Probably the best HN redesign I've seen yet to date.
Some light criticism:
1) decrease the padding between each story space, there's juuust a touch too much white space
2) the big attraction to HN is indeed the comments, so accessing or invoking the comments should be really easy. In your version, I have to click the comment icon or the comment numeral count link... why not instead have the entire space (excluding the story link) open up the comments?
> For the planet, sure. But for economic analysis its irrelevant.
No, for economic analysis overpopulation is very relevant. Maybe not in the extremely short term, but in the long term when overpopulation strains the finite supply of goods like energy and raw material, this becomes very relevant. In addition to the fact the reversing man-made climate change would also take incredible capital and resources to pull off, it's actually probably one of the biggest things to be seen in economic analysis.
> Given that it's impossible to produce more senior developers in a 1-2 year timeframe, what alternatives do people suggest to immigration?
Why do we operate under the assumption that these companies are entitled to as many unicorns as they want? Why shouldn't they just go out of business?
After the whole collusion ordeal when it became abundantly clear that on one side there are VCs, founders, and C-levels who work to suppress our wages -- and on the other side, us, I actually want to see them lose and get hurt after all the terrible things they did to us.
I'm not a VC or founder. I'm a developer just like you, trying to deliver cool products—but doing so requires more developers.
If my company was trying to suppress wages, or refused to pay above market, then I'd agree with you that we have no right to ask for more talent. But we're perfectly willing to pay for talent—we just can't find any.
I wouldn't be surprised if the number of senior developers on the market was less than 10% of the number of open positions.
So the thing is, I share your general opinion -- there is a legit shortage of talented developers, and it's hard to find them.
BUT: I guarantee you that there is in fact a wage and benefits package you can offer that would get you more good applicants. Maybe it's more money (sure, "above market" is nice, but I'm not going to leave a job for $5K more than my "market" rate -- but for $50K more, well, let's talk). Maybe it's perks and benefits (the Google package, for instance).
Whatever it is, there is absolutely money you can spend that would end up getting you noticeably more applicants one way or the other. That the company doesn't WANT to spend that money is exactly what bothers people.
And yes, yes, it's all well and good to say that developers are paid and treated well -- they are -- but if their talent and skill is really that rare and that in-demand, maybe they should be paid and treated even better.
Okay, let's assume we were willing to offer substantially higher salaries than the market (though the practicalities of our funding certainly limits that to some degree).
How would we communicate said information in a way that doesn't actively distort the hiring process? When was the last time you saw a job ad with salary listed?
Put it in the ad. It's not common, but it's not super-rare, either. And the main reason you don't do it is that you don't want to eliminate your chance at hiring someone at a below-market rate (or of alerting your below-market-rate current employees that they're being screwed and should be getting big raises). If you're committed to paying the rates you'd need to pay to get good talent, then put that upfront.
This is what I'm running into right now. Our CEO will not buy health insurance or computers for Dev. In a second breath, he gloats about paying people damn near nothing because they 'want to work in the industry.'
I am currently looking at jobs in NYC. With 2 years of experience I am fielding offers between 60k-80k in a cheap state to live in. Two comments above you make great points: (1) Developers should be making more than what they are and (2) Why should startups be entitled to cheap labor?
That being said my point is if I had the 5+ years of experience you probably are looking for and was moving to NYC I would expect to be making 150k+. Which if that is what you are offering, great. But if it's not then you can find the talent you are looking for, you just can't afford it.
> (1) Developers should be making more than what they are
As a developer, I'd love to agree with this. In fact, I do. But in our experience this isn't directly related to the talent shortage (again, we have never been unable to make a compelling offer to a candidate).
> (2) Why should startups be entitled to cheap labor?
I don't think they should be. All our senior devs have generous compensation which easily adds up to $150k+.
I'm not sure I agree, especially when you factor in substantial equity. We have interviewed numerous people from banks and large tech companies and our salaries certainly don't seem out of whack.
To you, that "substantial equity" might be a real cost, but to the applicant it's essentially a lottery ticket. The expected value of your equity is zero. I've worked in many silicon valley firms that offered stock options but the only time one ended up having any value to me was as a bargaining chip - I was able to tell the next firm that wanted to hire me "gee, I'd love to take your offer but if I leave now I'm giving up all these unvested options worth lots of imaginary money" which helped negotiate a signing bonus.
Most companies fail, making their stock options worthless. And even the few companies that succeed usually hit bumps in the road that dilute the stock options or put their value underwater.
So if you have a reason to think your idea of "substantial equity" is much more likely than average to ever be worth anything at all, you should make that fact a key part of your pitch. (Or if you're indifferent between equity and salary, offer more salary and less equity.)
"especially when you factor in substantial equity"
Unless your company ends up being the next Google or Facebook (which is a statistically unlikely outcome for any startup), your "substantial equity" may never be worth any significant amount of money. Living in NYC is expensive, and you can't pay your rent with stock options.
