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> It's very definitely a pay issue. How do you know this? From my own experience trying to hire in this economy, and from talking to other people hiring, the p

by arohner 13y ago

> It's very definitely a pay issue. How do you know this? From my own experience trying to hire in this economy, and from talking to other people hiring, the problem is finding good engineers that are hirable at all [edit: local or remote, for any amount of money]. When I've lost a candidate due to him taking another offer, the reasons have always been unrelated to money. Things like "The other company's problems are more interesting to me" or "I'd prefer to work locally in my current city, rather than move to SF or work remotely".

benjamincburns 13y ago
I've been through this a few times now, and for me it's definitely the money. San Francisco cost of living is out-fucking-rageous. Sure you can find cheaper housing outside of the city, but now you've got a long commute to deal with. Recent college grads are willing to deal with it because they don't know any better, because they think working in the valley is cool, and because they have the flexibility of being young and single. The problem is that recent grads don't have the experience most of you are looking for. The people with the experience are quite often married and have two careers to think about when making a move. If you're asking me to risk the move on my own, that's one thing. If you're asking me to beg my wife to halt all progress in her career, that's another. And now you're telling me that you're not willing to pay me enough to live relatively close to work and still have the same cash flow? No thanks! Edit: As an aside, a lot of startups try to justify the drop in cash flow with equity. Please... stop doing this. I don't mean to say that you shouldn't offer equity, you absolutely should. However I'm already telling you that I'm risk averse. Or, put differently, I'm telling you that I need compensation that's stable and easy to value. Your equity is nice, and I definitely want it, but it's the opposite of what I'm asking you for.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
And in my experience, if you are willing to pay the price, either in salary or in training investment, you will find yourself an engineer. Note that I didn't just say salary. Compensation includes the whole package, including, yes, the locality whose cost of living you're paying for, and especially the skills training you can provide, which is often not nearly as expensive as you think it is. Not to say there aren't some limits. There are obviously a limited number of people with expertise in kernel-level scheduler algorithms at any given time, for example. But as several of us have said below: if your business model relies on consistently finding and hiring unicorns, that is your problem. Either stop relying on unicorns or move your corporate HQ to the magical land of Equestria. Still, the BigCos almost all hire people right out of college and actually relocate and train them in the industrial environment, so I wouldn't call it a labor shortage until I've tried competing with that. (None of this is to say that I'm not trying to take advantage from my side by deliberately getting as close as I can to Unicorn-level expertise. Of course I am! But most of the time a well-run company built to grow should want my hardworking front-end, back-end, every-end web-dev friend who's less egotistical and doesn't rant on Hacker News, not a unicorn.)
- arohner 13y ago
  Who said I wasn't willing to pay the price? Again, this is about just talking to engineers that 1) I would enjoy working with 2) that are currently hirable. Offers and negotiating on price hasn't entered the conversation at all. Even that is hard.
  - eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    What about all the ones you're not talking to?
ditonal 13y ago
Saying it's a pay issue could also imply it's a macro issue, meaning that if salaries went up higher, the field would be more attractive and would attract more talent from other better compensated fields (i.e. medicine, big law), creating more hireable engineers in the long term.
tutufan 13y ago
I had an offer from an extremely famous Silicon Valley company, did the numbers very carefully, and realized that I simply could not afford to live there on what they were offering. (I have kids and a non-working spouse.) I don't think of myself as being a particularly greedy or spendthrift person. I've never owned a new car, for example, and I'm typing this on a five year old laptop. But the Bay Area is simply a no-go for me, sad as that makes me feel.

by arohner 13y ago

benjamincburns 13y ago

I've been through this a few times now, and for me it's definitely the money. San Francisco cost of living is out-fucking-rageous. Sure you can find cheaper housing outside of the city, but now you've got a long commute to deal with. Recent college grads are willing to deal with it because they don't know any better, because they think working in the valley is cool, and because they have the flexibility of being young and single. The problem is that recent grads don't have the experience most of you are looking for. The people with the experience are quite often married and have two careers to think about when making a move. If you're asking me to risk the move on my own, that's one thing. If you're asking me to beg my wife to halt all progress in her career, that's another. And now you're telling me that you're not willing to pay me enough to live relatively close to work and still have the same cash flow? No thanks! Edit: As an aside, a lot of startups try to justify the drop in cash flow with equity. Please... stop doing this. I don't mean to say that you shouldn't offer equity, you absolutely should. However I'm already telling you that I'm risk averse. Or, put differently, I'm telling you that I need compensation that's stable and easy to value. Your equity is nice, and I definitely want it, but it's the opposite of what I'm asking you for.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

And in my experience, if you are willing to pay the price, either in salary or in training investment, you will find yourself an engineer. Note that I didn't just say salary. Compensation includes the whole package, including, yes, the locality whose cost of living you're paying for, and especially the skills training you can provide, which is often not nearly as expensive as you think it is. Not to say there aren't some limits. There are obviously a limited number of people with expertise in kernel-level scheduler algorithms at any given time, for example. But as several of us have said below: if your business model relies on consistently finding and hiring unicorns, that is your problem. Either stop relying on unicorns or move your corporate HQ to the magical land of Equestria. Still, the BigCos almost all hire people right out of college and actually relocate and train them in the industrial environment, so I wouldn't call it a labor shortage until I've tried competing with that. (None of this is to say that I'm not trying to take advantage from my side by deliberately getting as close as I can to Unicorn-level expertise. Of course I am! But most of the time a well-run company built to grow should want my hardworking front-end, back-end, every-end web-dev friend who's less egotistical and doesn't rant on Hacker News, not a unicorn.)

arohner 13y ago
Who said I wasn't willing to pay the price? Again, this is about just talking to engineers that 1) I would enjoy working with 2) that are currently hirable. Offers and negotiating on price hasn't entered the conversation at all. Even that is hard.
- eli_gottlieb 13y ago
  What about all the ones you're not talking to?

ditonal 13y ago

Saying it's a pay issue could also imply it's a macro issue, meaning that if salaries went up higher, the field would be more attractive and would attract more talent from other better compensated fields (i.e. medicine, big law), creating more hireable engineers in the long term.

tutufan 13y ago

I had an offer from an extremely famous Silicon Valley company, did the numbers very carefully, and realized that I simply could not afford to live there on what they were offering. (I have kids and a non-working spouse.) I don't think of myself as being a particularly greedy or spendthrift person. I've never owned a new car, for example, and I'm typing this on a five year old laptop. But the Bay Area is simply a no-go for me, sad as that makes me feel.