
Want to hire the best programmers? Offer growth - ammon
https://triplebyte.com/blog/want-hire-best-programmers-offer-growth
======
chrissnell
It's a little peculiar how this blog post really pushes the inclusiveness
angle despite the numbers showing clearly that it is not a big priority for
prospective employees. They even go as far as highlighting that the sampled
women want inclusiveness 171% more than the sampled men, which sounds pretty
strong, but hides the real story when you look at the _actual numbers_. Only
15% of women ranked inclusion as a top priority, which is telling.

It seems pretty apparent to me that most employees (and that includes all
genders, races, etc.) don't care nearly as much about inclusiveness as their
leadership seems to. After reading this post, it seems to confirm what I've
suspected all long: people mostly want money and the potential to make more
money in the future.

~~~
xtracto
It is because it is SEO spam. TripleByte regularly posts these here in
HackerNews to promote their hiring platform. People seem to like it
nonetheless

~~~
meowface
It is SEO spam, and TripleByte does seem to use a lot of "growth hacks" or
something, because I see their ads on pretty much any platform that I see ads
for (like on mobile apps, where I don't have any easy-to-use ad blockers), and
they're mentioned on HN at a surprisingly high rate.

But (I think?) I've seen people here genuinely recommend them, and I also
don't think YC would work with and promote a company they didn't like or
trust. Companies' marketing and sales teams can sometimes have a very
different vibe and sense of ethics compared to the rest of the company.

~~~
titanomachy
They do advertise very aggressively, to the point where I think they risk
damaging their reputation. But I guess they've done the analysis and decided
it's worth it.

I went through their process and got lots of practice interviewing. Even
though I didn't take any of the offers I got through them I was able to use
one to negotiate a much higher salary at the job I did take. Their recruiters
and interviewers treated me respectfully and professionally.

So I'd recommend it, especially if you're very good and/or smart but not an
attractive candidate by conventional standards. If you have 5 years at
Microsoft or something then you probably don't need them, since you can
interview wherever you want at that point.

------
nscalf
I'm a software engineer with ~3 years of experience. I also want professional
growth. Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills,
partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part
of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium for
it. levels.fyi sort of convinced me that being a good engineer is a life
changing event for more than 1 generation. I answer questions like these as
growth primarily because I know growth is an investment for my life long
earning potential, and I just so happen to have a passion for growth to begin
with---it's a lucky combination to be drawn to.

I'd love to see questions like this phrased to account for this: "Opportunity
for professional growth, to grow my future earning potential." "Opportunity
for professional growth, because I enjoy learning new things." "Opportunity
for professional growth, to reach a role I cannot fill with my current
skills."

I know the article tried to address this with the responses, but that's sort
of the default answer you give in this field. No one really says, or enjoys
hearing, "I want to learn more so I can make more money".

~~~
chadash
> _" Partially because I enjoy learning and growing my technical skills,
> partially because I want to move into more leadership roles, but a huge part
> of it is because I know that if I'm good, I will be paid a massive premium
> for it."_

And it's one of the unfair things in life that jobs that pay more often get
other benefits as well. Making $40k/year? Chances are you get 2 weeks
vacation, inflexible work hours, inferior equipment. Making $200K/year? I'll
be you also have top of the line equipment, no one keeping close tabs on your
hours, 4 weeks or more vacation, money to go to conferences, etc.

A mentor of mine once told me that I should seek to make more money, even if
that's not my motivation. He said that more money is always nice to have, but
also that when someone pays you more, they respect you more, so you get all
the benefits that come along with that.

~~~
logifail
> when someone pays you more, they respect you more

The counter-example to that could be that once you're senior enough, you are
never 100% on vacation. If enough goes wrong, you _will_ get called back to
work.

~~~
bcyn
That has nothing to do with seniority, it's 100% about how you draw personal
boundaries between work hours and personal hours. You can make it clear that
you will be completely unplugged during vacation.

~~~
joshuamorton
Once you are an executive, you often have contractual obligations. You are the
key decision maker people escalate to. If time sensitive things that need a
decision to be made the buck stops with you, no matter where you are.

To give an extreme example, the President (of the US) is never truly
unplugged. In the cases where the president is truly unplugged, SoP is for
that person to temporarily stop being the President.

~~~
taurath
Delegation of authority is key here. If not for the commander in chief role of
the president it’s conceivable they could just delegate decision making to the
cabinet.

------
elindbe2
I wonder how many people in the survey interpret "opportunities for
professional growth" as "opportunities to get rich". To me that makes the
survey data more understandable. People, myself included, basically want more
money for less hours (AKA work/life balance).

~~~
stakhanov
That equation is a theoretical one. On the whole, jobs that offer high $/hr
will mandate crazy hours. Jobs that will allow you to go 20 hr/wk, or 10 hr/wk
will usually not pay you well on a per-hour basis either. -- I predict that in
response to what I just wrote, there will be people showing off about how they
managed to make a consulting lifestyle business like that actually work
because of how awesome they are. -- But keep in mind they are the exception,
not the rule.

~~~
Retric
Taking time off between jobs is a real option for most programmers. Depending
on how long you stay at each company it can even add up to a few years of time
off without having obvious gaps on the resume.

~~~
stakhanov
You have to have the stomach for that... Personally, I couldn't get any real
enjoyment out of a time period where I didn't know when/where/whether I have
another job lined up, and opportunities to get truly trustworthy commitments
on start dates that are a significant period of time in the future are rare.

~~~
badpun
I do that all the time - like literally my CV has probably 5 or 6 gaps of
varying duration (between 3 months and two years). Often, during those gaps I
spend some time working on something tech related, so I put that into the gap
in the CV.