Maybe the AngelList data is why startups have trouble finding good engineers? There is no good way of finding out what a good developer should get, and that is because the companies (including yours) like it that way.
I only have anecdotal data, I don't think many people have more, but I am very sure a decent senior dev can get way more than what you are offering.
I think there is more to a job than just the salary, but at least be open about the fact that there are open positions doing similar work in the same city offering significantly more.
>I don't think they should be. All our senior devs have generous compensation which easily adds up to $150k+.
I once got messaged on LinkedIn by a Bloomberg/banking guy looking for me to contract with them in New York at a rate of $144,000/year, and I'm comparatively junior. A properly senior developer, someone with something like 7-10 years of experience in industry, should definitely be making a bunch more than some guy offers me off-the-cuff when trying to recruit on LinkedIn -- especially in an expensive area like NYC!
> I once got messaged on LinkedIn by a Bloomberg/banking guy looking for me to contract with them in New York at a rate of $144,000/year, and I'm comparatively junior.
We have successfully hired people from Bloomberg and finance (including competitive compensation).
One thing to keep in mind is that contracting is very different from full time. $150k is low for senior contractors but normal for senior developers (annualized, I expect senior developer consultants to be making more than $200k if they're based in NYC).
You're right that our biggest challenge is in getting people to apply in the first place.
What do you think is the highest value of deploying monetary and other resources to make that happen, given that publicly listing salaries is a non-starter?
If you want the benefit of offering significantly above market salaries, at some point you've got to let it be known that you're doing that. Secretly paying people a lot of money won't attract new talent.
Does your employer use the lots of startupland hiring phrases, like "we're looking for passionate rockstars who believe in our mission to change the world through payroll software"?
A lot of the phrases in vogue right now seem to indicate companies that want employees that work 80 hour weeks and pay entry level salaries. Have you tried "competitive compensation" or some other non-numerical indicator that you guys pay well or phrases that indicate you guys have a professional vs. passionate culture?
I think our job listings are quite fair and free of "startup" phrases. We emphasize the actual problems you'll be working on and try to communicate that we pay professional salaries for professionals.
"I think our job listings are quite fair and free of 'startup' phrases."
Just looked at your "Lead Engineer" listing. It says: "We offer a great startup work environment with free beer, snacks, and friendly teammates." That sounds more like a typical startup that expects people to work there for the fun experience than a workplace that wants to attract highly-paid professionals.
And the offer of free beer makes it sound like a frat party. Maybe that's a turn-off to women who don't want to work in a place full of drunken guys. Maybe it's a turn-off to guys who want to have a life outside of work. Skip the free beer and make sure your employees have enough free time after work to get a beer outside if they want to.
I'm going to concur with selmnoo, but be less rude about it: sorry, but those are the rules of the game. However hard a time you're having finding senior developers, the incentive to produce them domestically gets skewed downwards, making the problem worse in the long term, if we let you "patch" the issue temporarily with immigration rather than signaling higher demand to the market with rising salaries.
Of course, your firm can also do its own part to fix the problem directly: hire more junior candidates and train them up. Yes, I realize this is quite difficult for your situation, but consider that if few to no companies train junior developers into senior ones, that explains why there are so few senior developers on the market.
And then there's the housing shortages around NYC and SF that make land rent eat up most salary rises -- that's worth an entire post in itself.
Training is part of the solution, but I truthfully don't think that can be driven by startups. We might not even be around years from now to receive the rewards from our investment in junior developers.
More practically, I wouldn't feel right hiring junior developers when I don't think we'd be giving them the best training given our current staffing levels and product needs. Since we already have too few senior devs, I'm not sure I could justifiably ask the team to take on the additional burden of mentoring junior developers (though I do hope we can start a robust training program once the dev team is a bit larger).
We of course help each other, but bringing on a junior developer is absolutely considered an investment. There is a tangible decrease in the amount of time senior developers have available for other tasks, not to mention the cost of any off-site training we might invest in.
Using that logic, you could say immigration laws are actually what are making the problem worse in the long term - by temporarily keeping salaries higher than what they otherwise would be.
On the one hand, everything you've said is more-or-less correct. On the other hand, there's an additional problem: as long as cities suppress the construction en masse of affordable housing, every attempt to raise salaries mostly just ends up raising rents, leaving employees only a tiny bit better-off than before.
> because while you bear the costs of training, your competitors can then poach your trained employees by offering a salary that is less than your total cost for that employee but more than the salary you pay that employee
I tell everyone that in this day and age, the company is not loyal to you -- they will get rid of you very easily if they need to, and so you should not be loyal to them. However, if the company starts investing in you, training you, then you should be loyal to that company. I would't go to a competitor that pays higher in this case (if they pay higher than 2(X + Y), consider it :)).
