
Why Your Startup Can’t Find Developers - lowglow
http://www.fastcolabs.com/3018568/why-your-startup-cant-find-developers
======
PhasmaFelis
_" I know one well-known startup who has been trying to fill a role for over
four months, and has gone through two dozen candidates, simply because the
founder mandates 80-hour workweeks.”_

I'm rather surprised that this wasn't a heading topic on its own: _Don 't
Expect People To Work 80-Hour Workweeks._ Bleary, burned-out, sleep-deprived,
stimulant-addled engineers do not produce decent code no matter how many hours
you make them stay at their desks. Obviously. You _bloody idiot._

(...The startup founder, I mean, not the article writer.)

Although really this folds into "You’ve Got To Pay If You Want To Play" to
make a larger point: _If You Want Good Employees, Don 't Treat Them Like
Shit._ Another of those blindingly obvious things that employers all over the
world just can't seem to wrap their little heads around.

~~~
minikites
You don't even have to go outside of HN to find this attitude:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6445484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6445484)

~~~
smtddr
I find that post you linked disgusting. Now I see why we need laws for things
I feel are obvious. I feel like that person should be reported to the
authorities or something. Not hiring people because they refuse to regularly
work over 40hrs/week should be illegal. I mean, sure I understand crunch time
as release-to-production draws near. I have slept in my cubicle overnight
before to make sure a critical production-change went smoothly, but that's
_my_ choice when I deem it necessary or a manager I respect is in a tough-spot
and would really like me to help him/her out. In what world does any manager
think they can demand >40hrs/week from me on regular basis? Unless I own a
significant part of the company, I'm just an employee and as such >40hrs/week
for a regular employee is an indication of a problem.

~~~
throwaway420
> I find that post you linked disgusting. Now I see why we need laws for
> things I feel are obvious. I feel like that person should be reported to the
> authorities or something. Not hiring people because they refuse to regularly
> work over 40hrs/week should be illegal.

It's interesting that you're so adamant about having the ability to make your
personal choices here when you're advocating to take choice away from others.

The article states that the employer demanding 80 hour work weeks cannot find
anybody to fill that role for 4 months and counting. Employers have to compete
for labor just as employees have to compete for jobs. If somebody offers an 80
hour per week job without offering adequate compensation (multiple times the
market rate, a large percentage of ownership, etc), then they'll fail to fill
that role.

Your personal feelings are no justification for trying to create laws and
interfering with other peoples' voluntary transactions in the marketplace.

~~~
v13inc
I probably shouldn't respond, considering the (very stoner) name of
"throwaway420", but the employer is in a position of power, so it is not
unreasonable to want laws that draw bounderies around your commitment,
especially with salary workers.

Fortunately, we work in an employee driven industry, so employers who demand
extraordinary commitment can't find employees.

~~~
bencollier49
For now.

------
toddmorey
Developers—the good ones—don't want to work for you. They want to work for a
cause. They want believe that their work will have real meaning; real impact.
This is not instead of a good salary, this is in addition to.

But it's an important addition and often overlooked. It's why among all of the
food delivery service startups recently, I have my eye on SpoonRocket. They
are on a passionate mission to provide healthy meals at the same price and
speed of fast food. That is something to get fired up about. That could have a
huge impact. That could change the diet of millions of people.

Please, don't settle for a mission statement. Please don't stop at the point
of a good idea and early revenue. Have a mission—a real one. It's not just to
romance investors or customers. The biggest impact you'll see is in your
people.

~~~
michaelochurch
_Developers—the good ones—don 't want to work for you. They want to work for a
cause._

Disagree strongly. Solving interesting problems, improving my skill set and my
career, and doing good work for the people immediately around me is enough for
me. Negative cause (e.g. working for an unethical company, or in the war
industry) would be a problem; but the difference between neutral and positive
means little to me. I'm older, though (30).

When I get to ownership level, perhaps starting my own thing, I'll care a lot
about macroscopics. However, most of us start out as employees and there's
more than enough rewarding in mastering the micro-scale stuff. As long as I'm
not being asked to do anything wrong, I'm not going to get emotionally
involved in how a company affects the world until I'm an owner; until that
point, it's just a distraction.

Macroscopics, in my observation, just mean more Kool-aid; and there are just
as many good people at companies doing less sexy (macroscopically speaking)
but still important things. In fact, I worked (briefly) for one of those
"change the world" startups-- a New York ed-tech that's devolved into being a
sidekick to mainstream publishers-- and it was all marketing bullshit; the
rank-and-file believed in it, but the executives were the most unethical
people I've ever met (and that includes drug dealers).

~~~
Swizec
The point is - good developers want to _care_. They can get a good salary
anywhere, but can you also make them _care_.

Some will want to work for a cause, some get fired up over cool algorithms,
some care because they're best mates with the rest of the team and can grab a
beer together.

But they want to _care_ passionately about their work. That's the bottom line.

~~~
hindsightbias
> good developers

I'm sure plenty of people feel passionately about something, but I don't see
how that makes them "good" in any technical sense.

The Spocks will always be a better developer than McCoys.

