
Make Stronger Offers to Engineering Candidates and Boost Your Closes - vinnyglennon
http://firstround.com/review/make-stronger-offers-to-engineering-candidates-and-boost-your-closes/
======
notyourday
So. Much. B.S.

There is only one thing that people who have not been dropped on a head
interested in. It is called _money_. Money buys them stuff. Money lets them
have a nice roof over their head. Money lets their family not worry about a
slum in the economy. Everything else is secondary.

Here's a magic formula: MaxMoney(Min(work))

402 "PAY_ME_MORE_MONEY"

P.S. That's why it is called a _job_ and not _hobby_ or _volunteering_.

P.P.S. Finance industry figured it out - which is why they are starting to
raid the interwebz companies with a great success. In finance _everything_ is
solved by paying people more money. Sucky stack? $30K extra. Wear suit? $30k
extra. Non-tech manager irritating you? Another $20k extra.

~~~
jcadam
Money is important, but past a certain point (when you are able to live
comfortably and are no longer feeling stressed about your personal/family
finances), other factors come into play. Off the top of my head:

1) Respect. By that I mean professional respect - I want to feel that my
contributions are valued and that people recognize my talents :)

2) Team. Working with dirtbags is miserable no matter how much you get paid.
Sure, I'd do it if you threw enough money at me, but all else being equal, I'd
like to work on a team full of smart, pleasant people.

3) Growth. Learning opportunities (conferences, training, etc.), promotions,
stimulating projects, etc.

4) Time. As in my time. Overtime is kept to a minimum and really only happens
when there is a true emergency. This kind of ties in with #1.

To an extent you can substitute cash for any or all of these. However, if your
working environment and/or culture is toxic, you're going to have trouble with
retention no matter what else you do.

~~~
dmitrygr

      Money is important, but
    

I'm going to stop you right there.

#1 is solved by more money. Want me to work in a team that mocks my work?
$100k extra will do it

#2 is solved by more money. Want me to work with dirtbags? $100k

#3 is solved by more money. Want me to wear a "super junior nobody" title? As
long as you're up front about it, $100k.

#4 is solved by money. My overtime rate is 2x normal rate

You know why? Money buys more than just "roof" and "comfort". It buys
everything. Planes. Parachutes. Yachts. Horses. Jet skis. Vacation homes.
College and private school for kids.

If you think that more money doesn't motivate you, either you've never been
paid enough, or you need to go find some interesting hobbies. You'll quickly
find they cost money (and do not accept "but I'm happy at work" statements as
payment)

~~~
dragonwriter
> If you think that more money doesn't motivate you, either you've never been
> paid enough

Or you have; there's significant evidence that behind a certain level,
additional income doesn't actually provide additional improvement in most
measures of satisfaction and subjective quality of life (IIRC, some studied in
the 1990s showed this on average at somewhere around $250,000 in then-current
dollars in the US.) Once you've reached the point where that occurs, it only
motivates to the extent that knowing you've missed an opportunity to run up a
higher score is disappointing to you.

I've been poor, and I was _much_ more motivated by money then than now, when
I'm being paid much more.

~~~
CydeWeys
It is certainly true that money has diminishing returns. Think of it as an
asymptotic function approaching a maximum level of happiness as income tends
towards infinity.

However, it's also important to take into account the cost of living. That
$400K/year figure (accounting for inflation), which marks something like 90%
of the way up the asymptotic curve, is an average across the US. But if you're
living in very expensive parts of the country, you need a good deal more than
that in order to be able to afford a nice house, with separate bedrooms for
all of the children that you (would like to) have, with a short commute, and
then a bunch more in the way for child care, college tuition, maybe private
school, extracurricular activities, and a whole host of others if you have
those children.

To give you an anecdote, I know a guy who's making $500K/year and has all of
those expenses, except he does _not_ live in the city, and he's barely
treading water. He's experiencing significant financial stress that more money
would be a solution to. And this is at $500K/year, which is not quite enough
to support his lifestyle.

~~~
mediocrejoker
This doesn't make sense to me. Cities are the most expensive place to live,
no? I would have thought that living in some small town and making 500k would
give you even more buying power than it does in the city.

Where does your friend live that $500k does not pay for rent or a mortgage on
a nice house, dinner at restaurants on a regular basis, and still money in the
savings account?

~~~
CydeWeys
You are severely underestimating how much it costs to put multiple kids
through expensive colleges. Also, they don't live in "some small town", it's
just not the city; it's still seriously expensive compared to the national
home value.

But I'm not here to debate this other person's life choices, nor could I. The
point is that even $500K/year is not enough for a decent number of people,
whereas, say, $1M would be.

------
lhnz

      > There is one motivation that should raise a red flag, though.
      > “The candidates that I don't usually want to spend much time
      > on are folks who are basically just looking for the next big check.
    

This is a red flag to me.

What if engineers want to buy houses or support families? What if they have
elite backgrounds and want a similarly high level of living as their friends?

Offering bread-and-circuses and work-as-lifestyle to software engineers when
they're fresh and naive or wishing to prioritise other things over money is
fine. But eventually people start wanting to be able to get a pay-off for
their investment in "learning". If all you're offering is warm-fuzzies,
they'll go somewhere in which the remuneration is able to support investment
outside from themselves.

~~~
username223
> “The candidates that I don't usually want to spend much time on are folks
> who are basically just looking for the next big check. Money is not a great
> motivation,” says Ajmal. “But it’s actually very common that this is driving
> the entire process for them.”

Ugh. No sh*t, Sherlock! And we're expected to believe money isn't driving the
entire process for you? There are things I care about besides money, like not
working for manipulative jerks, but at the end of a day it's a "job," preceded
by a "salary negotiation" in which I trade my labor for payment, most of which
will take the form of "money."

EDIT: > Ask them what they are maximizing for in their job search and how
they’re approaching that. People are not used to this question and may be more
candid, saving you a longer time investment.

Wow, this is a horrible and cynical person.

