9 ms·

Why developers are allergic to job opportunities

106 points by bitsweet 14y ago

beghbali 14y ago
There are a few issues with jobs, one is we want to focus on building great things and don't want to spend time exploring opportunities in parallel. Two, it's hard to narrow down available opportunities to a few we would actually be interested in. Three, we don't want to invest too much time interviewing and writing resumes to only find out the position is not exciting after all. This thing while it's not perfect it's the right direction. Ps I wanna know salary!
- ironchef 14y ago
  As to salary, i just ask up front during opening discussions (before interviews). I ask them to give me a ballpark of salary range so we're not wasting each others' time.
  - dadkins 14y ago
    And when they respond back, "That depends on experience. Why don't you tell us what you're expecting so we're not wasting each others' time."?
    - aristus 14y ago
      Then they are screwing around. At that stage they have your resume and know your experience. I tell recruiters my salary to save time but ymmv.
      - sp332 14y ago
        Why? Tell them what you're looking for, not what you have now. "A potted plant could handle a salary negotiation better than many people (myself included at one point) -- at least the potted plant wouldn't divulge a salary history when asked." -tptacek https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3290033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3290033
        aristus 14y ago
        Like I said, ymmv. I have no complaints.
        kls 14y ago
        I actually had a company that once asked for current pay stubs, they where a staffing firm and we had already negotiate the rate at which I was willing to take the job. Part of their process of on-boarding was that I had to submit three current pay stubs. I protested and they assured me that it would not be used as a lever to drive down the already negotiated salary. I agreed to submit them, but I also included a poison pill stipulation that if they tried to negotiate salary after they where submitted that my salary requirement would go to 120% of what we negotiated. Sure enough they saw that I was making far less than what we negotiated and thought that they had leverage. They tried to reduce the offer by a little more than 25%. What they did not account for was that I had another offer that was only a little less than the original agreed upon rate. I stuck to the 120% poison pill, but accepted the offer from the other company, because even if they would have accepted the rate, the well was already fouled.
        Simucal 14y ago
        How did this poison pill work? Did you simply state it verbally or in an email? In a contract?
        kls 14y ago
        Just verbally when they sprung the 3 pay stubs requirement on me. I kind of knew where it was heading but they said it was standard practice to verify employment. Mentally I was over it, but I submitted them more out of curiosity to see if a company would actually stoop to such practices. It was right when the .com bust happened and a lot of companies now felt like they had the upper hand.
        kls 14y ago
        Sorry I forgot to mention, after I declined the reduced rate and told them I would not be taking the position, they countered with a rate that was %10 below what the original offer was, stating that no one can reasonable expect to gain a 35% increase in salary by just moving jobs, but I was underpaid at the job I was at (A start-up that did not have a lot of capital) and the rate, I was looking for was only slightly above market. When I refused that, they then came back with the original offer and when I refused that they came back with %10 above what we had agreed on. I did not let them drag it out any further and notified them that I was taking another offer. The thing was, their client was a large online travel company and I have worked on a lot of the travel systems people use every day. My background read like the job description they where looking for. So I am sure they had to do a lot of explaining as to why they lost the perfect candidate. Their client is a household name in travel and they where extremely happy that I was coming on-board, I am sure they held their clients feet to the fire with my background and where just looking to squeeze out more profit by taking it out of my end. They got greedy and it cost them.
    - mratzloff 14y ago
      Which is bullshit. They know what they can afford and what range they're looking for.
    - mhurron 14y ago
      You thank them for wasting your time and walk away.
      - dadkins 14y ago
        Do you really think a Google or Facebook recruiter will tell you what they're willing to offer before they've interviewed you?
        matwood 14y ago
        Maybe not, but they don't need to. A few Google searches should give a candidate some idea what to expect based on their experience. Also, Google and FB both have well known perks. Google/FB/Other Big tech names are a lot different than some secretive private company that wants to interview for days on end and then offer half market value.
        mhurron 14y ago
        Why wouldn't they be? They already know the range they are going to offer. Why are you so open to them hiding important details that would immediately remove them from contention? Are you that happy to have them at the end of the process stating "Oh by the way we want you to move to Japan." Thanks guys, with that little bit of information we could have prevented this whole song and dance. On top of that, just because Google or Facebook might not, doesn't mean it's the right way or that I have to put up with that. If they won't say up front, I don't care about anything else they have to say.
        Matt_Mickiewicz 14y ago
        Maybe not Google or Facebook (yet), but we have hundreds of venture funded companies who will do exactly that on DeveloperAuction.
anonymouz 14y ago
How come this page is completely screwed up without JavaScript (tiny font, no paragraph breaks)?
- Wilya 14y ago
  The post seems rendered from markdown client-side. I fail to see how this even remotely makes sense, though.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    So its like XML+XSLT, but hipsterized?
    - ihsw 14y ago
      Not at all, there's a certain level of sensibility in client-side rendering -- particularly because responses can contain only a skeleton structure of content, ie: JSON. Relying on a client-side language that may (or may not) be disabled, however, is simply foolish.
      - anonymouz 14y ago
