Building a Good Engineering Team In a Competitive Market 101
Nerval's Lobster writes It's a pretty good market out there for tech professionals, at least on a statistical level. That can make it difficult for companies (both large ones and startups) to find good talent for their developer and engineering ranks. According to Ron Pragides, who rode the wave of IPOs at Salesforce and Twitter before joining Bigcommerce, the trick to hiring good tech people isn't necessarily a matter of offering the best perks, or the most money, or even an office with all sorts of fun stuff (although those can help). Instead, it's often a matter of selling them on a vision of the company's future. "It is about presenting the opportunity and the potential of what it could be if we have the right attitude, the right focus, the right work ethic," he said in an interview, "It's about making people feel like this is your company and making them understand they are going to help the culture and will have a big direction in how the office develops. I tell them, 'This is your company, this is your startup.'" But even that might not be enough in places like Silicon Valley, where lots of companies offer that "vision thing." So what does it take to pull in good people to work on your projects? Or does it really just come down to money in the end?
"This is your company, this is your startup" (Score:5, Insightful)
> This is your company, this is your startup
Really? So I've got a 10% equity stake?
Didnt think so.
Re:"This is your company, this is your startup" (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. You don't build a good team by starting out with lies.
Chumps won't make good team members in any case. Perhaps a few in junior positions.
Re:"This is your company, this is your startup" (Score:4, Insightful)
Seconded.
Has anyone else been through those "motivational" seminars that were popular back in the 80's and 90's?
They were all about YOU being "invested" in the company. YOU should be open with management about anything and everything. YOU should be 100% committed to your job.
But it was never about management being invested in YOU.
If management decided to ship production to China, the workers would be the last to know. And the workers would be escorted off the premises by security. But as long as they were giving 100% to their jobs right up to that point ...
A shorter version of TFA would be "if you want good people then treat them like good people AND BE A GOOD PERSON YOURSELF". Don't make excuses for why you "have to" be an asshole to the workers. They aren't stupid. They will know when increasing your profits are more important to you than investing in your workers.
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Also never never never hire asshole workers.
Asshole workers force the boss to be an asshole as well. Then it spreads.
Just never hire assholes for anything.
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...and don't hire any dicks either. I can't stand when the two get together.
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You need to maintain a healthy ratio of dicks to pussies. Say 1:10.
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Also never never never hire asshole workers.
Asshole workers force the boss to be an asshole as well. Then it spreads.
Just never hire assholes for anything.
The inverse is also true, hiring asshole bosses tends to end up with workers being assholes to try and suck up to the asshole boss, or leaving because they don't want to work for the asshole boss... ending up with a team or asshole workers under and asshole boss. Invariably of course, the asshole boss himself has a boss, etc, so it winds up with an asshole company - it just takes longer the bigger the company.
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Well your comment and the parent pretty much answered the whole question: don't be a slick lie.
There's enough car salesmen in this world, if you want good people to stick around just don't fuck with them. The experienced and savvy will recognize how precious that is and will make whatever effort to hang around and stay out of the mess elsewhere.
Re:"This is your company, this is your startup" (Score:5, Insightful)
Start by asking what kind of Engineers you want.
I'd expect that the majority of projects simply need well qualified, stable and dedicated people. Not that hard to find.
Just show them that they will have a job for more than six months, they will be paid industry rates, won't be working 80 hours a week, and will be financially successful if the company is successful. That doesn't mean a millionaire. It means a great benefits package and decent profit sharing.
Or, you could try to find flighty, pig headed Rock Stars who may be very smart and will create something truly amazing, only to have them leave straight away, taking knowledge and experience with them and a leaving a system that probably wasn't created with long term maintenance in mind.
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I would add...
1. Show them the company has competent leadership who won't fuck things up.
2. Show then that you have a competent Manager who knows how to run a project, provide resources, and make shit happen.
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Just show them that they will have a job for more than six months, they will be paid industry rates, won't be working 80 hours a week, and will be financially successful if the company is successful. That doesn't mean a millionaire. It means a great benefits package and decent profit sharing.