The best developers I've ever known move around a lot, or work at places like
Goldman Sachs. They have a clique, and it's well above any loyalty to some hip
corporate mission statement.

~~~
michaelochurch
_The best developers I 've ever known move around a lot, or work at places
like Goldman Sachs. They have a clique, and it's well above any loyalty to
some hip corporate mission statement._

Exactly. They care more about keeping their skills sharp than "change the
world" mission statements, so they'd rather do machine learning at a hedge
fund than grunt work for some 23-year-old kid whose family connections bought
funding.

They start thinking about the big-picture passion stuff when they're owners.
Before that point, it's not relevant. You care more about growing your skill
set and doing good work for (and mentoring) the people around you.

------
7Figures2Commas
I'll add a reason: you're looking for someone you don't need.

Not every startup is Google. A lot of companies have CRUD applications of
minimal to modest complexity which, even if actively used, are nowhere close
to facing performance and scalability barriers that would require _deep_
technical expertise.

These startups don't necessarily need "engineers" with computer science
backgrounds, but that's what many of them are searching for.

~~~
krstck
So, so, so true. I've been looking for jobs in a city outside of the typical
developer hotspots (Dallas) and it is absolutely insane for me to see every ad
seeking something like a "programming virtuoso" (an actual quote) for fairly
basic web dev. I got an email from a recruiter looking for a "top-level web
developer" and then saying they would be recruiting at a nearby college job
fair. (A tiny, rural college.)

Why does every business need to pretend that they are getting the best of the
best? Obviously, I want to get there someday, but I'm still early in my
career. I know I'm not top-level anything. It would be disingenuous and
frankly delusional for me to claim such!

~~~
checker659
And, to top that, they won't even be paying good money. They just want a
virtuoso. For peanuts.

------
Cookingboy
The author raised the point that very often young founders only want to hire
someone in their own image. I believe it's more of a problem of those young
founders have never worked with anyone who are NOT of similar backgrounds than
they are. In some cases just spending a couple years at a bigger company with
a more diverse workforce would completely shatter the "most productive
engineers are 20 something CS grads who can code 80 hours a week on Red Bull"
stereotype. Sure those people may be motivated by different things in life at
that point, but one quality of being a good leader is the ability to gather
different people with different backgrounds and motivations and still utilize
them to the max and achieve the common goal. A company that's run purely on
Kool-aid may have the short-term "enthusiasm" but is not going to survive the
ups and downs of a long journey.

~~~
mratzloff
Efficiency is not lines of code produced, it's the experience to choose the
right technologies and approach the first time: when to choose a stable,
behind-the-curve technology and when to take a calculated risk; when to do
something that's good enough and when to do spend more time to make it robust.

------
greenyoda
_" New graduates can command $100,000 a year in Silicon Valley. Hired has
found that bumping the offer up to $120,000 gives you access to 30% more
candidates."_

This is something many people on HN have been saying for a long time in
response to the question of whether the US needs to create more H-1B visas:
companies have a hard time finding qualified employees because they don't want
to pay enough. It's nice to see the numbers quantified in this way (even
though this is only anecdotal evidence from a single recruiting firm).

~~~
rhizome
Maybe the execs are having trouble raising the money required to hire these
people. Another thought is that the VCs are putting arbitrary limits on
$/head.

~~~
greenyoda
If they're setting arbitrary caps on salary, then they're not playing by the
rules of the free market, and they shouldn't be whining about a "shortage". (I
can't find someone who is willing to sell me a new luxury car for $10,000. Is
that a problem? Is there a shortage of BMWs?)

~~~
rhizome
That's exactly what they're doing. It's a lie of omission regarding the execs'
price sensitivity.

------
BrainScraps
You can't find developers because everyone in the Greater SF Bay Area is
looking for the perfectly seasoned developer that has deep experience in their
given stack.

It reminds me of a grownup having Play-Doh time with toddlers. The grownup
takes the time to make some recognizable object (a dog, a human figure, an ice
cream cone) and then the toddler starts grabbing for it. This is how many
young companies act with talent. They don't want to invest in people, they
don't want to bring on interns or junior folks. They want high-output plug-
and-play rockstar senior devs. And they want them on their terms.

Some of you might see things differently, but that's the impression I'm
getting from all of the listings I'm seeing in my job search (for a junior dev
role.) There are some companies that are making the long-term investment in
finding the less refined talent and developing it, but they are hard to find.

I hope other people see this trend and that I'm not just entirely saturated in
the pungent juice of sour grapes.

~~~
chrissnell
Well said.

If properly picked and hired, junior-level inexperienced engineers can be a
gold mine. Employers need to retune their hiring process to value intellect
and potential over straight-up experience and know-it-all-ness. This is a
tricky proposition, since many hiring managers are terribly inexperienced with
hiring and don't know how to do much more than coding challenges, "explain to
me how DNS works" questions, etc. These hiring managers are trying to compare
their own skills against this new hires and they will reject the hire if it
doesn't match up. Huge fail. The gold miner hiring manager, however, asks more
open-ended questions to probe the intellect of the hire. The gold miner
doesn't expect a "full-stack hacker" and is tolerant of "I don't know"
responses. The more important question: what problems has this person solved
and how did they solve them?

