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Inside the War For Top Developer Talent
snydeq writes "With eight qualified candidates for every 10 openings, today's talented developers have their pick of perks, career paths, and more, InfoWorld reports in its inside look at some of the startups and development firms fueling the hottest market for coding talent the tech industry has ever seen. 'Every candidate we look at these days has an offer from at least one of the following companies: Google, Facebook, Twitter, Square, Pinterest, or Palantir,' says Box's Sam Schillace. 'If you want to play at a high level and recruit the best engineers, every single piece matters. You need to have a good story, compensate fairly, engage directly, and have a good culture they want to come work with. You need to make some kind of human connection. You have to do all of it, and you have to do all of it pretty well. Because everyone else is doing it pretty well.'"
The number one problem is many top brains burned too brightly and sometimes they burn out too fast
I've been in the industry since the 1970's, have had worked with geniuses that could out-produce a contingent of code monkeys for any given task, and I've seen too many cases of burn-outs amongst those top brains
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
If you have talent, don't go work for those stuffy old companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Square, Pinterest, or Palantir, who will all kill your inventiveness and originality with million-dollar budgets.
I must be drunk because I could have sworn the title to this story was "Inside the War for Top Developer Taint."
More Dice influence?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Looks like a start-up.
1) This sort of data isn't easy to verify - if there's one thing my experience in recruitment has taught me, it's that a lot of people outright lie, exaggerate, or have a completely distorted opinion of the truth. For example, some of my "I've worked for Google" candidates have, on further exploration, been "I've worked for a company which had a contract with Google";
2) As my physics teacher, who once worked at NASA, put it (metaphorically - he wasn't a toilet cleaner),: "Even NASA needs people to clean their toilets". A big organisation is very likely to have some wonderful talent, but don't expect everyone at that organisation to be amazing. Indeed, for most positions, it's more important to have someone who fits in than it is to have an outstanding performer. You're NOT there to change the world, but to do a little bit of some bigger thing in a yet larger overall plan, and in most cases your creativity will not be exercised nearly to its full potential. The really bright people will thrive in a research position - and you'll find them in academia, in IBM, and even in Microsoft - but not in Pinterest, lol;
3) To follow on from that, "top talent" doesn't equate to a job offer from a major company. That just means you've succeeded in the interview process, which means you were well prepared for the interview process. It doesn't mean you've achieved anything. In the UK, about 50% of people who get into Oxbridge were educated privately (present company included). Yet the interviews are designed to teach potential, and obviously people who went to private school aren't inherently brighter - they're just better prepared. Never underestimate "cultural" bias in an interviewer.
tl;dr Someone who claims to have worked at a well-known brand isn't necessarily brilliant, nor even entirely honest. They will absolutely have desirable qualities for a major corporation, but these qualities may not be what you think they are.
And yet, he is still paid less than two other guys, who didn't win the Super Bowl last year.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Agile is for Teams/projects without a clear goal, vast experience and wÃre nobody knows how to solve it directly.
So basically every project then?
I'm looking for a rockstar developer!!!
You need to have 5 years experience (of a 4 years old) technology.
And you need to be very cheap.
REALLY good developers are still hard to find for specific target markets E.g. MySQL DBAs, Sench,a (pick framework here), Ruby, JQ-Mobile, Linux admins / scripters (counting bash/perl/python scripters here too) etc.
"Good" developers are plentiful, but have trouble connecting because of:
1. Contract House Spam (thank you Monster.com for that concept.)
2. Ridiculous job descriptions (I have seen more than I can count that look like: "Rockstar wanted, 10-15 years of: html5, css3, app, mobile, sql dba, C/++, PHP, all variants of OOP, Sencha, JQ/JQ-ui, WebGL, tighten compiler code in Hex, expert-in-all-required - 1 year contract to possible hire.", I laugh myself silly at those ones...)