You've got to be fucking kidding me. No companies do this shit any more, and haven't for a long time; they're happy to can your ass as soon as the project is over and they can save a little money (and get a bigger bonu
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may ACT very smart and will create something WHICH WOULD BE truly amazing IF IT WOULD WORK.
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Agreed. It seems that it is also fashionable to have "startup teams" in large software companies. In our company there are also few of those, and they are just hilarious. Somehow a startup is a team of 4 highly paid managers, 2 patent lawyers, 3 UX designers and one cheapest junior software engineer the HR department could find. The senior management is then surprised, that those startups didn't produce applications which produce diamonds out of thin air. After few of such experiments they now did a major r
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Kool-Aid makes the taste of bitter almond go down easier.
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Exactly.
To join a startup, you need to know several things you need to know in addition to the usual job stuff - how much finding does the company have (i.e., how long will it last, who is backing it, etc), will I get equity, and how much (usually in exchange for a lower salary because the funding isn't infinite), and how the team is structured.
Don't join a startup that wants you to earn less than elsewhere if they are looking at getting fun rooms, nice desks, top notch offices, etc. Join a startup that can
Combinations that personally resonate (Score:5, Insightful)
What it comes down to is either treating people well so they want to stay, or paying them so well that they stay even if they're unhappy. Trouble with the latter is that they don't necessarily do any better work, even if they're trying, because unhappiness can hurt productivity.
If you want to build a core that works well together, don't let problems fester, don't let middle-management screw things up, and do what you can to make the employees content and motivated toward the goal. So, pretty much read Dilbert and don't do whatever Scott Adams has illustrated.
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>Some people want cash. Some (especially those with dependents) want benefits. Some want guarantees that respect their free-time during the workweek. Some want vacation.
Money (and, by extension, benefits) is necessary but not sufficient. For anyone good enough to have their pick of jobs (which is the kind of person you want to persuade to work for you), the work has to be interesting and offer growth potential as well.
In other words, cheap. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you'd better offer a lot of free Mountain Dew and Nerf toys.
A LOT.
I did some consulting at one of those "We want to be in the top 50 places to work" companies. Lots of silly office perks. But the employee parking lot behind the building was full of shitty cars. That said a lot right there.
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Then you'd better offer a lot of free Mountain Dew and Nerf toys.
I never understood the whole cratering to infantile tastes like nurf balls and free drinkable corn syrup candy in the lobbies. The best engineers are not highschool wiz kids, sorry. I'd rather work with adults. If you want to be awesome, look at stuff like Disney washing your car and dropping the keys in your office and delivering your dry cleaning really fast.
Old fashioned mindset (Score:1)
Which does not work if the talent ever gets the impression they have been misled.
If you over work them, if you treat them with anything less than humanity and respect for their goals and life, if you use the s**t rolls down hill business model or you promise them the moon and they never move up or your idea of motivating employees is holding the constant threat of firing over their head. You will fail. Period.
You have a choice as a leader either learn from this or become another social dynamics statistic.
I
Money and Opportunity (Score:5, Insightful)
I manage a technical team in a medium sized corporation (~3000 employees). Our primary offerings are SaaS based applications and we are on board with all of the buzzword trends from the last few years; virtualization, cloud, flash storage, blah blah blah. Our environment is fairly small with 60 UCS servers at two sites (full SRDF/A replication between them) running ~1500 VMs.
One of my guys is an engineering rock star. He can pick up any language given a week or two to sit down with it. On top of that he is an excellent systems administrator, DBA, networking guy and project manager. Retention is a constant challenge because there are very few engineers who excel in so many different areas.
The technologies that we are working with are widely deployed. We could be implementing them somewhere else and making the same money. At a high level, we are just infrastructure plumbers. We could care less about the applications. Our purpose is to make sure that they are stable and that they perform well. With my particular employee, he keeps coming to work because we give him the opportunity to work with the latest technologies and the ability to leverage them to make his, and everyone else's, lives easier.
The two things that keep this team together are money, and the leeway to continually improve things. We have had a lot of territorial disputes with various teams over their inability to effectively manage infrastructure at scale. In many ways, they are scared of losing their jobs and are resistant to adopting better ways of doing things. We win those battles one at a time, but continually fighting them gets lame.