If you want to see how to hire and structure your team, a good example to
follow is the military. Consider the typical platoon of Infantry soldiers: you
have one senior leader/manager, one senior subject matter expert and all-round
ass-kicker, four SME-and-ass-kickers-in-training, and about 36 junior guys who
are there to learn. The junior guys make a fraction of what the senior SME
makes and their skill level is also fractional. No worries. They are there to
learn, develop, and do their best. Treat them well, not like slaves, , respect
them, and develop them. Most of them will leave after a few years for a new
job elsewhere. That's okay. You got something from them (work) and they got
something from you (experience). You, the leader, will identify a few
promising individuals amongst them and groom them to be SMEs in training,
giving them the added responsibility and pay increases that they deserve. Like
an Infantry platoon, your team will eventually hire experienced SMEs from
outside the company to bring in fresh skills and ideas. If this team building
is done right, you can build a loyal, organic organization that grows and
trains it's own and you can do it for about the same cost as going out and
hiring three or four absolute badasses that will probably leave as soon as the
next shiny, well-paying thing comes along.

~~~
BrainScraps
Love the platoon analogy. I've seen it work firsthand and it works in all
sorts of different places - especially startups!

------
vosper
> On the other hand startup CEOs tends to be prejudiced against developers who
> work for less cutting-edge large companies like Dell, Accenture, or
> Salesforce. Mickiewicz points out that Uber’s CTO was hired from VMware.

In what world is VMWare not cutting edge? Sure, they're a big successful
company, but that's because they solve a complex problem.

Also, hiring a CTO from a large tech company is nothing like hiring an ground-
level engineer - there's no way VMware's CTO spent his days coding before he
went to Uber.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
I'm not really sure what the point the author was trying to make. vCenter is
_not_ a cutting edge piece of software when you compare it to modern cloud
offerings like AWS or even OpenStack. vCenter is, however, very good at what
it does, and in many ways does a lot of things that new cloudy offerings will
probably never do.

One thing I can say about Thuan, having worked for him at VMware for a long
time, he always tried pushing things. My guess is Uber saw that and figured
he'd make a good fit.

~~~
kjackson2012
Having actually worked on vCenter, I can tell you that it is at best adequate
for what it does, but the code is amongst the shittiest I have ever worked on.

~~~
Afforess
Behind every successful commercial software product is a horrible codebase.

~~~
jronkone
This should become a law, like Brook's, Sturgeon's or Greenspun's.

------
sedev
"Too many twentysomething founders look for employees just like themselves.
“So you discriminate against anyone who is in their 30s or 40s or has a
family,” says Mickiewicz. “But the most talented and experienced people will
be in their 30s and 40s."

It's always a relief to see an article like this not just calling out age
bias, but putting it at the top. There are other good points in the article
too, but it's important to note that Bay Area tech culture skews heavily
towards white dudes in their 20s. There are plenty of people pushing back
against the "white dudes" part, but we could use a little more pushing back
against the "in their 20s." Especially since someone who's 35 today was born
in 1978 and was turning 12 in 1990, right around the elbow of the explosive
growth curve of home-available computing. You could have maybe made an
argument that someone who was 35 in 1995, born in 1960, was a bit late to the
game to profoundly grok the web then (I think that argument's wrong, but you
could make it without being laughed out of the room). But in 2013, a 35-year-
old engineer is someone you want to look for because that's probably going to
be someone with perspective and a mature skill set. There are plenty of smart
20-year-olds out there, yet there is no substitute good for experience.

------
lzecon
Hiring people that come from a similar background as founders is the biggest
problem on that list. It's part of the reason there's a serious lack of
diversity in tech and startups today. Truly recognizing that people unsimilar
to you are capable, smart, and successful is a learned view. One that founders
may not have had time to develop because they have to be so focused on
themselves to start a company.

Once you develop bad hiring habits they become part of a start-up's culture,
making a lot of people very resistant to doing something differently. For
instance, if all you're doing is interviewing and not looking at the bigger
picture, you may not even realize you're doing something wrong.

~~~
tnuc
I've had interviews where I basically get asked "Are you fun to drink beer
with?", but with more words.

And all I can think is "What a fucking waste of time this is."

Hire the people that you need to get the job done, not because they have the
latest in hipster underwear.

My Requirements for hiring; 1\. They can do the job well. 2\. I can understand
what they are saying. 3\. They have a bath/shower at least once a week whether
they need it or not.

The amount of people who fit into categories two and three is surprising high.
These are the people I desperately want to hire but I can't.

~~~
CmonDev
"These are the people I desperately want to hire but I can't."

I desperately want to buy a 3-bedroom in London for £20k but I can't.

------
danso
> _“Hiring Google engineers is generally a really bad idea. If you work at
> Google you have access to an entire set of tools and technologies that you
> won 't have in a smaller startup environment.”_

This seems like a sensible and underrated assertion. I have no idea if it's
more true for Google than other large startups...but yeah, great companies
have great toolsets...that's in part why they're great. But that
infrastructure isn't available elsewhere and an engineer's reliance on that
isn't easily tested. It seems akin to my experience in journalism, that some
very accomplished reporters have had very accomplished support staff
(researchers, fact-checkers, handlers), but may flounder when forced to do
that work themselves.

~~~
rgbrgb
I wouldn't go so far as to say that large companies have great toolsets, but
they're definitely pretty different from what's on the outside. I've spent a
ton of time learning internal tools and that knowledge won't transfer when I
leave my company. Frameworks are different, infrastructure is different, and
the process and scope of responsibilities is different. Building something
inside a large company is a pretty different skill from making it from
scratch. That's my experience anyway.

------
RougeFemme
<<Hiring in your own image

For most/many founders this is closely related to "hire people you would want
to hang out with on Sundays", another common hiring "mistake/tip".

The hiring pool shrinks considerably and diversity of perspective/ideas and
any other attribute you value likely goes out the window.

------
rosspanda
I verbally accepted a job at a UK based start-up once, it was 3 days per week
as that was all they could afford at the time.

It was not until i got the contract that it stated a minimum of 40 hours in
the 3 Days, so they wanted me to work full time hours in the 3 days for 3 days
pay.

I turned it down. I still see the founder around and he is still looking for
dev's.

