almost immaterial; the real red flag is the fact that an organization wouldn't _let_ you use it.
  - pcthrowaway 5y ago
    What tech stack do you work with where you don't need to Google how to do things at least occasionally? This seems unfathomable to me, but I'm open to reinforcing my imposter syndrome.
    - gdulli 5y ago
      The one you don't throw away after two years because the industry has convinced you that something new is better. But there's a distinction between losing access to SO, which shouldn't be a hardship, and losing access to online material in general. The latter would be unreasonable.
      - pcthrowaway 5y ago
        > The one you don't throw away after two years because the industry has convinced you that something new is better. I know you're not the person I asked, but if you also find that you don't need to google things regularly while working I'd love to know the actual tech stack. I've been using HTML, CSS, and Javascript for more than 5 years for example, and I still google things at minimum once a day, and SO usually has a prominent answer.
        nawgz 5y ago
        For example, as a TypeScript / React guy who likes MobX, I have used most of the API surface of those libraries at least once, so combined with type hints both inline & thru option-click in my editor I virtually never search on those layers. More when I'm trying to use some new backend library.
      - heavyset_go 5y ago
        There are platforms with staying power that are just really big and hard for a single person to keep everything about them in their head.
        davidw 5y ago
        Or there's some esoteric corner of it that you're unsure of.
    - yodsanklai 5y ago
      Some big companies use a lot of internal tools for which Google/SO won't help. Also, for some niche languages or recent libraries, it can be hard to find answers for very specific issues.
      - pcthrowaway 5y ago
        If you're talking from experience, would you mind sharing a bit more about the stack you used (or still use) where you didn't regularly Google/SO? Even when using libraries I've written I frequently still find myself in situation where: A) I have questions about the programming languages or frameworks I'm using. In my case Javascript, Typescript, Svelte, React, HTML, CSS, Express, Tailwind, Bash. Even having used Javascript, HTML, and CSS for 8+ years, the core language specs and capabilities keep changing as well as the execution environments (the browser or Node) B) I run into limitations with the libraries I've written that require improvements, and google (A) as well as miscellaneous patterns while seeking to address those limitations in clean, maintainable, and intuitive ways.
        Jensson 5y ago
        > Even having used Javascript, HTML, and CSS for 8+ years, the core language specs and capabilities keep changing as well as the execution environments (the browser or Node) But you can read the language spec/notes when they release a new version, you don't go to SO for that you just read the version update when it comes and learn the new things. And if you miss something you can read the language manual/spec later, it is usually more accurate and complete than SO. > B) I run into limitations with the libraries I've written that require improvements, and google (A) as well as miscellaneous patterns while seeking to address those limitations in clean, maintainable, and intuitive ways. This shouldn't happen that much after 5 years, at least not improvements that you can find at SO. SO is good to find "hello world" examples for frameworks and function api's, but it isn't much help once you know how to set things up.
        driscoll42 5y ago
        My former employer blocked GitHub, though not Google or SO, however I barely used SO (did use Google though). It was an Oracle shop, and really there's not much Oracle documentation on SO. Some SQL stuff from time to time, but really less than you'd think. If SO had been blocked it'd have been a bit irritating, but not awful for getting work done. Still, blocking GH and using Oracle did make me want to change to a different company.
  - ominous_prime 5y ago
    I also rarely find anything useful on StackOverflow, but that's not never. I bet the real reason for the response level here is the difference between "Do you require StackOverflow to do your job?" and "Are you OK with your internet access being censored?". I would guess that most are replying to the latter interpretation, even though StackOverflow was probably attempting to gauge their own importance.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    JS catching strays smh
- poidos 5y ago
  Probably depends a lot on the language.
dvt 5y ago
Don't really understand the paragraphs here on "reputation" and "tech stack," it's pretty obvious that it's all about the salary & work-life balance, which isn't that surprising.
benbristow 5y ago
> Interestingly enough, the absence of ChatOps isn’t a deal-breaker for developers—a mere 8-12% said not having one of these tools would make a company unappealing. Maybe if you're working in an office. But working from home, I'd find my job brutal without a tool like Slack/Teams. Long response times from emails and it'd be very dry as the 'IM' style chat allows for a bit of banter like GIFs/'private' chats etc.
- detaro 5y ago
  "ChatOps" refers to using chat bots for development/deployment steps, not to "having company chat": https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/what-is-chatops/ https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/what-is-chatops/ (random promo article picked from Google, but it gets the point across). Although I guess it's an interesting question how many of the 8-12% quoted thought it meant that.
- jeremy_wiebe 5y ago
  I haven't heard the term ChatOps before, but at first glance, I don't think the article is stating the complete lack of Slack/Teams. Rather I think they're referring specifically to the use of chat platforms to manage operations (such as deploys, test runs, etc).
- jrumbut 5y ago
  It's funny I am at a place where there is no chat and my productivity has never been higher and I've never been futher away from burning out. I go entire days without an unscheduled mental context switch. We're slowly going back to the office but have been remote almost 2 years now. It's only a few times a year I get or send an email that can't wait 5 minutes and in those rare circumstances a phone call usually does it. I will admit I do miss the banter and social cohesion chat provided but it's been a revelation how much of a time and energy sink chats were for me.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  I would be curious if it was asked about each individually or chat tools as a group. I am concerned that it may be the former. Neither lacking Teams or Slack is a deal breaker for me, but it is a big one if both are missing.