In that regard, I think that the author of the article is on point with the observation that good engineers need to believe that they are involved in setting the direction of how the office, and most importantly, operations, will develop. There are too many companies who need good engineers, and not enough good engineers to go around. Therefore good engineers will choose to work for companies where they can do things "the right way". Life is too short to put up with organizations who are slow to adopt new technologies and better ways of doing things.
Perks: Control and Responsibility (Score:3)
I found myself happiest in places where I was trusted to go off and make things happen. Examples:
* A P-card, even if it was a small limited one, to spend however I thought would give the company the most bang for the buck. Maybe we just need a special cable to get a demo project working. Maybe I save it up for a second monitor. Maybe the group just needs to chill out together over a beer at the end of the day. We can deal with full transparency and expense reports, just don't make us go through a month
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One of my guys is an engineering rock star. He can pick up any language given a week or two to sit down with it.
bollocks.
two weeks into a *new* language you are still programming modula in that language. i'm not saying this is always useless, but that's not a rock star, it will always be poor quality code.
On top of that he is an excellent systems administrator, DBA, networking guy and project manager. Retention is a constant challenge
more spectacular bollocks demonstrating that he just happens to be the guy you feel comfortable with and he managed to make himself appear indispensable. and that just unfolds how industry (specially corporate industry) works: a bunch people covering each other's asses. which is also fine but ... oh, this constant b
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Who the fuck are you to come on and assassinate someone else's character who you have not even met, and whose work product you have never seen?
At least you had the dignity to post with a legitimate account instead of as AC.
I have to wonder what is so wrong with your own character, that you are so threatened by the potential competence of a complete stranger, that you have to take to defaming them in order to re-enforce whatever impoverished view of the world you have adopted for yourself.
It seems to me like
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Who the fuck are you ...
hi. i am "znrt" for you and you should chill, you are going from bullshitter to total psycho in just two posts. think of your reputation!
Too many factors. (Score:5, Insightful)
As already noted in the comments, "this is your startup" doesn't mean much if I don't have a meaningful equity stake, but that's only one part of the equation. At least in my social circle, the most competent tech people are wanting to work for companies that are actually changing the world, and if your company isn't doing that, then the only thing it has to offer is money. If it's actually doing something interesting that affects the world at large, you'll have a better chance of attracting my interest even if the pay is likely to be lower.
If all you have is money and Wednesday beer nights and a pool table in the office or whatever, that's great, but that mostly just translates to "trying to keep you at the office as much as possible" usually, so that sort of cultural stuff is less interesting.
Personally, I'd rather work at a $40k/year job where I feel like I'm contributing to making the world a better place than a $100k/year job where I'm just enriching the company owner in exchange for all of my free time, but obviously different people will have different ways of calculating what's worthwhile to them. Also, obviously, family and location play into it - the "best pay" may not be in the most family-friendly markets, and you could easily make yourself unattractive to highly-skilled engineers with families no matter what your pay is like if your company is located somewhere with crazy real estate prices.
Re:Too many factors. (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I'd rather work at a $40k/year job where I feel like I'm contributing to making the world a better place than a $100k/year job where I'm just enriching the company owner in exchange for all of my free time
Those aren't the only two options. Personally, I'm quite happy in a stable secure intellectually challenging position that pays well over the industry average for my area that allows me to afford two properties and three cars, lets me afford vacations abroad and lets me afford jewelry for the wife. I arrive at work every day at precisely 07h30, leave precisely at 16h00 and do not work weekends (no, I don't even answer the phone!). I've done this for the last ten years (or more).
It leaves me time for plenty of hobbies - writing fiction (see sig at the bottom), maintaining a FLOSS library, playing guitar in a band, taking up painting, building a mill in my garage, rebuilding cars, basic home construction (walls, ponds, etc). I didn't have to sacrifice all of this for a decent paying job that let's me afford all life's little luxuries.