Even with those gaps, I'm having zero problem finding well-paying jobs. I
think it's because, despite those gaps, I represent good value to the employer
- I know the latest tech, have done good work in the past, can present
coherent and mature opinions during the interview etc. Also, I only do long-
term contracts where they explicitly don't care that I'm a job-hopping
mercenary that is not ever going to believe the "company mission", because the
assumption is that the whole arrangement is temporary anyway. In practice,
they always want to retain me and I end up quitting out of boredom after a
year of two.

To summarize, the gaps are probably important only when you're in close
competition with lots of folks similar to you. But, if you're a bit of an
expert in a specific niche (mine is Big Data - Hadoop and related crap,
applied in enterprise IT context) and there aren't that many competent
candidates around, the gaps suddenly don't matter.

~~~
rabidrat
Are you over 40 yet? It changed for me this last job hunt.

~~~
badpun
I'm 38. We'll see what happens in a couple of years. In any case, these
enterprise companies usually have a position of architect on their teams,
where grey hair are even an advantage. I don't like this job, as it's more
headaches than coding in a lot of ways, but when if ages turns out to be a
thing, then I guess I'll be architecting (I've done it several times already,
so I have the CV for that).

------
antoinevg
Fuck that, I've been doing this for 25 years and what I want in order of
importance is:

1) Pay me 2) Autonomy

~~~
dillonmckay
I am willing to forgo #2 if #1 is high enough.

~~~
meowface
I'm the opposite. If my living and food expenses are covered, I'll prefer full
autonomy over no or minimal autonomy. You can only spend so many years doing
things you're asked to do which you don't really want to do before the value
added by the extra money is outweighed by the value lost from life in general
becoming more depressing and less inspiring.

~~~
thedufer
You can turn extra money pretty directly into time with actual autonomy (i.e.
not working) pretty easily, though.

~~~
meowface
That's true, but it depends on the income rate, I guess. If I need to work a
soul-sucking job for 15 years to be able to spend the rest of my life with
mostly full autonomy, I think that trade-off isn't worth it. If it were
working a soul-sucking job for 1 or 2 years to get enough to be autonomous for
life, then it's probably worth it.

~~~
thedufer
Yes, there is some preferred balance between the two for any one person. But
for reference, 15 years to retirement means shaving 25 years of full-time work
off the typical career. That seems...pretty appealing.

------
ticmasta
So in a candidate response-based survey 54% picked the more palatable "Growth
Opportunities" item but 42% also selected the far less attractive motivator of
"More money".

Accounting for the "perceived gallantry" of these motivators I'd call that a
statistical wash, but the article title "Want to hire the best programmers?
Pay them the highest salaries." doesn't support the "best engineers / best
companies" narrative very well.

------
vinceguidry
The vast majority of programming jobs, like the vast majority of ordinary
jobs, are not going to be able to offer growth potential, at least, not growth
potential that would actually look appealing to anyone posting here. If the
only incentive on the company's part is increased retention, that's just not a
good-enough reason to spend time on more than lip service.

My company is a weirdly-effective consulting firm with a staff-augmentation
business model. I chalk their success up to two factors. One, there's no
middle management, only team leads reporting to a cadre of developer-owners.
Second, they've been really good at landing the right kind of clients.

It's rather funny watching them try to figure out how to engage their
workforce, but with a staff-aug model, devs feel more like employees of the
client rather than of the consultant. So everyone's just kind of meh. It feels
a little The Office-ish.

The other consequence is that there is practically zero real growth potential,
and no incentive to do anything other than keep butts in chairs. Nobody's
going to let me jump from the consultant to the client, the only path up is
out.

I hope this business model dies. It feels distinctly evil.

~~~
robohoe
That sounds like something like Accenture, InfoSys, etc. I too hope this
business model dies but I don't see it dying for a long time. As long as
business school MBA types keep making decisions and hiring those companies,
they will keep hiring butts in the chair.

------
RNeff
Offer a quiet, private office. Two or more monitors. Free snacks and free
lunches. Modern software stack (whatever that is).

Or full-time remote.

~~~
aczerepinski
I’m 80-90% remote, and it’s such a huge lifestyle perk that I’d need at least
a 50% pay bump to even consider anything in the city. I hope this becomes more
and more the norm for tech jobs because everyone deserves ample time with
their family and friends.

For me now the baseline is remote + good work life balance and vacation
package.

If we can throw exciting tech, more money, etc on top of that, great.

~~~
avgDev
I can't imagine not having any remote days in the week. Unfortunately, many
enterprise jobs in my area expect people in their seat 8 hours a day, 5 days a
week.

I'm hoping to polish my skills and eventually find something 100% remote even
if its less thank $100k. I want to buy a lake front house, and get on a
jetski/boat during my lunch break.

~~~
Consultant32452
I'm 100% remote working full time for a household name financial company. I'm
making $150k, plus 6 weeks vacation, 401k match, etc. I'm in process
negotiating a consulting gig that will pay a little over $300k that is also
100% remote. That one is a corp to corp contract, not an employee position.

Hang in there, you'll find your spot. My advice would be to make friends with
a few recruiters for the big headhunting firms. With a little patience for
terrible signal to noise ratio they should help you break the $100k mark for
remote work. Sometimes you gotta shop around for the right recruiters. The
first person you talk to is probably not the person with the right contacts.

------
cbanek
> Second, women engineers prioritize growth to an even greater extent than
> men, and they place particular secondary emphasis on inclusivity and comfort
> with their work and environment.

Woman in tech here. I agree completely, and I'd almost say that saying you
want to grow your career in an inclusive environment is saying "I want to grow
in a place that will actually value me and promote me." Been in so many places
where talented women are just not promoted, and it can be so demoralizing.