3. Between the age of 25-35 (no 50+ yo "burnout, job hoppers please")
4. Increased use of computer screening. Think Taleo and the rest, leading to resume's that are 1 page w/ 15 pages of keywords. (I really hate the way this is going... if you don't know it, they share just enough data to make targeted resumes impractical - beware)
5. "Job hopping" (think: multiple / many 6m-1.5y year contracts) is no longer considered "a positive thing" as it was in the late 90s early 2000's.)
I haven't had too much trouble staying busy (an admitted 52yo, I started "real" programming on the Fat Mac 512, and work on all 3 platforms from C++, PHP-OOP/Zend, SQL, Jquery and good Linux admin skills and a PMI member), but I am also close to #2 in the list with an MBA (sorry, I don't do Sencha.)
HOWEVER, a LOT of my friends are not so fortunate in this area. They have been contracting since the late 90's and have touched (some even partially mastered) almost all today-relevant tech, but their network is filled with similar "old people" with the same problem.
Stay tech fresh, talk a lot, lie (read: keyword heavy) on your resume for the HR computers, bring actual resume and your skills to an interview and be prepared to wait if (2 >== $HRstaff). In my life I have seen boom and bust, hired the next day or we'll get back to you in 6-8 months (with an offer too, not a "thanks, but no thanks."
Note: I live in Massachusetts , USA
I remember prepping for interviews where there were 30 applicants for every opening, and each of us competed for low pay, a random grab-bag of on-site 'non financial incentives', with zero focus on the work environment or corporate culture, and where your only chance to stick out was to make a strong human connection.
Now it's shifted the other direction, but devs - don't be lax. If you're any good, you've already been approached by at least 3-4 recruiters a week via phone & email. Do not blow these people off. In a few years, they could be your best friends. Write a short letter that includes that sentiment: Sorry, not now, but please keep me in mind when a position pops up, because my situation may change It doesn't hurt to ask them if you can forward it on to friends or ex-coworkers who may find it interesting either; it increases their interest in you, and most companies provide referral bonuses even to folks outside their company structure - I usually cash in 2 or so of these a year. I like to ask them too, what their focus is - for example, some look more for admin and general IT, some for java or C# devs, some for embedded devs, and so on so I can send them good candidates.
Once you have a list of non-robotic/non-spam real actual recruiters in your area, when someone you know does indicate they're looking for a job, play matchmaker. Send them to the folks on your list. Tell the recruiters to expect to hear from so-and-so. Grow the professional relationship.
It's not just about the occasional free lunch. Once, when I was part of a large contract for a company, there was an emergency meeting as our contract had been cancelled out of the blue, and some 200+ of us were effectively laid off. We all shuffled into a big meeting hall to hear about COBRA insurance and such, and after the first 15 minutes, one of the recruiters comes over to me and says, "Oh, you don't have to worry about this stuff; they still need 2-3 folks, and you're one of them. Technically you'll be unemployed for a week and a half, but we got you a pay raise and more vacation time. No need to interview, we're just shifting you over. Congrats!"
Sure, without my technical skill, I wouldn't have been considered, but out of the some 100 or so with that same skillset in the group of 200, they picked me because they knew me personally. I had brought them 3 new hires, and about 5-6 potentials that didn't get hired. When we had lunch meetings, we spoke about the employment environment, and what it looked like from our perspectives so they could better market jobs. When they had candidates, I made myself available to answer working environment questions, things like that.
Basically, I had value to them more than just the contract, and they knew it. So my name was at the top of the list when it came time to hand out the more rewarding jobs or christmas bonuses.
So the tl;dr: Software devs would do well to nurture your relationship with recruiters, because it could pay off in the long run.
what's wrong with agile?
Nothing in theory, **if** your project meets a certain profile. The real problem is that some people tend to implement an agile process in terrible ways, more so with "extreme programming" (XP). For example paired programming with constantly changing pairs, including pairs where a member is on unfamiliar ground. This may work for some projects or tasks but it is not going to work for others. Where agile/XP can go wrong is where management/leaders believes that this sort of paired programming is always of benefit.
Plus in the above example basic human psychology is ignored. Some people are most productive when they are not bouncing between different domains every day or two. Some people are wired to work in a more depth first manner, not so much breadth first. To force the later to constantly bounce between domains, well management/leadership is basically sabotaging their efficiency. Perhaps some people should only pair in a new domain every month or two.
