
Why developers are allergic to job opportunities - bitsweet
http://coderwall.com/p/devsal
======
dpeck
Developers are allergic to career advancement for a few reasons. They tend to
be a fairly risk averse lot, with many unwilling to trade the devil they know
for the devil they don't.

They also tend to have a low bullshit tolerance and get worn down quickly with
the hassle that recruiting/employment has become. Multiple phone interviews,
HR people, code tests, and then the "used car salesman" process of salary
negotiation. Its draining, especially when you're an introvert by nature.

I went through this once with a semi-established startup when I was looking
for my 2nd job. 3 interviews in they wouldn't discuss salary over the phone,
wanted me to come in to meet with the CTO again to discuss. I burned the
bridge at that point, and became fairly jaded to the whole process. Get salary
info up from, if what you want is near the top of any range they give drop it
and move on theres no oppertunity for advancement. If they won't give salary
range, drop it and move on. More than 2 interviews after the inital HR
screening, move on. And realistically if you're a somewhat proven commodity
you should be able to hammer out all the details off-site over coffee/beer and
finish up the formalities in a few hours at the office.

We're fortunate enough to have a high demand skillset at the moment, and
thankfully most of us can approach these situations from a position of
"power", but sadly most of us don't.

~~~
anon987
I'm looking for something right now, I have a very strong resume, and am
willing to relocate anywhere so I'm getting 15-20 e-mails a day. This is part
rant part so you might want to stop reading:

\- I send a recruiter my resume, they call me 20 seconds later and want to
discuss it. I took hours to write a damn good resume. Read it, contact me with
questions that ARE NOT answered by what I just sent you. It's all laid out in
front of you, stop wasting my time.

\- How many years of experience do you have with product X? Again, you can
read the resume and add it up, not hard.

\- Don't ask me to put other opportunities on hold or somehow make your
opportunity exclusive. If this was a perfect world where companies and
recruiters got back to me with a yes/no in a day I would be fine with that,
but expecting me to ignore 20 other e-mails when you never get back to me or
take two weeks to schedule an interview is laughable. If you want me, step up
or step off.

\- You contacted me about a position that's W2 and offers NO benefits?
Seriously?

\- If you only send a location and job title it's going in the trash.

\- If I don't respond to the initial or 2nd e-mail, I won't respond the 5th
time you spam at me.

\- I can tell that some recruiters are using me to simply fill their daily
quota of sending e-mails. All of my past job titles are related to Linux /
UNIX and I mention EMC once so you're going to send me storage admin jobs?
Stop it.

\- No need to tell me positions are "urgent" or have an "immediate need". When
it comes to hiring the need is always immediate, and when I see the word
"urgent" it means OH GOD I HOPE I GET TO HIM FIRST I NEED MY COMMISSION.

\- Oh, working with Product X is required and you only mention that after I
send you the exact same resume you saw on a job site? If it's not on my resume
I haven't worked it it, stop wasting my time to fill your daily e-mail quotas.

\- Stop creating hoops. Bob gets my resume who sends it to his account manager
Jane who sends it to Bill in HR who sends it to the supervisor John who sends
it to the hiring manager Rick. By the time my resume gets to Rick it's been 3
weeks and someone has already scooped me up.

\- Stop with this subcontractor -> subcontractor -> outsourcing company ->
outsourcing company -> actual client bullshit. After all of these worthless
middlemen get their cut the actual company ends up paying way way more than
they would hiring directly. My former (and very good natured) boss and I had a
good laugh when we realized the company was paying almost twice as much for me
as he made.

\- Just because you have a branch office near me doesn't mean I want to drive
down, fill out a bunch of paperwork, and waste an afternoon.

\- Stop leaving me in the dark if you don't want me. I can tell some contract
houses are doing this intentionally because they don't want to submit me but
also don't want me to try again with a competing contract house that WILL
submit me. Naughty, naughty.

\- You expect me to spend a few hundred dollars to travel to your location for
the 2nd, in-person interview? Riiiiight.

\- I've only talked with three recruiters that I actually like as people. I
resent the other 95% because they might be getting $10-20 for each hour I work
just because they are keyword monkeys.

\- Inefficient recruiting practices are driving away potential talent, period.
Your company needs talent? Start by getting talented HR and in-house
recruiters.

Ahh, I feel a bit better. What a shitty day.

dpeck is completely right about the hassle it's become. I'm only on week #2,
I'm already fucking sick of it, and will take almost anything just to make it
all stop.

