If software could help you hire candidates that are 10% more productive and stay 25% longer (numbers pulled out of my ass) than the candidates you hire now, how much do you think your company would pay for that?
.. that companies love spending money instead of changing anything, so I think they'd spend loads of investor money on it.
How hard could it possibly be to get 25% longer than all the people who say you have to change jobs every 12-18 months? To be nice enough that people stay /four months/ longer??
If that's not happening, switch out the managers.
1 month, 2, 3 went by. I found guaranteed positions for them based solely on my recommendation for more pay then if we had money, the people still stayed.
They came in for work the same. Everything kept going. We eventually had a successful product, made money, and were able to backpay.
If I was a disorganized manager giving meaningless drudgery and absurd requirements divorced from product and purpose they would have all left.
There has to be a deeper mission, purpose, and vision that keeps people around and focused. That's the managements job.
People aren't generally in tech for the money, there's better money in real estate, sales and finance with less work. Drive the passion and you'll drive the work.
Programming is like movies, art, and music: great things rarely happen when people are just chasing dollars.
Sales.
> ...finance...
You make the real money here as an IB analyst (100+ hours a week in the office — definitely NOT less work than the average SWE job), or as a financial advisor, i.e. sales.
So, yeah, if you go into sales, sales, or sales, you can make more money that way than in tech as a SWE. But, honestly, do you think the average engineer would do well in sales?
Family of four, one breadwinner, property owner, annual vacation, eating out once a week, two cars, college education for children...
You know, baseline idyllic suburban living. For the bay it was I believe north of $200K.
That's what I'm talking about. Someone making 250K in Mountainview isn't in it "for the money", they are just trying to live a life that frankly, most other countries can tender for about $75,000 but because of decisions we've made in how we structure society, it takes a quarter million a year.
This is the real equivalent to the 1950s idea of "middle class", it's just gotten so out of reach for most people, we construe people looking for it as greedy.
They aren't. Once you understand that, you can align incentives ... A $5,000 reward doesn't mean much for these people since 250k doesn't mean they're chasing dollars, instead a challenging rewarding job where they can work from home whenever they want, that's what keeps them around.
Or maybe I read too much into it.
And, yes. Boy would I like an agent to negotiate my next raise and find me a better job if my current employer says no....
This is a very cultural thing. For example, in Germany it is frowned upon to switch companies too often. If your CV shows that you switch jobs every few years, this is considered a red flag since this candidate will not be very loyal to your company.
I also ask myself whether the "company incentive structure" is the cause of switching jobs; if it is easier to get more pay by switching companies than by staying, then of course candidates will be prone to switch. So perhaps not what is broken (in terms of loyality) is "eng hiring", but the incentive structure of the companies that want to retain the engineers.