Must-Reads When Recruiting Programmers | Hacker News Reader

Must-Reads When Recruiting Programmers

blog.kiratalent.com

73 pointsklistwan21 comments

Man I wish more employers in my local area (Calgary, Alberta) would read this article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html

Every place I interview at thinks:

- developers want to work in fishbowls ("fast paced environment")

- thinks old/used furniture from the 80's is suitable for developers

- assumes we want stock options as compensation (in a "start-up" hell no, give me actual stock or a real salary)

- assumes 40-60k a year is a good salary for developers. Yeah, no, not in Calgary. ("but we're not Oil and Gas so we can't pay as much..." deal with it buddy)

And since this isn't exactly a tech hotbed, most of us are forced to nod politely and take what we get offered (and maybe negotiate a third week of vacation if we're lucky).

I don't know about how Canadian taxes work, but at least in the US, you have to pay taxes on stock you receive, even if they are illiquid (but with stock options, taxation does not occur until you exercise).

It's the same in Canada as far as I understand - but thing is, options aren't compensation unless the business is sold or goes public.

Unless I'm misunderstanding something, in which case I'll have to change my mind on this.

If I'm issued stock options in a privately held company at $1 per share, and I vest 200, I get $0 (the value hasn't changed since I was issued them). In order for the value to change, the company needs to be purchased or be listed on an exchange. No?

Okay, I misinterpreted "give me actual stock" as preferring stock to options. Your definition of "actual stock" seems to be publicly traded stock.

In a sense yeah. The share option agreements I've seen haven't provided a way to flip the options into proper shares in the company that are under my name.

So the company boasts to me that I have "stock" in the company - I am a "owner" when in reality I'm not at all. I find it disingenuous.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding this - I can never get a clear answer on any of this stuff.

You seem confused. Private companies don't have any liquid stock to give. Options aren't the issue, just subtract salary minus share price and taxes to get net.

How am I confused? Get net of what?

My point is that local start-ups are misrepresenting share options as "stock" in the company, telling me I have ownership when in fact I do not.

And they use this notion that I am a "owner" to extract far more then the 40 hours per week I'm contracted to do (it's "start-up culture" after all). I like the work and problems that start-up's tend to focus on, but the way it gets represented here is a joke to professionals.

I suspect every country taxes stock, certainly every country I'm aware of. The thing that's different in the US is you only get taxed capital gains (much lower). In the other countries I'm familiar with (Canada isn't one of them) stock is just income and gets taxed via the normal income tax mechanisms.

You know, working in Alberta and not being in the oil and gas industry is like being a fish out of water.

Companies that are outside the industry really do have a hard time matching compensation.

It's a funny situation in a way. The average person within the industry doesn't know how good they have it if they have worked their whole career in oil and gas.

Generally people that are outside the industry have a sense of how good it is but don't really know.

Why fight the machine? You should get on the oil and gas ride and do the "fun" stuff on the side.

I struggle with this - I know exactly the difference between being in the industry vs doing local start-ups. Start-ups are more fun and I can usually forgive the pay inequity (it's about 20-30k per year less in normalized salary).

If I could put up with the O&G corporate environment I'd be all over it - but I do prefer natural light in my work environment and an interesting problem domain over a flourescent lit grey cubicle on the 12th floor of some sky scraper and another well analysis application.

Agreed with your sentiments.

It's much better to work on contract with the oil and gas firms. In this way you will definitely be in the 100K-180K range (at a minimum). It also offset's the domain issue a bit as you can move around.

Usually the start-ups are working on product that relates to oil and gas anyways.

How do you find these startups?

I largely find them through networking connections - I know a bunch of people in the "start up" community and subscribe to a few networking mailing lists.

Digital Alberta and Pints & Pixels are both good sources for information.

I'm thinking of moving to Calgary - I'm currently in Saskatoon. What is a decent price for a developer in Calgary? I'm an iOS dev with 4 years experience (I've worked on about two dozen apps, and have ~10 on the store I've worked on, including 4 of my own). I know of a place that will pay at least starting 70k, it may have gone up since I last checked (I wouldn't guess more than 75). They do also offer bonuses and what not and company stake for vc created stuff, but I'm not really sure if that's a good wage or not. There aren't many places in Saskatoon doing mobile work right now, and to be honest that looks a lot more promising than stuff locally.

Is 4 years your sum total? If so, 70k is fantastic in Calgary for that experience. Plus, depending on your needs/wants, 70k (without huge consumer debt) is enough to live quite nicely in Calgary right now.

If you managed to grab a job working directly for an Oil & Gas dept doing mobile (they exist), you'd be able to command 90k+. Work would likely be boring though - but you'd get impressive bonuses, benefits and other stuff that you'll never find at the mobile agencies that exist in this city. Most of the agencies are marketing houses - development isn't treated as a priority at most of them.

I will tell you this - mobile dev experience (especially iOS) is hard to find in this city - make sure you get as much as you can for your experience level.

4 years of iOS. I've been using php/MySQL and all the other jazz for about a decade. I'd also say I've got solid design skills.

You're basically gold to any agency here then :)

Development + Design is like finding a unicorn. You should be aiming much higher then 70k.

I'm finding a hard time finding people who even care - they either want to hire a developer or hire a designer. I feel like I'd need to jump in with a startup or into a company with few employees to get the commendation.

I would just keep applying with Oil and Gas until I got in. You only have so many billable years, don't throw them away getting under-compensated.

Seems like they forgot Steve Yegge: https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-pho...

In our experience, the best way to learn how to interview is to talk with hiring managers. The 2nd best way is to pretend you are one.

We SWEAR by this book: Who (http://www.amazon.com/Who-The-A-Method-Hiring/dp/1400158389)

Skip to chapter 4.

It's structured our interviews as we grow our team at http://thinkful.com/ as well as work with students to improve their resumes as junior engineers.

I've got three good old fashioned book recommendations:

* Johanna Rothman's "Hiring Geeks that Fit" (https://leanpub.com/hiringgeeks) does what it says on the tin - her blog is a useful resource too http://www.jrothman.com/blog/htp/

* Andy Lester's "Land the Tech Job You Love" (http://petdance.com/book/) is written for job seeker - but is actually a good read for folk on the recruiting side too [bias warning: I was one of Andy's tech reviewers on this book]

* Lou Adler's "Hire With Your Head" which completely changed my approach to interviewing for the better and made it vastly more effective. His accomplishment based interviewing technique is very effective in my experience.

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