        But roughly speaking HTML should contain the structure, and CSS the rendering information, especially if it's mostly a static page like here (maybe if you're writing a Webmail client or something it makes sense to handle more stuff on the client side). I guess the absolute horror scenario for the web would be when people start deciding to do their own personal server-side markup, and then render it with a bloated JS library on the client (hey, it's Turing complete!).
  - bitsweet 14y ago
    We invested a lot of time in the preview capabilities when creating a protip. We hit a small issue recently rendering the same markdown from both the client side during content creation and server side during rendering. While we fix it we just opted to temporarily do it client-side for now. It's not perfect but worked as a stop-gap measure for most.
donretag 14y ago
What a great idea, let's put all our tech team members all on one page so that recruiters can have one-stop shopping for people to spam. I am half joking, but also half serious. I minimize my profile online to cut down on recruiting spam. Coderwall is a step in the wrong direction in this regard.
- bitsweet 14y ago
  The reality is this information is easily accessible on LinkedIn. Even if someone hides their current place of employment, LinkedIn's recruiting tools actually let recruiters see that information (one of the reasons we receive so much recruiter spam). Companies that want to build great teams need to start thinking more offensively than defensively. If you have a great culture and solving interesting problems, recruiters wont pose a threat.
  - dpritchett 14y ago
    Yep. Security through obscurity is no security at all.
  - k3n 14y ago
    I'm like donretag in the sense that I also seek to minimize my online profile as much as possible; thus, I don't use LinkedIn. So no, the reality is not that it's easily accessible -- unless you're already making it so on sites that are liberal with sharing your info like LinkedIn.
    - bitsweet 14y ago
      Coderwall never exposes personal contact information of anyone on the team, so the exposure is no greater then having a GitHub profile...probably even less.
      - k3n 14y ago
        That's cool, I was mainly just commenting on the LinkedIn aspect. Monster.com was probably the biggest mistake I ever made, it took 5+ years for my info to get fully removed there (or at least for the random spambot recruiters to stop spamming me).
threepipeproblm 14y ago
Why do developers love to use tiny fonts, even though people are known to flee at the sight of them?
- btilly 14y ago
  I personally use small fonts in my editor so that I can see more code at once. So I don't notice how big the font is. But as my eyes get worse, I may be forced to adjust. :-(
  - jebblue 14y ago
    They will and you can, getting old sucks.
- dclusin 14y ago
  It's not so much the small size of the font it's whether or not it is a fixed-width font. A font is considered fixed-width if every character that can be represented in the font set has the same width and height for each character. As an engineer this is extremely important because it makes the text easier to read. This is because in programming a single semicolon among thousands and thousands of lines of code can literally make or break a program.
columbo 14y ago
This is off-topic but I couldn't read the article past a few lines. The blurry background kept getting my eyes unfocused. Maybe it is time I see an eye dr.
- mratzloff 14y ago
  You're not alone. I had to shrink the window to get past the first couple of paragraphs. A truly terrible background for a blog.
dpeck 14y ago
Developers are allergic to career advancement for a few reasons. They tend to be a fairly risk averse lot, with many unwilling to trade the devil they know for the devil they don't. They also tend to have a low bullshit tolerance and get worn down quickly with the hassle that recruiting/employment has become. Multiple phone interviews, HR people, code tests, and then the "used car salesman" process of salary negotiation. Its draining, especially when you're an introvert by nature. I went through this once with a semi-established startup when I was looking for my 2nd job. 3 interviews in they wouldn't discuss salary over the phone, wanted me to come in to meet with the CTO again to discuss. I burned the bridge at that point, and became fairly jaded to the whole process. Get salary info up from, if what you want is near the top of any range they give drop it and move on theres no oppertunity for advancement. If they won't give salary range, drop it and move on. More than 2 interviews after the inital HR screening, move on. And realistically if you're a somewhat proven commodity you should be able to hammer out all the details off-site over coffee/beer and finish up the formalities in a few hours at the office. We're fortunate enough to have a high demand skillset at the moment, and thankfully most of us can approach these situations from a position of "power", but sadly most of us don't.
- mratzloff 14y ago
  I think this hits the nail on the head. Stop putting up with bullshit, guys.
- dclusin 14y ago
  Also for me it's the threat of potential downtime. Switching organizations is a hugely expensive process and to create anything of consequence (e.g. not some stupid rails crud app) takes a lot of domain knowledge and experience with the existing code base. When I think about switching organizations I dread the inevitable "setting up the enviornment" slog as it's required but not useful to anybody. At my current job I have my pick of hugely complex and difficult problems ready and waiting. And of course there is also tons of open source projects a click away
  - pasbesoin 14y ago
    And sometimes, acquiring some of the knowledge can be like pulling teeth (very difficult and perhaps political).
jdavid 14y ago