~~~
frequentnapper
true story: sister was hired at a big company as a tester with degrees in bio
and comp sci. The manager had her doing manual testing for a year. She aspired
to be a developer. Even offered to automate testing on her own time after
work. The manager told her if she has extra time, she should do more manual
testing instead. When a dev position opened up on the team, he just hired some
coop guy instead for it without even considering her. She quit.

~~~
Benjammer
Why did she take a job as a tester if she was a CS grad with developer
aspirations?

~~~
fernandopj
Why not? I do contract work for a big, public company, they have dozens of QA
testers and every path is available for them (becoming a dev, analyst,
manager, ... I've seen all). It's not even just an entry job for CS grads,
many become senior testers as well and don't want to move to a dev position.

~~~
Benjammer
Edit: this was dumb I'm sorry I shouldn't get mad on the internet I apologize

~~~
danharaj
My guy you read way too much into a comment about a manager who was not trying
to nurture the career path their subordinate was aspiring for. That's part of
being a manager. A manager who doesn't go to bat for people like that is a
shit manager. Your response is really bizarre, like you were personally
attacked.

~~~
frequentnapper
maybe he's one of those managers. she was clear when she was hired that she
wanted to be a dev. like i said, this was a branch office of a big company in
a small city. many people moved from testing to dev and vice versa.

------
trilila
Don’t treat developers like bricklayers. Sack any product manager or manager
that does it. This is the root of all evil, radical as it may sound. There
needs to be a balance between engineering and product delivery, but too much
emphasis on product delivery leads to tech debt, cutting too many corners and
poor tech choices. Not to mention stress and little to no job satisfaction.
Give devs some time to build something they are proud of. Good devs are in it
because they love and once that love is gone the dev is gone.

~~~
dpeck
in my experience many developers want to be bricklayers (not to discount
bricklaying, there's an art to it, but they're focused on the individual
bricks, not the other aspects of the building). They get annoyed when they're
asked to think about the bigger picture and just want to focus on the code,
the architecture, and whatever is new and shiny. It is largely due to these
sorts of developers that we've developed all the ritual around sprints/product
owners/etc to put blinders on them because they cannot deal with deadline and
thinking in terms of business value creation.

This sort of person is under-represented here on HN for obvious reasons but
they represent the majority of people developing software. The opportunity to
contribute more than just lines of code should be offered and encouraged, but
don't be surprised at how few will be interested.

~~~
yezanotherone
I am one of these happy bricklayers. It's the only way I can stay sane in a
job. When I'm working on my own projects, I'm all in, and I love all aspects
of the process. But in a job, on a project that 99% of the time is run badly,
and my colleagues are writing terrible code, just give me the bricks and tell
me what to build. If I try to care, I get frustrated and depressed.

Plus, I'd be fooling myself if I were not like this. I've seen people put
their passion into a job, argue their case, and then they get made redundant.
Don't be fooled.

P.s. I'm a very good, reliable bricklayer who makes very solid walls.

~~~
opportune
Yeah I agree with this. If you are not in a high-up position you will just get
too frustrated caring about the bigger picture because you have little power
when it comes to actually making bigger-picture decisions. So all you can do
is suggest things which 1) may not be well received, could be perceived as
some low-level employee overstepping their bounds 2) probably won't be heeded
since then the managers/pms/directors/etc. have to concede power

------
umvi
Am I the only one here that likes growth because I like learning? I try and
grow all the time in non-professional areas of my life even though there is no
direct monetary compensation for doing so (such as learning new languages,
instruments, etc.)

~~~
AznHisoka
Outside of work, absolutely.

At work though, I find my thirst for learning new technical things has
disappeared as I've gone older. What has grown instead is the thirst for
learning new things in or related to my industry (domain knowledge). Like the
problems my customers are facing, or where the industry is headed, or why they
have been doing things a certain way.

~~~
eropple
This matches me pretty well, too. I was lucky in that I had the opportunity to
get a broad base of knowledge very young and now don't _have_ to run to catch
up so much; because of it most of what I have to learn now are variations on a
theme. Which is good, 'cause like you I've got way too many things to learn
about the company and the industry and how to best apply those skills therein.

------
noncoml
Can we stop with this “we hire only the best programmers?”

You are probably not the best company so stop trying to hire the best
programmers.

It’s like the fat, ugly, jobless guy that only dates accomplished super
models.

~~~
opportune
Why would a company ever insult their employees like that?

------
sombremesa
Want to hire the best programmers? Good luck.

Same as "want to pick the best stocks", "want to win the lottery", "want to
marry the best person", "want to get the best price", ...

~~~
doh
We rather look for nice, pleasant people. When I get excited to be around
them, I do better job. I believe it works for others too.

------
jodrellblank
_Engineers Want To Learn, Even If They’re Very Senior_

But /what/ do they want to learn? Something about this bit is rubbing me the
wrong way:

> " _In 2002, a very good COBOL or Fortran engineer was probably in a good
> place as far as their job search was concerned, but today they 're unlikely
> to get much attention from companies that have moved on to more modern
> languages. Had that engineer focused on growth to keep up with changes in
> the industry, they might have learned Python or JavaScript and been able to
> keep up with the market._"

Is .. reinventing the wheel, or learning the same thing in a new language,
really the same as "growth"?

Is it even "learning" in any way more than "memorization"?

Since when is "keeping up with the Joneses" the same as "(personal) growth"?
Had that engineer focused on growth and learning, perhaps they'd now be a High
Performance Computing specialist in Fortran, or a business analyst with an MBA
overseeing a COBOL team's migration, or a founder of a COBOL codebase analysis
tool company, or a bi-lingual contractor traveling to help foreign companies
move away from COBOL, or .. anything, growing and changing instead of writing
a database report in COBOL then in Java then C# then in JavaScript.

------
git-pull
Don't give coding quizzes if they can provide better evidence of their
ability.

It's unfair in the least, rude at the worst to pigeon-hole "senior"
programmers into scenarios / pop quizzes.