~~~
polymatter
Wait, so he was asking for 13 hour 20 minute days?

~~~
rprospero
I played D&D with a guy who did forty hours in two, twenty-hour days. He'd
arrive at midnight, work until eight PM, then sleep (on site) until 4 AM, then
work again until midnight. From what I heard, the sleep was more of a legal
fiction to get around OSHA regulations than actual sleep.

I guess it paid decently enough, since he never complained about, but he
pretty much slept for the entire following day. He never knew until Sunday
which two days he would be in, so scheduling gaming time was a pain.

------
buckbova
> Why Your Startup Can’t Find Developers

Relying on recruiters.

Recruiters are notorious for buzzword searching and resume stacking. And
Googler's probably don't respond to interview requests because they don't
trust or respect recruiters (just a hunch).

Find other ways to advertise your jobs, like old fashoined networking, message
boards, social media, etc.

~~~
JakeStone
I'll second that one. I'm actively searching to get me and my family out of TX
back to the SF Bay area. I'm a .NET guy, so I know the deck's a little stacked
against me, but dealing with recruiters is rapidly becoming mind numbing.

"Must have 2 years of T-SQL." Ok, I've written my share of SQL for ASP.NET and
desktop apps on MSSQL Server. Add it up and it's about 4 years, plus the last
year or so with EF. Here's my resume.

"We can't send this to our client, you don't have T-SQL." Umm... SQL on MSSQL
Server _is_ T-SQL. "Now you're lying to me." Ok, this is where our
professional relationship ends. Thanks for your time.

Then there's that job where I pitched in on some Java stuff that needed doing.
Similar to C#, I can grok. We got that code out the door, and it's still
working. Yay. "Hello! I want to tell you about an opportunity requiring 10
years of J2EE and [insert other Java tech buzzwords]." <sigh> I'm not a Java
guru anywhere near that level. Let me rewrite that project so Java isn't on
there anymore. Doesn't matter. My resume is now in some resume bank that farms
it out to non-perceiving headhunting companies.

Yeah, I'm getting a little cranky now. I'll stop.

~~~
RogerL
Have you talked to the bigger companies? Microsoft is here, for one, and are
unlikely to turn up their noses to a .NET developer. Plenty of places have
dozens of recs open. Don't talk to the stupid recruiters, talk to the
companies themselves.

I'm not dismissing your larger point that a good engineer can quickly take on
a specific stack - engineering is what is important in a good employee, not
knowledge of a specific API.

~~~
JakeStone
Phase 2, which I'm implementing tomorrow, consists of basically that. I'm
figuring at least Microsoft, Amazon and Google. We'll see what else I can
find. Any recommendations?

------
snorkel
Another disconnect is start ups tend to advertise "team lead" roles where you
have the responsibilities of a manager, developer, and operations all at once
while paid entry level salary. No thanks, but nice try.

~~~
debacle
I think this is a result of fear and marketing - if you have team leads, then
you can still advertize a flat corporate structure, and startups are afraid to
offer the management title because it means giving up control, which is a bit
crazy - you'll give up 15% of your company for 100k, but not a bit of control
to a manager who is just trying to do what he can for your company.

------
robomartin
I'll tell you how to find the best people. It's not easy, but it works.

For a while I tried a very simple policy:

You come in when you want and go home when you want. Take as long as you want
for lunch. Got errands to run that are important to you? Don't ask me, go do
it. Need to go out of town to see a concert in the middle of the week? Have a
good time. Bring pictures. In general, everyone in this group was allowed to
be an adult and manage their time as they wished. There was no such thing as
vacation time or sick time accounting. If you need time off, take it.

The only requirement was that the work get done, get done well and on time
(within a schedule that was discussed by all and agreed-upon).

That's it.

What happened? Well, a few people abused it. They tended to be in the younger
end of the spectrum and perhaps thought this was a license to fuck off and get
paid. They didn't last long. The rest of this small group was great. They got
their work done without a lot of supervision, were happy and actually went out
of their way to push the project forward. It was an excellent experience and a
great way, as far as I am concerned, to filter the idiots from the
professionals.

This isn't easy to manage. That seems like an oxymoron. You are not actively
managing people yet you say that it is hard to manage? Well, the problem is it
takes a little bit of time to settle into a stable state. Every addition or
change to the team creates a step change that needs to be allowed to settle.
Once you have a stable team it pretty much runs itself and it runs well. Until
then it can be a little chaotic.

I've done this once and was happy with the results. When you are under the gun
and trying to put together a new team it is easier to go with a more
conventional top-down approach and pretty much dictate what each person needs
to do, when, how, etc. Not the best environment but sometimes you have no
choice.

That said, in general terms I firmly believe in making people responsible for
an area or reaching a certain milestone and pretty much leaving them alone.
They should come to you if they need help or guidance. Other than that, if you
are working with professionals there should not be any need to hover over them
every day to see how they are doing.

------
teddyh
As is common, Joel said it all back in 2000:

“Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers?”
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html)

------
wyclif
Why can't your startup find developers?

1\. You want to be stingy on salary and benefits, and avoid paying above
market rates. You quibble over meeting trivial salary requests. Your company
doesn't have proper review processes and doesn't give raises frequently
enough. You don't provide equity in your company to your most valued employees

2\. Your interview process sucks. You hand off the candidate to 5 different
people, the interview lasts all day, you require too many interviews before
making an offer, you have puzzle questions, your interviewer is non-technical
and has never used the technologies you're hiring for, you rely on agency
recruiters, you and your co-founders aren't involved in hiring, you don't
spend enough time on hiring, it takes weeks for you to get back to candidates,
it takes days for you to make an offer, you forget about scheduled interviews,
your people doing the interviews aren't at work the day candidates have
scheduled to come in, you ask inappropriate questions during interviews, you
lie to candidates during interviews, interviewing is combat and not
collaborative

3\. You hire for "culture fit" which means you only hire people that fit
whatever your version of the status quo is. You signal that older people or
non-hipsters need not apply. You discriminate against people old enough to
have spouses and children. Your office has a culture offensive to women and/or
minorities. You have the words "rock star" or "ninja" in your description. You
prefer "yes men" over free thinkers. You hire only people who are like you

4\. You demand that every employee commute to your offices because you have an
antiquated "asses in seats" busywork mentality or a "no remote work" policy.
You treat remote employees as if they are second-class employees. You demand
relocation to the Bay area or it's a 'no hire'. You don't provide relocation
assistance. You don't help with visas

5\. You require educational credentials for jobs that don't and shouldn't
require them. You set up qualification barriers for great candidates. You
don't respect candidates who have experience outside of your specific
technology stack

6\. You have a toxic office environment. Your offices are shabby and "Class
B." You make people work in grey cubicles, Office Space-style. You don't
provide catered lunch. You pay no attention to, and invest nothing in, office
equipment. You don't provide up-to-date equipment and developer hardware

7\. You require ridiculous hours that make work/life balance out of the
question. You don't offer generous holiday time. You tell people they cannot
take holiday time because it's "crunch time." You resent employees who take
holiday time they are entitled to

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I kind of object to #6. Not every company _can afford_ to rent or purchase the
nicest wonderfulest offices ever. Plenty can only get offices out in some
godawful office park where everyone has to, GASP, bring their own lunches or
buy one off a local shop or food truck. That doesn't mean your company is bad,
it means you've got fewer hipster pretensions -- though I would ask companies
to please locate nearer to downtown centers rather than out in the exurbs.

