weliketocode

My last startup made the decision to change plans which cut benefits across the board as well.

However, they made across the board salary increases to offset these costs.

Great company. Great culture. Great people.

But I still made the decision to switch to a FAANG for the comp increase.

Here's my recommendation:

1. Take a breather. Things are really good for engineers right now, and it'll be ok.

2. Ask your manager about this in your next meeting. Explicitly state that it represents a comp decrease. They should respect that concern (even if they can't do anything)

3. Get an offer elsewhere. Everyone thinks they're underpaid. Offers represent the truth.

The phrase 'hiring is broken' seems to have become synonymous with companies improperly judging candidates.

BUT! This problem pales in comparison to the difficulty involved for candidates trying to judge companies.

Now, I won't go as far as some of the other posters here and point to rampant deceit. However, interviewers will generally try to be positive, and it's very difficult for an interviewer to say "don't work here".

This is a scare-tactic article from 10 years ago quoting ANOTHER scare-tactic article from 10 years prior.

The truth: The number of programmers has doubled every two years since the 70s. The demand for programmers is today exceeding the supply.

Until the supply/demand forces change, these headlines will continue to be nothing but fake news.

> It is not realistic to give an early software engineer defects within the first few months of a project assignment. So this skill area might not apply until a little later in their career.

what?

Please don't listen to this. Give junior engineers bugs right away. It forces them to set up their environment for debugging and begin to understand the flow of the project.

Even if he/she needs to be guided to the solution, this is a GREAT litmus test for the standards of your documentation, and ease of environment setup.

Your two points really don’t fit with your follow-up explanation.

If you don’t believe finding information is currently trivial using Google, that’s going to be a tough nut to crack.

What would you use for information retrieval that doesn’t involve indexing or a search engine?

The recordings of my voice here from google home are rather scary.

There's a good second or two of recording time before I say the words "Hey, Google"... which means it's just always recording?!

I know practically speaking I should have known this, but I somehow assumed that nothing was being recorded until after the trigger word.

Just as likely as an ordinary locksmith would be to help the same person out in the same situation I'm sure.

Note that this was just a settlement, not a 'won' case.

As per me, I'll stand with the smart locks. They're better for everyone.

For landlords:

- change locks by adding/removing users & passcodes

- tenant forgets their code in the middle of the night? Remind them of the code

For tenants:

- No more lost keys; just remember a simple number or use your phone

Some of the anti-lock tech arguments here are just silly.

Landlords aren't going to use an electronic lock to harass you anymore than they'll use a regular lock. They'll have access either way.

But a landlord can use an electronic lock that's hard to open for the elderly, you say! That's NOTHING compared to having a heavy deadbolt that doesn't fit quite right and requires excess amounts of force.

No, I believe I understood the point you're trying to make, but I disagree with it.

I've worked directly with several VIM devs on Enterprisey frameworks who were not held back by their lack of Intellij.

When comparing vim and intellij,

vim is a lot closer to the chisel, while intellij is closer to the chainsaw.

Only a sith speaks in absolutes.

I have known several vim purists who are extremely productive in Java/Scala/Kotlin.

I both understand and respect your preference for Intellij. But, your dismissiveness of others is misguided.

The usual HN refrain here is 'pay more'.

And as a developer in NYC, I'd say this is accurate, but simplifies the problem a bit too much.

Companies like their salary bands. Companies like to hire people at around the same compensation as current employees in the same role with around the same experience.

The problem is that demand has recently gone up and pay should go up with it, but companies are refusing to adjust their bands and greatly increase pay for their current employees across the board.

So, instead of addressing the pay issue head on, we're seeing a few really really bad practices:

- Lose candidates at the offer stage

  - Try to get comp expectations out of the way earlier.

    - Losing candidates to Big Co. for big pay discrepancies is likely tolerable
    - Losing candidates over $20k salary band issues is absolutely unacceptable
  - DO NOT let HR takeover the closing process. 
    - Don't try to give an exploding offer
    - Don't say an offer is 'best and final'
    - The CTO or VP eng should give the offer and 
      make it a priority to close the candidate

- Giving pay increases to current employees only when they have other offers or explicitly ask for it

- Giving regular title bumps to justify pay increases

  - Your 'senior' engineers will be involved with hiring. 
    It's better to give junior/mid-level engineers big raises 
    than title bumps that will make hiring talent more difficult

If these points sound obvious, they're not. As a candidate, I have not seen a single company that follows them.

And this post just addresses issues around compensation. I haven't even begun to touch on being honest around your interview process. But let me put a few questions out there as well:

- How many rounds do you have?

  - 3 is probably a maximum. Never have more than one on-site

- What is your accept rate at each round?

  - the accept rate should increase from round to round

- For testing candidates

  - be very clear about what questions you're asking and why
  - know, objectively, what is considered a pass vs a fail for every question

Their dog and pony show almost netted them $3bn.

That type of payday might be worth a bit of scrutiny.

The two issues aren't mutually exclusive.

The supply/demand balance for experienced engineers is such that many companies are (explicitly or not) choosing to go with less experienced engineers.

No need to say 'bad', but there is definitely a shortage of experienced coders.

- Competition/Compensation for experienced coders has risen sharply

- There are many more inexperienced SDE's coming from colleges/bootcamps/etc

- Senior titles are often given to individuals who are still very early in their careers

Now, these factors might be necessary/good in the short term as software continues to eat the world.

But, let's not pretend that the talent shortage isn't a problem.