~~~
codex_irl
Rails developer here, I am thinking of changing jobs right now but am put off
by the thoughts of going to bullshit technical interviews where I need to
implement / modify some obscure algorithms or concepts which I last saw 12+
years ago in a computer science class.

I would be much happier if the interviewer gave me a small app to create from
home (which was relevant to the work they actually do) & then discuss my
implementation choices in person with them.

What is the point of having me spend most of an interview doing things with
dijkstra's algorithm if never, in the history of your company has this been
used nor do you plan to use it & then spend the last 5 minutes asking a few
vague questions about what I like about Ruby / hate about Rails.

Technical tests, in my experience, are mostly (90%+ of the time) composed of
challenges which have no relevancy to the work I would be doing for that
company, its pointless ceremony over common sense.

~~~
mquander
Do you, in fact, have small apps that you send to companies you apply to?
Because I personally will spend time asking that flavor of "bullshit"
questions if and only if the candidate can't show me any significant code
they've written. I have to gather some kind of direct evidence that you are
good at actually writing programs.

~~~
codex_irl
I have a few small apps, personal projects, that I have offered to show to an
interviewer & discuss, while this offer is normally received positively, it is
always viewed as an addition to some sort of cryptic test, never a
replacement.

I am also happy to work on a small take-home project for them (within reason)
& provided its relevant to the work they do.

------
autarch
I think one of the biggest barriers to finding a new job that's better than
your current one is lack of telecommuting options.

Unless you live in NYC or the Bay Area or a few other big cities it's not like
there's dozens of great companies to choose from for programming jobs.

Younger people might find it easy to move, but once you're in a relationship
or have kids you can't just pick up and move every few years.

~~~
loeschg
Even as a young guy I can relate. I want to stay in the DC area, and I'm
having trouble finding anything other than government consultant work. Not
exactly the most exciting realm. Working to meet some people that might be
able to point me in the right direction. As much as I hate to say it,
"networking" pays.

~~~
armored_mammal
I hate the whole 'networking' thing, too, because I associate it with people
who replace functional skills with schmoozing skills, and I also hate how
concentrated in California and New York things are, because I'd really rather
not move, too. Plus moving to San Fran or NY, a huge chunk of any salary
increase just goes straight to rent. Blah.

~~~
loeschg
_I also hate how concentrated in California and New York things are, because
I'd really rather not move, too. Plus moving to San Fran or NY, a huge chunk
of any salary increase just goes straight to rent. Blah._ haha, amen.

~~~
EricDeb
Could not agree more. For young coders, offering time to learn a particular
technology or a telecommuting opportunity would sell me.

My impression is most small companies are hiring because they are disappointed
with the output by their technical teams thus far. Therefore they think they
need a "rock star" replacement.

------
beghbali
There are a few issues with jobs, one is we want to focus on building great
things and don't want to spend time exploring opportunities in parallel. Two,
it's hard to narrow down available opportunities to a few we would actually be
interested in. Three, we don't want to invest too much time interviewing and
writing resumes to only find out the position is not exciting after all. This
thing while it's not perfect it's the right direction. Ps I wanna know salary!

~~~
ironchef
As to salary, i just ask up front during opening discussions (before
interviews). I ask them to give me a ballpark of salary range so we're not
wasting each others' time.

~~~
dadkins
And when they respond back, "That depends on experience. Why don't you tell us
what you're expecting so we're not wasting each others' time."?

~~~
aristus
Then they are screwing around. At that stage they have your resume and know
your experience. I tell recruiters my salary to save time but ymmv.