~~~
wyclif
I think that's reasonable, but note I didn't say expensive real estate. I've
seen some pretty nice office space in converted warehouses and repurposed
industrial areas. What I'm talking about is putting devs in a cube farm and
stuff like that. I also don't think it's _absolutely essential_ that you cater
lunch (if you're in a city with lots of dining options and off-site
opportunities for employees to eat together), but if you're in the exurbs it
probably is at this point. Top devs expect these things, even if they might be
willing to work without them for a certain startup.

~~~
dobbsbob
I had to pick up a contract from a mobile gaming startup yesterday. 30 grim
cubicles crammed together, shit literally everywhere on the floor like piles
of cables, papers, discarded hardware...

There was even a gargantuan flatscreen that looped their product commercials
and one of the guys sitting beside it I could see the flashing, seizure
inducing graphics reflecting off his 2 screens and glasses. No windows, and
unbearably hot from all the machines. How do you not go mad in that
environment

~~~
chii
i'd be worried about occupational health and safety in an environment like
that. In fact, you can sue the employer for such an environment as unsafe. and
if it turns out that they didn't do their due diligence to provide a good env,
they might even have to cough up compensation. Food for thought!

------
tunesmith
Is that really the salary structure in the bay area these days? It used to be
that a senior developer's salary was easily 2x a junior developer's salary,
but I thought senior and lead developer salaries were in the $130-$150k range
in the bay area, at least for java developers.

~~~
Pxtl
Jeeze, I wonder why we don't see more start-ups appearing in other areas - I
mean, there are lots of college towns pumping out brilliant engineers and
coders that cost a lot less to live in. Your users don't care if you're
located in Cambridge or Waterloo or the Bay area.

~~~
jseliger
There is a field called economic geography that works to explain your
question. It's too complex to summarize, but the short version is that SV has
lots of startups, lots of investors, and lots of hackers in a small space, so
people who want to do those things move there, creating a cycle.

See also [http://paulgraham.com/maybe.html](http://paulgraham.com/maybe.html),
[http://paulgraham.com/cities.html](http://paulgraham.com/cities.html),
[http://paulgraham.com/hubs.html](http://paulgraham.com/hubs.html).

~~~
Pxtl
Yes, but that's why I'm mentioning college towns. Lots of hackers in any town
with a top-rate software/engineering department. And a start-up is just a
hacker with a bit of extra ambition.

Investors and start-up culture sound like the missing ingredient more than any
shortage of technical know-how.

~~~
clavalle
Austin is much cheaper than SF and SV but salaries are still in the $100K to
$130K for talented devs.

~~~
victorf
Surely the TX labor laws are worse for the employee than CA's, though? It
might make sense.

~~~
clavalle
Well, we don't get 8 weeks of guaranteed paternity leave if that's what you
mean. But Texas has some nice protections for employees. Non-compete
agreements, for example, are almost unenforceable in Texas, which is nice.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Also in California, actually.

------
edwinnathaniel
$100k-$120k for undergrad? that's crazy. I guess this is one of the reasons
why Facebook and Twitter decided to open offices in Vancouver _specifically_
to hire undergrad. Undergrad salary here can be half of that.

~~~
quaffapint
It does say 'In silicon valley'. But even after price adjust, that does seem
WAY too high for a junior developer.

~~~
onedev
Yep FB offers undergrads from some universities 100-120k, plus 50-100k signing
bonus, plus $100-125k in stocks from what I've heard.

~~~
michaelochurch
Those numbers, in general, are high. You might get that if you get them into a
bidding war.

In general, a publicly traded company is not going to give that kind of
package to an undergrad. Maybe $110-120k in salary, but the stock amount is
more likely to be around $80k vesting over 4 years.