Assuming a particular task should be paired at all.
Similar problems can be found in other aspects of agile/xp doctrine. Management/Leadership is hard. There is no magic bullet. Great ideas tend to work best under specific circumstances. Deciding when to stick with doctrine and when to deviate from doctrine, or to pick doctrine A over doctrine B, is what makes it so hard.
People use "agile" as a way to start coding when they have no requirements.
Then when they produce the predictable crap anyway, they claim they have to go live because "well, we used Agile".
The worst part is....
PEOPLE ACTUALLY FALL FOR IT
...offering employment contracts which don't bind employees in intellectual slavery. Some employers - especially tech employers - lay claim to every thought, word and deed of value that the employee creates during his term of employment - even if done in his own time and on his own dime.
Yes, but they didn't win the Super Bowl.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Funny how attracting the top talent only requires you to compensate *fairly*, not "well" or "very well", just fairly.
Does this mean that the strategy for hiring "average" talent involves compensating unfairly?
Umm, sure since you interrupted me in the zone I might as well help you, what is it?
I can't install this USB device?
(thinking to self)You're supposedly a tech savvy IT professional with a decade of experience and the first thing you think of when you can't get a 3rd party USB device working is talk to software engineering since hey you know, co-location human interaction. Oh and you plug it in and it shows up as a serial port
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
With eight qualified candidates for every 10 openings
To me that means that the companies are being far too selective and / or not using screening methods that reflect positive employment outcomes.
.
As google's selection process has shown, rejecting qualified candidates just because they do not do well on some obscure testing hurdles is not the way to find qualified candidates.
It seems like agile would be good if you need something quick. So management hears "Oh it's quicker than what you're doing" and dive on that like a pigeon on a French fry. Honestly the agile I do currently should just be called "go fast, be stupid" because that's how it works out.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Funny, that's not my experience up here in the north east. What I basically find is there's 3 or 4 jobs that every recruiter tries to drop on me. (Which makes for very short conversations.) I think I've been asked about 1 company from at least 5 interviewers.(I interviewed there and didn't like it btw.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
There are top developers everywhere, not just in SF or Seattle or NY. But not everyone wants to work at giant companies, some would rather work for a small team that does great work but doesn't burn itself out. Some people like living in smaller towns. Some people want a life outside of a job as well. Some would prefer working in a startup where they can make a huge difference and do something amazing. I think a lot of those companies aren't any better at evaluating talent than anyone else and often succeed due to market position, luck, being first to something, or something other than simply hiring "top" talent.
It's not the case in most places on the planet...just the same little incestuous circle-jerk in northern California.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Gotta love how these recruiters and employers screen so badly and allow office politics, greed, and silly prejudices to blind them to what's right in front of their noses. This insistence on "top" talent is one of the prejudices.
Then, as you say, they drive talent away with ridiculously harsh and thoughtless demands, threats, pushing, and bullying.
They could find talent, if they wanted to. They're good at coming up with excuses why they can't do it. They can't be bothered to train people either, not even allow 2 measly weeks for self training, no, they demand that developers "hit the ground running". Their complaint that schools aren't teaching the skills they need, as if the skills they think they need now will still be hot 5 years down the road, totally misses the point that education isn't about memorizing the specialized knowledge needed for any one or two petty little skills, it's about learning how to think and study so one can solve problems and acquire skills outside the classroom, without a teacher holding one's hand. "Hit the ground running" is a philosophy better suited to indentured servitude and menial labor, not careers in technology and science.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I actually think the best talent comes from the programmers who don't advertise themselves. The coders coming out of university / college generally can't program very well at all, well you do find a diamond in the rough it's not common. I'd rather interview a programmer who doesn't have a flashy resume and doesn't try to show off his coding ability because it's often the case that these kind of programmers are the best to have around.
