Software Engineering Job Openings - Please help me hire!

[tbrown_01923]

I am not sure if this is the right forum for this - apologies if it isn't.  I run software and it at a small (yet profitable) shop just off the orange line in Medford.  I have had a very difficult time bringing in talent (I can't even get resumes from recruiters) in this market.  Yet I am comparing what I think is a pretty cool position with what is available on other forums it loks as though I am paying fairly.  
 
If you are interested or know of anybody - please direct them my way (We will donate to SOSH for any referals through this forum that result in a hire). 
 
We are a successful financial technology firm, looking for software leaders to automate our existing lines of business and to help deliver new product lines. We use the most applicable technologies to solve the problems at hand, and are not constrained to a small set of tools that have been pre-established by non-technical people. We believe the top developers should be able to learn, apply, and support any technology in front of them.
Our most recent applications are written using the following stack:

• 
  AngularJs
  
• 
  Bootstrap
  
• 
  Node.js (ES6 and Koa)
  
• 
  MongoDb
  
• 
  Oracle
  

We are focused on building a culture of entrepreneurship, accountability, team work and excellence. Therefore, you should have experience in start-up environments, and view yourself as a world class problem solver, who happens to be a first class engineer.
Skills and Requirements:
Candidates can take many shapes and sizes, and likely exhibit the following characteristics

• 
  ~10 years experience
  
• 
  Full Stack engineer, who loves GUIs as much as algorithms
  
• 
  Polyglot, with experience in dynamic and static languages
  
• 
  Familiarity with distributed computing and database principles
  
• 
  Experience with RDBMs
  
• 
  A profound sense of curiosity driving you to continually improve both yourself and the ecosystem around you
  

As with any position, salary is commensurate with experience
 
 
MBTA Orange line accessible.

 

[veritas]

Join the club. It's pretty much impossible to hire software engineers in Boston right now. If you think you're paying fairly based on glassdoor, etc, you're likely not.
 
Referrals are the best way to go, even better if they're from employees you trust. Are you offering your employees a referral bonus?

 

[Spelunker]

I've been hiring all year, and I've only brought in 3 fulltimes (and one was a re-hire that was moving back to Boston). It's a tough market.

 

[HillysLastWalk]

Yeah, I saw the headline and laughed.  We just tried to hire a software engineer and it was brutal.
 
I tried the following:
 
a. Posted to craigslist.
b. Posted here on SOSH.
c. Posted to some service that handled all the community and local colleges (in CT? Or maybe it was the one's closest to us).
d. Posted to stackoverflow.com
e. Posted to UCONN directly (they weren't included in that other service)
f. I could be forgetting some other things
 
We weren't dealing with recruiters and the "big boards" (monster, careerbuilder).
 
And as you can attest, it is hard getting resumes, let alone good one's.
 
Wait, let me take a step back, after all initial postings, you get resumes.  But, the majority of them are from people who must be blasting their resume's to every posting that exists.  For example, we allow work from home, but it's not going to be every single day.  So the expectation is that you live, ya know, close to where we work.  Heck, at least the same state!  But instead, you get these 10-15 resumes, from long Indian names (I'm just the messenger - don't shoot me!), from states hundreds of miles away, with skills that don't even match.
 
It reminds me of when I posted to the system over at UCONN.  This was like in March, so graduation is coming up.  And we got like two responses.  One was from an Economics major.  Umm, this is a software position.
 
When I talked to the guy at stackoverflow, they let me know that this is common.  It's HARD to find software developers.  I'm entirely interested in this discussion, though.
 
Btw, have you tried stackoverflow?  We did get one guy that was promising, but ended up going with a referral.  They also had some extra service we could have paid for that we didn't try.   It was some candidate database I think.  You could search it, but they wouldn't reveal names without payment (I think).

 

[crystalline]

tbrown, do you mind if I ask what salary range you'd offer for that job? What bands would people be in if they were a good candidate with ~10 years of experience in the range of technologies you are talking about? What about with 2-5 years of experience?
Thanks in advance.

 

[tbrown_01923]

I wish i knew what the right salary range is, part of my exercise is educating the organization.  
 
There is the general engineering: Angular, Node, Mongo, Oracle  - I was targetting up to $135,000 with a (up to) 20% annual bonus (15% employee driven and 5% compnay driven) - budgeted at the full 20%.  So that is $162,000 on target total earnings.
 