Let them show off recent personal projects. They'll probably have no problem
spending a weekend hacking on something they're passionate about.

Be a serious employer:

Convince the best programmers (whatever that means) why they should reorganize
their life around your business:

\- Pension plans / job security are nice. It's a good motivator to know that
there will be an annuity when they're 60 / 65 and would rather spend time with
their family.

\- Union contract (or something comparable) _or_ a labor system with robust
employee rights and unemployment insurance. It's pretty unfair in the US with
at-will employment.

\- Have strong financials. Be a business that'll be around in 10 years. Can
your business keep paying employees if it's in the red for a year?

If you don't offer the above: Why feel deserving of the best?

I'm being facetious on the above points: It's tech, it's a fast cycle and
inherently unstable. But when orgs talk about hiring - it irks me to see the
entitlement employers have when they have little investment in the welfare of
employees as persons (and families)

~~~
davidw
None of these things are perfect - I agree with you about quizzes and the
like.

> Let them show off recent personal projects. They'll probably have no problem
> spending a weekend hacking on something they're passionate about.

Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential
employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying
life.

~~~
enraged_camel
>> Nope. Not spending my weekend fooling around to impress some potential
employer. I'm going to spend it with my kids, riding my bike, and enjoying
life.

Okay, it is time for some harsh love. You won't like it, and I'll get
downvotes, but whatever. It needs to be said.

My parents are both doctors, and they are in their 60s now. And you know what?
They still work their asses off, on many evenings and weekends, trying to stay
up-to-date with new developments in their respective fields. My dad just got
back from an ophthalmology conference in Europe. My mom is a guest speaker at
a pathology conference and she has been preparing furiously. And it has been
like this _all my life_.

So yeah, I detest this sense of entitlement that programmers have, where they
want to a) get paid a lot and b) have lots of free time on the side. How about
this instead: if you want to have a high salary, then it is reasonable for
people to expect you to make certain sacrifices, such as work on your own
projects on the side experimenting with new technologies and ideas. Don't like
it? Well, it may be time to pick another profession...

~~~
themarkn
I’m not sure that the lesson to be learned from the medical profession’s
overburdening of its professionals is that other well paid industries should
follow suit and overburden their own professionals.

~~~
shawnz
Then salaries in our industry need to decrease if we don't want to be held to
a standard of overburdening ourselves.

The salaries in our industry have a precedent which was set by individuals
that overburdened themselves. That might have been irrational, but if we want
to change that, then we need to accept less pay. We can't have the same
rewards as they did while doing less work, even if the amount of work they did
was unreasonable.

~~~
themarkn
We aren’t being rewarded for how hard we work, we’re being rewarding for
having skills that are in high demand while supply has not caught up yet.
Salaries may well go down in future when the need for developers is less or
the pool of talent is bigger. We also aren’t trapped by the examples set by
previous developers - our productivity varies depending on what we are doing,
the tools we are using, what our team is like, etc - not just the raw number
of hours we put in.

------
thow_leet
I don’t think hiring managers really want to hire the best programmers. They
want people they feel comfortable managing, someone who isn’t going to be
challenging them. There is no risk in leaving roles open, in fact it
contributes to their job security as long as there is VC money to burn. That
is why the coding challenges are so popular, it communicates “here, do what I
say.”

~~~
ritchiea
I have been freelance for years, recently I did some interviews for full time
positions and I can't agree with you more. Companies that need freelancers are
primarily concerned with can you do the job, there's a deadline, there's a
contract, there's some urgency.

Most companies I have interviewed with for full time roles advertise that they
are a hiring for several roles but often are just hoping that someone who
speaks at a lot of conferences or is a ex-FANG higher up will apply (I've
heard this from friends on the inside).

I have been very open about what my experience is and what I'm looking for.
Somehow every full time job interview feels like getting picked apart to
pieces while most freelance interviews feel like someone genuinely trying to
assess if you can be useful to them.

~~~
thow_leet
You and me both. I just went through the Triplebyte process after my last
contract wrapped up. Passed their exam and interview and went on-site at
multiple companies. In the end it was a total waste of time and very
stressful. I would go so far as to say that if you have been successful with
startups and equity that it would be a net negative for you because the 5
peers you will be interviewing with will feel threatened as well. Rinky-dink
organizations really don’t want very good people, they want people they feel
comfortable with. Luckily I have a network which allows me to bypass all this.

------
ngngngng
I'm not sure I agree with the conclusions. Sure I really want to grow as an
engineer, BECAUSE I want to make more money. When I think of professional
growth, I think of a company that will give me large pay bumps equal to what I
could get if I left, because as time goes on I get more productive and more
knowledgeable.

------
opportune
I have seen employers grossly misunderstand "professional growth" to mean
paying for tons of random seminars telling you the basics of being a
professional like taking care of your appearance, carrying yourself, setting
goals, etc. I don't think they understood that growth == promotions and income
advancement.

I would have much rather taken home an extra $5k, or get a promotion two
months earlier, than waste time sitting through self help seminars

~~~
john_moscow
Because the cost per employee of a useless self help seminar would be way
below $5K and the HR might even get a kickback.

~~~
opportune
I don’t think so because they also paid for hotels, airfare, food etc for
multiple days. But yeah probably a kickback involved

------
notyourday
I love these kind of surveys. They just demonstrate time and time again how
gullible people are, especially those that hire companies like TB to help with
hiring.

Want to hire best programmers? Pay. Them. More. Money.

"I want to grow" is a polite way of saying "I want my compensation to grow".

P.S. Do you know why people bend over backwards at interviews for
Google/Netflix/Facebook and do not for a Domino's? It is because if they do
well on interview at FAANG they would be making mid to high six figures while
they would be making sixties as managers at Domino

------
WomanCanCode
There's no such thing as growth in the technology field. Most of the
organizations just want a specific and narrow expertise in a particular
technology. If you think your 7+ years of experience in certain technology is
something then you are wrong. There'll be an 18 year old who has been
programing in that technology since he was 12. You'll eventually get pushed
over. Employers don't want a well-rounded person. They just want someone who
know enough to do maintenance and their current products.