~~~
logical42
100k-ish stock vesting over 4 years is pretty standard among the big SV
companies for new grads. It can be a lot more though if you're not a new
graduate.

------
BigChiefSmokem
I've given up on salary.

I work as a W2 contractor (and 1099 at very high rates) and I always let my
bosses know if they want me here after 5pm then they better be ready for me to
charge it.

I might have to pay for my own benefits but I have full control over my hours
this way. It's a nice compromise between salary and freelance, even if I do
have to deal with a recruiting agency (just don't work with mom-n-pop
recruiters and you'll be okay).

------
drakaal
Here I thought the problem was we were in Phoenix, and we had hired all the
Python Developers in the area. (with a few exceptions for those who work at
NASA)

~~~
diek
Phoenix has a pretty thriving tech community. I'm in Chandler, and in the last
week I have gone to a Cassandra meetup at GoDaddy and am going to an Amazon
cloud meetup at the Amazon offices in downtown Tempe tonight.

I run into Ruby and Python devs all over the place. The problem is, like this
article touches on, the jobs advertisements I've seen for Python seem to be
written for the "hipster" crowd (I've even seen some with "ninja", etc in the
title).

Then they end up wanting to pay $30k less than the competition, so most people
I know chose to go work at Intel, Freescale, Microchip, one of the aerospace
companies... somewhere that has a professional atmosphere, pays well, and you
get to work on interesting tech.

~~~
drakaal
At the risk of getting flamed as an arrogant bastard. Which I am. The python
talent in Phoenix is for the most part not talent.

The guys who want $75K would not fetch $50k in San Jose, and the guys who want
$100K would not fetch $70k in San Jose.

I have been lucky to get some really great guys, but most of the guys are
script kiddies who have never done anything hard, and are too high and mighty
to learn to do the hard stuff.

We aren't competing with LimeLight very often for tech talent. We are
competing with Silicon Valley. Because unless you have roots in Phoenix, if
you are talented you aren't staying here.

I am very aware that if my guys wanted to leave Phoenix they would do well in
Silicon Valley, and I'm very glad they choose to live here.

~~~
diek
I can only speak to my experience, but I've turned down offers from Google and
Netflix to stay in the Phoenix area. The cost of living (relative to salaries)
in the valley is crazy, and you're competing for housing with people who just
happened to "be around" when their company IPO'd. In Chandler I can afford a
nice house near parks and good schools and I don't have to worry about
earthquakes.

Speaking to your troubles hiring, I can only generalize based on some job ads
that I've seen. Like I mentioned before, some ads just seem too targeted at
the "early 20s fresh out of school" demographic that companies think they can
lure in with free soda in exchange for 80-hour weeks. Senior devs just don't
go for that, so they ignore those ads and go interview at Honeywell instead.

~~~
drakaal
The quality of living is different.

I am working mostly in Python these days. When I was in Silicon Valley I could
go talk to Guido. When I had questions about AppEngine from Google I met with
the PM's.

Phoenix doesn't have that. Also the place I rent in Tempe is with in 10% of
the price of the same thing in San Jose.

~~~
diek
That's more about personal connections than the quality of life of a region,
right? Granted, geographically if you happen to know those people it makes it
hard to connect with them, but most people can't just ring up Guido when they
have a Python question.

As far as Phoenix-based Python developers, there appears to be a Python meetup
group, 'DesertPy': [http://www.meetup.com/Phoenix-Python-Meetup-
Group/](http://www.meetup.com/Phoenix-Python-Meetup-Group/)

As far as real estate... I don't know about your specific situation but as a
whole the valley is much more expensive than the Phoenix area. San Jose,
through Cupertino, up to Mountain View... on average you're easily paying
twice as much for the same square footage (I just checked San Jose on Zillow.
2,000 sq ft is easily 600k).

~~~
drakaal
The Buy is better than rent in Phx, opposite of San Jose.

"nice outside" doesn't happen much in Phx. In Silicon Valley you open the
windows and let the breeze in. In Phx you kick up the AC.

------
taude
Back in the mid-90s when just out of school, working at MSFT, a buddy and I
calculated that we were making about $15/hour after calculating all the long
hours we worked (it wasn't 80 hours, but 60 was quite common).

...then the dot-com boom came and we all went and worked elsewhere. Which was
good because our stock options never went up much after 1999 (to justify the
salary anyway).

BTW, it was still one of the best jobs I've ever had working for someone else.

------
bithive123
While I was reading this I kept thinking that although the points are sound it
fails to point out the upside -- that making these kinds of mistakes also
effectively signals the presence of undesirable traits in the leadership.

~~~
kps
And consequently, the author is doing developers a disservice by telling
employers how to _pretend_ not to suck.

Or would be, if there were the slightest possibility of them listening.

------
dobbsbob
Just go through an open source mailing list and find people who seem to know
what they are doing. Somewhere they probably have a consultant page, or git
profile of work. Done, hire them remotely. If they need extra people tell them
to find somebody they know who's competent and hire them too. No office, no
recruiters, no insurance/rent to pay and no investment needed to buy hardware.

------
grantlmiller
I would add that the low barriers to entry to become a startup founder (and to
raise several hundred thousand dollars) leaves us with few great people to be
employees (this goes for engineers & business folks alike).