I think it's crucially important to note that even if folks watch porn, it doesn't mean they can't have a successful marriage. My thinking is it would actually probably help to make a conscious decision to stop watching porn or at least reduce to a healthy minimum (insofar as it is an activity that may make a man and a woman more distant and aloof), and look instead to rebuilding a healthy physical relationship [1].
The reason I feel the need to emphasize this is that I think it's pretty much a matter of fact these days that many people watch porn. They should not start thinking now that they'll have trouble with marriage because of their porn habits, rather they should focus on what can be done to prepare for a successful marriage and commit to that.
[1]: Somehow I'm expecting people to get nitpicky on me on this, so let me just preemptively say: if within the framework of your relationship watching porn is acceptable to you and your significant other, then bless you both, keep doing it.
> I think marriage is fundamentally an economic institution.
I don't like that reduction of marriage. Having known several couples who've made it for over 50 years and above, it really makes things clear to me -- they let themselves be totally truthful and vulnerable to each other, they rely on each other in the other's time of need, they find joy in doing things as one. Like most things, marriage is what you make of it, if all you want out of it is economic benefits, it can be just that.
You might not like a further reduction which I suspect is true, which is that monogamy (punctuated or otherwise) itself is an economic (or if you prefer, game theoretical) institution dating back to when females traded reproduction for food and protection. There was no easy way for a male to determine the paternity of the child of a female with which he has mated, other than securing an ostensibly exclusive relationship and monitoring the female's fidelity as best as possible.
Of course, I don't think that takes anything away from the couples you know.
> There's no easy way for a male to determine the paternity of the child of a female with which he has mated, other than securing an ostensibly exclusive relationship and monitoring the female's fidelity as best as possible.
I meant a long time ago, when these institutions first developed among humans. The fact that paternity tests exist now probably only corroborates my point. I'll edit the comment for clarity.
It's an important distinction. The desire for fidelity is clearly genetic. I agree with you, it probably entered the gene pool because of those reasons. With those reasons now gone, it can and probably will exit the gene pool. This will drastically change the nature of human relationships.
Yes, I think we agree fully. I would add that the persistence of norms does not have to be directly genetic in the way most people would interpret that. It could be indirectly genetic, in the sense that we have a strong genetic propensity to adopt the norms of our social surroundings and attempt to spread those norms to the next generation. That propensity probably applies even for norms that have far outlived their original purpose.
I don't think the reasons are gone completely. Having children is much more than mating with someone and taking a test to determine that the children are yours. I want to have children one day, so I'm very careful with who I select for a partner, because I want her to be there with me raising our children, and be very committed to the family.
Monogomy in the modern age has always seemed like a sexual (and emotional) put option.
That said this rock that we're flying through space on becomes much less enjoyable if you stop believing entirely in the more romantic ideas of human entanglement (we are beings that need stories).
Of course, you can have that without getting married. But you see, more than anything, marriage is really a cultural institution. It has a strong symbolic power. It's an excuse for a big party, a signaling of commitment, etc.
We humans do a lot of things based on tradition and culture. Marriage is one of those things.
Because come on, if we don't have culture, what do we have?
There is no such thing as logical action independent of values, which are cultural. Logic can help with determining how to serve values, but it can't tell you what your base values should be.
It only takes one exception to disprove a rule, and in the interest of not inviting debate - I'll pick an obvious example: biological imperatives have nothing to do with culture.
Everytime I hear somebody excuse silly behaviour with "culture" it reminds me of the Louis CK bit: http://youtu.be/CQSRPMFDTSs
Also, allowing yourself to depend on the other, being truthful and the other things you say will quickly translate into economic benefits. Stability, emotional/financial/..., a safety net, a second opinion, a distraction when needed, I don't know how I'd do without.
Moreover, people who say they don't eat sugar don't mean they'll never ever eat sugar in any amount. I don't eat sugar - but I'm okay with a desert once per month or something. I'm also willing to eat things which have minute amount of sugar on a regular basis.
That's pretty much broscience unless substantial redefinition is made of "you" "have to" "sugar" and "die".
There's plenty of broscience to go around, I only eat roughly 1800s era quantities of sugar per year, compared to the American average being about 150 pounds/yr, so along with a bunch of people I say "zero" in general conversation but in reality its about 5-10 pounds/yr. Well under 10% the sugar consumption of "average american" so close enough to zero. But yeah I'll probably eat some kind of sugar until I die, just practically none. Last week I had a piece of family members birthday cake, how you folks eat that kind of stuff mystifies me, I practically puked it was so sickly sweet and the frosting was like a scoop of Crisco.
That's false, there are no essential sugars. You can live a completely normal life even if you manage to remove every single molecule of sugars from your diet.
I wouldn't say he's a quack -- that implies incompetency. Dr. Oz is actually one of the best heart surgeons in the country, it's rather just that he sold himself for money.
It’s likely guessing based on previously typed history.