~~~
quickthrower2
Your downvoted but there is some truth in this.

~~~
WomanCanCode
I've been in the technology field for 20 years. I'm also a female coder. I was
a Java Expert. Then start again with entry level with other technology. Then
start again with entry level web development in my third job. Whenever you
start again with a different technology stacks you become an entry level. You
cannot really climb higher or grow in this profession. And that's the inherent
problem with information technology. It's changing to fast.

~~~
quickthrower2
I think you can climb higher and grow, but not necessarily in ways most
technologists would enjoy. For me I see the growth opportunities as

1\. Become a team leader, then manager, CTO, .. etc.

2\. Become an "architect". I.e. move away from coding and design systems,
choose technologies and suchlike.

3\. Very rare: Become a very senior individual contributer with lots of
freedom.

I can see why side hussles are popular as a way for developers to express
creativity and try to make some money a completely different way.

> Whenever you start again with a different technology stacks you become an
> entry level.

Totally. I can't (generally, there might be exceptions) get a full time non C#
job without taking a paycut that would put me on the streets. Confounded with
the fact that because of this people are going to lie about experience to
change jobs to another tech stack, which I wont do, so I'm competing against
those people too.

I too am (almost) 20 years in. Male (but I think these problems apply to
everyone).

------
ptero
Growth is good, but it means different things to different people. Someone
might want more money, another opportunities to attend and present at
conferences, third a path to management, fourth a path to "technical expert at
large", etc. etc.

And mistakes can backfire: offer a management path to a person who wants more
technology and he may think "ouch, bureaucracy and PowerPoint ahead". I think
a general (and genuine) statement of support for technical leadership,
management and whatever other paths a company offers would go further than a
generic "support growth" mantra. My 2c.

~~~
wocram
What does technical expert at large mean to you? I have some idea from my
experience, but it seems like it's usually a nebulous role that nobody asked
for.

~~~
ptero
This, in my experience, often means advising on several ( >3 ) projects with
no (or very minimal) explicit technical commitments. And "no explicit
commitments" means you get more freedom to attend conferences, close the door
for a generic "I am working, please do not disturb" stretches, take vacation
when convenient to you and generally be a master of your time.

Getting there may not be easy. IME the best path, especially in larger
companies, is to:

1\. Be effective and gain wide domain knowledge, so your time is valued and
multiple diverse projects want as much of your time as you can spare. This is
(relatively) easy.

2\. As requests for your time rise, negotiate advisory instead of worker bee
roles. Avoid writing code, even when you can do it quickly. Instead architect,
mentor, advise, assess, etc. This is tricky. As you transition to advisory
roles you need to stay valuable and not turn into one of the folks just
hanging around with nothing meaningful to do -- those heads are first on the
chopping block. If you stop getting invites to new projects, lean hard on #1
for a while.

------
bozoUser
> “Opportunities for professional growth” is the clear winner, appearing 13
> percentage points above even “salary”.

Ofcourse professional growth is the winner as more often than not is directly
proportional to one`s salary.

As a s/w engg. "professional growth" is a hybrid of bunch of things - learning
new tech, Cloud knowledge(k8s, docker etc.), and well summarized in the lines
below by the author:

> In short, software engineers of all stripes want, more than anything else,
> to develop their abilities as engineers. They want it more than pay, more
> than work/life balance, and more than autonomy.

~~~
standardUser
I strongly agree - to me the term "professional growth" is synonymous with
higher income and greater future employment opportunities. Not with learning a
new framework or language.

------
sheeshkebab
When someone offers me “Growth” at work, it makes me cringe. We’re all grown
ups here - offer me either mission/things I’m passionate about or money.
Ideally both. Don’t offer me bull shit.

------
dobleo
Is it just me, or did they twist the data in order to put "inclusive
workplace" at the first place in the rating? Even the adjusted table shows
that only 15% of women care enough about inclusivity at work, but the summary
puts a lot of emphasis on how women prioritize it...

------
davesmith1983
TBH I would settle for working on a sane codebase. Almost every codebase I
have worked on except for my own are a complete mess. Basic things aren't done
right e.g. Reproducible builds, source control, code review etc.

~~~
motivated_gear
It blows my mind that there are still projects managed without git. I've seen
entire production projects in a shared network drive with