Why is everyone making the assumption that you either work for little money and altruistic reasons, or you work for lots of money and become brain-dead/tired/etc? Those are the two extremes, and you don't have to work at the extremes.
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The extremes were for illustration, obviously. If you read my entire post rather than cherry-pick, the point is that what works for one person isn't likely to work for someone else, and a company doing recruiting needs to realize that there's no "spend $x on solution Y and your team will magically appear" answer to the question posed. Unnecessarily pointing out that there are options in the middle doesn't change that.
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Personally, I'd rather work at a $40k/year job where I feel like I'm contributing to making the world a better place than a $100k/year job where I'm just enriching the company owner in exchange for all of my free time, but obviously different people will have different ways of calculating what's worthwhile to them.
Hahahaha, that is the most ridiculous false dichotomy I've seen in slashdot. $40k/year is peanuts, and whatever free time you *think* you get gets quickly consumed by the realities of not having enough for decent living, vacation, health care (and God forbid if you have or plan to have a family.)
$100K/year on the other hand, that's standard fair for any mid-to-senior developer in most urban areas, many of those clocking at 9 hours a day (with the typical crazy delivery weekend every 6-8 weeks.) There is
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Reading comprehension on Slashdot is seriously weak. I stated a personal preference between two hypothetical jobs for simple illustration of a point other than the one you're making, and nowhere did I say that those were the only choices available to myself or anyone else for that matter. The point that you and the preceding response make is irrelevant to the topic and to my point, which is that money isn't the only thing people consider when looking for a job and just waving high salaries at top-end develo
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Reading comprehension on Slashdot is seriously weak. I stated a personal preference between two hypothetical jobs for simple illustration of a point other than the one you're making, and nowhere did I say that those were the only choices available to myself or anyone else for that matter. The point that you and the preceding response make is irrelevant to the topic and to my point, which is that money isn't the only thing people consider when looking for a job and just waving high salaries at top-end developers ignores the possibility of soft factors playing a part in their decision-making processes.
The problem with your counter-argument (aka "simple illustration") is that you presented the hypotheticals as a dichotomy, one that is patently false in real life. It is a false dichotomy that glosses over/denies all the other possibilities in between from which people select according to their personal preferences as well.
Polish your arguments if you don't like the type of responses you get.
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From my original post: "Personally, I'd rather work at a $40k/year job where I feel like I'm contributing to making the world a better place than a $100k/year job where I'm just enriching the company owner in exchange for all of my free time, but obviously different people will have different ways of calculating what's worthwhile to them."
By definition, a false dichotomy excludes other possibilities than the two presented, which I deliberately went out of my way to acknowledge in the original post. Both you
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From my original post: "Personally, I'd rather work at a $40k/year job where I feel like I'm contributing to making the world a better place than a $100k/year job where I'm just enriching the company owner in exchange for all of my free time, but obviously different people will have different ways of calculating what's worthwhile to them."
By definition, a false dichotomy excludes other possibilities than the two presented, which I deliberately went out of my way to acknowledge in the original post. Both yourself and goose-incarnated are simply trolling.
You did not acknowledge other possibilities in your post. You insinuated that different people will make a decision between making the world a better place and giving up all their free time to their boss (for a livable paycheck). You only state they will calculate what's worthwhile to them when deciding between these two options. That is a perfect example of a false dichotomy.
The reality that luis espinal was explaining to you is someone usually does not have to make this decision. First off, you can do som
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As other people have noted, the value of $40k or even $100k varies wildly depending on where you live. However, as I've already stated, my point wasn't about the actual numbers. I could have chosen "free" and "ten million dollars a year" if I was trying to suggest that these were the only two options.
And I "insinuated" nothing - I stated exactly what I meant: other people will weigh various factors that may or may not include the two I was using as an example in their decision of whether or not a particula
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As other people have noted, the value of $40k or even $100k varies wildly depending on where you live.
It can vary wildly, but usually only at the extremes . In the vast majority of urban areas (where the vast majority of IT staff work), $40k is a low salary and $100k is a standard senior level IT staff salary.
And I "insinuated" nothing
You may not have meant to insinuate anything, but you did all the same.