Here is the problem with the job market in SF Tech. As a developer we get plenty of emails, and when we finally go through the work of finding a good job we probably put more on the table than most business dev people do. We are asked to work late when the project was miss planned or miss communicated to customers, when the thing breaks for some random reason, we are there to fix it. So at some point we feel like it's a part of us. On the flipside while companies are trying to recruit they don't want to talk about the details of the app and what they really need done because they don't want to scare you off. So you go through this dance, and it kinda starts like this. Some recruiter sees in their linkedin network that a job posts. If they are whiley they might find the job listing on a particular site. They don't have any relationship with the company or with you but they want to broker the deal and get %25 of your yearly salary so they are willing to work for it. All the while the recruiter is trying to get information out of both sides without a contract and with out all of the information. They don't know how much the job will offer until they have a few good candidates to show, and to start a dialog with the company. On the other side of the table they are trying to figure out what it will take for you to leave what you are doing so they ask weird questions that have hardly anything to do with what you care about, but are solely related to things they understand. Once you get far enough along in that dance, you'll go for an onsite where the interviewer is either an engineer or a hiring manager. In SF, no one has any time, so the interviewee is just not that important until they are actually hired. This is the first thing I look for. Does the hiring company actually care about me? In many cases you are just someone else to interview. Some companies like to interview a whole lot of people and then select the best. This is a long drawn out process and usually involves some metrics on the back end. Positions that are open longer are more likely to hire. Once you get past the personality screen then they give you a technical task/ interview. Some companies ask tough computer science questions that have long been lost by people who actually do the work. Others ask tech gotchas that you would normally look up on google if you were stuck. And some actually get you to work on something related to the actual position you are interviewing for. Now once you get through all of that, now they need to close you. At this point they need to work a number. Back in the old days companies would work out a number and then do something nice just to make you feel really welcome. In SV this is much less so the case. Many people are very analytical and hardly have social skills so it becomes all about the numbers. At this point as an engineer you would like to know how well the company is doing, but you can't quite ask the hard questions without seeming skeptical as this might affect your offer. On the flip side the company making the offer wants to get you as affordably as they can and they don't want you to take some other offer. At the end of the day, the offering company will make an offer and put a time limit on it. ( as for some reason why they would rather have you make a brash decision about the next 3 years of your life, i don't get ) And then you look at the numbers and you either counter or don't. Many companies out here have been hard pressed to negotiate for the following reasons. * the cap table is already set * the salary is fair, and we are a startup and that's what we can offer * we don't offer bonuses It's odd, because they are willing to pay a recruiter $20,000 to find you, but they don't want to actually give a little extra to the engineering staff. Some companies wont even accept resumes from recruiters, but then you are missing out on all of the talent that get's talked into submitting a resume and has not had the time to search on their own. I just wish companies talked more about the real issues and were more open and honest about things. I think that if you start with honesty, and expect honesty you have a much better chance of getting it back from your future employee and confident. I forgot to mention that each of these dances might take an engineer 10-20 hours per company to full evaluate them. It's not a small amount of work to interview.
autarch 14y ago
I think one of the biggest barriers to finding a new job that's better than your current one is lack of telecommuting options. Unless you live in NYC or the Bay Area or a few other big cities it's not like there's dozens of great companies to choose from for programming jobs. Younger people might find it easy to move, but once you're in a relationship or have kids you can't just pick up and move every few years.
- loeschg 14y ago
  Even as a young guy I can relate. I want to stay in the DC area, and I'm having trouble finding anything other than government consultant work. Not exactly the most exciting realm. Working to meet some people that might be able to point me in the right direction. As much as I hate to say it, "networking" pays.
  - armored_mammal 14y ago
    I hate the whole 'networking' thing, too, because I associate it with people who replace functional skills with schmoozing skills, and I also hate how concentrated in California and New York things are, because I'd really rather not move, too. Plus moving to San Fran or NY, a huge chunk of any salary increase just goes straight to rent. Blah.
    - loeschg 14y ago
      I also hate how concentrated in California and New York things are, because I'd really rather not move, too. Plus moving to San Fran or NY, a huge chunk of any salary increase just goes straight to rent. Blah. haha, amen.
      - EricDeb 14y ago
        Could not agree more. For young coders, offering time to learn a particular technology or a telecommuting opportunity would sell me. My impression is most small companies are hiring because they are disappointed with the output by their technical teams thus far. Therefore they think they need a "rock star" replacement.
Zelphyr 14y ago
Because the job descriptions are always "fast-paced" and "cutting-edge" and "changing the way X does Y" perhaps?
jetti 14y ago
Speaking as somebody very early in my career, the "having your pick of places to work" isn't that apt to me. Sure I could quit today and have a job next week doing development, however, I would for sure be worse off because while there is need for developers there companies that are doing awesome things already attract awesome developers, where the need seems to be the strongest is at companies that are doing boring work and paying shit wages. Also, what some see as "allergic to career advacement" could also be seen as long term career planning. For instance, I worked a terrible dev job for 7 months. I hated the place and they paid terrible salary for the skills they wanted and area they were. I quit after finding my current job. Now this is a nice place to work but there is still limitations to advancing as it is a smaller company. That being said, I'm planning to stick around for a few years because I'm working on my MS in CS and working on achieving my goal of working on compilers for a living. I don't need to hop to whatever job seems cooler than where I'm at currently because in the long run, it doesn't help me. Does it raise my income a bit? Sure, but after a certain point the money doesn't matter.
pnathan 14y ago
