Cardiff tech firm: 'We'll pay £100k, but can't get staff'

But there was no careers page, no call-to-action to apply, or as far as I could tell any way to contact them at all. Here's what I wrote then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14248550

It sounds like today's company is similarly interested in getting some press and maybe influencing immigration policy, not in getting applications.

In my pair programming jobs, we've usually been able to onboard people to be fully productive in a few weeks.

Me. But then I'd much prefer to have lots of open space around and orders of magnitude fewer people.

Everyone's rushing there for the same reason, with all the cultural things that's suppose to be going on in the big city, only to find that the high CoL make life actually quite a bit more difficult to enjoy.

It gentrifies the area quickly, the commute is either long (in the case of the bay area) or being one of the sardine in the Tube.

The disposable income ends up being lower, so there's less money to actually enjoy the things that actually attracted people to the cities.

> most people in these salary ranges aren't that badly impacted by high property prices in London

Everybody is impacted by high property prices in London, except the tax exiles with the empty mansions. I moved from Cambridge to Edinburgh and benefited greatly from the lower property prices.

However, as others point out, this seems to be fraudulent advertising: all the advertised positions are £60k. Where's the £100k coming from? Did they only have one post at that range which is now filled?

There does seem to be a sudden hiring boom going on in the UK, which I'm curious about - applicants are hard to find and advertised salaries are up. Alternatively is this the consequence of Brexit-induced skilled staff supply shortages?

(Pet peeve: it should be mandatory for job adverts to post a salary range, even if it's a really wide one)

Let me raise a counterpoint, the cost of living in Cardiff is vastly less than the, frankly, over inflated prices in London.

I'm going to reuse your tone here - who would give up Cardiff to go to London to get the same Salary but pay twice as much for rent?

I'd raise another point as well - you're assuming people prefer the art and culture scene in London in comparison to a more local scene in a smaller city where gentrification isn't as ubiquitious. I'd rather live in Glasgow, where anyone can afford to go to a club or gig than London, where such activities are generally reserved for rich kids.

Welsh speakers?

(Probably not a big factor in recruiting, but still...)

Yes, so many more rats running the same race on the same overcrowded facilities? Cardiff is a nice city and the same London money is worth two times more there.

Of course that's part of the reason companies spend budget on headhunters rather than extra salary...

Edit: also assuming no revenue, so I don't know. Is that normal startup math?

Double edit: Crunchbase revenue estimate is $20.9M.

I've never seen any company offering developer training, so i assumed training developers doesn't work.

If it does, it is in elite organizations under the wing of highly principled bosses who are able shield their staff from project-management and organization-wide performance-metrics bullshit.

The main question, for me, is what point the article is trying to prove. The cynic in me believes that it's an effort to drive down permanent developer salaries by saying "we already tried to offer above market rates and it didn't work, so we're bringing them down again".

From a .NET perspective, I think you'd be lucky to get £100k a year in a contract role, let alone as a permanent employee. With that said, if you want to earn more than £50k in the south west, your only choice is large multinational company (which are mostly in London), management, or contracting.

Getting a story in the BBC and on Hacker News might help, though.

"Only a little thought is needed to convince us that the perfect advertisement would attract only one reply and that from the right person."

Sure - as demand goes up and supply is constrained, salaries have to rise. But it’s more complex than that - first, salary increases don’t magically increase supply. There’s a long lag time between salary rises and increased supply. On top of that, there’s a particular dearth of senior engineers. It’s easier to recruit people with less experience, and there’s nothing wrong with doing that and training them up - but this in itself takes quite a lot of investment and can be difficult in a small team. And third, the UK’s shitty immigration process and ongoing Brexit catastrophe make it more difficult to recruit developers from other countries.

At some point, it becomes economically infeasible to run a functioning business as the staff you need become more expensive to hire. It’s good for people in that market, but it can also make it difficult to run a sustainable small business, and it’s okay to call attention to that. Like most things, it’s a bit of a balancing act.