It is not a false dichotomy every time someone lists two options. In fact the more inclusive term "false dilemma" allows for three or more options. What makes your statement a false dilemma/dichotomy is that you present the options
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Personally, I'd rather work at a $40k/year job where I feel like I'm contributing to making the world a better place than a $100k/year job where I'm just enriching the company owner in exchange for all of my free time, but obviously different people will have different ways of calculating what's worthwhile to them.
Oh look we've got another ideal wage slave....erm worker
Let me translate. (Score:4, Insightful)
Can you describe an ideal engineering recruit?
There is no ideal, but there are great traits such as intelligent, communicative, can work in a team, not afraid of hard problems, curious, passionate, and wants to make a difference. An engineer who is not impressive is someone who is just in it for a paycheck.
Translation: "We want a kid whole will work his ass off for shit pay and an extremely small chance of getting a nice nest egg with stock options."
When I grew up, I realized that what I want is not to be bored and a fat paycheck. They might think their business and software idea is gonna make the world a better place but is usually just more bullshit like Twitter, facebook or some other thing that lowers people's quality of life.
My passions are my family and I am making a real difference by contributing to my community and doing my best to raise well adjusted kids.
Developing for some dipshit service that in the grand scheme of things offers no value to society means nothing to me.
Bigcommerce? snore.
Rule #1: Don't take the piss (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not rocket science, but in 30 years I've yet to find a company that has all the above.
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Ether A) he's telling the truth or B) they don't have honest managers/sales ether.
My money is on B
Re:Rule #1: Don't take the piss (Score:5, Insightful)
... and pay-rises.
This is usually the problem right here. The last two times I've switched jobs, I ended up with a pay bump equal to about 10-15 YEARS worth of the wimpy raises I got for keeping my valuable institutional knowledge at the same place.
The limits most places put on promotions & raises mean you're usually shooting yourself in the foot if you stay someplace more than a few years.
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... and pay-rises.
This is usually the problem right here. The last two times I've switched jobs, I ended up with a pay bump equal to about 10-15 YEARS worth of the wimpy raises I got for keeping my valuable institutional knowledge at the same place.
The limits most places put on promotions & raises mean you're usually shooting yourself in the foot if you stay someplace more than a few years.
Which only means your previous employer was able to enjoy having a sucker for an employee for 10-15 years before you wised up. A company is not going to pay more for someone if they aren't scared of losing you, and since you stayed for so long they probably made the right call by not giving you substantial raises.
One of the best things I can see on a resume is job advancement within a company. That means they weren't just able to convince a hiring manager they are good, they convinced their day to day manag
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What I meant by 10-15 years worth of raises was that I would have had to stay there that long to equal the increase I got by moving on after a handful of years (at my last job, you'd get +$1-2k/yr regardless of merit, and I got +$25k for jumping ship).
I agree that being somewhere for along time with no promotion can be a red flag, but I've also worked places where they'd rather hire externally than give someone too big of a raise.
I also tend to choose jobs based more on what I can learn than what I can earn
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I agree that being somewhere for along time with no promotion can be a red flag, but I've also worked places where they'd rather hire externally than give someone too big of a raise.
There are clearly many companies that do not give big raises and do not promote from within. Part of the reason it is a red flag if an employee has not been promoted is because they were unable to realize they should have left that company a long time ago. It doesn't necessarily show a lack of technical skill, but it shows a strong lack of many other "soft skills". Once someone has a base level of technical competence, soft skills are usually much more important than technical skills.
I also tend to choose jobs based more on what I can learn than what I can earn. Then, so long as you can learn, the money comes naturally.
This is a great way to
Sell them the vision, but show them the cash (Score:2)
Quickest way to get what you want is.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is to offer good pay and equity stake in the outcome of your idea.
Other than that, think about what you are asking of an engineer.
1. Sign up to work on YOUR idea.
2. Sign up to work long hours with little time off to meet your schedule.
3. Sign up to work for low and non-advancing wages, at least until the idea pays off, if it ever does.
4. Sign up with a company with an obviously shaky future where they can get canned at a moment's notice when you run out of money..