~~~
sp332
Why? Tell them what you're looking for, not what you have now. "A potted plant
could handle a salary negotiation better than many people (myself included at
one point) -- at least the potted plant wouldn't divulge a salary history when
asked." -tptacek <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3290033>

~~~
kls
I actually had a company that once asked for current pay stubs, they where a
staffing firm and we had already negotiate the rate at which I was willing to
take the job. Part of their process of on-boarding was that I had to submit
three current pay stubs. I protested and they assured me that it would not be
used as a lever to drive down the already negotiated salary. I agreed to
submit them, but I also included a poison pill stipulation that if they tried
to negotiate salary after they where submitted that my salary requirement
would go to 120% of what we negotiated. Sure enough they saw that I was making
far less than what we negotiated and thought that they had leverage. They
tried to reduce the offer by a little more than 25%. What they did not account
for was that I had another offer that was only a little less than the original
agreed upon rate. I stuck to the 120% poison pill, but accepted the offer from
the other company, because even if they would have accepted the rate, the well
was already fouled.

~~~
Simucal
How did this poison pill work? Did you simply state it verbally or in an
email? In a contract?

~~~
kls
Just verbally when they sprung the 3 pay stubs requirement on me. I kind of
knew where it was heading but they said it was standard practice to verify
employment. Mentally I was over it, but I submitted them more out of curiosity
to see if a company would actually stoop to such practices. It was right when
the .com bust happened and a lot of companies now felt like they had the upper
hand.

~~~
kls
Sorry I forgot to mention, after I declined the reduced rate and told them I
would not be taking the position, they countered with a rate that was %10
below what the original offer was, stating that no one can reasonable expect
to gain a 35% increase in salary by just moving jobs, but I was underpaid at
the job I was at (A start-up that did not have a lot of capital) and the rate,
I was looking for was only slightly above market. When I refused that, they
then came back with the original offer and when I refused that they came back
with %10 above what we had agreed on. I did not let them drag it out any
further and notified them that I was taking another offer. The thing was,
their client was a large online travel company and I have worked on a lot of
the travel systems people use every day. My background read like the job
description they where looking for. So I am sure they had to do a lot of
explaining as to why they lost the perfect candidate. Their client is a
household name in travel and they where extremely happy that I was coming on-
board, I am sure they held their clients feet to the fire with my background
and where just looking to squeeze out more profit by taking it out of my end.
They got greedy and it cost them.

------
jetti
Speaking as somebody very early in my career, the "having your pick of places
to work" isn't that apt to me. Sure I could quit today and have a job next
week doing development, however, I would for sure be worse off because while
there is need for developers there companies that are doing awesome things
already attract awesome developers, where the need seems to be the strongest
is at companies that are doing boring work and paying shit wages.

Also, what some see as "allergic to career advacement" could also be seen as
long term career planning. For instance, I worked a terrible dev job for 7
months. I hated the place and they paid terrible salary for the skills they
wanted and area they were. I quit after finding my current job. Now this is a
nice place to work but there is still limitations to advancing as it is a
smaller company. That being said, I'm planning to stick around for a few years
because I'm working on my MS in CS and working on achieving my goal of working
on compilers for a living. I don't need to hop to whatever job seems cooler
than where I'm at currently because in the long run, it doesn't help me. Does
it raise my income a bit? Sure, but after a certain point the money doesn't
matter.

