If any of you have suggestions for how to make this most helpful under current conditions, please share them. I'll check this thread later tonight.
- Remote work (even across the country, with no expectation of travel)
- Short-term work (like a few months, no expectation of staying for > 1 year)
- How long the employer roughly expects to be able to provide the job in their projection of the current economic conditions
- Rough company size, given the US Congress just passed a bill concerning sick leave that might not apply to companies with under 50 or 500 employees [1]
Also, less certain about the following, but:
- Maybe highlighting contractor possibilities would be good too? In case the additional flexibility in e.g. work hours is better for workers, or in case it's easier for companies not to have to worry about insurance, etc.
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/paulmcleod/coronavirus-...
Funny story: I actually did contract-to-hire by accident at one of my jobs. They wanted to hire me but couldn't fit me in their salary scale so I was a contractor for a while. They actually needed about three people and agreed that I could work as many extra hours as I was willing to on the other projects. So I worked 9 hours on my contract software project and most days about another 5-6 hours on the other embedded systems projects (I was young and an early riser, so I still got home before 1800 to play with my kids and have dinner). After about 2 months I got called into the presidents office and was offered a job with a better salary than the rate I'd asked for and was told I had made more than the president the last pay period and it raised the board's eye-brows. Still worked 10-11 hours a day for quite a while (and some ridiculous bursts in years after) since it was a start-up but I really was just trying to impress them enough to get hired.
On to companies with more than 500 employees. They are being exempt because they are large enough to afford paying for their own employees to go on sick leave with it only affecting the profit for the year rather than sinking the company.
Now personally I think that 500 number should be 5,000 instead but at the end of the day any line you draw is arbitrarily arrived at (think some countries banning gatherings larger than 10, while others picked larger than 100).
We're going headlong into a recession and I imagine an overwhelming number of firms are going to take the same stance.
Those places might realize that they can get react devs for a dime a dozen out of bootcamps all over the country for a third of that in a few months once they have let people do fully remote work for a while.
The smart thing would seem to be to hire them now before the companies with bigger pockets start driving remote salaries up in the other 45 states.
React was just a glib example anyway, I purposefully stay far away from anything trendy. I'm hiring people who are data smart, can think in SQL, and fully understand that AI/ML/NLP is smoke and mirrors bullshit in the vast majority of contemporary applications.
Anyway, I guess my broader point is: When every single PE/VC is battening down the hatches, firms are preemptively laying off people by the thousands before their clients even start missing payments, and a large number tech employees are in mortgages/leases they cannot sustain without those aforementioned salaries? We're about to see a tech bust and housing crash far worse than dot-com. Things are going to get really bad. Programmers are about to be competing head-to-head with front-of-house restaurant employees for gig-economy jobs. Thus, I can afford to wait a bit to find the right people.
I agree with you about remote reverting to a large extent.
I have been working 90% remote for a while, but most of my co-workers have not and it is driving them crazy after only a few days.
We know that a large subset of companies would prefer to have visibility and control.
I still think that even if only 5% of the tech employees forced to work remotely for the first time these next couple months get a taste for it, it will change the landscape of remote work in a noticeable way.
Even if just a few decent sized employers see and acknowledge good productivity in these next couple months and the talent pushes the issue, it could end up with a lot of 300k positions in california being replaced by 130k remote positions basically anywhere else.
After being forced to do it for a while, it's hard to imagine this not happening to some extent, especially in areas that aren't especially strongly affected by stock market news bites.
I used to think that, but now that circumstances are forcing me to work remote, I'm amazed at how much I get done, even with the crap communication due to the overloaded VPN at work. And that's while also trying to homeschool two children.
Alright, this is a weird situation that's not comparable to anything else, but still, velocity seems remarkably high in my team.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
He claimed his emotion (fear) towards a behavior that has been demonstrated by many in this chaotic environment.
I interpreted his post as an observation and experience rather than an attack.
Perhaps by asserting the OP is trying to "exploit" the situation by not wanting to pay Google wage rates at their small business?
I'm not sure I understand why the business owner "deserves" to take the financial hit for the sake of a new employee. The market will sort it out.
Business owner is using a turtle strategy. Opportunistic yes but also seeing people as numbers on a spreadsheet.
OP stated that he feels fear. Fear is a reasonable reaction when a Business Owner closes doors for conversation to wait out catching google 'talent' at a bargain.
Some people are in a situation where they need work now or very soon.
I think the general issue with my post is that the moderators want this to be a "place of ideas". So that tends towards the appearance of decorum being more important here than actually treating people better in the current crisis.
Looking at numbers in spreadsheets is how you stay in business.
>Some people are in a situation where they need work now or very soon.
Then they should lower their rates until they find a market clearing salary.
I'm flabbergasted at the argument that a business should pay a potential employee whatever they demand, because that person "needs work". It flies in the face of all logic.
That wasn't the argument.
What is it that owners do that is worth billions exactly, when developers should be happy with less than the numbers you presented?
That being said, if history repeats itself, there is a decent chance some of these jobs will be short-lived, then move on to the next, which also will not last, and a cooling off period.
I am not trying to be negative, I just think it is wise to consider not just the job, but the industry, its customers, and how it handles its cashflow, and how that relates to limited physical contact for the foreseeable future.
There is an issue in my repo with a really good spreadsheet contaning a lot of companies. I was planning to import that but havent got time and now im stuck in Japan with just my phone.
Edit: if anybody has an idea about how to let more people know about those, as well as the "Who Wants To Be Hired" threads, I'd like to hear it. The problem is that frontpage space is the scarcest resource on HN, and it's hard to justify using 3 of those slots for whoishiring posts.
- just a simple google form and spreadsheet?