Another thing that would be happening if demand for developers is really that high: Routinely offering developers $250K a year, plus benefits, plus a nice office, plus no on-call or after-hours support duties, plus paid overtime, plus free catered lunch and possibly breakfast and dinner too. That's textbook economics, where the economy responds to a shortgage by raising the price until either the demand drops or the supply increases to meet the demand. But I think a lot of managers have a philosophical problem with managing people who get paid more than they do, so it will never ever happen.
Changing the pricing around might convince them to consider hiring somebody other than the person they're typically after, who is 25-27-year-old, with 3-5 years of experience, a B.A. in computer science or something similar from a top tech school such as MIT or Stanford, with detailed knowledge of the exact technology stack their company uses, currently employed by somebody else, not married and not a parent, with no life beyond work, who will be comfortable being available 24x7x365, and sincerely believes that working 80-90 hours a week will reap financial and career rewards. Unless there are affirmative action rules in place, this mythical person they're after is probably also male, white or Asian or Indian racial background, and speaks Standard American English as his first language.
I am officially gone from
This article is about the San Francisco Area.
In the tech-crazed San Francisco Bay Area, it exceeds $110,000.
IN SF, $110,000 is SHIT pay. For me to move to SF from Metro Atlanta and keep my lifestyle, I would need a minimum of $250,000 per year. Don't BS me about the cost of living or you can much cheaper living 90 minutes away.
And if it's a startup (I don't give a rat's ass about the "track record" of the entrepreneurs - one hit wonders), their doors will be closed within the year.
Stock options?! Ahahahahaha!
Of course, I have been around the block a few times and that's why the SF people prefer young and naive programmers - i.e. Less than 30 years old.
Nah, there are also the teams/projects with vast inexperience, and where everybody knows how to solve the problem directly.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Wow, this part sounds absurd:
For example paired programming with constantly changing pairs, including pairs where a member is on unfamiliar ground.
Is there XP literature actually advocating that, with a theory behind why it's a good idea? Or is this some kind of DIY management innovation? Honestly it sounds Extreme more in the sense of a reality TV show: watch this wacky company that randomly assigns untrained people to a new job every day, with new partners they've never worked with before! See what hijinks ensue!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm looking for a rockstar developer!!!
Great stuff, I have fantastic "rockstar" developer credentials:-
.
* Regular user of both cocaine and heroin
* Drink Jack Daniels pretty much 24/7 (got a drip hooked up for when I need to sleep), can't remember the last time I was sober
* Throw 60" monitors out of boardroom windows
* Once sexually pleasured a lower-ranking female colleague with a red snapper fish (probably Not Safe For Work unless you Work with Rockstars like me)
Was that what you were looking for?
And you need to be very cheap.
Fuck you, I cancelled my last programming tour because I was offered less than $1m a night and no guarantee of red-haired groupies with a proclivity for red snappers...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Caveat: Outside looking in, have not technically worked in an Agile environment (although I have a new gig that is supposedly going to implement it Real Soon Now).
It seems to me that the main benefit to the business concerns in Agile is the ability to see something rudimentary right away, and be able to give better-informed feedback to the developers with regards to the features that are yet to be implemented. The trade-off is that the new features have costs associated with them, so the benefit to the developers is that that forces the business concerns to curb their scope accordingly, and hopefully provide better specs. However, what I can see happening is costs being invisible (or non-existent) to the business concerns, giving them a blank check to creep the scope and demand features that were never discussed in the planning stages (because the developers selfishly insisted on having adequate time to implement the features in a sane environment, thus committing the cardinal sin of pushing up a deadline).
Without those costs as a check against business concern ignorance, Agile IMHO seems doomed to failure. At my last job (and this is one of the reasons I no longer work there) we had a big client. A really big client. A client that was big enough to bully their way into creeping the scope and providing inadequate (and by inadequate, I mean non-existent) specifications. A client that would not allow us to bill them for additional time when they changed their requirements and demanded new features. Without that check (increased costs) the development process went way beyond initial estimates to the point where we ate most of the development costs and burned out our resources. Had we tried to implement Agile, I would have either quit sooner or had a psychotic break. So, to bring us back on topic, they now have zero developers on staff instead of one because of poor management.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
THere's plenty of jobs for developers right now. I'm getting an average of two random hits a week from recruiters, and I'm not looking. Perhaps there aren't jobs in Bumfuck, Alabama. But there seem to be a lot of recruiters from SF, Seattle, New York, and pretty much every major city.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Edison vs. Tesla; I seem to recall that it sucked to be Tesla.