You might find the risk taking young engineer willing to buy into this kind of thing, but to find the experience and skills you really need to make things work, you are going to need some seasoned help. It's the seasoned help that will be the hardest to sell and thus the hardest to find and pay, but you only need a few of those. After that it's the young smart bucks for no bucks you need...
My suggestion is to be ready to pay handsomely for the seasoned engineers and sell them on the idea first. Guarantee their employment up front by contract for the expected development time. Then let them plan the project and hire the young bucks for you. If you can offer stock options or equity stakes great, but if your investors won't let you, pay what you can. Then treat your employees like family and hope you finish before the money runs out.
good market? (Score:2, Insightful)
"It's a pretty good market out there for tech professionals,"
Yes, for the market for those willing to take salary cuts in competition from outsourced jobs, monopolies, and salary price fixing.
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If you are truly even an average developer and you are getting pay cuts and not able to compete with outsourced "developers", you're doing it wrong.
Don't forget OT and people skills (Score:2)
1 Is there a lot of unpaid overtime ?
2 Does the management and team have a reasonable level of interpersonal skills ? (if you've been at this a while you know how important it ends up being)
So I tell them we have little OT, and an unusually high level of people skills and cooperation, base on
Wait, I was told it was all about diversity! (Score:2)
Every color ( except white )! Every gender ( except male )!
At least, that's the message I get from various media and state organizations.
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You might try these: 1) Offer a max overtime guarantee or time off for OT. (if you can't do at least one of these, something is wrong)
2) Let them know you understand what it is like to work for narcissists and mentally unwell entrepreneurs, and you will put effort into making sure everyone is treated with respect.
Do what Microsoft and Amazon does (Score:1)
You should hire lots of talented foreign workers at lower wages than domestic workers make using short term visas. Then, you can argue that the workers that you've spent the last year training have skills that no domestic workers have and use this to justify permanent work status (green cards). This will take 3-5 years to process, so you will benefit from the cheaper wages for a good amount of time before they are able to jump ship. Finally, rest assured that most big tech companies engage in this practi
get of of the way & let me work. Anti-Office S (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm currently working for much less money than I might work elsewhere. I'm here partly because the people above me and around me pretty much stay out of the way and let me get the job done. They don't micromanage or have me spend my day filling out TPS reports.
I figure if you want to keep good people, and have them refer friends, watch Office Space and pretty much do the opposite of whatever Lumbergh does.
Specifically, remember people are ends, never just means. The purpose of the company is to serve the people involved - customers, employees, and owners. If you're seeing your customers as solely a means to an end, you're doing it wrong. If you're treating your employees as solely a means to some end, you're doing it wrong. If you see your boss or owners as just a means to get what you want, you're doing it wrong. We get together as an organization in order to benefit all concerned, that is the purpose.
Insecurity, PHB-Drivel, Lack of Vision (Score:2, Insightful)
My beard is getting grey, so here comes a rant. I've changed job every 4 years (average) because the wonderful companies I go to always find themselves in a downturn. All, without exception.
I am sick and tired of this "we can't hire good people" nonsense.
Here's why you can't hire good people.
You say you want the best, yet don't put out informative job ads. You talk PHB-drivel in them. When you get a good candidate, who is intelligent, diligent and technically proficient, you can't see it for reasons of nebu
Hire decent people (Score:3)
There is really no way you're going to get the people you want based on perks, salary, benefits, and the like.
However: virtually every company has some insufferable ***holes on staff, either in engineering, or management, or both. If you're lucky, you get to meet one during your interview process, and strike that company from your list. In other cases you think you're golden - only to meet the offending employee(s) during your first week or two. Then you have to restart the whole job search thing once again.
I'm not saying that everyone needs to be perfect. Everyone is a jerk once in a while; but the fewer loud, arrogant, sexist/homophobic/prejudiced/intolerant people on staff, the happer everyone will be. If I'm going to spend 10 hours a day with people, then they should be people I'd choose to hang out with anyway, not people I'd avoid.
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Funny I've always found that the fewer SJWs there were, the happier everybody was.
Keep your politics out of the god damn office or polish that resume.