gamerDude 5y ago
> Developers value flexibility and opportunities to learn at work There survey may touch on this later, but looking at the graph above it, it was pretty clear that developers were willing to sacrifice flexibility and opportunities to learn for a higher salary.
- handrous 5y ago
  Don't need to make sure you're on a path to still have in-demand skills in 15 years, if you can retire by then.
- ddoolin 5y ago
  Their*, and yes, I'd think so. I've done it myself and seen it done countless times. At a certain point, money is gonna win every time and it really doesn't even need to be that much more, in my experience.
abeyer 5y ago
Where's the data and the original questions? This seems like a lot of dubious interpretation of data we can't see and possibly wasn't terribly well collected in the first place. I feel like I have just reached the point that whenever someone tells me their "survey says" I just tune out unless they provide those things, as I assume it's either marketing fluff and/or was just gathered to support some predetermined outcome.
- cik 5y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. There's a reason that the image https://149351115.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/pulse-survey-employer-branding-unappealing-1200x628.png https://149351115.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/202... exists in their survey. Seriously, 59% of developers would find a company unappealing if they couldn't access Stack Overflow? This is marketing.
the_gipsy 5y ago
C’mon, what about remote?
- aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
  That's the default.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
A while back I was a hiring manager at a company that checked a lot of boxes for the things developers want. Everything from flexibility, partial work from home (before COVID even), an option for 4x10s, freedom to choose your own development hardware and so on. We even had private offices with doors for developers, which was (at the time) the holy grail for developers who were sick of open office floor plans. Yet we constantly lost candidates to our competitor across town because they would pay $5K more than our offers. The kicker? The competitor had $0 employer contribution to healthcare, so that $5K higher comp was a net loss for anyone taking their family insurance plan. But nothing mattered except that salary number to a surprising number of candidates. Really opened my eyes to the difference between what people say they want and what they actually choose come decision time. We had a lot of people come back to us later after realizing the competitor wasn’t that great, but it was a strange experience. I always wonder how much easier hiring would have been if we dispensed with all of the expensive employee perks (private offices and top-tier health insurance are $$$) and instead just put it all toward developer compensation.
- demonel13 5y ago
  We had this situation over a year ago also and we really needed to re-evaluate the culture in a way that fitted devs reality and needs. The main points that came out to what made them stay and love the company - opportunities to learn and grow, having a real say and impact to the products + company culture. One year later we have people come back to us so I'm hoping to keep this trend :)
- nine_zeros 5y ago
  You just don't realize how high attrition would have been without the perks. Pay is to attract. Perks and good work environment is to retain.
- autarch 5y ago
  A bit OT, but how does 4x10 work for developers? I feel like realistically no one can write code for 8 hours a day anyway, so what does a 10 hour day look like? More meetings? More browsing Hacker News? More hanging around on Slack in case someone pings you so you can pretend you're "at work"? Or maybe I'm just way too cynical and people actually got more done in a 10 hour day than they would in an 8 hour day?
andersonmvd 5y ago
> How developers discover companies Surprised not to see "recruiter getting in touch" as an option
- ketralnis 5y ago
  I'm not. I reflexively ignore them, train my spam filter to remove them, and even decline to contact a company myself if a particularly aggressive recruiter from that company has recently reached out to me. In my experience they have 0 respect for my time or boundaries. Their 2x drip autogenerated email campaigns have grown to 4x recently, clearly all generated using the same software because the cadence is identical though of course they're written to sound like a human sat down and wrote them. I'm sure somebody at that company got a promotion for changing a 2 to a 4 which most have cost them nothing but who is responding to that 4th email that wouldn't have responded to the first? They've called me during work hours, they've texted me, they've lied about where they got my number. A friend even had an "AI-generated" recruiter cobble together a mad libs email from whatever they must have crawled from his github so they aren't even respectful enough to send humans anymore. [0]: https://twitter.com/chromakode/status/1463006262950457345 https://twitter.com/chromakode/status/1463006262950457345
  - ketralnis 5y ago
    Of course as I wrote that I received 3 simultaneous identical emails from an Amazon recruiter, two to my work address and one to my personal one, for a job that I'm not qualified for at a level significantly below my years of experience in a city where I don't live. But it's full of emojis so I guess there's that.
- schainks 5y ago
  I have limited experience with recruiters, but generally they often are nice, polite, want to help, then ask me the same question three times over a 30 minute period: "So, I know you asked for X as base compensation preference, but what would it take for you to do 0.8X of that number?"
IMTDb 5y ago
Interestingly, 50% declare that it makes a company unappealing if people are asked to work in an office. This also mean that half of developers have no problem at all with onsite work. Reading HN, I would have expected the ratio of "remote required" devs to be higher.
jl2718 5y ago
Everybody wants flexibility, but it always turns into “always on” at the lowest geographic pay. I would like to try working 100% in-person, meaning no remote communication at all, like a university research group.