How would the 3 Laws of Robotics created by the Taliban work?
Amazing as it sounds, it's not the technology that wins, it's marketing. For example, ear phones on a music player is nothing new. But put a go-go dancer on a some street dancing/walking to music that only she hears, and one has the iPod.
From the 1900's, in New York there were steak houses everywhere. A successful marketing person said, "Don't sell the steak, sell the sizzle."
Routinely offering developers $250K a year, plus benefits, plus a nice office ...
I'd like that too, but these days I'll settle for less prejudice against me. Given that high of a potential price, and assuming they couldn't get the H-1B quota raised to 1M/yr, a more realistic outcome would be, as you said, "convince them to consider hiring somebody other than the person they're typically after".
Unless there are affirmative action rules in place, this mythical person they're after is probably also male, white or Asian or Indian racial background
I suspect that many of the job interviewers aren't even aware of that bias (though some are, and sometimes flaunt it, despite there being an EEOC). Often it's just "this is what we've seen in the past, so I guess it's what we're looking for now". It's a common, sometimes understandable, and not always bad thing for people to prefer things they're comfortable and familiar with. Arguably it's a useful heuristic in some situations. However, with an issue like employment, you have to be aware of your prejudices and fight them, not just because the alternative is illegal or at least unethical, but because it's bad business. What kind of idiot leaves money on the table?
When you say, "recruiter," what do you mean? I get hit up constantly by places like Robert Half or TEKSystems, for the same few (local) jobs at places I don't want to work, for far less compensation than I am making now. I have told them I would consider something different, but it would have to be a move up, explain what "up" is, and then get fed crappy compensation values (ie. contract positions that have no/poor health insurance, no/poor PTO, no 401K). If a "real" recruiter were to contact me, I'd love to hear.
Jokes aside as how 50% of the world things software testers are monkeys bashing on a keyboard and another 40% think we're just game testers with no degrees. Where's the cry for talented software testers? It's reached the point that developers are far easier to get than a good software tester. The number of bugs that are openly visible in software is ridiculous as people tell companies to push rapidly & push often and let their customers find the bugs :(.
I seem to be getting a fair bit of interest in Austin, and not just from local employers.
For most dev positions two "pretty good" $125k/yr guys are going to give you more bang for your buck than one $250k/yr guy. For some dev positions that's not the case. Those guys do, in fact, get paid in the $250k/yr range.
But there seem to be a lot of recruiters from SF, Seattle, New York, and pretty much every major city.
What's "pretty much every major city"? SF, Seattle and New York are the three big hotspots. What about Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Portland, Phoenix, Denver, Minneapolis, etc.? Before you say "Podunk", let me point out I'm from, and still live, in the NY area. If I want to put on my NY snob act, I'll say every other city in the country is Podunk. But being an American first and a New Yorker a distant second, I'll point out that every city I mentioned, and a lot more, are major cities. It's a big country. Are you going to claim you have knowledge of the job market in all or even most of them, and that it's good?
Or you could get 4 guys for $65k each. Or eight for... Well, naturally we are ignoring benefits which could be quadruple for four. They can always offer less, or pay much more. Perceived quality is what they are supposedly wanting and paying for. But as Moneyball teaches us, the smart HR guys don't always have a clue what they are doing. The main problem here is the premise that talent and companies only exist in Silicon Valley, etc. If they'd broaden their horizons outside of VC land they might find plenty of people. But then what would the poor overpaid do when they have to share their wealth with other (grossly underpaid) software brethren?
Nobody else pointed this out? Come on guys.
This is AGILE.
This is what most of us get from pointy-haired bosses in corporations that just heard of this "agile" thing.