I'm not allergic to career opportunities. I am, however, slightly picky in regards to the company ethics & business plan, technology used, viability to be operating in a year, and also- I don't want to live in SF or NYC. If you want to hire someone, make a concerted effort not to drag out the process, get the decision maker involved early, and cut the crap. Your OODA cycle will be lowered, the candidate will have a better impression, and you'll see more people. I've been on both sides of the table, and a conscious decision not to look like Dilbert ( or worse, Ratbert/Dogbert ) in your process makes a huge difference.
ig1 14y ago
The premise is false. Developers change jobs roughly every three years, that's actually high compared to most other professions.
drumdance 14y ago
tl;dr - currently Supply < Demand. Back after the dot com burst a whole lot of developers would have loved for recruiters to bug them.
zackmorris 14y ago
I have the training to build a computer from scratch (computer engineering degree). Anymore, I find it absolutely exhausting to talk to anyone about technology. Nobody seems to understand that all I need are living expenses. Please, just leave me alone, give me a place to live and food, and I will make whatever you need. Anymore though, the gap between earning room and board and signing your life away to a soul sucking corporate atmosphere is so vast that I've opted to just go it alone and live as a starving artist. I wish there was an in-between, but I've become disillusioned with the startup culture that is devolving towards 90s era bubble think. I think of it as, hackers have not yet declared independence from the power elite. Until that happens, I fear that we'll suffer indefinitely.
- calinet6 14y ago
  There are some very down-to-earth companies doing real good work out there, things you can believe in with people that won't suck your soul away. Don't give up hope. Best of luck to you.
calinet6 14y ago
He's out of the loop—also a member of the "job noise" he speaks of. This is a case of being on the inside looking in. From the outside looking in, I don't want to go anywhere near it. Most of the jobs I've had (and all the recent ones) have been through friends and connections, completely bypassing the system and the job noise. If I need a job, I talk to people—any people, and lots of them. My last job I found while at a party with random friends-of-friends I mostly didn't even know, and before that was through a coworker at a consulting gig. Prior to that I started a company after having a great discussion at a bar. I haven't updated my resume in 8 years—it's pointless, I've never found a good job using it anyway. In my opinion, if they're looking at your resume, you've already lost. You have already become a number in a pile. If they're looking at you personally and evaluating your fit for the company, then you start way ahead of the game. This is how job searching today has to go; if you're going to recruiters or job boards, you're already in a death spiral. Escape it by networking and reaching out to your true human connections. Treat your resume as obsolete, and let your true work and your recommendations stand in its place. It will be much more effective, I promise.
- mooreds 14y ago
  Resumes are for chumps. Don't do it, spend the time getting to know the company you want to work for, or people you'd like to work with. Frankly, I don't want to compete on the basis of my resume! Keywords and biz speak are hard to avoid on these documents. And now that everyone can spray their resume at hiring managers without licking a stamp, sending in a resume really is a waste of time. It almost always has been that way, read 'What Color is Your Parachute' for a taste of job hunting over the past few decades. Get to know someone at the company, do a contract to hire, do a gig, volunteer with someone, even read and comment on a blog or twitter feed of someone in the company. All these are far more likely to lead to conversations that will let you know if you actually want to work there, and if you'll be a good fit.
orangethirty 14y ago
I'm not allergic to job opportunities. In fact, I'm always interested in knowing abou them. But, don't expect me to wait by my inbox. I just pushed out 3 MVPs last month, and I'm on my way to push 3 more this month. I have code to ship. If you want me to ship your code then be aware of some things. First, I understand where you are coming from. I do. But don't expect me to give into your proposal just because you have some investor interested in your "app." Two, if you offer me equity, then you are out right telling me that my time is worth more than your whole business. That is not a good deal for either side. You wouldnt be giving away equity if you had money in the bank. Three, don't lowball be. It's a waste of time for us both, because I will decline, and you will waste a lot of time finding someone who ships.
armored_mammal 14y ago
I want to find a new job that's more interesting, but every time I try it's impossible to wade through the piles uselessness obfuscating everything. Then I think about how much trouble it'd be to market myself and how much of my private life and interests I'd have to make public just get someone interested enough to get me a detour around said piles. Then I go back to my current job where I'm woefully underpaid and build mountains of Rube Goldberg-esque trash to satisfy the idiotic short term thinking justified by the fake jingoism of the business and marketing types that run the company. Remember folks, if you can build something wrong to reduce the cost of developer time, it's always worth it!
abuiles 14y ago
I wonder at which point did you ended up going on this direction, did the launch of recent businesses like http://developerauction.com/ http://developerauction.com/ influenced some how this decision? Would you still describe as the "online reputation system for developers" or are you going to turn around and head into a new "job market" where companies can show off their profile? what do I gain following a company? The profiles look really nice :D.
bbwharris 14y ago
I think we should all sit back and be happy that we are in this position. It's a great place to be, much better than desperate to find anyone who's hiring. We have our pick and we complain about recruiters? If only everyone was so lucky.
EricDeb 14y ago
I see a lot of jobs requiring 3-5 years of experience in an odd combination of technologies that I seriously doubt many, even experienced coders have. I imagine a lot of companies could attract more applicants or find talent easier by allowing a developer time to ramp up with a new technology or language.
etherael 14y ago
I think the incentives need to be re-aligned. https://www.sofee.com.au/ https://www.sofee.com.au/ is new and maybe a step in the right direction, though only for Australia at the moment. Does anyone know of anything similar internationally?

