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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

• 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?
  • eyelidlessness 5y ago
    Historically I’ve been a workaholic, though I’m gratefully recovered (probably for life at this point, I’m very tired and very persistently burned out). Saying that for context, to say this: regardless of any individual’s baseline productivity, the only reasons 8x5 vs 4x10 will make any difference are - they have strong feelings about it either way: they’ll perform according to their wishes regardless. - they have demanding commitments to non-work concerns: they’ll perform better with the schedule that fits their other concerns. - they have free time they’d prefer to spend working: they’ll overperform regardless, at least until they burn out.
  • CoastalCoder 5y ago
    I'm curious as well. On a really good day, I can get about 6 hours of solid focused work before my brain gets too tired.
  • MattGaiser 5y ago
    I would much prefer it actually and in practice many days I do. I will also work a lot at night. The reason I prefer it is that I can just focus on that one thing and keep the context in my head. Even very degraded, I seemingly can get a lot of work done simply by having lots of focus time rather than being interrupted every hour or so.
  • ianleeclark 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? I've been doing it for nearly 4 years, and it works great for me. The third day of rest is worth its weight in gold, and, on the very rare occasion I do a normal 5x8, I always feel much more drained when I come back. From a work perspective, I can do 10 hour days of coding without too much of a hassle, but I have a lot of things that pull me away from it: lunch, drink breaks, standup, 1-2 hours a day for meetings (sometimes more, usually lower-bounded), writing documentation, doing code reviews, responding to queries on slack, doing some git archaeology, etc. There's a lot more to the job than just writing code.
    • 5y ago
• noahtallen 5y ago
  It’s very difficult to quantify the “benefits” you get! Comparing base salary is very simple, there are two numbers and you know exactly how they compare and what they mean. But comparing two health care plans, or time off benefits… it takes a lot more effort and is harder to quantify. I also think plenty don’t realize how much certain benefits can cost sometimes, like healthcare. Plus, most people are obviously working to make an income. And if you want to do FIRE, maximizing income is very important. So some are willing to sacrifice work life quality for extra base salary. Speaking personally, I try to have a decent picture of how much extra I’d need to be offered to make it worth a switch. At a certain point, money will win, though it’d have to be significant :)
  • jjwiseman 5y ago
    It's also a lot easier for a company to decrease the value of other benefits than it is to reduce salary. If you work for Disney and your park pass slowly becomes less valuable over time because more and more dates are blocked out, that will probably cause much less consternation among employees than cutting their salaries.
    • cableshaft 5y ago
      Yep, joined a company that had solid benefits. Within two years they had switched from a PPO to a high deductible medical plan, killed all bonuses, and stopped their 401k match. But they didn't lower my salary! (It didn't go up either, they froze raises too). Major corporation, still kicking somehow six years later, although I hear they've lost a ridiculous amount of people and my former department is a pale shadow of what it used to be (50 people when I started, down to 5).
• achillesheels 5y ago
  I've noticed that when I have interviewed there is quite the pause when, not even 20-25 minutes into spending time with each other, the question about salary expectations is raised, and I have to ask what are the perks and/or benefits? I am willing to be very flexible with my salary given what else is being offered in the package. It just surprises me that most people are really chasing after total compensation without any consideration of well-being.
• fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
  Heres the thing, every company I have worked at that has been more willing to pay me more, has also respected me and the software development process more. When a company nickle and dimes on the salary/total cash/stock compensation they are providing a direct signal. It may be true that your company does treat employees well, but the majority of companies paying mediocre compensation treat their employees like mediocre people to be replaced on a whim.
• perl4ever 5y ago
  >Really opened my eyes to the difference between what people say they want and what they actually choose come decision time. Well, there are at least two types of people - those that prioritize pay and those that prioritize benefits, particularly health insurance. Maybe you were actually competing with public sector jobs in terms of benefits and coming up short. If someone has a partner who has a really secure job with great health insurance, then it frees them to take more risks and optimize for pay, and vice versa.
  • jkubicek 5y ago
    [Disclaimer: I work in the US] It's just so hard to correctly evaluate health care plans, though. Even at the company I work for now, it took multiple evenings of spreadsheets, calculations and hypotheticals to choose from one of the three plans my employer offered, and that's with access to the HR Slack channels and internal docs to help clarify our questions. I can't imagine trying to do the same calculation from outside the company.
    • perl4ever 5y ago
      I can't either, and indeed I don't analyze the options at a given employer that much. But for people with chronic health conditions or who intend to start a family, there can be a huge difference between private and public sector positions due to health benefits. There's no need for a spreadsheet and evaluating fine-grained differences, you look around at what your friends, family, and acquaintances do and why.
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  I just completed a job search and probably focused on salary a lot more than I should (although it worked out in the end) simply because I was unwilling to ask a ton of details to figure out the value of the various benefits. One of the challenges is that as a candidate, it is hard to know how real the perks are and whether they will stick around. One company I know advertised a choice of dev hardware, specifically a 17 inch PC or a 15.6 inch PC. No real choice. My past company had semi-private offices, until we grew and everyone was put into a new noisy single room open office, with everyone, including execs, taking meetings at their desks. Sure, you might like one manager over another, but they will probably be gone in a year anyway. In my two and a half year career at three companies, I have worked for 6 people. With valuing health care plans, at least in Canada, so much of the value comes from the specifics and your specific needs. My employer has unlimited and 100% drug coverage. If you are chronically ill, that could be worth $20,000 dollars a year. Great dental too. But if your need is physiotherapy, I actually have the worst plan I have ever had, capped at 90% reimbursement up to $500. Same with mental health needs. 90% capped to $500 for therapy. Valuation of these things is messy, so people just go with salary.