> Google didn't develop Android, they acquired it.
That's as true as saying Microsoft didn't develop DOS/Windows, they acquired it.
Android 1.0 ALPHA was after Google bought Android. Everything from 1.0 through 4.4 has been developed by Google.
I've had recruitment hits from half that list in the past 2-3 months, and I live near none of them (I'm near Baltimore at the moment).
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The difficulty of the problem has to be taken into account. Some dev tasks are "harder" than others. There's somewhat of a lower limit, though, given that even "easy" problems can be solved "poorly". Let's say your dev task is "moderately" hard. The $125k guy can produce a "reasonably good" solution. The $250k guy can produce a better solution, but his output isn't twice the output of the $125k guy. If you're okay with "reasonably good" then maybe two units of "reasonably good" has a more positive impact on your bottom line than one unit of "really great". But what about four $65k guys or eight $33k guys? At some point, the quality of dev you're going to get is so low that they'll produce "unacceptably poor" solutions to your task. Four units of "barely functional" or eight units of "utterly worthless crap" is not better than two units of "reasonably good".
I suspect that hiring managers underestimate the "hidden costs" of settling for "reasonably good" over "really great", but that's just me. Also, depending on geography, you probably don't have to spend $250k to go from "reasonably good" to "really great". If you take the compensation needed to get "reasonably good" and multiply it by 1.5 then that's probably enough to get you "really great". The question is whether the ROI also goes up by 50%
I get 5-6 requests per day from random recruiters, and 1-2 a week from serious recruiters in Chicago. I also get requests from other places occasionally, like Milwaukee, Dallas, Atlanta, and Raleigh, NC.
There are top devs everywhere, but suburbs don't scale well. Even a small company can need 5-10, and getting a bunch of good devs who didn't already move to SF or Cambridge, are interested in your projects, are ok with your conditions, and happen to be in the same small town as you, is ridiculously hard.
Its just easier in most cases (not all!) to have a few hubs where both top companies and top talent know where to find each other, and its what happened with the couple of top cities.
Its basically whats happening. Salaries are jacked up already (110k~ is average in the big tech centers...which means top devs can easily be paid far more than that. If you include bonuses and other kinds of compensation packages, 200-250k isn't even rare. Its not standard, but its not rare). No one dares adding on-call to top dev jobs anymore as you lose everyone who matter right there, and while after hour support is kind of inevitable when you do something meaningful, there's like 4 levels of support between you and that happening (people here get called maybe once a year, and only if they didn't do knowledge sharing as they should have)
There's a point where raising the price doesn't help anymore though, as money and benefits are only one part of the equation... working on projects you like with people you like is the other, and there's only so much companies can do. If their projects suck, even paying a million won't help.
Wow, this part sounds absurd:
For example paired programming with constantly changing pairs, including pairs where a member is on unfamiliar ground.
Is there XP literature actually advocating that, with a theory behind why it's a good idea? Or is this some kind of DIY management innovation?
This is one of those things that will work for some projects and not others. It can be helpful with cross training and works better when the knowledge behind the various parts of the project is somewhat shallow. As it is in some books on Agile/XP where Agile/XP worked out brilliantly for the development team. Beware the manager reading such a book and believing they found the magic bullet.
There, fixed it for ya
...
Sure, but how many able and willing candidates were there? 200 for every 10 openings? 300 for every 10 openings? The tech execs' lobbyists and tools refuse to say.
...
which violates my privacy, unlike the local red-necks (which, BTW, originated as a designation for Presbyterians). But the vast majority of south-easterners drive quite well... except for some of the retirees and "Yankee tourists". I've seen a pilot project test or 2 and was not impressed.
"book scanning"
Librarians were already doing that quite well, though not well funded, and that "work on digitization" goes back decades.
Gmail is brain-dead these days, insisting on mobile phone numbers and other privacy violations. Ad targeting is similarly entertaining, at least: I don't wear many sarongs or extremely ugly high heels, not the least bit interested in dating other guys... But the search results have been getting worse and worse, with the "headlines" not matching the URLs and the content, and fairly often not matching the search criteria.