106 points by bitsweet 14y ago

There are a few issues with jobs, one is we want to focus on building great things and don't want to spend time exploring opportunities in parallel. Two, it's hard to narrow down available opportunities to a few we would actually be interested in. Three, we don't want to invest too much time interviewing and writing resumes to only find out the position is not exciting after all. This thing while it's not perfect it's the right direction. Ps I wanna know salary!

ironchef 14y ago
As to salary, i just ask up front during opening discussions (before interviews). I ask them to give me a ballpark of salary range so we're not wasting each others' time.
- dadkins 14y ago
  And when they respond back, "That depends on experience. Why don't you tell us what you're expecting so we're not wasting each others' time."?
  - aristus 14y ago
    Then they are screwing around. At that stage they have your resume and know your experience. I tell recruiters my salary to save time but ymmv.
    - sp332 14y ago
      Why? Tell them what you're looking for, not what you have now. "A potted plant could handle a salary negotiation better than many people (myself included at one point) -- at least the potted plant wouldn't divulge a salary history when asked." -tptacek https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3290033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3290033
      - aristus 14y ago
        Like I said, ymmv. I have no complaints.
      - kls 14y ago
        I actually had a company that once asked for current pay stubs, they where a staffing firm and we had already negotiate the rate at which I was willing to take the job. Part of their process of on-boarding was that I had to submit three current pay stubs. I protested and they assured me that it would not be used as a lever to drive down the already negotiated salary. I agreed to submit them, but I also included a poison pill stipulation that if they tried to negotiate salary after they where submitted that my salary requirement would go to 120% of what we negotiated. Sure enough they saw that I was making far less than what we negotiated and thought that they had leverage. They tried to reduce the offer by a little more than 25%. What they did not account for was that I had another offer that was only a little less than the original agreed upon rate. I stuck to the 120% poison pill, but accepted the offer from the other company, because even if they would have accepted the rate, the well was already fouled.
        Simucal 14y ago
        How did this poison pill work? Did you simply state it verbally or in an email? In a contract?
        kls 14y ago
        Just verbally when they sprung the 3 pay stubs requirement on me. I kind of knew where it was heading but they said it was standard practice to verify employment. Mentally I was over it, but I submitted them more out of curiosity to see if a company would actually stoop to such practices. It was right when the .com bust happened and a lot of companies now felt like they had the upper hand.
        kls 14y ago
        Sorry I forgot to mention, after I declined the reduced rate and told them I would not be taking the position, they countered with a rate that was %10 below what the original offer was, stating that no one can reasonable expect to gain a 35% increase in salary by just moving jobs, but I was underpaid at the job I was at (A start-up that did not have a lot of capital) and the rate, I was looking for was only slightly above market. When I refused that, they then came back with the original offer and when I refused that they came back with %10 above what we had agreed on. I did not let them drag it out any further and notified them that I was taking another offer. The thing was, their client was a large online travel company and I have worked on a lot of the travel systems people use every day. My background read like the job description they where looking for. So I am sure they had to do a lot of explaining as to why they lost the perfect candidate. Their client is a household name in travel and they where extremely happy that I was coming on-board, I am sure they held their clients feet to the fire with my background and where just looking to squeeze out more profit by taking it out of my end. They got greedy and it cost them.
  - mratzloff 14y ago
    Which is bullshit. They know what they can afford and what range they're looking for.
  - mhurron 14y ago
    You thank them for wasting your time and walk away.
    - dadkins 14y ago
      Do you really think a Google or Facebook recruiter will tell you what they're willing to offer before they've interviewed you?
      - matwood 14y ago
        Maybe not, but they don't need to. A few Google searches should give a candidate some idea what to expect based on their experience. Also, Google and FB both have well known perks. Google/FB/Other Big tech names are a lot different than some secretive private company that wants to interview for days on end and then offer half market value.
      - mhurron 14y ago
        Why wouldn't they be? They already know the range they are going to offer. Why are you so open to them hiding important details that would immediately remove them from contention? Are you that happy to have them at the end of the process stating "Oh by the way we want you to move to Japan." Thanks guys, with that little bit of information we could have prevented this whole song and dance. On top of that, just because Google or Facebook might not, doesn't mean it's the right way or that I have to put up with that. If they won't say up front, I don't care about anything else they have to say.
      - Matt_Mickiewicz 14y ago
        Maybe not Google or Facebook (yet), but we have hundreds of venture funded companies who will do exactly that on DeveloperAuction.

anonymouz 14y ago

How come this page is completely screwed up without JavaScript (tiny font, no paragraph breaks)?

