
True cost of recruiting a developer [infographic] - tomwinter
https://devskiller.com/true-cost-of-recruiting-a-developer-infographic/
======
Exuma
Scroll hijacking is absolutely deplorable. Who in their right mind thinks this
is a good idea? And I don't mean that sarcastically, but who... in their sane
and healthy mind, thinks its a good idea to blindly overwrite a user's
personal scroll preference and neuter it, muck it up, and completely change it
to something thats not as performant, clunky, buggy, and doesn't match the
speed their used to.

I gave up reading the article because I shot past the paragraph a bunch of
times.

~~~
er0l
it's absolute garbage on Firefox Dev Edition. Chrome seems fine. But I agree,
not worth the trouble at all.

~~~
corobo
Chrome on Linux. One scroll blip on my mouse wheel and I'm half way down the
page. I no longer care about what it costs to hire a pineapple or whatever the
article was.

------
austincheney
Hummmm... you wonder how much of that money is invested in internal training
for those skills they claim they cannot find. I bet the average is pretty
close to 0. I guess it just makes more sense to throw money at the problem and
hope for magic in 43 days.

Instead, why not just devote that $33K to a training program for a duration of
roughly 43 days? Now you have the skills you were missing with the bonus of
added loyalty and lower risk at no additional cost (money and time that would
have been spent anyways). You also get a massive productivity boost for free
according to Brook's Law. The only cost is that an external candidate might
(or might not) have a diversity of skills your company doesn't provide.

~~~
struppi
Training is also a good idea since bringing a new person to a team has a
negative effect on the productivity of the team (#):

(1) If you are not working on a greenfield project, it takes some time for the
new hire to get up to speed. During that time, their productivity is negative:
They are not really productive yet, _and_ they need help from everyone else on
the team.

(2) If you add people to a mature team (or remove people), the team dynamics
change _completely_ and the team might need several months to get back to
their previous performance again (##).

So, hiring a new developer can cost you several tens of thousands of dollars /
euros even after you already hired them. Training your existing developers can
make sense here - They get a productivity boost sooner. And, when I teach
inhouse-trainings, I always have a feeling that people are more motivated to
do their job after the training, even when they cannot immediately use what
they have learned: It matters to them that their employer cares about them and
their technical excellence.

Still it often makes sense: Some times, you just don't have enough people for
your long term plans. But don't expect too much too early.

(#) Adding people to a late software project makes it later / You cannot get a
baby in one month by hiring a team of nine women.

(##) I collected some data about this when I was an agile coach for two teams
at a large company. We added 2 developers, productivity dropped, needed ~6
months to become reliably higher than before adding the developers.
Unfortunately, I cannot share the data. Also, I guess this was an extreme
case: Complicated legacy system.

~~~
OpenDrapery
Sounds like we've found the guy who has the secret to measuring productivity.
Care to share what the rest of the industry has yet to figure out? How, on
earth, do we measure developer productivity?

~~~
struppi
I know that this every productivity measurement is _very_ fuzzy and can be
cheated (#), but here's how we did it:

We were simply looking at the number of features delivered to the customer in
a certain amount of time, number of defects found in production and number of
critical defects found immediately after roll-out (a.k.a. hot-fixes). We
adjusted for holidays, vacations and sick leaves.

Those numbers were relatively stable until we changed the team, then dropped,
and it took quite a while to reliably get to higher levels than before.

(#) I don't think the team cheated, because if they had, they could have
_easily_ cheated the numbers in a way that they'd steadily rise.

~~~
flukus
> Those numbers were relatively stable until we changed the team, then
> dropped, and it took quite a while to reliably get to higher levels than
> before.

That could be a reflection on a number of things, most notably the code
quality. If your new hires are taking a while to get up to speed (you didn't
specify how long) then that's also an indication of either quality or doing
something quite different.

------
Etheryte
Why oh why does the page need a custom hijacked scroll speed and a custom
scrollbar? Completely awful to use, closed the page as soon as I noticed the
wonky scroll behavior.

~~~
rogual
PM: Site looks good guys, but can you just tweak the scrolling behaviour? It
doesn't match my preference.

Devs: That would be a setting on your device, we can't control that without
some terrible hacks.

PM: I don't understand any of that, just make it work how I said.

~~~
pc86
> _Devs: [While updating resume] That would be a setting on your device, we
> can 't control that without some terrible hacks._

FTFY

------
zephyrfalcon
"In the IT world, where there is a talent shortage, ..."