67 points by Amorymeltzer 5y ago

> nearly 60% would be turned off if they were blocked from accessing Stack Overflow That number sounds low. Asking the other 40%, why would that NOT turn you off?

nowherebeen 5y ago
I was going to say that’s super high. I haven’t used Stack Overflow in years. The only time I come across it is when using JavaScript or some niche sql queries.
- fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
  Yeah oddly enough I don't use it anymore, I just find myself reading the source code to understand the problem.
- comp_throw7 5y ago
  Whether or not you use SO is almost immaterial; the real red flag is the fact that an organization wouldn't _let_ you use it.
- pcthrowaway 5y ago
  What tech stack do you work with where you don't need to Google how to do things at least occasionally? This seems unfathomable to me, but I'm open to reinforcing my imposter syndrome.
  - gdulli 5y ago
    The one you don't throw away after two years because the industry has convinced you that something new is better. But there's a distinction between losing access to SO, which shouldn't be a hardship, and losing access to online material in general. The latter would be unreasonable.
    - pcthrowaway 5y ago
      > The one you don't throw away after two years because the industry has convinced you that something new is better. I know you're not the person I asked, but if you also find that you don't need to google things regularly while working I'd love to know the actual tech stack. I've been using HTML, CSS, and Javascript for more than 5 years for example, and I still google things at minimum once a day, and SO usually has a prominent answer.
      - nawgz 5y ago
        For example, as a TypeScript / React guy who likes MobX, I have used most of the API surface of those libraries at least once, so combined with type hints both inline & thru option-click in my editor I virtually never search on those layers. More when I'm trying to use some new backend library.
    - heavyset_go 5y ago
      There are platforms with staying power that are just really big and hard for a single person to keep everything about them in their head.
      - davidw 5y ago
        Or there's some esoteric corner of it that you're unsure of.
  - yodsanklai 5y ago
    Some big companies use a lot of internal tools for which Google/SO won't help. Also, for some niche languages or recent libraries, it can be hard to find answers for very specific issues.
    - pcthrowaway 5y ago
      If you're talking from experience, would you mind sharing a bit more about the stack you used (or still use) where you didn't regularly Google/SO? Even when using libraries I've written I frequently still find myself in situation where: A) I have questions about the programming languages or frameworks I'm using. In my case Javascript, Typescript, Svelte, React, HTML, CSS, Express, Tailwind, Bash. Even having used Javascript, HTML, and CSS for 8+ years, the core language specs and capabilities keep changing as well as the execution environments (the browser or Node) B) I run into limitations with the libraries I've written that require improvements, and google (A) as well as miscellaneous patterns while seeking to address those limitations in clean, maintainable, and intuitive ways.
      - Jensson 5y ago
        > Even having used Javascript, HTML, and CSS for 8+ years, the core language specs and capabilities keep changing as well as the execution environments (the browser or Node) But you can read the language spec/notes when they release a new version, you don't go to SO for that you just read the version update when it comes and learn the new things. And if you miss something you can read the language manual/spec later, it is usually more accurate and complete than SO. > B) I run into limitations with the libraries I've written that require improvements, and google (A) as well as miscellaneous patterns while seeking to address those limitations in clean, maintainable, and intuitive ways. This shouldn't happen that much after 5 years, at least not improvements that you can find at SO. SO is good to find "hello world" examples for frameworks and function api's, but it isn't much help once you know how to set things up.
      - driscoll42 5y ago
        My former employer blocked GitHub, though not Google or SO, however I barely used SO (did use Google though). It was an Oracle shop, and really there's not much Oracle documentation on SO. Some SQL stuff from time to time, but really less than you'd think. If SO had been blocked it'd have been a bit irritating, but not awful for getting work done. Still, blocking GH and using Oracle did make me want to change to a different company.
- ominous_prime 5y ago
  I also rarely find anything useful on StackOverflow, but that's not never. I bet the real reason for the response level here is the difference between "Do you require StackOverflow to do your job?" and "Are you OK with your internet access being censored?". I would guess that most are replying to the latter interpretation, even though StackOverflow was probably attempting to gauge their own importance.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  JS catching strays smh
poidos 5y ago
Probably depends a lot on the language.