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No. But to a SJW everybody is 'loud, arrogant and intolerant'. I don't like to work with such shitholes.
Dave Barry? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't quickly find it, but years ago I read a nice 1 page column that summed up how ot motivate your employees well.
1) Give employees the tools to do their jobs well (don't make us fight over licenses, etc).
2) Give clear goals and direction (know what you want before unleashing the whole team on it).
3) Get out of their way (keep the meetings and paperwork truly to a minimum).
All else seems to be window dressing.
comp (Score:3)
Top Quartile Pay for Top Quartile Talent (Score:1)
Anything else is just whining about how you're entitled to an exception to basic economic laws of supply and demand.
How to do it (Score:4, Insightful)
That can make it difficult for companies (both large ones and startups) to find good talent for their developer and engineering ranks.
Violate a good number of this, and you will have a revolving door of top talent in no time. Companies sacrificed the meaning of loyalty a long time ago, and they expect us foot soldiers to show loyalties when are now nothing more than commodities. Fuck you. We are mercenaries now.
Talk with HR (Score:1)
This might be the time too sit down with HR and go over the rejected resumes. Like the ones from highly qualified individuals that happen to be over 50. and or caught by one of the outsourcing things. or the ones from the folks working on C# when you need C++ or something similar. They act like they want someone who will be there for 20 years. We all know the odds of being outsourced/acquired/right sized in the next 5 years are good.
So why discard the older folks.
Rod
Building a good team is all about people (Score:2)
What are you hiring? Are you hiring a resume or are you hiring a person? In order to get a good team, you need to start with good people and let them carefully add who they think will mesh with the team. This usually results in long term team stability since the team gets along with each other and works well together. If you have a good team core in place and try to force the rockstar that HR found onto the team or alternately the low waged, inexperienced H1-B without input it could end badly. This cou
The biggest problem is that (Score:1)
Most managers suffer from the Dunning Kruger effect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
and to quote the story that inspired the original insight in the study, Most managers I have encountered might as well be saying "But I wore the Juice!"
They wouldn't know talent if it cured their type 2 diabetes induced obesity, erectile disfunction and male pattern baldness.
Do you have an open office floor plan? (Score:2)
If you do, you do not really understand or care about your developers and unless you can tempt them with FU money, they aren't going to want to work there.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot (a _lot_) of developers like those. Some don't of course, and the stereotypical "The only thing I do is code in a silo in the dark" definitely don't.
For the former group, its a matter of providing huddles, library atmosphere areas, etc. The later, well, you don't want those anyway.
Know how to run a business (Score:2)
The key to building a good engineering team is knowing how to run a business. Decent pay is important, but that's a function of knowing what you need to build, what kind of capital you need to build it, and how to run the team that's going to build it.
There's a lot of interesting people with interesting ideas out there; but they are such horrible businesspeople that it doesn't matter how much I love what they want me to work on. If they can't figure out how run a f**king business; it's all going to fall apa
easy (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of people mention money, but its a tricky one. You absolutely have to pay competitively, but then you end up with a few issues:
a _lot_ of good engineers will pick a projects they like over money. There's a reason a lot of fantastic ones will jump over to that fun startup that pays them NOTHING (aside equity) even when they know the odds of it working out is minuscule. No, its not because they expect the next Facebook.
You end up with a lot of candidate looking for money alone, so your pipeline ends up
It's about pegs and holes (Score:1)
Structure your organisation with Right/Centre/Left branches for sales/admin/production and you can fit the right personality types in and then they all get their different achievements. Look at Left-Right-Center at http://vulpeculox.net/treems/i... [vulpeculox.net]
"Shortage" = underpaid (Score:2)
Sure a lot of other things are important, but saying there's a shortage is just admitting you're not paying what the job's worth. If a good CEO is worth $1M, then a superb and highly productive engineer is certainly worth that. But you won't be finding many engineers paid better than "well".
If you're looking for individuals with superhero skills, then maybe you're looking for a single person when you should give up and hire several, each with superb skills in a certain area. After all, if a leader is worth
Adapt the lawyer model (Score:2)