
The War For Talent - travisglines
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/the-war-for-talent.html
======
geuis
It may just be me, but I don't see this "war for talent". I live in San
Francisco and have worked for 3 companies since moving here. I am a damned
good frontend engineer, like learning and playing with new tech, very
opinionated and dedicated to good product design, and sure I would be an asset
to any company that wanted to hire me. I've also had experience with trying my
own startup (failed) and even been part of a team that got a YC interview.

Despite all of this, any time I have interviewed with some of these companies
that claim to be in a war for talent, that's not the impression I get. I
always end up meeting and talking to people that are looking for CS students
who happen to know HTML.

Some random Facebook engineer wasted a half an hour of my time trying to get
me to write a function to calculate a square root approximation method.
Another interview asks me how to figure out which one of 100 bottles of wine
has poison in it using 10 mice. Seriously, WTF?

At no point have these people who say they desperately want a frontend
engineer actually asked _anything_ remotely touching the job skills I possess.
Want super efficient pages? Well constructed js? An innovative solution to a
hard frontend problem? A high performance html5 app that looks native on a
phone? Apparently not. These guys just want more CS engineers like themselves
and not people that have acquired the best knowledge by years of working in
the field.

I work at a big name media company now. When they interviewed me a couple
years ago, they got it. They knew what they were looking for and what they
actually needed. I work with some awesome people. Sometimes we butt heads
because I care a lot about what I build and sometimes big corporate decisions
are bullshit, but that's ok. The team I work with is smart and capable and we
get shit done.

And guess what? We aren't all CS graduates. We taught ourselves and built
careers for ourselves. We learned everything we know the hard way, by actually
doing it.

~~~
JoshCole
The question about mice seemed sort of neat to me at first. I figured the
desired solution was splitting the wine into two groups, taking the group that
turns out to be poisoned, and then recursing.

Then I came up with an alternative solution.

Step 1: Kill 9 mice.

Step 2: Have the mouse drink from a wine bottle.

Step 3: Wait to see if he dies. If he dies you found the right bottle. If he
doesn't take the next bottle and go to step 2.

~~~
sgrove
He left out that there's a time limit. You have a party with guests coming
over in 10 minutes, and it takes 5 minutes for the wine to kill the rat (in
any dosage amount). Given those constraints, how do you do it?

It's a fun question, but the best response I've heard to this is, "Move.
You're never going to get laid with rats at your place during a party."

~~~
nostrademons
He's testing if you can think in binary. Label the bottles of wine with binary
numbers, 0000001 to 1100100. Give the first mouse every other bottle of wine,
the second mouse every bottle of wine with a 1 in the 2's place, the second
mouse every bottle with a 1 in the 4's place, etc. If a mouse dies, the poison
lies in one of the bottles it was given. If a mouse survives, there is no
poison in any of the bottles it was given. Since every combination of mice is
associated with a unique bottle, you can read off the digits formed by the
dead and live mice to determine which bottle it was.

And then hope none of your guests call the SPCA.

~~~
contravert
Given the constraints (10 minutes total, 5 minutes for poison to kill), you
can also divide the wine into 10 groups and assign each group to each of the
10 mice. The mice then drink samples from every bottle in his group, and after
5 minutes, the one that dies has the group with poison in it. You then assign
each of the rats a bottle from this group, and then see which one of them
dies. If they all live, then the remaining bottle is poisoned.

Granted, your solution is better, but you can solve this problem without
binary tricks.

------
dstein
Okay, so New York has hipster traps:

<http://www.jwz.org/images/hipster-trap-560x795.jpg>

New Jersey has guido traps:

[http://www.thehighdefinite.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/03/je...](http://www.thehighdefinite.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/03/jersey-shore-trap-32459-1300473027-15.jpg)

And now Silicon Valley has developer traps:

[http://www.avc.com/.a/6a00d83451b2c969e2014e5ff76eed970c-500...](http://www.avc.com/.a/6a00d83451b2c969e2014e5ff76eed970c-500wi)

------
nadam
The most important things for me as a developer:

\- Money (I have a family to care about)

\- 'Interestingness' of the job: does it require creativity? Do I have
ownership? Can I start things from scratch, or do I have to maintain an ugly
overcomplicated buggy code full of
EntrpriseEntiytyManagerConfigurationFactoryFacadeIntefaceBean-s created
without any philosophy behind?

Hardware setup is not that important for me. Never was.