~~~
greenyoda
Not all great developers want to run a startup. The founder of a startup has
to do all sorts of stuff that most developers don't like doing: management,
marketing, endless meetings with investors, etc.

~~~
seiji
plus getting 90% of the exit money while the employees who built the company
get to split 10% 200 ways (all of the non-funding allotments).

~~~
CmonDev
Yes, that's how lotteries work.

~~~
ffrryuu
Work at a tier A company and buy lotto tickets give you the best of both
worlds, corporate + startup!

------
nasalgoat
It's nice to see the fallacy of options is finally sinking in, and people are
refusing to take a pay cut for the mystical unicorn of a fast exit.

------
NadaAldahleh
Google stopped asking questions like "how many golf balls fit into a plane",
but they didn't stop asking puzzles and programming trivia questions.

If you know how to ask these questions, and what insight you're looking for
from them, they can be very insightful. Here's the different types of
questions and puzzles you should ask, how, and what insight to get from them:
[https://www.sandglaz.com/blog_posts/104-How-to-interview-
and...](https://www.sandglaz.com/blog_posts/104-How-to-interview-and-hire-
junior-developers)

------
jtbigwoo
>> Founders typically look for candidates who have a similar educational
background to themselves and live within 25 miles of their office.

I go back to the stories of google rejecting mid-level management applicants
because their college GPA's were 3.0 instead of 4.0 or they went to Georgia
Tech instead of M.I.T. Seems like everybody makes these same mistakes.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/15-google-interview-
questions...](http://www.businessinsider.com/15-google-interview-questions-
that-used-to-make-geniuses-feel-dumb-2012-11?op=1)

------
gboudrias
Startups can't find (good) developers because they don't understand how high
the demand is. Unless you're in the big league with the big money, you _will_
have to settle.

------
snowwrestler
It's trivially easy to find developers. It's very difficult to find developers
who are competent and responsible, let alone rock stars.

~~~
pm24601
Why should a "rock star" work for you ?

How about creating the rockstars rather than hoping for one to fall into your
lap.

------
consultant23522
There's a local startup here that I would absolutely love to work for, except
for one thing. I have a lot of experience in their technology stack and some
domain knowledge. They won't hire be because I'm not willing/interested in
churning out 60 hour work weeks every single week. So.. alas, double-lose.

------
orenbarzilai
another interesting question is how to find the good candidates. We use the
usual ways: personal connections, head hunting agencies etc. we have also
started to target top talents on meetup groups, hackathons & local technical
bloggers.

If you have another creative & efficient way to find candidates please share.

~~~
Matt_Mickiewicz
Unfortunately, Hired isn't in Tel Aviv yet, otherwise I'd love to help!

------
kps
The photo is certainly appropriate.

------
kumarski
well done.

------
michaelochurch
Find, or entice to join after an offer is made? Two different processes.

The first can be solved by getting one's name out there: writing a tech blog,
hosting meetups, coming up with novel perks. The second is harder and more
objective.

Most startups give mediocre salaries, but people know that. There are two
things about startups that damage them, though.

1\. Low equity. Once the VCs get involved, equity allotments become so low
that their motivational effect is pretty much nil. I feel like the current
culture of startup mediocrity has a lot to do with the fact that seriously
skilled people aren't interested in the laughable equity amounts they get in
post-A startups, unless they can treat it as a 9-to-5 day job and have almost
unlimited autonomy.

2\. Low autonomy, which surprises people. You're more able to have a global
effect on the company in a startup-- that's pretty much impossible for a big
corporation-- but the amount of day-to-day personal autonomy people have over
their own work and careers is often less in the startups. Big companies can't
compete on options and usually pay market (because they _set_ the market rate)
so the good ones give their good people decent projects. A lot of startups
have micromanagement and, worse yet, an increasing number that have that MBA
douchebag culture are popping up (and if you work for a startup with MBA
douchebag culture, you get the worst of both worlds between big and small
companies; the risk and division-of-labor uncertainty of a small company,
usually run by someone too unstable and arrogant to last more than 6 months--
which isn't even that hard to do-- in a large one). New York is full of
startups run by MBA types who couldn't hack it in real finance but made enough
contacts to raise VC.

I'm pretty sure I'd have no trouble hiring good developers. I'd run open
allocation as far as possible, and I wouldn't give out _any_ equity, but
replace that with a far more generous profit-sharing program. There wouldn't
be far-off payouts with messy tax implications as with options, but bonuses
would be 200-500% in good years.

~~~
yid
> I'm pretty sure I'd have no trouble hiring good developers.

Honest question -- you have a bit of a reputation, I'd say mainly from your
Hacker News rants. Do you think that those will help or hurt your recruitment
prospects?

~~~
michaelochurch
_Honest question -- you have a bit of a reputation, I 'd say mainly from your
Hacker News rants. Do you think that those will help or hurt your recruitment
prospects?_

In the short term, it makes me unfundable (but that's OK, because I'm not
interested in raising money right now-- too many douchebags in the game)
because I've brought out too many unpleasant truths, but would be neutral-to-
positive if I were the one doing the hiring. In the long term, I think it's
favorable, because I think (hope) that the culture will evolve to a point
where I seem prescient rather than pugnacious. If I'm wrong, and the startup
culture devolves, then, I don't want to be a part of it anyway.