dvt 5y ago

Don't really understand the paragraphs here on "reputation" and "tech stack," it's pretty obvious that it's all about the salary & work-life balance, which isn't that surprising.

benbristow 5y ago

> Interestingly enough, the absence of ChatOps isn’t a deal-breaker for developers—a mere 8-12% said not having one of these tools would make a company unappealing. Maybe if you're working in an office. But working from home, I'd find my job brutal without a tool like Slack/Teams. Long response times from emails and it'd be very dry as the 'IM' style chat allows for a bit of banter like GIFs/'private' chats etc.

detaro 5y ago
"ChatOps" refers to using chat bots for development/deployment steps, not to "having company chat": https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/what-is-chatops/ https://www.pagerduty.com/blog/what-is-chatops/ (random promo article picked from Google, but it gets the point across). Although I guess it's an interesting question how many of the 8-12% quoted thought it meant that.
jeremy_wiebe 5y ago
I haven't heard the term ChatOps before, but at first glance, I don't think the article is stating the complete lack of Slack/Teams. Rather I think they're referring specifically to the use of chat platforms to manage operations (such as deploys, test runs, etc).
jrumbut 5y ago
It's funny I am at a place where there is no chat and my productivity has never been higher and I've never been futher away from burning out. I go entire days without an unscheduled mental context switch. We're slowly going back to the office but have been remote almost 2 years now. It's only a few times a year I get or send an email that can't wait 5 minutes and in those rare circumstances a phone call usually does it. I will admit I do miss the banter and social cohesion chat provided but it's been a revelation how much of a time and energy sink chats were for me.
MattGaiser 5y ago
I would be curious if it was asked about each individually or chat tools as a group. I am concerned that it may be the former. Neither lacking Teams or Slack is a deal breaker for me, but it is a big one if both are missing.

gamerDude 5y ago

> Developers value flexibility and opportunities to learn at work There survey may touch on this later, but looking at the graph above it, it was pretty clear that developers were willing to sacrifice flexibility and opportunities to learn for a higher salary.

handrous 5y ago
Don't need to make sure you're on a path to still have in-demand skills in 15 years, if you can retire by then.
ddoolin 5y ago
Their*, and yes, I'd think so. I've done it myself and seen it done countless times. At a certain point, money is gonna win every time and it really doesn't even need to be that much more, in my experience.