  • r00fus 5y ago
    There are lots of very specific details, but the top line number is really important - what % of the benefit premium does the employer cover. 85% is a decent answer (83% is apparently the average in 2020 [1]). HSAs and HRAs complicate the calculations, but that topline % should be something a recruiter or hiring manager knows. Also if you happen to be dual-income, your spouse's benefits may be better or good enough that you don't care as much the employee premium % vs. an equivalent salary boost. [1] https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/what-percent-of-health-insurance-is-paid-by-employers https://www.peoplekeep.com/blog/what-percent-of-health-insur...
  • IMTDb 5y ago
    > Sure, you might like one manager over another, but they will probably be gone in a year anyway. In my two and a half year career at three companies, I have worked for 6 people. It's strange, the most common - and best in my opinion - advice we give to junior professional searching for their first job is "Don't pick the job/company/role, pick the manager" as the manger is the main defining factor on how good/bad your experience will be. Once you have more experience (usually 2-3 years), you usually start feeling more comfortable picking a role and prioritizing benefits/company values and all that stuff. Of course, knowing if the manager is going to be stable at his job is part of the process of picking the "right" manager. If the guy is brand new at this job or if he has done 5 companies in 5 years, it's a red flag. Two and half year career at 3 companies working under 6 people sounds really weird. My personal internal clock is that a new employee (junior or senior) reaches his full potential after roughly 6 month of stable environment.
• hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I get what you are saying. I have found the opposite though, but not on new hires. On new hirers the employee is looking at money, and reputation. I have seen guys stay in mediocre companies for years because they like the owners, and the managers. A place can have a lot of perks, but if the employee doesn't feel like they are family/team; you will have an employee that does the bare minimum, or tries to sabotage at worse. Those middle managers whom are terrible with people are poison to the company. I used to work for a restaurant consultant firm. I basically got the job because I spent way to much time hiding out in school, and was a cook in high school. Our job was to go in as customers and find out why the business was mediocre. We also looked at the accounting. (This was before cameras were everywhere.) I did feel like a weasel, but told my boss employee theft is not part of my job. I will not go to court, or even turn in tap tillers (guys basically stealing). The restaurant industry is rife with theft. My boss's attitude was basically try to turn over help every six months. It's cruel, but effective. I noticed a trend. On pretty much every fledgling site I went to, there was one, or two, people who made the staff angry. The employees seemed to take it out on the restaurant. They were all middle manager types. I once went into this bar in SF that used to be profitable. I went there a few times. There was this one bartender/manager who was nice initially, but had a very bad side to her. She literally alienated 90% of the staff. Even customers did not want to deal with her. She was a friend of the owner. She was the queen of Mixology (Her title), and mean. She had something nasty to say all the time, but was cagey. When someone was watching her, she was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I told my boss the problem, but the owner never fired her. I left the job after a few months. Most of the restrants failed because they were in the wrong location, or food wasen't right, but there were places that went down to one, or two, toxic people.
• tessierashpool 5y ago
  I don't know if you checked as many boxes as you think. "Partial work from home" is the same thing as "not remote" to a lot of people.
  • shubb 5y ago
    It can mean very different things different places. From "option to spend the morning at home if you have an excuse" to "everyone meets up every 2 weeks for a day long meeting, so live in the same state I guess". Depending on local cost of living that can be a big difference in disposable income.
• conductr 5y ago
  I see it all in my job and certainly things like this. Generally perks don’t work as expected if you’re asking the employee to pay for them. Which is basically what you’re doing if the competition is offering $5K more. Also people often will prefer base comp as it is seen as cash. And, squabbling over $5K is a sign that future salary conversations/advancements will be challenging or signals the company is “cheap”. The weirdest thing I ever saw was an employee turned down their ~$50K bonus due to taxes. Or, likely, their misunderstanding of how marginal taxes work.
• nine_k 5y ago
  Maybe the folks you were hiring were mostly single? I have a family and kids, and care a lot about health insurance. I'd hazard to say that different strata of developers may want different things. Those fresh from college may strive for a bigger name and tech stack that looks impressive on the resume. Seasoned but single may look for a larger paycheck and faster career growth. People with kids may look for flexible hours and good health insurance. Etc, etc. I'd see perks not as tools to improve acceptance of offers, but as tools to improve productivity of those already working. And I bet that some flexibility in hours, or offices for those who ask for them, do improve it, and likely improve retention, too. But you have to check whether the expense is worth the improvement. With that, I'd say that good processes, right culture, great people around may be a bigger perk than any gym memberships and fancy coffee machines.
• xtiansimon 5y ago
  I’d put some of the items in your first list as a retention perk. When it comes to perks, the devil is in the details. On the other hand salary, x < y, is a solid decision point. > “I always wonder how much easier hiring would have been if we dispensed with all of the expensive employee perks…” Regarding health insurance, I don’t think employers should be involved in anyone’s health insurance. This is a holdover from a time now gone in the U.S., along with pensions and life-time employment. That said, why not offer employees the choice to buy into the company plan after hired?
• danielscrubs 5y ago
  Where they forced to use a specific insurance company? We had something similar but the insurance provider my company had picked where constantly in the news for basically being a con (they only did just enough to not get the authorities after them, but compared to all others they where awful). Also, when HR asks you what your current salary is, for your next gig, you can anchor with a higher salary which is insanely important (I wish it wasnt).