~~~
victorf
I have a lot of respect for your no-bullshit attitude towards VC-funded
companies. I don't see why that would appear as a downside to employees. Most
of what I've read is you talking about what a shitty deal it is for the
employees; obviously you're imagining some kind of fairer compensation and I
think that's nothing but a plus.

~~~
michaelochurch
I agree. But I think that traditional VCs would be reluctant to fund me. I'm a
known publicity risk; so they'd have to find a way to sell it as upside (we're
so forward thinking that _this guy_ endorsed us). LBJ had a darker view of
that dynamic, "I'd rather have him in the tent pissing out than outside of the
tent pissing in".

In the long term, everything I've said will seem prescient. But I'm pretty
sure my chances of getting VC funding right now are zero. Those chances were
never strong, because I wasn't born into that kind of connections, but I've
pissed a lot of people off. That's OK, because I'm interested in starting
something when the scene is clotted with douches. I'd rather wait 5-7 years
for the douche tide to go out.

------
pastProlog
Companies put up barriers for applicants, then wonder why they can't find
anyone.

A big thing for me is references. I have good references but I don't like to
bother people. These are often from bosses who I worked with four years before
and have only had sporadic contact with since, I don't want to be asking for
favors every other contact.

Some companies, in e-mails before I even talk to anyone want me to send them
references. I mean it's not like people ask for references as the last step
before making an offer.

So what I have to do is when I'm looking for work, contact all my references,
make sure my phone # etc. for them is current, and ask if they'll give me a
reference - they always say yes. I figure I'm then good for the next few
weeks/months in terms of that.

But it also means I basically have to make the major commitment of saying I
want another job. Then I go looking and look until I find one.

If people were not so free with asking for references before I even talk to
someone on the phone even, I could look for work at my leisure. If a
headhunter contacted me, even if I wasn't looking, I could talk to the
company. If they said they were almost set with the decision and just wanted
some references, then I could do that as a last step.

Really it limits when I am available to hear offers. I am only open for offers
every 2-3 years, in the weeks and months I am looking for a new job. I'm not
open 18 months into a job, because I'm not going to hassle 3 old bosses for
one company which hasn't even decided if they want to do a phone interview
with me yet.

Of course I can always say I don't give references until later in the process,
but usually it's some HR drone handing me a sheet and telling me to fill it
out. If I don't put contact for references they tell me I should fill that in.
It's like I'm sloppy for not bringing contact information, or have something
to hide in not wanting to hand out reference information freely. People can
say "tell 'them' so-and-so" but there's no them, there's an HR information
sheet and some HR drone only peripherally connected with the hiring process.

It's not a big deal for me, it just limits my availability for talking to a
4-6 week cycle out of every 100-150 weeks. Companies throw up these barriers
against themselves, then wonder why they can't find people.

There's other things as well. I work from 9 to 5. But companies want me to
come in at 10 AM, I wait around 30 minutes for the first person to talk to me,
then they want me to talk to someone else etc. Then two people who I have to
talk to before getting hired are busy or not there. Also, if I schedule one a
vacation day during the week, my current company might wonder what I'm doing.
How am I supposed to make time for these long, drawn out interviews during the
work week?

Then of course there is specialization. Wanting someone who knows a language
like C++ is fine. Even wanting someone who knows OpenGL is fine. Or even more
specifically, OpenGL ES if OpenGL is too general. But then they want people
who know who Objective C for Apple hooks into C++ with OpenGL ES, as opposed
to someone who has maybe been doing Java and JNI hooks into C++ with OpenGL
ES. Or if that is not specific enough, then something even more specific.

Or it might say BSCS required. So if you're a few classes short - tough luck.

The entire interview process is geared towards company's establishing their
dominance in the relationship from the get-go. You go hassle your old bosses,
asking them to put in a good word for you. You come here when you're supposed
to be working. And so on. Companies throw up these barriers as if there is a
huge excess of good programmers they can pick and choose from. When that pool
dries up, do they think, gee, maybe we should change how we interview? Of
course not, they just complain how they can't find talented developers, and
lobby Washington so that foreign programmers don't have to hop through the
immigration hoops everyone else has to.

They don't see a lack of talented programmers, they see a lack of a large pool
of talented programmers they can put over a barrel. Because otherwise they
would have changed how they do interviewing.

While they only have the option of griping about lack of talent, we have
options beyond griping about interviews. With the cloud, growth of mobile and
app stores etc., as everyone says, now it's easier than ever to get your own
personal (or partnered) income stream going. Hopefully mine grows to the point
where the spectre about potentially having to go on a job interview ever again
diminishes to nothing. I dislike enough the more easy interviews about whether
I will consult on a project for a few months.

~~~
aspensmonster
>The entire interview process is geared towards company's establishing their
dominance in the relationship from the get-go.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Worth highlighting, but we don't have greentext on Hacker News ;-).

>implying implications

~~~
krapp
>Worth highlighting, but we don't have greentext on Hacker News ;-).

we do now:
[http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/178736](http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/178736)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>just installed the script

>greentext now displays

>newfriends learn to triforce eventually

~~~
krapp
>flawed victory...

------
avty
I know recent grads making close to $200k (everything included) simply by
working at Google...

------
marincounty
When In was younger I didn't trust people older than I. As, I got older I
became one of those people. In my twenties, I had absolutely so patience for
computers. I felt like I was wasting my time looking into a computer terminal.
To be absolutely honest--all I cared about was getting laid--oh, and a little
bit of beer money. As I got older, my physicality changed. I now cherish the
time I can spend in front of a terminal. I still believe the best minds are
kids in their twenties, but don't rule out 40, and 50 year olds. Their is a
few exceptions though; I would never hire a 'know it all'\--young, or old.
Eighty hour weeks? Fine, but let them work from home.

------
dschiptsov
Because bright people will never end up in a sweatshop?)