Wilya 14y ago
The post seems rendered from markdown client-side. I fail to see how this even remotely makes sense, though.
- Evbn 14y ago
  So its like XML+XSLT, but hipsterized?
  - ihsw 14y ago
    Not at all, there's a certain level of sensibility in client-side rendering -- particularly because responses can contain only a skeleton structure of content, ie: JSON. Relying on a client-side language that may (or may not) be disabled, however, is simply foolish.
    - anonymouz 14y ago
      But roughly speaking HTML should contain the structure, and CSS the rendering information, especially if it's mostly a static page like here (maybe if you're writing a Webmail client or something it makes sense to handle more stuff on the client side). I guess the absolute horror scenario for the web would be when people start deciding to do their own personal server-side markup, and then render it with a bloated JS library on the client (hey, it's Turing complete!).
- bitsweet 14y ago
  We invested a lot of time in the preview capabilities when creating a protip. We hit a small issue recently rendering the same markdown from both the client side during content creation and server side during rendering. While we fix it we just opted to temporarily do it client-side for now. It's not perfect but worked as a stop-gap measure for most.

donretag 14y ago

What a great idea, let's put all our tech team members all on one page so that recruiters can have one-stop shopping for people to spam. I am half joking, but also half serious. I minimize my profile online to cut down on recruiting spam. Coderwall is a step in the wrong direction in this regard.

bitsweet 14y ago
The reality is this information is easily accessible on LinkedIn. Even if someone hides their current place of employment, LinkedIn's recruiting tools actually let recruiters see that information (one of the reasons we receive so much recruiter spam). Companies that want to build great teams need to start thinking more offensively than defensively. If you have a great culture and solving interesting problems, recruiters wont pose a threat.
- dpritchett 14y ago
  Yep. Security through obscurity is no security at all.
- k3n 14y ago
  I'm like donretag in the sense that I also seek to minimize my online profile as much as possible; thus, I don't use LinkedIn. So no, the reality is not that it's easily accessible -- unless you're already making it so on sites that are liberal with sharing your info like LinkedIn.
  - bitsweet 14y ago
    Coderwall never exposes personal contact information of anyone on the team, so the exposure is no greater then having a GitHub profile...probably even less.
    - k3n 14y ago
      That's cool, I was mainly just commenting on the LinkedIn aspect. Monster.com was probably the biggest mistake I ever made, it took 5+ years for my info to get fully removed there (or at least for the random spambot recruiters to stop spamming me).

threepipeproblm 14y ago

Why do developers love to use tiny fonts, even though people are known to flee at the sight of them?

btilly 14y ago
I personally use small fonts in my editor so that I can see more code at once. So I don't notice how big the font is. But as my eyes get worse, I may be forced to adjust. :-(
- jebblue 14y ago
  They will and you can, getting old sucks.
dclusin 14y ago
It's not so much the small size of the font it's whether or not it is a fixed-width font. A font is considered fixed-width if every character that can be represented in the font set has the same width and height for each character. As an engineer this is extremely important because it makes the text easier to read. This is because in programming a single semicolon among thousands and thousands of lines of code can literally make or break a program.

columbo 14y ago

This is off-topic but I couldn't read the article past a few lines. The blurry background kept getting my eyes unfocused. Maybe it is time I see an eye dr.

mratzloff 14y ago
You're not alone. I had to shrink the window to get past the first couple of paragraphs. A truly terrible background for a blog.

dpeck 14y ago

Developers are allergic to career advancement for a few reasons. They tend to be a fairly risk averse lot, with many unwilling to trade the devil they know for the devil they don't. They also tend to have a low bullshit tolerance and get worn down quickly with the hassle that recruiting/employment has become. Multiple phone interviews, HR people, code tests, and then the "used car salesman" process of salary negotiation. Its draining, especially when you're an introvert by nature. I went through this once with a semi-established startup when I was looking for my 2nd job. 3 interviews in they wouldn't discuss salary over the phone, wanted me to come in to meet with the CTO again to discuss. I burned the bridge at that point, and became fairly jaded to the whole process. Get salary info up from, if what you want is near the top of any range they give drop it and move on theres no oppertunity for advancement. If they won't give salary range, drop it and move on. More than 2 interviews after the inital HR screening, move on. And realistically if you're a somewhat proven commodity you should be able to hammer out all the details off-site over coffee/beer and finish up the formalities in a few hours at the office. We're fortunate enough to have a high demand skillset at the moment, and thankfully most of us can approach these situations from a position of "power", but sadly most of us don't.

mratzloff 14y ago
I think this hits the nail on the head. Stop putting up with bullshit, guys.
dclusin 14y ago
Also for me it's the threat of potential downtime. Switching organizations is a hugely expensive process and to create anything of consequence (e.g. not some stupid rails crud app) takes a lot of domain knowledge and experience with the existing code base. When I think about switching organizations I dread the inevitable "setting up the enviornment" slog as it's required but not useful to anybody. At my current job I have my pick of hugely complex and difficult problems ready and waiting. And of course there is also tons of open source projects a click away
- pasbesoin 14y ago
  And sometimes, acquiring some of the knowledge can be like pulling teeth (very difficult and perhaps political).