Also there is no war for talent yet. Firms in Silicon Valley did not realize
yet that there is talent in other parts of the world for much cheaper than in
Sillicon Valley. When the real war will begin, I hope we will gain access to
better opportunities here in the east than now. (Now they mostly resort to the
east if some noncreative work should be done. (So called 'offshoring'.))

~~~
cabalamat
> Hardware setup is not that important for me. Never was.

Maybe that's because you've always had a decent hardware setup. I once worked
for a company where the clueless management decided to save money by having
fewer workstations than developers, and our department had to make sure they
all looked in use, otherwise a management snap inspection might take even more
away.

~~~
icefox
You could look that on the plus side and start doing a bunch of pair
programming. I have started doing bits of pair programing and found it to be
very productive.

------
jpcx01
Don't play their game. If you are a great dev, ask for what you are worth
(100-150 an hour). Or get solid equity. Or start your own company.

Don't be fooled by cheap gimmicks. You can buy your own Dr Pepper.

~~~
trumbo
100-150 an hour? I have 6 years of experience and I can hardly get more than
$70 an hour in NYC. Maybe I'm not a "great" developer.

~~~
solutionyogi
I was also making around 70$ to 80$ an hour. I decided to get in to Wall St
(Investment Banks/Hedge Funds) and now I am able to make more than 100$/hour.
In NYC, other than finance industry, I haven't seen anyone paying more than
100$/hour.

------
giardini
Wishing for a "talent-detector": I could make billions.

Seriously, how can you call it a war when the territory is so poorly
delineated. Searching for "talent" is like capturing neutrinos. So shouldn't
it be termed a "Crapshoot for Talent" or "Gold Rush for Talent" or such? Add
to that the interaction problem (an excellent worker in one environment may
wither in another).

Metaphors matter! Choose your weapons carefully. Oops, sorry, it isn't a war!
Choose your garden shrubs carefully.

~~~
fizx
Google, FBook, etc in particular are fighting over some key execs and senior
engineers, as well as the flow of new grads from key universities like CMU and
Stanford.

That's the war. For most industry engineers, its a crapshoot.

------
wladimir
It's interesting how much the high-tech industry that made remote and
distributed working possible is still bound to a locality.

Outside Silicon Valley, and outside the US, there is _also_ a lot of talent,
which would dream of earning even half of what a Silicon Valley developer
does, but cannot move there for some reason.

Ample opportunity here for smart companies.

~~~
nadam
Yes. If anybody is interested: For example offering half of Sillicon Valley
salary to developers I could find the brightest 10-20 programmers from my
country. I am well connected amongst developers. (Hungary is a 10million
people country.) Just give me a very hard 'test', I will give that or
something similar to hundreds of developers, and choose the best 10. If you
offer higher than market salary, money makes miracles.

~~~
shalmanese
TopTal does this: <http://www.toptal.com/> . You should contact them if you're
interested.

~~~
nadam
Thanks, I will contact them.

------
sdizdar
It is probably just me and my overly pessimistic and cynical point of view,
but sometimes I think this "war for talent" is basically synonym for "search
for very good engineers willing to work 70 hours a week for less than 100K"
(or something like that). I do understand the need to for these creative idea
(good setup, etc.), but unfortunately these tweks and ideas work only and only
after salary is good, challenge is there, and team is great.

And there is one more problem: some of startups struggling to hire very good
engineers are not aiming big - the prevalent business model is: we hope to be
acquired by Google/Apple/Facebook/Intuit etc. Stories of Digg, Reddit, and
Delicous don't inspire a lot confidence for engineers to join these companies.

------
jgh
No matter how much a company is willing to spend on gadgets, everyone seems to
stick with that same $100 Ikea desk.

~~~
icefox
Have you tried asking for a different desk? They end up with the same ikea
desk because no one cares about it that much.

