3 ms·

That surprising to me (perhaps due to bay area bubble), how do I hire people at that rate? Is it entirely about the location? Are the skill set expectations dif

That surprising to me (perhaps due to bay area bubble), how do I hire people at that rate? Is it entirely about the location? Are the skill set expectations different?

nostrademons 4y ago
You can do a lot better than that internationally. When I was in the startup founder world my peers were paying their developers about $30K/year, and getting decent (but not great) talent in Thailand, Vietnam, India, Eastern Europe, etc. The downsides are that all your employees are a.) remote b.) not great English speakers and c.) generally mediocre developers, and this all has negative impact on developer velocity and the caliber of features you can ship. If you're chasing a niche this is often a great trade-off, because it can make your business profitable even at revenue levels that can't support a big-company product. If you're chasing the next big thing this is usually a stupid idea, because somebody's going to raise $50M, hire top-quality ex-FANGs at half a million each, put them in a room together, and win the market before you can ship your first couple features.
closeparen 4y ago
I think you will find a lot of these people doing embedded, desktop, or enterprise intranet stuff rather than slick web/mobile products or massively scalable backend APIs. Using dated and uncool stacks. Dated and uncool practices. Windows centric. Hiring more about years of experience with particular framework versions than LeetCode or system design interviews. Two perrenial favorite pieces on this website include Dark Matter Developers [0] and We Only Hire The Trendiest [1]. [0] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-unseen-99 https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un... [1] https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/ https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/

3 ms·

That surprising to me (perhaps due to bay area bubble), how do I hire people at that rate? Is it entirely about the location? Are the skill set expectations dif

by justahuman74 4y ago

That surprising to me (perhaps due to bay area bubble), how do I hire people at that rate? Is it entirely about the location? Are the skill set expectations different?

nostrademons 4y ago
You can do a lot better than that internationally. When I was in the startup founder world my peers were paying their developers about $30K/year, and getting decent (but not great) talent in Thailand, Vietnam, India, Eastern Europe, etc. The downsides are that all your employees are a.) remote b.) not great English speakers and c.) generally mediocre developers, and this all has negative impact on developer velocity and the caliber of features you can ship. If you're chasing a niche this is often a great trade-off, because it can make your business profitable even at revenue levels that can't support a big-company product. If you're chasing the next big thing this is usually a stupid idea, because somebody's going to raise $50M, hire top-quality ex-FANGs at half a million each, put them in a room together, and win the market before you can ship your first couple features.
closeparen 4y ago
I think you will find a lot of these people doing embedded, desktop, or enterprise intranet stuff rather than slick web/mobile products or massively scalable backend APIs. Using dated and uncool stacks. Dated and uncool practices. Windows centric. Hiring more about years of experience with particular framework versions than LeetCode or system design interviews. Two perrenial favorite pieces on this website include Dark Matter Developers [0] and We Only Hire The Trendiest [1]. [0] https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-unseen-99 https://www.hanselman.com/blog/dark-matter-developers-the-un... [1] https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/ https://danluu.com/programmer-moneyball/