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Comment by SamoyedFurFluff | Hacker News Reader

This happened to me, too. I could imagine someone without connections, who is desperate, who simply doesn’t know how much software devs could make, who comes from poverty, etc. would be vulnerable.

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I didn't go through Revature but I did go through something similar. They hired me after an extended period of travel with no programming experience to speak of after no one else would. 8 years later I'm a "senior" dev making 200k.

Can you argue that I was vulnerable and my original company took advantage of the situation? Perhaps. But nobody else was hiring me so in my eyes they were the company that treated me the best at the time.

That was mostly me at a certain point in my career except I did know how much devs could make. That doesn't make them actually offer you a job at that salary though. I didn't get into anything like this but I took an offer far far below market rate.

When you have no connections, no resources, no work history in the field, dependents to support.... Shit $42k was still more than I was making in the career I came from. I took it then and people are still taking that stuff now. They aren't wrong to do so either, but the ones exploiting them in this way are wrong to do it.

When you have no connections, no resources, no work history in the field

Sounds like you took a job at roughly the market rate (for what you're offering), not below market rate.

Just because some developers earn a lot, doesn't mean all developers should immediately earn that much or otherwise consider themselves underpaid.

Having connections, resources, experience, education etc. makes you more valuable and therefore increases the value of what you're offering.

In other words, don't compare apples and oranges just because they're both fruit.

Yeah, the salaries being touted around here aren't typical for a non hyper-inflated job market.

Most of the country, in my research, will pay 40-60k for a junior developer, but won't own you either (giving you time to find/ build a family, friends, hobbies, etc)

How is having connections directly increasing the value I am able to deliver to an employer? I mostly use connections to get the job, so it benefits me, but it doesn't make me any more valuable to an employer.

I've referred people in my professional network to my employers saving them on recruiter fees and protracted hiring efforts, reducing opportunity cost of the job sitting vacant, reducing risks of a bad hire, and sometimes increasing productivity of those around them as well. It's hard to put exact numbers on the long tail effects but a well connected long term employee could easily be worth double.

Connections is another way of saying references, which is a less formal but sometimes more valuable variation of having credentials. If an employer hires 10 unknown people, maybe 4 will work out good and the other 6 will be possibly a net loss. Whereas hiring 10 people with references that you trust, if 9 work out then that is a positive for the employer. That is the value that having connections brings to the employer, it makes you more of a "known" vs "unknown" (not that it increases your specific value, but it is a value to the overall process).

This. Most job seekers misunderstand the hiring process from the hirer's perspective.

Companies aren't paying someone with references more because of luck.

They're paying that person more because that person has less risk and hiring the wrong employee is incredibly expensive.

Effectively, they're amortizing and rebating the dollar value of that person's risk reduction into their salary.

Hint for new/first job seekers: this is why (non-predatory) internships are win/win, the company is able to ascertain your risk (in lieu of references or a track record) and therefore make you and offer and hire you for a higher (de-risked) salary.

Luck.

Right. Either Hacker News is at the peak end of salary curve, or US developers make 2x-5x what Canadian developers make. Or, of course, both :).

A job below market rate isn't a problem, as long as you're able to leave when something better comes along. Underpaying and then having a fee when they leave, is probably worse than nothing.

People have bills (there were all of those threads yesterday about how bad student loan forgiveness was for society, right?) and no one will even date you now if you don’t have job, McDonalds won’t hire you if you have SQL as a skill on your resume, so at a certain point, this is better than nothing.

You can after 2 years, what am I missing? Or is that too much time to spend at a job nowadays?

Life is complicated, and people leave jobs all the time for reasons I expect you'd find valid (take care of an aging family member, move with your spouse to their new tenure-track position, ...).

Analogizing with another crime against a person's freedom to do as they please, consider "kidnapping." It includes forcibly restraining a person or moving them some place they'd like not to go, and in the eyes of the law the duration doesn't matter; people have unsuccessfully defended kidnapping charges for minutes of detainment. If you agree that the fees in question do rise to the level of indentured servitude (which seems plausible at least), then the fact that it's only for 4% of your working life shouldn't be a relevant consideration.

I dont want to be at work lol

Big difference is I'm getting money.

I've wasted over a decade (thanks health care in Europe, you stinky garbage!), so I don't get your last point.

Not if they fire you at 23 months.

Alternative hot-take: those first two years of experience are often the hardest to get, and junior devs are simply not that productive. 3x minimum wage for some work experience that is going to allow you to be charging 6 figures in short order is probably ... not that bad? Hard to make exact comparisons because of inflation + country differences but my first programming job paid $30k and I didn't feel exploited

I'd have taken such an offer in a heartbeat just to get back in the industry. "Indentured servitude" 2 years being paid... what ridiculous bs, that's normal in many countries.

Just leave it at someone who doesn’t have connections who is desperate, really.

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