Ask HN: What are things you wish you knew about hiring engineers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are things you wish you knew about hiring engineers?

mazeg.io

6 pointsnikasakana11 comments

Hey hackers! I'm a hacker/tinkerer myself that has started building a software company and soon i'll need to hire at least 5 engineers. What are some of the things you can share that might be important to know to a complete noob in hiring? Thanks in advance!

I don't understand how Mazeg is related to your question. Is it your main project and you are going to hire people?

His username matches the name of a founder on the linked site.

Sorry for the misunderstanding, should have made it clearer. Mazeg is a service provider company that i've started. Link was misplaced there didn't want it and can't remove now :D lol

Sorry for the delay. My usual recommendation is to read whatever patio11 wrote about this, but I think most of his advice is about solo consulting instead of a managing a consulting company. https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/ Probably the most relevant are https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick... and https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick...

I also like the old post of Joel Sposlky https://www.joelonsoftware.com/ Probably the most relevant are shown when you click "Recruiter" near the bottom.

If you are in US hire local developers. Don't outsource to other countries and don't use H1B visas.

Why?

So that American programmers have jobs. Quote from here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41870887:

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I worked for Best Buy. Entire teams fired but first had to train the Indian Accenture replacements. Entirely their right to fire us but don’t you dare say there is a “talent shortage.” There is definitely a talent shortage — of talent willing to work for $20/hour. In the jobs I’m seeing now, what used to be $65/hour jobs are now $48/hour. I remember making $90/hour a few years ago — now similar levels one would be very lucky to find $50/hour for a similar role.

I know H1Bs working at $40/hour for jobs their American counterparts are making $75/hour. They can’t move to higher paying roles at other companies because of the visa.

Also the termed “highly skilled” is an absolute joke. I can teach a person off the street to be “highly skilled” in a few weeks, based on the standard of what “highly skilled” means in H1B.

H1B needs to be highly reformed. It’s the tech equivalent of hiring construction workers from the Home Depot parking lot and paying under the table wages. I am not generally a fan of tariffs, but I suggest a 100% tariff on H1B wages paid by the hiring company. And that tariff would be a sliding scale — the more H1Bs you hire, the higher the tariff. If you need that foreign engineer so badly, paying $100/hour shouldn’t be a hardship. That would incentivize hiring the American/permanent resident at $80/hour. We’d find that “shortage” going away pretty quickly. Drive up the costs of Accenture/Infosys/etc., to make them unattractive. The only reason those companies exist is to provide cheap labor to companies like Best Buy, etc. The money collected from that tariff can be used to fund tax breaks for companies that don’t hire H1Bs. H1B isn’t about highly skilled labor. It’s about “highly” skilled cheap labor.

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Edit: figured out how to do direct link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41878386

Are foreigners downvoting my comments?

That skill matters much less than attitude.

I do a lot of hiring, email me if you want to chat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com