~~~
how_gauche
> And we're expected to believe money isn't driving the entire process for
> you?

It's right there in the name, even!!! It's not "First Round Hugs" or "First
Round Charity", is it?

------
learc83
This title is very misleading. It implies that it advises you to boost your
closing rate by offering more money.

But it's actually about how to save money by finding people who aren't
motivated by money.

------
dkhenry
Wow these comments are depressing. The extreme polarization between, pay me
enough and I'll do anything, and take one for the team by making peanuts and
working obscene hours is kinda frightenting. Has no one had a job where they
were treated well and paid a fair wage? Its perfectly reasonable to get both
of those things and be able to make a decision on a company based on
additional things, like what the mission is, or who you will work with, or
what tools you will use. Money isn't everything and you don't have to be taken
advantage of. There is a middle ground.

~~~
nfriedly
> _Has no one had a job where they were treated well and paid a fair wage?_

I think IBM would qualify there, with the one exception of their occasional
mass firings ("resource action").

------
dmitrygr
I guess I'm one of those "red flag" candidates that this guy says you
shouldn't hire. If I wanted to make a difference, I'd join the Red Cross. If I
wanted to solve people's problems, I'd go work as a life coach. I want to get
paid the maximum amount while working around people and doing a job that
doesn't make me want to blow my brains out or work 20 hour days. That is all.

~~~
Bob2019
Red flag = "not a gullible looser". It's a flag of honour.

------
dmitrygr

      “At a certain point, I’m very
      explicit: ‘Look, I think 5X is
      Absolutely conservative given
      how we’re growing
    

No. 0X is conservative. It's a startup. Most of those make non-founders $0.00
on equity

~~~
sk5t
Indeed. If 5x were conservative, at series C or any other point, one would be
fending off investors with a stick, failing to justify 409a valuations, etc.,
etc.

------
jerrycabbage
The advice is, "tell the person what they want to hear". It is absolutely no
surprise that the author does not stick around at one job either.

------
JustSomeNobody
Here's what most companies want:

>> We only hire "passionate" engineers who have proven themselves to be "rock
stars" and we call them "family" so that they can "take one for the team" and
forgo a "raise" because we didn't meet our quarter. But we did make enough to
give ourselves "bonuses!"

I am motivated by money because every company I work for is motivated by
money. They want theirs, I want mine. I factor into my asking salary a "what
if I get screwed" amount.

~~~
notyourday
> I factor into my asking salary a "what if I get screwed" amount.

I can _guarantee_ that the moment it is cheaper to screw you than keep you a
_successful company_ will screw you. If a company is _not_ successful, they
may miscalculate when they screw you and instead screw themselves in addition
to screwing you.

------
SubuSS
NOTE: This applies only to the Big 5 (Amazon/Google/MS/FB/Oracle). To be
really honest, it is hard to distinguish the big companies today based on non-
money line items:

\- All the companies I have and am working for have very smart folk, very
personable people you want to work with / learn from.

\- All the companies pay well, have great benefits.

\- I don't care for perks, I can afford the $20 a day to spend on food and
snacks.

\- All of em have great challenges to tackle, and usually you are sought after
by the teams with exactly those. No one is going to pay you double your worth
to sit around / purely 'learn on the job'. Past experience counts big when it
comes to leveling/team choices in all of them.

\- All of them are exponentially growing.

\- Almost all of them are dabbling in each others areas of work: Everyone is
doing databases/fs/networking/user applications/web dev and what not.

For me the choice of snap was purely because I wanted a small company
experience without the risk of a pure startup, in fact all the benefits and
better compared to the big 5. Unless you have a specific requirement like
that, sadly money will end up being the differentiator.

To add some irony to the whole discussion, they know this as well: All the
offers I got from the big companies were with few $$$ of each other. I didn't
tell them my current salary with Amazon, it didn't even come close to the
numbers on glassdoor for my then level, but magically they seem to 'know'
(shrug).

------
sjg007
There’s two forms of money: cash now and Magic future money (stock options)

~~~
tzahola
B-but what about Making The World Better™ ?

------
purplezooey
How about not putting your new company in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Menlo Park
or Santa Clara. Nobody can live there, it's impossible to drive/transit there
from anywhere, and they're just plain miserable places with cheaply
constructed office buildings. So tired of seeing this.

~~~
pascalxus
I agree. But companies will never learn this lesson as long as they can still
hire there easily.

------
ggggtez
As someone who makes money, money is still the strongest argument. If I'm
bored with my job, and you offer me a 30k pay cut, then I think I'll suck it
up and stay bored. I don't care how good you think your product is.

------
YPCrumble
A moderator should rename this "How to pay your engineers less by fooling
them: A primer by First Round Capital".

------
kylnew
I do agree with the criticisms of this article but also agree with the parts
about assessing your candidates better and understanding their motivations. I
did an interview once where they tried to jump to technical interview on the
first phone meeting so fast I felt my answers to everything else were this
unnecessary preamble to just doing a code question. It totally turned me off.
I ended the call early.

So while I need the money to be good, I also want to feel like we are starting
a mutually beneficial arrangement on other levels than just pay.

------
pascalxus
You can boost a potential candidate's compensation by 1 to 2 million dollars,
just by choosing a suitable location outside the bay area! At no cost to
yourself!

This should become an increasingly hot strategy, as all those young engineers
at google and facebook begin to age and start thinking about having families.

Then again, if all you want is young interns that'll work for free, keep
hiring in SF.

------
FidelCashflow
Full screen pop up warning.

