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Comment by pizzetta | Hacker News Reader

Companies like Netflix have the cachet and can retain people despite an anti-worker culture. It's also a self selecting group of over-achievers who may like the environment.

I'd argue most above average but not stellar workers would not put up with Netflix's implicit demands.

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It doesn't necessarily self-select for over achievers. It could very well self-select for people who don't recognize their own (flawed, not empirically justified) biases with regards to what "high performance" means. Most of that Netflix deck is the same kind of vague "we hire only the best" and "our values are (list of over-broad, meaningless but impressive looking jargon)" expressed in different words.

I would gladly work for a place like Netflix for a year or two, bust my butt, put it on my resume and move on. My market value would make it well worth it.

Word of caution from doing exactly that: you're signalling to future employers that that's who you are now, and forever. It's a pathway to burnout if you're not careful.

If companies don't want good developers to jump ship, it's simple. Pay them market value and keep paying them market value not 2-3% wages when they know if the employee leaves, they are going to have to pay market value and they are going to lose the person with institutional knowledge.

As a long time employee and employer in this industry all it signals to me and people like me is that you managed to survive that environment for two years. The name brand on the resume -is- worth something. Maybe more than it ‘should’ be, but that’s reality. Work at Google for two years and I mostly know you got through a Google interview and you can probably code. Work at Yahoo for 10 years and I know you’re good at politics. Etc. ;)

There's something depressing about your comment that screams dystopic to me. You're effectively reducing someone's hard work down to notches on a belt. I realize why you do it, but it still rubs me the wrong way.

What a boring future we live in. :)

When I compare opportunities for mobility that we have as developers, I'm grateful for the industry. I can't imagine being "stuck" at a job I don't like. In the last 20 years it's only taken a month to find a new job once I started looking. One time, I quit a job on Monday without any job in the pipeline, I hadn't interviewed with anyone when I quit and by that Thursday, I received an offer from what was then one of the 10 most valuable companies in the U.S. (not a tech firm) making 10K more.

I'm not claiming to be a special snowflake. I'm just a regular old "Enterprise Developer".

But the thought of working 30 years at one company and receiving a pension, horrifies me.

Just like we are just "resources" to an employer, they are just resources for us to make money. No loyalty either way, no expectations.

They give me a paycheck every two weeks and I work hard and do my best work for those two weeks. Nothing more, nothing less.

Thank you for your candidness. Your experience matches my own. It's a bittersweet grace, I suppose.

That said, I come from an area where for whatever reason, there was a large population of undocumented or otherwise illegal immigrants. One of my good friends, then and still, was able to get a work permit through deferred action. Her experience transitioning into a legal workforce has been nothing but depressive frustration to the exploitative and apathetic practices that her employers are able and willing to get away with. We both agree that the same practices happen in and out of tech.

While her struggle is strong and her ambition gets around a lot of niggling motivation problems. I can't say the same for many of my other friends in the same situation whose lives are irrecoverably fucked before being adults, despite their bleeding passion for what they do and care for.

Point is - peoples' lives are complicated and others' apathy only makes it worse. Your paycheck every two weeks and the decisions that follow can make or break a person's life. Please grow some empathetic balls, consider the power you have over others and try to look past lines on resumes and try to see the person behind it. "That's life" is not an excuse for your selfishness.

Thank you.

I hate to say this but I have mixed feelings.

From a personal standpoint, I always put family first and will go to bat with my manager all the way up to chain for anyone who has personal obligations that reports to me.

On the other hand, technology is more black and white. I don't expect anyone to know everything but I do expect a certain level of competence and being able to work independently based on your hired skill level - especially for contractors.

When I'm hiring contractors, I don't expect to have to handhold, mentor, etc. I'm not making a long term investment in them and they are getting a premium for it.

I don't see myself any differently. If I'm applying for a contract job, I know 90% of the job requirements. If I'm going in as a permsnent employee, I'll try to squeeze in with 50-70% of the requirements and bust my butt to get up to 90% proficiency.

Having worked at a “name” company is not the big boost to your value lots of people think it is. That’s a lie that those big companies use to get people to accept bad working conditions.

You can't just "work" at the company, you have to produce.

There was an anecdote about Netflix about how a group of engineers who were top performers were let go after they did their part in transistioning Netflix's data center to AWS.

So should we feel bad for the people that got laid off? They will be some of the most sought after people in the industry.

That's exactly it. And the thing is no matter where you worked, if you did great things and have great skills, you're going to get opportunities and recognition. If you don't have the skills and don't do the work, it doesn't matter where you filled a seat.

In my experience the HR people think more highly of resumes when a big-name company is on them. Maybe they shouldn't, but they do.

HR people have to market candidates internally, many times to hiring managers who tell their bosses “Your recruiters don’t bring me quality candidates.” To protect themselves, the recruiters go after brand names. (“Is it my fault they didn’t like someone from Cornell who worked at Google?”)

The reality is this is suboptimal for the company, but can still be rational for HR.

Is it really sub-optimal for the company? Consider that the goal of HR is not to hire the best, but to avoid hiring the worst.

I'm no different as an an architect. I don't always choose the best technology. I sometimes choose the most popular. The practical reason being its easier to find people who know it and there is plenty of documentation. The CYA reason is that if things go south, It's much easier to say it came highly reccomended. "No one ever got fired for buying IBM."

Right, but look who is stuck with IBM technology now.

It was an analogy. But, you'd be surprised.

https://www.serverwatch.com/server-news/ibm-mainframe-revenu...

It’s not the revenue that I’m knocking. It’s being stuck with obsolete legacy technology that you can’t get rid of. Better things are out there but you are stuck because someone else made a decision that wouldn’t get them fired. (I’m at a place that is going through the painful process of showing IBM the door)

Why work for a company that you wouldn’t like to work for for those 2 years rather than work for the company you want for the same time period and gain seniority?

What does "seniority" buy you as a software developer? I stayed at one company for 9 years and between bonuses being cut and 3% raises my pay at year 9 was only 8K more than year 2. Over the next 9 years and 4 companies, I'm making $70k more. This isn't anecdotal:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/cameronkeng/2014/06/22/employees...

There is a term for it "pay compression"

https://definitions.uslegal.com/p/pay-compression/

I'm not surprised. As far as I'm aware, larger companies don't top up your on-hire stock award once it has fully vested.

That’s true nearly anywhere your strongest negotiation position is during pre-employment.

But money isn’t everything and those pay rises suck I get 5-6% p/a without asking, must have been a heck of a bonus cut then.

This was between 1999 - 2008. Our quarterly bonuses started out at 20% and the yearly raises were 3%.

But even at 5-6% raises, that doesn't compare to the roughly 11% "raises" I've received by jumping jobs 4 times since 2008.

As far as money isn't everything. Yes there is a trade off between how much I'm willing to accept and commute times. All in all, the only reason I go to work every day is for the compensation.

As far as I can tell, the gravy train is over as far as being able to make 10K to 20K+ to switch jobs if I still want to be an active developer and I'm not willing to relocate. I'm okay with that. Now the criteria for jobs are what new skills I can learn, comparable compensation, new challenges, and work life balance including the commute and work for home opportunities.

parent didn't say s/he wouldn't want to work for Netflix. just sayin'

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