------
columbo
This is off-topic but I couldn't read the article past a few lines. The blurry
background kept getting my eyes unfocused. Maybe it is time I see an eye dr.

~~~
mratzloff
You're not alone. I had to shrink the window to get past the first couple of
paragraphs. A truly terrible background for a blog.

------
pnathan
I'm not allergic to career opportunities. I am, however, slightly picky in
regards to the company ethics & business plan, technology used, viability to
be operating in a year, and also- I don't want to live in SF or NYC.

If you want to hire someone, make a concerted effort not to drag out the
process, get the decision maker involved early, and cut the crap. Your OODA
cycle will be lowered, the candidate will have a better impression, and you'll
see more people.

I've been on both sides of the table, and a conscious decision not to look
like Dilbert ( or worse, Ratbert/Dogbert ) in your process makes a huge
difference.

------
zackmorris
I have the training to build a computer from scratch (computer engineering
degree). Anymore, I find it absolutely exhausting to talk to anyone about
technology. Nobody seems to understand that all I need are living expenses.
Please, just leave me alone, give me a place to live and food, and I will make
whatever you need.

Anymore though, the gap between earning room and board and signing your life
away to a soul sucking corporate atmosphere is so vast that I've opted to just
go it alone and live as a starving artist.

I wish there was an in-between, but I've become disillusioned with the startup
culture that is devolving towards 90s era bubble think. I think of it as,
hackers have not yet declared independence from the power elite. Until that
happens, I fear that we'll suffer indefinitely.

~~~
calinet6
There are some very down-to-earth companies doing real good work out there,
things you can believe in with people that won't suck your soul away. Don't
give up hope.

Best of luck to you.

------
calinet6
He's out of the loop—also a member of the "job noise" he speaks of. This is a
case of being on the inside looking in.

From the outside looking in, I don't want to go anywhere near it.

Most of the jobs I've had (and all the recent ones) have been through friends
and connections, completely bypassing the system and the job noise. If I need
a job, I talk to people—any people, and lots of them. My last job I found
while at a party with random friends-of-friends I mostly didn't even know, and
before that was through a coworker at a consulting gig. Prior to that I
started a company after having a great discussion at a bar.

I haven't updated my resume in 8 years—it's pointless, I've never found a good
job using it anyway. In my opinion, if they're looking at your resume, you've
already lost. You have already become a number in a pile. If they're looking
at you personally and evaluating your fit for the company, then you start way
ahead of the game.

This is how job searching today _has_ to go; if you're going to recruiters or
job boards, you're already in a death spiral. Escape it by networking and
reaching out to your true human connections. Treat your resume as obsolete,
and let your true work and your recommendations stand in its place. It will be
much more effective, I promise.

~~~
mooreds
Resumes are for chumps. Don't do it, spend the time getting to know the
company you want to work for, or people you'd like to work with.

Frankly, I don't want to compete on the basis of my resume! Keywords and biz
speak are hard to avoid on these documents. And now that everyone can spray
their resume at hiring managers without licking a stamp, sending in a resume
really is a waste of time. It almost always has been that way, read 'What
Color is Your Parachute' for a taste of job hunting over the past few decades.

Get to know someone at the company, do a contract to hire, do a gig, volunteer
with someone, even read and comment on a blog or twitter feed of someone in
the company.

All these are far more likely to lead to conversations that will let you know
if you actually want to work there, and if you'll be a good fit.

------
ig1
The premise is false. Developers change jobs roughly every three years, that's
actually high compared to most other professions.

------
donretag
What a great idea, let's put all our tech team members all on one page so that
recruiters can have one-stop shopping for people to spam.

I am half joking, but also half serious. I minimize my profile online to cut
down on recruiting spam. Coderwall is a step in the wrong direction in this
regard.

~~~
bitsweet
The reality is this information is easily accessible on LinkedIn. Even if
someone hides their current place of employment, LinkedIn's recruiting tools
actually let recruiters see that information (one of the reasons we receive so
much recruiter spam).

Companies that want to build great teams need to start thinking more
offensively than defensively. If you have a great culture and solving
interesting problems, recruiters wont pose a threat.

~~~
k3n
I'm like donretag in the sense that I also seek to minimize my online profile
as much as possible; thus, I don't use LinkedIn.

So no, the reality is not that it's easily accessible -- unless you're already
making it so on sites that are liberal with sharing your info like LinkedIn.

~~~
bitsweet
Coderwall never exposes personal contact information of anyone on the team, so
the exposure is no greater then having a GitHub profile...probably even less.

~~~
k3n
That's cool, I was mainly just commenting on the LinkedIn aspect. Monster.com
was probably the biggest mistake I ever made, it took 5+ years for my info to
get fully removed there (or at least for the random spambot recruiters to stop
spamming me).