jdavid 14y ago

Here is the problem with the job market in SF Tech. As a developer we get plenty of emails, and when we finally go through the work of finding a good job we probably put more on the table than most business dev people do. We are asked to work late when the project was miss planned or miss communicated to customers, when the thing breaks for some random reason, we are there to fix it. So at some point we feel like it's a part of us. On the flipside while companies are trying to recruit they don't want to talk about the details of the app and what they really need done because they don't want to scare you off. So you go through this dance, and it kinda starts like this. Some recruiter sees in their linkedin network that a job posts. If they are whiley they might find the job listing on a particular site. They don't have any relationship with the company or with you but they want to broker the deal and get %25 of your yearly salary so they are willing to work for it. All the while the recruiter is trying to get information out of both sides without a contract and with out all of the information. They don't know how much the job will offer until they have a few good candidates to show, and to start a dialog with the company. On the other side of the table they are trying to figure out what it will take for you to leave what you are doing so they ask weird questions that have hardly anything to do with what you care about, but are solely related to things they understand. Once you get far enough along in that dance, you'll go for an onsite where the interviewer is either an engineer or a hiring manager. In SF, no one has any time, so the interviewee is just not that important until they are actually hired. This is the first thing I look for. Does the hiring company actually care about me? In many cases you are just someone else to interview. Some companies like to interview a whole lot of people and then select the best. This is a long drawn out process and usually involves some metrics on the back end. Positions that are open longer are more likely to hire. Once you get past the personality screen then they give you a technical task/ interview. Some companies ask tough computer science questions that have long been lost by people who actually do the work. Others ask tech gotchas that you would normally look up on google if you were stuck. And some actually get you to work on something related to the actual position you are interviewing for. Now once you get through all of that, now they need to close you. At this point they need to work a number. Back in the old days companies would work out a number and then do something nice just to make you feel really welcome. In SV this is much less so the case. Many people are very analytical and hardly have social skills so it becomes all about the numbers. At this point as an engineer you would like to know how well the company is doing, but you can't quite ask the hard questions without seeming skeptical as this might affect your offer. On the flip side the company making the offer wants to get you as affordably as they can and they don't want you to take some other offer. At the end of the day, the offering company will make an offer and put a time limit on it. ( as for some reason why they would rather have you make a brash decision about the next 3 years of your life, i don't get ) And then you look at the numbers and you either counter or don't. Many companies out here have been hard pressed to negotiate for the following reasons. * the cap table is already set * the salary is fair, and we are a startup and that's what we can offer * we don't offer bonuses It's odd, because they are willing to pay a recruiter $20,000 to find you, but they don't want to actually give a little extra to the engineering staff. Some companies wont even accept resumes from recruiters, but then you are missing out on all of the talent that get's talked into submitting a resume and has not had the time to search on their own. I just wish companies talked more about the real issues and were more open and honest about things. I think that if you start with honesty, and expect honesty you have a much better chance of getting it back from your future employee and confident. I forgot to mention that each of these dances might take an engineer 10-20 hours per company to full evaluate them. It's not a small amount of work to interview.

autarch 14y ago

I think one of the biggest barriers to finding a new job that's better than your current one is lack of telecommuting options. Unless you live in NYC or the Bay Area or a few other big cities it's not like there's dozens of great companies to choose from for programming jobs. Younger people might find it easy to move, but once you're in a relationship or have kids you can't just pick up and move every few years.

loeschg 14y ago
Even as a young guy I can relate. I want to stay in the DC area, and I'm having trouble finding anything other than government consultant work. Not exactly the most exciting realm. Working to meet some people that might be able to point me in the right direction. As much as I hate to say it, "networking" pays.
- armored_mammal 14y ago
  I hate the whole 'networking' thing, too, because I associate it with people who replace functional skills with schmoozing skills, and I also hate how concentrated in California and New York things are, because I'd really rather not move, too. Plus moving to San Fran or NY, a huge chunk of any salary increase just goes straight to rent. Blah.
  - loeschg 14y ago
    I also hate how concentrated in California and New York things are, because I'd really rather not move, too. Plus moving to San Fran or NY, a huge chunk of any salary increase just goes straight to rent. Blah. haha, amen.
    - EricDeb 14y ago
      Could not agree more. For young coders, offering time to learn a particular technology or a telecommuting opportunity would sell me. My impression is most small companies are hiring because they are disappointed with the output by their technical teams thus far. Therefore they think they need a "rock star" replacement.

Zelphyr 14y ago

Because the job descriptions are always "fast-paced" and "cutting-edge" and "changing the way X does Y" perhaps?

jetti 14y ago

Speaking as somebody very early in my career, the "having your pick of places to work" isn't that apt to me. Sure I could quit today and have a job next week doing development, however, I would for sure be worse off because while there is need for developers there companies that are doing awesome things already attract awesome developers, where the need seems to be the strongest is at companies that are doing boring work and paying shit wages. Also, what some see as "allergic to career advacement" could also be seen as long term career planning. For instance, I worked a terrible dev job for 7 months. I hated the place and they paid terrible salary for the skills they wanted and area they were. I quit after finding my current job. Now this is a nice place to work but there is still limitations to advancing as it is a smaller company. That being said, I'm planning to stick around for a few years because I'm working on my MS in CS and working on achieving my goal of working on compilers for a living. I don't need to hop to whatever job seems cooler than where I'm at currently because in the long run, it doesn't help me. Does it raise my income a bit? Sure, but after a certain point the money doesn't matter.

pnathan 14y ago

I'm not allergic to career opportunities. I am, however, slightly picky in regards to the company ethics & business plan, technology used, viability to be operating in a year, and also- I don't want to live in SF or NYC. If you want to hire someone, make a concerted effort not to drag out the process, get the decision maker involved early, and cut the crap. Your OODA cycle will be lowered, the candidate will have a better impression, and you'll see more people. I've been on both sides of the table, and a conscious decision not to look like Dilbert ( or worse, Ratbert/Dogbert ) in your process makes a huge difference.