appname_april_3_2014

appname_april_4_2014

appname_april_4_2014_new_order_schema

------
swalsh
My wife is a traditional "professional". When she has a 1:1 with her boss, her
boss gives her advice on how to move up. They talk about what she needs to do
for a promotion etc. I've never personally experienced that. If I talk about
growth, my bosses always think i'm talking about what new kinds of
technologies I want to work with. I've been writing code professionally for
nearly 14 years, it's still interesting, but I've increasingly become less
interested in the technical aspects. I've worked with my current boss at 3
different companies. He's always took care of me, and he trusts me to write
code, but the one time I talked about moving my career along to the next step
to something beyond what I am today he was ready to let me go. His exact words
were "I'd be happy to provide a reference for you". It became clear that he
had no interest in helping me grow unless growth meant learning a new
technology. I've just avoided the topic since then.

~~~
d0100
May because your boss sees you as an asset? As 'his' asset. And once you
decide to grow out of that role, he'll slap you right back to 'where you
belong'.

I'm being a bit uncharitable with my perception of your story, but it
shouldn't be a stretch to believe that given how tech workers are generally
perceived by 'business type folks'.

As I see it, his response shows his complete disregard and lack of respect for
you as anything other than 'his IT guy'.

I'm way too proud to continue working with someone that thinks of me that way.

------
john_moscow
If you want growth as a programmer, you need to learn how to see the business
model of the company you are applying to and how your work integrates into it.

It wouldn't be very wise to expect growth if your job is to keep a legacy
system running on the minimum possible budget. Or to maintain a "leave us your
email" website where the business is all about sales talking to the prospects
and all they need from the devs is to make certain a database entry gets
created when a user clicks "submit".

You could expect growth if your job is about finding efficient ways to solve a
business pain. Or creating a model that makes it easier to understand and
navigate domain-specific data. Or anything else where the decisions you make
affect how much the paying customers will appreciate the product.

Unfortunately, most developers don't want to go into that domain, and so most
of the developer jobs focus on pretty much CRUD where "growth" could at best
mean learning a new framework that will get obsoleted in a few years anyway.

------
georgeburdell
In my opinion this line of thinking may be good for the employee but bad for
the company and its users. I bet a large chunk of the “Google Graveyard” is
comprised of projects designed to get a few people a promotion or keep them
around. And we’re worse off for it.

My takeaway is that companies need to start focusing on matching jobs to skill
level instead of always competing for the best

~~~
opportune
I have seen the opposite issue too, which is where if someone has sat in a
chair in the company for X number of years and isn't terrible at their job,
they are almost guaranteed advancement. And usually this is a bad recipe for
stagnation and you end up with bad middle management (the Loser-Clueleess-
Sociopath hierarchy comes to mind). Whereas if you force people to execute a
project decently, at least you have the opportunity of those paying off even
if most don't; for every 10 failures maybe you get a Google Maps or Google
Docs.

------
yangez
> We’re arbitrarily defining “great” candidates as those scoring between 95th
> and 98th percentile on our technical interview, and “the best” candidates as
> those scoring at 98th percentile or above.

This is an important qualifier. I'd argue that the _most technical_ candidates
are not necessarily the ones who offer the most value to companies. In fact, I
would argue that "notably de-emphasizing ambition" will cancel out your
technical superiority in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Here's a choice for your company's next hire:

1\. A technically superior but comfortable candidate whose top priority is
maintaining work-life balance and flexible work arrangements

2\. A technically adequate but hungry candidate whose top priority is moving
fast and learning tons

Who would you choose?

~~~
lugg
1., 2. Sounds like a pain in the arse to manage while I work at maintaining my
work-life balance.

You're presenting a false dichotomy. There is also

3\. Technically superior whose top priority of learning things got them where
they are. Maintaining work life balance is just one of the many tools this
person has learned over the years to be consistently effective over the long
term instead of running into burnout.

------
joker3
"opportunity for growth" is ambiguous. TripleByte should really be asking
about more specific things like "skill development" or "opportunities for
promotion". I expect that you'd see some pretty different patterns with those.

------
julius_set
This article defines great and the best engineers by:

“For the purposes of this article, we’re arbitrarily defining “great”
candidates as those scoring between 95th and 98th percentile on our technical
interview, and “the best” candidates as those scoring at 98th percentile or
above.”

A test that they’ve come up with internally. What makes this company an
authority on determining great and best engineers purely on data structures
and algorithms style interview questions that most likely a recent grad will
be efficient with (for software engineers anyways*).

This article is standing on a house of cards. It’s first principles lack and
the assumptions it makes on top of those first principle is highly
questionable.

J

------
l0b0
Is there a dark side to this? A lot of the "not invented here" and chasing the
latest tech could be caused by workplaces not realizing that there are less
breaking ways to learn new things. Agile is great at this, by encouraging
self-review at all levels. Then there's getting from sufficient to masterful
at all sorts of general skills such as testing, version control, refactoring,
requirements gathering, presenting etc. But to advance _quickly_ in any of
these you need mentors rather than self-study, because it's easier to learn
directly from someone who has done it before and who can show you examples in
the work context you already know.

------
bluedino
Is Triplebyte paying for product placement here now? They've taken over
Reddit.

~~~
dang
Nobody pays for or gets product placement on HN. You have to make something
readers find interesting. I assume that's the case with the current
submission, since it hasn't been affected by moderators or by any of the
below.

We do sometimes place stories that we or a small number of story reviewers
think the community might like. That program is described at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380)
and the links back from there. Such stories get lobbed by software randomly
onto the bottom half of the front page, whence they fall off in a few minutes
unless people upvote them. The purpose is to make HN more interesting (because
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20curiosity%20optimiz&sort=byDate&type=comment)).
Many good submissions fall through the cracks and this is a way to give some a
second crack.

Anyone who knows of a story that deserves a second chance like this should
email us at hn@ycombinator.com and we'll consider throwing it in that pool.
It's ok to ask this for one of your own stories, but it's better if you just
ran across something and think it's cool.

By the way, you can see a partial list of these at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/invited](https://news.ycombinator.com/invited).
Those are the ones that were too old to be lobbed directly when we saw them,
so we emailed the submitter and invited them to repost it instead. It's on my
list to publish a more comprehensive set of lobbed stories.

There are two other types of placed submission that HN does as a way to give
back to YC for funding this place: job ads
([https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs](https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs)) and
Launch HN posts for startups
([https://news.ycombinator.com/launches](https://news.ycombinator.com/launches)).

~~~
dredmorbius
This (or an abstract of it) might make a good FAQ addition:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

~~~
dang
Yes, it's probably time to add that.

------
jv22222
Again, with the demonizing PHP as a staid old language to stick with.