abeyer 5y ago

Where's the data and the original questions? This seems like a lot of dubious interpretation of data we can't see and possibly wasn't terribly well collected in the first place. I feel like I have just reached the point that whenever someone tells me their "survey says" I just tune out unless they provide those things, as I assume it's either marketing fluff and/or was just gathered to support some predetermined outcome.

cik 5y ago
You hit the nail on the head. There's a reason that the image https://149351115.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/pulse-survey-employer-branding-unappealing-1200x628.png https://149351115.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-content/uploads/202... exists in their survey. Seriously, 59% of developers would find a company unappealing if they couldn't access Stack Overflow? This is marketing.

the_gipsy 5y ago

C’mon, what about remote?

aaaaaaaaaaab 5y ago
That's the default.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

A while back I was a hiring manager at a company that checked a lot of boxes for the things developers want. Everything from flexibility, partial work from home (before COVID even), an option for 4x10s, freedom to choose your own development hardware and so on. We even had private offices with doors for developers, which was (at the time) the holy grail for developers who were sick of open office floor plans. Yet we constantly lost candidates to our competitor across town because they would pay $5K more than our offers. The kicker? The competitor had $0 employer contribution to healthcare, so that $5K higher comp was a net loss for anyone taking their family insurance plan. But nothing mattered except that salary number to a surprising number of candidates. Really opened my eyes to the difference between what people say they want and what they actually choose come decision time. We had a lot of people come back to us later after realizing the competitor wasn’t that great, but it was a strange experience. I always wonder how much easier hiring would have been if we dispensed with all of the expensive employee perks (private offices and top-tier health insurance are $$$) and instead just put it all toward developer compensation.

demonel13 5y ago
We had this situation over a year ago also and we really needed to re-evaluate the culture in a way that fitted devs reality and needs. The main points that came out to what made them stay and love the company - opportunities to learn and grow, having a real say and impact to the products + company culture. One year later we have people come back to us so I'm hoping to keep this trend :)
nine_zeros 5y ago
You just don't realize how high attrition would have been without the perks. Pay is to attract. Perks and good work environment is to retain.
autarch 5y ago
A bit OT, but how does 4x10 work for developers? I feel like realistically no one can write code for 8 hours a day anyway, so what does a 10 hour day look like? More meetings? More browsing Hacker News? More hanging around on Slack in case someone pings you so you can pretend you're "at work"? Or maybe I'm just way too cynical and people actually got more done in a 10 hour day than they would in an 8 hour day?

andersonmvd 5y ago

> How developers discover companies Surprised not to see "recruiter getting in touch" as an option

ketralnis 5y ago
I'm not. I reflexively ignore them, train my spam filter to remove them, and even decline to contact a company myself if a particularly aggressive recruiter from that company has recently reached out to me. In my experience they have 0 respect for my time or boundaries. Their 2x drip autogenerated email campaigns have grown to 4x recently, clearly all generated using the same software because the cadence is identical though of course they're written to sound like a human sat down and wrote them. I'm sure somebody at that company got a promotion for changing a 2 to a 4 which most have cost them nothing but who is responding to that 4th email that wouldn't have responded to the first? They've called me during work hours, they've texted me, they've lied about where they got my number. A friend even had an "AI-generated" recruiter cobble together a mad libs email from whatever they must have crawled from his github so they aren't even respectful enough to send humans anymore. [0]: https://twitter.com/chromakode/status/1463006262950457345 https://twitter.com/chromakode/status/1463006262950457345
- ketralnis 5y ago
  Of course as I wrote that I received 3 simultaneous identical emails from an Amazon recruiter, two to my work address and one to my personal one, for a job that I'm not qualified for at a level significantly below my years of experience in a city where I don't live. But it's full of emojis so I guess there's that.
schainks 5y ago
I have limited experience with recruiters, but generally they often are nice, polite, want to help, then ask me the same question three times over a 30 minute period: "So, I know you asked for X as base compensation preference, but what would it take for you to do 0.8X of that number?"

IMTDb 5y ago

Interestingly, 50% declare that it makes a company unappealing if people are asked to work in an office. This also mean that half of developers have no problem at all with onsite work. Reading HN, I would have expected the ratio of "remote required" devs to be higher.

jl2718 5y ago

Everybody wants flexibility, but it always turns into “always on” at the lowest geographic pay. I would like to try working 100% in-person, meaning no remote communication at all, like a university research group.