ig1 14y ago

The premise is false. Developers change jobs roughly every three years, that's actually high compared to most other professions.

drumdance 14y ago

tl;dr - currently Supply < Demand. Back after the dot com burst a whole lot of developers would have loved for recruiters to bug them.

zackmorris 14y ago

I have the training to build a computer from scratch (computer engineering degree). Anymore, I find it absolutely exhausting to talk to anyone about technology. Nobody seems to understand that all I need are living expenses. Please, just leave me alone, give me a place to live and food, and I will make whatever you need. Anymore though, the gap between earning room and board and signing your life away to a soul sucking corporate atmosphere is so vast that I've opted to just go it alone and live as a starving artist. I wish there was an in-between, but I've become disillusioned with the startup culture that is devolving towards 90s era bubble think. I think of it as, hackers have not yet declared independence from the power elite. Until that happens, I fear that we'll suffer indefinitely.

calinet6 14y ago
There are some very down-to-earth companies doing real good work out there, things you can believe in with people that won't suck your soul away. Don't give up hope. Best of luck to you.

calinet6 14y ago

He's out of the loop—also a member of the "job noise" he speaks of. This is a case of being on the inside looking in. From the outside looking in, I don't want to go anywhere near it. Most of the jobs I've had (and all the recent ones) have been through friends and connections, completely bypassing the system and the job noise. If I need a job, I talk to people—any people, and lots of them. My last job I found while at a party with random friends-of-friends I mostly didn't even know, and before that was through a coworker at a consulting gig. Prior to that I started a company after having a great discussion at a bar. I haven't updated my resume in 8 years—it's pointless, I've never found a good job using it anyway. In my opinion, if they're looking at your resume, you've already lost. You have already become a number in a pile. If they're looking at you personally and evaluating your fit for the company, then you start way ahead of the game. This is how job searching today has to go; if you're going to recruiters or job boards, you're already in a death spiral. Escape it by networking and reaching out to your true human connections. Treat your resume as obsolete, and let your true work and your recommendations stand in its place. It will be much more effective, I promise.

mooreds 14y ago
Resumes are for chumps. Don't do it, spend the time getting to know the company you want to work for, or people you'd like to work with. Frankly, I don't want to compete on the basis of my resume! Keywords and biz speak are hard to avoid on these documents. And now that everyone can spray their resume at hiring managers without licking a stamp, sending in a resume really is a waste of time. It almost always has been that way, read 'What Color is Your Parachute' for a taste of job hunting over the past few decades. Get to know someone at the company, do a contract to hire, do a gig, volunteer with someone, even read and comment on a blog or twitter feed of someone in the company. All these are far more likely to lead to conversations that will let you know if you actually want to work there, and if you'll be a good fit.

orangethirty 14y ago

I'm not allergic to job opportunities. In fact, I'm always interested in knowing abou them. But, don't expect me to wait by my inbox. I just pushed out 3 MVPs last month, and I'm on my way to push 3 more this month. I have code to ship. If you want me to ship your code then be aware of some things. First, I understand where you are coming from. I do. But don't expect me to give into your proposal just because you have some investor interested in your "app." Two, if you offer me equity, then you are out right telling me that my time is worth more than your whole business. That is not a good deal for either side. You wouldnt be giving away equity if you had money in the bank. Three, don't lowball be. It's a waste of time for us both, because I will decline, and you will waste a lot of time finding someone who ships.

armored_mammal 14y ago

I want to find a new job that's more interesting, but every time I try it's impossible to wade through the piles uselessness obfuscating everything. Then I think about how much trouble it'd be to market myself and how much of my private life and interests I'd have to make public just get someone interested enough to get me a detour around said piles. Then I go back to my current job where I'm woefully underpaid and build mountains of Rube Goldberg-esque trash to satisfy the idiotic short term thinking justified by the fake jingoism of the business and marketing types that run the company. Remember folks, if you can build something wrong to reduce the cost of developer time, it's always worth it!

abuiles 14y ago

I wonder at which point did you ended up going on this direction, did the launch of recent businesses like http://developerauction.com/ http://developerauction.com/ influenced some how this decision? Would you still describe as the "online reputation system for developers" or are you going to turn around and head into a new "job market" where companies can show off their profile? what do I gain following a company? The profiles look really nice :D.

bbwharris 14y ago

I think we should all sit back and be happy that we are in this position. It's a great place to be, much better than desperate to find anyone who's hiring. We have our pick and we complain about recruiters? If only everyone was so lucky.

EricDeb 14y ago

I see a lot of jobs requiring 3-5 years of experience in an odd combination of technologies that I seriously doubt many, even experienced coders have. I imagine a lot of companies could attract more applicants or find talent easier by allowing a developer time to ramp up with a new technology or language.

etherael 14y ago

I think the incentives need to be re-aligned. https://www.sofee.com.au/ https://www.sofee.com.au/ is new and maybe a step in the right direction, though only for Australia at the moment. Does anyone know of anything similar internationally?