So silly, and completely incorrect, as PHP frameworks and the language itself
continue to innovate and keep Up and in some cases are cutting edge.

~~~
IggleSniggle
Don’t worry. Give it a few years. The reason php has such a bad rap is that it
was so important for low-skill web-devs, so there’s a lot of bad php out
there. In 10 years, React will have the same reputation. Again, not because
it’s bad, but because it’s usefulness is so high that all the worst devs will
be using it.

------
hidden_arachnid
Author of this article here. As long as this initial data-dive came out, there
are still a bunch of things we’d like to look at. Does location (say, NYC vs
Silicon Valley vs affect these preferences? Does which track (generalist,
front-end, mobile) a candidate takes through our process? How does this link
with how candidates actually behave when given an offer? Our data set has
enough information that we can investigate these questions, but this was long
enough as it is.

~~~
asdfman123
As a Houston developer, that chart of motivating factors describes exactly
what I'm looking for.

I won't work on an ancient Java codebase that has no tests or no deployment
pipeline, because doing that is death. Gotta keep moving forward or find
yourself sliding backwards. I would say your analysis is spot on and I could
have written the same article myself.

Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" and not entirely
necessary, like moving to a newer tech stack, might be worth it as it will
make it easier to attract new talent. And if they stay behind, they might
encounter the famous "dead sea effect" and wonder why things break, and every
new feature takes forever -- the best technically minded people have left for
greener pastures.

However, I'd say that considering people who are great at interviewing are
great engineers is flawed. There's a correlation, but it's probably a weak
one. To get great at interviews, you have to practice interviews a __lot __.
It 's a separate skill orthogonal to software. Basically, you're selecting the
most motivated to succeed -- but motivation to succeed doesn't necessarily
translate into the best technical ability. It makes sense that they care most
about salary, impressive surroundings and fast pace, as they're probably the
most careerist SEs out there.

> devoting (say) $1,000 or even $5,000 to classes or other forms of
> professional growth is not particularly expensive, but it can have a
> disproportionate effect on recruiting.

I don't need classes. When I say I want professional growth, it means I want
to play with new technologies and gain experience with them at work. So if
you're willing to hire me to work on a new hot thing, I'll be more likely to
take it.

But please, please do away with the conceit that great interviewers are great
employees unless you have data that suggests otherwise. Reading this, I'm
under the impression you only look at candidates and don't have any metrics to
understand their actual work performance.

~~~
maltalex
> Companies should realize doing things that seem "fluffy" and not entirely
> necessary, like moving to a newer tech stack, might be worth it as it will
> make it easier to attract new talent.

Why are we as professionals (myself included, I'm not immune) so obsessed with
shiny new things?

Updating a product's tech stack just to attract new talent and not because the
product needs it is objectively strange. Imagine if roads were torn down and
rebuilt just because civil engineers wanted to try out some new road laying
thingy.

~~~
triceratops
Road-laying technology doesn't develop at the pace that computer technology
does. We went from room-sized mainframes to powerful pocket computers in 40
years. Working on "new things" is objectively more interesting and pays better
- modulo the COBOL devs making $500/hr now.

~~~
hollerith
You are describing advances in semiconductor performance whereas the person
you are responding to has in mind things like new programming languages,
libraries and frameworks, many of which we cannot even confidently say are
advances at all.

~~~
triceratops
New programming languages, libraries, and frameworks often tend to go in
lockstep with semi-conductor and hardware advances.

~~~
asdfman123
Advancements in semiconductor research have led to wonderfully inefficient
front end frameworks.

~~~
triceratops
That too :-) But front-end frameworks don't constitute the entirety of new
language and framework developments.

For instance, having cycles and memory to spare made using fun languages such
as Python and Ruby practical.

Advances in hardware let (and force) us (to) write applications of far greater
complexity. Writing a mobile game is way more involved than a payroll
application on big iron.

------
tonymet
Not that I fully disagree, but with proper discipline growth can be found in
maintenance work. no system is perfect and you can constantly improve,
refactor, add coverage, add telemetry, reduce operations etc. It's not only
Greenfield or "hip" projects that provide growth. like any endeavor it's up to
the artisan to find meaning and challenge in any work

------
mytailorisrich
At the risk of sounding cynical, this is really the standard drive in all
jobs: money and opportunity for more money and higher status.

~~~
wsc981
Personally I couldn’t care less about status, but money is very important to
me, because I want to “retire” (work on my own stuff and by my own schedule)
by the time I’m 45.

------
radcon
In my experience, most managers think _" If I can't objectively measure it, it
doesn't exist."_

Therefore, since the benefits of fostering employee growth can't be easily
quantified, most managers choose to believe they don't exist.

Same goes for things like flexible work schedules, work-from-home days and
generous vacation policies.

------
gringoDan
As the article mentioned, the importance of growth's influence can be
explained in large part by a broad interpretation of the question. This
article defined "Professional Growth" by saying:

> _" In short, software engineers of all stripes want, more than anything
> else, to develop their abilities as engineers"_

This is true, but it's also the first-order answer. The follow-up question to
ask is _why_ they want to develop their engineering ability. It may be to make
a higher salary down the road (i.e. current salary is less important than
future earning potential), to develop the skill set to found their own
company, to gain prestige by moving up in an organization and managing other
engineers.

Overall, really interesting post - definitely worth diving into the data
further.

------
itronitron
The article title conflicts with the conclusion of their analysis.

 _The best engineers notably de-emphasize ambition._ is one of their
conclusions based on their 'best' category indicating a higher priority on
work/life balance than the 'great' and 'all' categories.

They say their data shows that all engineers care about growth, so the title
would be more accurate written as 'Want to hire programmers? Offer growth'.

It would be nice if they included information on the source data, in order to
go through their system it is my understanding that candidates need to be
willing to work where they have clients, and that is going to bias their
sample considerably.

------
pixelrevision
Anecdotal but "opportunity for professional growth" seems like the best answer
to a recruiter trying to sell you. Flexible work arrangements on a high
quality code base is what everyone I know wants to do....

------
pawelduda
And here I am, 1 day after a presentation in front of the entire company,
about pretty much the same topic.

Had I known about this article earlier, the execution would have been so much
different (the presentation was terribad but whatever, I had good intentions).
And the response would have been much better too (it's still very good, but I
don't know whether that's good enough to push other people forward).

Regardless, thank you for posting this. The article and most of the comments
in here echo my thoughts.

------
c-smile
Management is an art of creating motivations to your subordinates. An art,
sic!

Each of us is different. Of course we can draw charts outlining average
patients temperature in a hospital... with the same informational value.

I wish all of us to experience joy from what we are doing. Let it be in the
number of happy members of your team, beauty of your code, amount of salary
you bring to your family … It can really be anything. Just keep your mind out
of Procrustean bed of common stereotypes.

------
pyb
My main motivator, "close collaboration within the team", didn't even make the
list.

Wonder what were the choices on offer in the survey ?

------
LordHumungous
Very interesting that women consistently rate salary as a lower priority and
w/l balance as a higher priority than men.

------
dymk
Interesting that Salary is the second most important. I think there might be
an explanation for this.

I've always interpreted "Personal Growth" as basically meaning "I'll have a
higher salary in the future". So perhaps "Salary" is still the main motivator.

------
mxd3
Off topic: this company’s advertising on Reddit is beyond annoying. Has anyone
else experienced this?

------
_def
Isn't this conclusion only natural? It baffles me that so many people
responsible for companies don't understand basic human needs and instead
blindly follow trends. I just don't get business stuff.

------
glutamate
Apparently no one is motivated by social or environmental impact