Could we please stop perpetuating this myth? If there really was a shortage,
companies would fall over each other trying to hire anyone they could, not
make it almost impossible to get hired by imposing ridiculous and long
interview processes.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_...companies would fall over each other trying to hire anyone they could, not
make it almost impossible to get hired by imposing ridiculous and long
interview processes._

This doesn't follow. Gold is a scarce resource. This doesn't mean that gold
purchasers should stop using assays to determine if they are buying gold or
pyrite.

~~~
mrfusion
What if those assays didnt work though?

------
krat0sprakhar
The scroll hijack on this page is super annoying. Here's the direct link to
the infographic for those interested - [https://devskiller.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/12/Devskiller...](https://devskiller.com/wp-
content/uploads/2016/12/Devskiller-True-cost-of-recruiting-a-developer-
infographic.png)

------
notjustanymike
On a related notes, devs now you know how much it costs to replace you. Next
time you ask for a raise, remember the alternative is for the company to spend
$30,000 replacing you.

------
arielweisberg
Hiring and retention are two sides of the same coin.

It's really an incomplete picture when you don't look at the cost of churn at
the same time.

------
thenipper
As someone who manages an ATS for a global company that keyword myth drives me
crazy. The ATS adds a ton of value to the recruiting process and in my
experience most good recruiters don't use a keyword scoring system or at least
trust one.

~~~
mrfusion
95% of recruiters are not "good" recruiters from my experience.

------
dbg31415
For smaller shops, there are some easy ways to bring the cost down.

1) Make sure you are networking and social, budget time for this. It's good
for team moral to get people out of the office anyway. Sponsor some talks /
Meetup groups, host some public lunch and learns, get booths at career
fairs... just get your folks out to meet people. Is there a cost? Yes, but as
being proactively social becomes part of company culture you get a ton of
benefits... more applicants, more partnership opportunities, better informed
and educated staff, more confident staff if you give them more opportunities
for showing their knowledge / public speaking / leadership...

2) Get better screening questions. I've hired a ton of developers for clients,
I have 4-5 questions on my screen. I use a web form (you can even use a Google
Form) that takes maybe 5 minutes for the person to write a few paragraphs for
the responses. A fast no is good at this stage -- it's more about getting to a
reason to ding the candidate at this point than a reason to hire them. Don't
waste the candidates time asking them to re-type their resume, those systems
are really stupid and turn off qualified candidates.

3) Get better at phone screens. I jump right in, I don't normally budget more
than 5-10 minutes for a phone screen. Either they've got the skills, have
confidence, and communication ability -- or they don't. If an employee sent
them in as a referral, they always get to skip the phone screen and I just do
a scheduling call to set up a time for them to come in. Always a good idea to
respect your employee referrals. (Make sure you are paying a generous bonus
for referrals.)

4) Given it takes ~20k to hire another dev, when you get the right candidate
don't fret on salary. If they said they were looking for $125k, offer them
$127k... easy easy way to come off strong out the gate with them. Understand
that if you have a shitty health plan, people with kids and families aren't
going to want to work for you -- the cost of skimping on your dental plan in
terms what it does to employee turnover is staggering. "Stitch in time to save
nine" type stuff right there. Understand that if you don't have 401k
matching... you aren't a real company and your offers won't be competitive
just because you have sodas and a foosball table in the break room. Get all
your shit in order to reduce on-boarding speed-bumps, your employees can work
other places and showing you care about them is a great way to retain them.

5) Spend money educating your staff. Do you need to hire for the position, or
can someone you have cover it with a bit more training? Make sure employees
have a training budget, make sure they are discouraged from not using it, make
sure they are getting value from the training they take -- having them do
summary lunch and learns for the company is a great way to spread the
knowledge. And you never know who's going to be interested and what that will
lead to... had an accountant show up for a talk on SEO... a year later she was
running the analytics department at the agency. People can pivot, and you can
benefit from that if your structure allows for personal growth.

~~~
HelloNurse
Also, spend money retaining staff. What use is hiring someone at $127k if it
causes three equally senior employees, currently earning $90k, to quit in
anger?

I'm currently experiencing a softer version of this pattern as top management
treats the very small team of a promising product as the future of the
company, and the people and customers providing 98% of revenue as legacy.

------
er0l
The cost of making the wrong hire is usually way higher.

------
mrfusion
I bet if you took that lost money and put it into higher salary that 43 days
would go away and you'd get higher quality candidates.

~~~
pc86
You're probably right to a degree but people will still leave and you'll still
have to replace. Saying that you won't have restaffing costs if you paid
everyone $35k/yr more just isn't true.