The real problem with so many of these "brilliant" firms (FB, Goog, MSFT, Oracle, GE, Siemens, LinkedIn, Friendster... and their execs) the media seem to love soooo much is their determination to violate peoples' privacy. As one receent article put it, too many people confuse getting money with earning money, being wealthy with being virtuous. Of course, the left tends to the opposite, assuming anyone who is wealthy must be evil unless proven to have leftist credentials. The reality is that one must actually look closely at how the wealth is obtained and sort out the details to arive at the net balance for each executive.
I was modded down for that post? Must be some recruiters or immigration lawyers modding today. It's one of those cases where I take a certain pride in being modded down - I know I hit a nerve somewhere.
But not everyone wants to work at giant companies, some would rather work for a small team that does great work but doesn't burn itself out.
It should be noted that such can also be found at giant companies, if you look hard enough. The quality obviously depends on how well the manager can isolate the culture of such a team from the rest of the company, which in turn depends on having a really good manager... but from personal experience working on just such a team in Microsoft, they do exist. This is truly the best of two worlds, because you get the typical "big corp" compensation package, but there is much less bureaucracy and red tape and corporate culture bullshit than is typical of such jobs.
The real problem is that some people tend to implement an agile process in terrible ways, more so with "extreme programming" (XP).
Extreme programming RUUUULES!!!!
I come to work, wearing big old Birkenstocks and long board-shorts, with my long curly hair wrapped up in a rasta-colored nappy, then I pound on my keyboard while yelling "Woooooooo!", then I grab my snowboard and go down the side of the building.
Extreeeeeeeeme!
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
At my last job (and this is one of the reasons I no longer work there) we had a big client. A really big client. A client that was big enough to bully their way into creeping the scope and providing inadequate (and by inadequate, I mean non-existent) specifications. A client that would not allow us to bill them for additional time when they changed their requirements and demanded new features. Without that check (increased costs) the development process went way beyond initial estimates to the point where we ate most of the development costs and burned out our resources.
Yeah, I heard about the healthcare.gov debacle. Sad.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Remember to reject outright any patches submitted by anyone outside your chosen circle of top developers. You don't need contributors, and you certainly don't need users. Then you'll have a real free software project.
Amen to that, brother. I can't count the number of open-source projects I've tried to contribute to, only to be met with outright hostility.
Want to read a gem? It'll take a while, but check this out. The coding guidelines said "when in doubt, use the Google C++ Style Guide". What it should have said is "we have a huge boner for the Google C++ style guide, and we'll harp on every minor deviation from it, since we have no other insight into the worth of code, up to and including complaining that your indenting is off by a space".
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Tell them: 'You hold it. I'll see how much range I've got today'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
my 2c.
It is harder to find a good company than talent! I have been retired since 2005, forced out by disability and age from a career in Silicon Valley as a developer and system admin. And it is hard to stay current and to know what to study. Right now I am enamored with Python, but not too experienced, yet.
The thing which bothers me is that I am turned off by the companies, especially the well-known ones. I live a bus ride away from Facebook HQ in Menlo Park, and not far from Google, not that either would hire an old grey beard like me, and yet I would not clamor to work to either, except to try and cause trouble. I am totally unimpressed with these and many of the other famous companies around here. Seeing the crap that these companies do makes me laugh at Capitalism and at business in general the way it is done here in the U.S. and world. I am frankly ashamed and embarassed for the people who run these and who persaude investors. OK, I get that it takes some smarts to do some of the things behind the scenes, like the Big Data backend of Facebook, and I have had words with the people at Google about the design of their products, Google Docs mostly, So I know that I wouldn't fit in because despite what I know and don't know, I would try to be disruptive because I can see basic evil in what they are doing.
I know that there are lots of smart people, all those that learned their computer science and other things, and I took my degrees in Earth Science and got int Scientific Programming by way of that, but the way business is done is wasting talent on useless and destructive things. You would be better off writing words than code, analyzing why the world can go so awry as it has under the poor leadership we get for these people.