~~~
noodle
I think many people are, but it's not something that can be put first in your
decision making process unless you are already successful.

If you're financially unstable, paying down student debt, etc., it becomes
much harder to justify picking a lower-paying job that is more personally
motivating if you have other options on the table.

~~~
glutamate
I agree with you, but that's ultimately what this survey is about - how you
weigh salary against professional growth, autonomy etc.

------
typon
Women value good code-bases more than men. Very interesting.

~~~
brabel
Of course they do... whose house do you expect to be tidier, an average
woman's or an average man's?

~~~
hippich
I do not have anything to support it, but I think if you will be able to make
such a study comparing women-into-programming vs men-into-programming there
might be no difference in cleanness of one's house.

------
eddd
Do they want to "grow" or just want to deploy shiny projects that showed on HN
last week?

------
keithnz
seems an odd title to the article given the analysis of "great" and "best"
engineers where they highlight other factors as being more important?

------
miguelmota
Growth = new skills

New skills = more money

More money = better life

------
yowlingcat
I think this means we have to address some potentially specious statistical
reasoning here. Assuming that a point cloud of pre transaction questions gives
you the information to ascertain the career trajectory between great engineers
and the "best" engineers is likely a fool's errand. What's the data source? Is
it your technical screen? If there is any possibility that your technical
screen doesn't track reality accurately, then your ranking metric is
probabilistically very likely to be inaccurate. This is the risk of trying to
quantify skill and potential levels before you try to qualify them properly.
Most recruiting platforms work on a transaction processing fee on a per
placement basis. Triplebyte is no different. The entire product is set up for
a candidate to land a job. It is not set up for a candidate to structure and
guide their entire career. The simple way to think of a transaction is as a
point: point score on an assessment test, point score on a technical screen,
point offer extended or not. You see these things being measured in this blog
post, but that doesn't tell the full story to a hiring manager. If you're
hiring an engineer that's actually growth oriented, you care about looking at
the first and second order derivatives of all of these things, and you'll see
them on a project to project basis, or on a person to person basis based on
how they interact with their team and other teams.

I want to repeat myself and restate that most recruiting platforms work on a
transaction processing fee on a per placement basis. It's erroneous to try and
draw the wrong kind of conclusions from data points gathered from enabling
this transaction, especially when it's just 1. When a candidate receives
multiple offers that they're interested in, it's very likely that they'll make
a holistic judgment based on a combination of factors, and their gut. Is the
company "good" or "sketchy?" Do they feel chemistry with the people they'll be
working with? Are they stimulated by the work the team will be doing over the
next year? The truth is, for most talented engineers at early stage companies,
any company that makes a desirable product and has substantial growth left in
building and scaling its product will allow for growth in literal terms. The
limiting factors there will likely be the team, if anything. If there's juice
left to be squeezed from building further product edge, and the team is good,
the org is good, and the leadership is good, it's very likely that an engineer
will receive more than one opportunity that is "good enough" \-- good enough
for them to exercise the upper limits on how far they can grow.

It's easy to pay lip service to offering growth, but it's hard to actually do.
In many cases, companies shouldn't be trying to offer that with a straight
face. In growth stage startups, growth as an engineer is bound to the
combination of the growth of the company and the growth of the product. In
most cases, if you want to hire any kinds of the best employees, you need to
offer growth. But, your business model, company growth and stage of company
and culture all have to offer that. That's the hard part. It's something that
needs to come from the executive level as well as good timing and a ton of
foundational work.

If you can offer growth, that's great. It will make it easy to hire the best.
But, most companies are not in the position, and the ones that are certainly
don't need this advice. So, this isn't really useful. Offering growth is not
something you can turn on and off. You need to build a great company and build
a great product that people want and which a great business can or is built
around. If you can do that, expanding the engineering team becomes a matter of
logistics instead of intractables.

I think TripleByte is a great idea, and it's at an interesting point right
now. But to use your data to answer this question requires looking at things
longitudinally, and that could be hard unless TripleByte becomes more of a
career management platform as well as a two sided hiring marketplace. Having
used Hired, Angellist and TripleByte before on both sides, I'm definitely
really curious about seeing where things evolve.

------
ppcdeveloper
nuff said

------
dventimi
Hire database developers.