~~~
sahat
Monster.com is a joke.

~~~
donretag
Luckily for software developers, we can ignore the horrible job sites.

Here is an article on Monster.com and endless email:
[http://blog.brusic.com/2012/07/how-private-is-your-online-
jo...](http://blog.brusic.com/2012/07/how-private-is-your-online-job-
profile.html)

------
armored_mammal
I want to find a new job that's more interesting, but every time I try it's
impossible to wade through the piles uselessness obfuscating everything.

Then I think about how much trouble it'd be to market myself and how much of
my private life and interests I'd have to make public just get someone
interested enough to get me a detour around said piles.

Then I go back to my current job where I'm woefully underpaid and build
mountains of Rube Goldberg-esque trash to satisfy the idiotic short term
thinking justified by the fake jingoism of the business and marketing types
that run the company.

Remember folks, if you can build something wrong to reduce the cost of
developer time, it's always worth it!

------
Zelphyr
Because the job descriptions are always "fast-paced" and "cutting-edge" and
"changing the way X does Y" perhaps?

------
threepipeproblm
Why do developers love to use tiny fonts, even though people are known to flee
at the sight of them?

~~~
btilly
I personally use small fonts in my editor so that I can see more code at once.
So I don't notice how big the font is.

But as my eyes get worse, I may be forced to adjust. :-(

~~~
jebblue
They will and you can, getting old sucks.

------
anonymouz
How come this page is completely screwed up without JavaScript (tiny font, no
paragraph breaks)?

~~~
Wilya
The post seems rendered from markdown client-side.

I fail to see how this even remotely makes sense, though.

~~~
bitsweet
We invested a lot of time in the preview capabilities when creating a protip.
We hit a small issue recently rendering the same markdown from both the client
side during content creation and server side during rendering. While we fix it
we just opted to temporarily do it client-side for now. It's not perfect but
worked as a stop-gap measure for most.

~~~
anonymouz
Ah, I can see the reasoning there, but do not agree with it at all. Besides
the inherent awfulness of this approach, my first thought was that the site is
completely broken. My second one was, "Why do they want to trick me into
enabling JS?".

------
jdavid
Here is the problem with the job market in SF Tech.

As a developer we get plenty of emails, and when we finally go through the
work of finding a good job we probably put more on the table than most
business dev people do. We are asked to work late when the project was miss
planned or miss communicated to customers, when the thing breaks for some
random reason, we are there to fix it. So at some point we feel like it's a
part of us.

On the flipside while companies are trying to recruit they don't want to talk
about the details of the app and what they really need done because they don't
want to scare you off. So you go through this dance, and it kinda starts like
this.

Some recruiter sees in their linkedin network that a job posts. If they are
whiley they might find the job listing on a particular site. They don't have
any relationship with the company or with you but they want to broker the deal
and get %25 of your yearly salary so they are willing to work for it. All the
while the recruiter is trying to get information out of both sides without a
contract and with out all of the information. They don't know how much the job
will offer until they have a few good candidates to show, and to start a
dialog with the company. On the other side of the table they are trying to
figure out what it will take for you to leave what you are doing so they ask
weird questions that have hardly anything to do with what you care about, but
are solely related to things they understand.

Once you get far enough along in that dance, you'll go for an onsite where the
interviewer is either an engineer or a hiring manager. In SF, no one has any
time, so the interviewee is just not that important until they are actually
hired. This is the first thing I look for.

    
    
      Does the hiring company actually care about me?
    

In many cases you are just someone else to interview. Some companies like to
interview a whole lot of people and then select the best. This is a long drawn
out process and usually involves some metrics on the back end. Positions that
are open longer are more likely to hire.

Once you get past the personality screen then they give you a technical task/
interview. Some companies ask tough computer science questions that have long
been lost by people who actually do the work. Others ask tech gotchas that you
would normally look up on google if you were stuck. And some actually get you
to work on something related to the actual position you are interviewing for.