~~~
jgh
I actually like those desks, I just think it's funny.

~~~
georgemcbay
Who cares that the desk costs $100 if it does an excellent job as a
workspace/computer desk? I'm a huge fan of the Ikea Galant desks to the point
where I bought myself one for home to go along with the $700 chair I have
(similar situation to what is shown in the Tasty Labs picture).

I didn't buy it because it cost $100, I bought it because they are JUST ENOUGH
desk to make an excellent workspace and they are height adjustable. I will
never use a non-height adjustable desk again, full stop, and there aren't many
other options for height adjustable desks that are anywhere near reasonable in
price (and that is coming from someone who didn't blink when buying a $700
chair).

------
VladRussian
there is no war for talent. It is just a market that started to favor seller a
bit (smart buyers buy in a buyers market by the way). When i recently "came up
on the market" (laid off), 2 companies gave offers under the asking price, one
din't make the offer at all as it was "above the range", and another company
(that i even didn't hope to get into) offered ~15% more than the asking price
was and of course i'm happy to be there now.

------
zemanel
... while on this side of the ocean i couldn't even accept a position at a
northern europe bank because i can't afford relocation at the moment, and
everyone tells me people are hiring like crazy in NY/SV. Life can be bull
sometimes :(

------
RandallBrown
I may not have a cinema display, but many in my company do. When I started, I
had a brand new HP desktop. A few months later I got a brand spankin new
Macbook Pro when I started doing Mac development. I would expect AT LEAST what
I see from the picture at any serious software company and I live/work in mid-
michigan. We don't have to put our monitors on cardboard boxes either.

------
balanon
Looks like they're offering up a Macbook, a cinema display, a red Swingline
stapler, and Dr. Pepper in the photo. #devporn

~~~
DVassallo
... and an Aeron chair!

~~~
rdl
Given how selective joshu claims to be in hiring, would be surprised if he
turned down a developed who requested a mac pro and 3 x 24" or 30" monitors
for both home and office, in addition to a macbook pro or macbook air.

A $20k pimped out setup or two is still less than a recruiter would charge,
and hopefully about the same as the value of a developer's work to the company
in 1 week.

I think Asana has the right idea, just letting people pick whatever they want
within a $10k or so budget. There is some value in having commonality (spare
parts, support, chargers), and I'd be surprised if anyone wanted anything
except Apple or Lenovo laptops and high-end desktops with big monitors.

~~~
rudiger
Valuing a developer's one week of work at $20K is a bit much (~$1M per year?).
Also, I'd question the judgement of developer who thinks a $20K pimped-out
setup, a Mac Pro and three 30" displays at both home _and_ office, in addition
to a laptop, is necessary.

------
wolfrom
I wonder if there's a point where the talent wars in the Bay Area could
actually affect pg's view that the Valley is the best place for a startup. I
know that Jason Calacanis has talked about how it might now make sense to do
your development somewhere else.

~~~
kovar
Finding good talent elsewhere is non-trivial, but with some care it is much
easier.

We're currently doing our development in WA (one founder), NH (lead developer,
almost founder), and IL. If we get into one of the Bay Area programs, I'll
move to CA for the program, and probably then some.

The reason for the move isn't for development talent, it is for networking
opportunities and mentoring opportunities.

------
petercooper
Getting standard-issue equipment _that you need to do your job_? I don't
disagree with the overall premise but getting a computer isn't that unusual
and you need one anyway.

I think 37signals gets it (more) right. A company credit card with which you
can buy any training or educational materials you need to become better at
what you do or to help you with your work. Now _that's_ a perk. (Though a
personal secretary/PA to handle all of the non dev BS would be even better..)

~~~
joshu
That was taken out of context. We get developers whatever they want. We only
posted it to be funny.

~~~
petercooper
Oh, right. But yeah, I wasn't picking up on you or Quora, more Fred's
interpretation of a banal reality - I'd hope _any_ company would get their
developers this sort of kit! :-)

~~~
joshu
Indeed. However, the hiring part IS brutal. We interviewed 90-something
people, made one offer.

There's a huge difference between engineers and developers.

~~~
dmoney
What makes the difference between the one developer you would hire and the 89
engineers you wouldn't?

~~~
joshu
I want to hire engineers, not developers.

Engineering is the negotiation of constraints. Developers write code. You need
to be both.

------
jprobert
This goes back to the popular post about Reddit being down to one developer.
The war for talent comes down to a) having the resources to pay for top talent
- Google or b) cool and fun concepts to work on which have enormous potential
- Hipmunk. Getting hooked up with nice hard wear is great but at this point it
seems expected as everyone pretty much does it (except for the bootstrapped
start-up).

------
stcredzero
Does this "War for Talent" mean that I don't have a hope of acquiring talent
through outsourcing? I just looked (briefly) at the Philippine job boards, and
unless I'm doing something SEO heavy, there didn't seem to be too much there.

------
gtani
Heh, Mr. Wilson forget to mention that a primary qualifier for getting
headhunter cold calls is quality/quantity of comments on HN.