Now once you get through all of that, now they need to close you. At this
point they need to work a number. Back in the old days companies would work
out a number and then do something nice just to make you feel really welcome.
In SV this is much less so the case. Many people are very analytical and
hardly have social skills so it becomes all about the numbers.

At this point as an engineer you would like to know how well the company is
doing, but you can't quite ask the hard questions without seeming skeptical as
this might affect your offer. On the flip side the company making the offer
wants to get you as affordably as they can and they don't want you to take
some other offer.

At the end of the day, the offering company will make an offer and put a time
limit on it. ( as for some reason why they would rather have you make a brash
decision about the next 3 years of your life, i don't get ) And then you look
at the numbers and you either counter or don't. Many companies out here have
been hard pressed to negotiate for the following reasons.

    
    
      * the cap table is already set
      * the salary is fair, and we are a startup and that's what we can offer
      * we don't offer bonuses
    

It's odd, because they are willing to pay a recruiter $20,000 to find you, but
they don't want to actually give a little extra to the engineering staff.

Some companies wont even accept resumes from recruiters, but then you are
missing out on all of the talent that get's talked into submitting a resume
and has not had the time to search on their own.

I just wish companies talked more about the real issues and were more open and
honest about things. I think that if you start with honesty, and expect
honesty you have a much better chance of getting it back from your future
employee and confident.

I forgot to mention that each of these dances might take an engineer 10-20
hours per company to full evaluate them. It's not a small amount of work to
interview.

~~~
niggler
"It's odd, because they are willing to pay a recruiter $20,000 to find you,
but they don't want to actually give a little extra to the engineering staff."

You have to ask the question: if they didn't pay $20,000 would they have found
you in the first place? And if the answer is no, then it's $20,000 well spent.

"I just wish companies talked more about the real issues and were more open
and honest about things. I think that if you start with honesty, and expect
honesty you have a much better chance of getting it back from your future
employee and confident."

There's dishonesty on both sides of the table and it's hard to discern, until
after the fact, whether the other side was being true to their word and
intent.

~~~
svachalek
The odd part is not that they're willing to pay the recruiter, it's that
they're not willing to pay the candidate.

~~~
niggler
the recruiter charge is one-time, the candidate salary is recurring and it's
hard to ask for a pay cut (much much harder than giving a pay raise)

------
EricDeb
I see a lot of jobs requiring 3-5 years of experience in an odd combination of
technologies that I seriously doubt many, even experienced coders have. I
imagine a lot of companies could attract more applicants or find talent easier
by allowing a developer time to ramp up with a new technology or language.

------
orangethirty
I'm not allergic to job opportunities. In fact, I'm always interested in
knowing abou them. But, don't expect me to wait by my inbox. I just pushed out
3 MVPs last month, and I'm on my way to push 3 more this month. I have code to
ship. If you want me to ship your code then be aware of some things. First, I
understand where you are coming from. I do. But don't expect me to give into
your proposal just because you have some investor interested in your "app."
Two, if you offer me equity, then you are out right telling me that my time is
worth more than your whole business. That is not a good deal for either side.
You wouldnt be giving away equity if you had money in the bank. Three, don't
lowball be. It's a waste of time for us both, because I will decline, and you
will waste a lot of time finding someone who ships.

------
bbwharris
I think we should all sit back and be happy that we are in this position. It's
a great place to be, much better than desperate to find anyone who's hiring.
We have our pick and we complain about recruiters? If only everyone was so
lucky.

------
abuiles
I wonder at which point did you ended up going on this direction, did the
launch of recent businesses like <http://developerauction.com/> influenced
some how this decision? Would you still describe as the "online reputation
system for developers" or are you going to turn around and head into a new
"job market" where companies can show off their profile? what do I gain
following a company? The profiles look really nice :D.

------
etherael
I think the incentives need to be re-aligned. <https://www.sofee.com.au/> is
new and maybe a step in the right direction, though only for Australia at the
moment.

Does anyone know of anything similar internationally?

------
drumdance
tl;dr - currently Supply < Demand.

Back after the dot com burst a whole lot of developers would have loved for
recruiters to bug them.