Then there is the "extra" skills which I would pay more for (starting with the above) - we are working with these libraries: Zookeeper, Kafka, Samza, Chef, VMWare, CentOs administration.  Any sort of distributed computing experience.   Anybody interested in Haskell or RUST or just passionate about code.  Like a cultural hire. I have pretty much given up hope on finding any of the extras...
 
I would be willing to discuss folks with less experience - but it really depends on the candidate.  I am stretched pretty thin - and need folks who can contribute and have the accumen to navigate the organization to be successful.  I run a flat team and trust my team to interact with vendors, outsourcing firms and clients (mostly internal).
 
Any insights? 

 

[tbrown_01923]

You all may laugh with me (or at me) for this.
 
I am only hiring local and in office, the work remote policy blew up in my face.  We hired a gentleman from a southern state.  Three weeks into it his "internet went down" and was unavailable for 2 days.   Came back was super apologetic, and we gave him another chance (with a full set of rules and expectations). Flew him to boston for a week paired him with another remote worked (in cali). Three weeks later he disappears again. Game over. We all lose.
 
I need to regroup all employees in the office to build momentum before revisiting a remote policy. I don't think 4 days in the office is too much to ask. Is it?
 
Edit 1: And thats not the end of it.  There have been 5 engineers I phone screened because they were "willing to relocate" - only to decide they really like working from home.  It is unbelieveable.
 
Edit 2: Yes stackoverflow, and we paid.  my "remote employee" came through that media.

 

[HillysLastWalk]

I would be careful about abandoning remote work entirely.  Meaning, I'm sure this same guy would have found ways to fuck things up - even if he was supposed to come into the office 5 days a week.
 
I wonder if it's better as something that is "earned".  Meaning, you can get it - but after some initial evaluation period.  One of our developers, who had been here for years (long before me), moved to Pennsylvania (we are in CT).  So he works from home five days a week (He still has family in CT, so about once every month and a half, he shows up for two days).  And it works out great!  Of course this is someone who has the knowledge of all our systems and code, and for years has shown that he was a valuable member of the company.
 
That's sort of what we were shooting for.  That's why our initial job postings mentioned that you must come into the office every day.  But in reality, I just come and go as I please.  That's on hours and days.  Though I rarely work from home.  I prefer to come into the office.  I save those days for inclement weather, or scheduling issues (example: some type of plans, where it's better to just stay home then to go into the office and waste time driving).  I do take advantage of strolling into the office at 11am, though.
 
Your edit1: Yeah - programmers sure do feel entitled to a lot of things, huh?

 

[saintnick912]

As someone who worked at a couple of startups and is now in a large org, I'd say you're very unlikely to find someone who is good at all of Angular/Node/Mongo.  Maybe the first two, maybe the last two, very unlikely all three.  You might have more luck finding someone with UX/Design skills and Angular, and then someone who can do your back-end work.

 

[veritas]

That's a competitive package for a Senior Engineer with 10 years of experience. And your technology stack is going to be appealing to a lot of developers.
 
But the end of the day, there's just way more demand than supply at the moment.
 
Also, as far as remote employees go, you should definitely adjust their salary based on where they live. Salaries in big cities are so high because it costs a lot to live there. I would never hire someone to work remotely though.

 

[Blacken]

tbrown, do you mind if I ask what salary range you'd offer for that job? What bands would people be in if they were a good candidate with ~10 years of experience in the range of technologies you are talking about? What about with 2-5 years of experience?
Thanks in advance.

A unicorn with even two of his three must-haves and any number of his wants, with that many years of experience, is well north of $135K base--that's a 2-4 year employee's salary at competitive places around here right now. And your bonuses had better be eye-popping on top of that, or they'll skate when they're disappointed come December.

I don't mind saying--because there's plenty of work going around, I'm not going to hurt myself by saying it--that I check most of his must-haves and a ton of his "extra skills" (Zookeeper, Kafka, his devops/CM stuff) and charge about $150 to $180 an hour. More if I don't like a client, less for friends. The market is on fire right now, especially if you want anybody who is doing that sort of devops or high-end systems design.
 

That's a competitive package for a Senior Engineer with 10 years of experience.

From where I stand, it looks like a competitive package for a good to great engineer with three to five years of experience--the sort of engineer you want running your shop in three years--and a competitive package for a mediocre engineer, or a catastrophically bad negotiator, with ten years of experience.

For another data point, I've got about six years of post-college experience and I'm currently discussing (idly, I don't really want the job, see above) a $160K base salary, plus a very strong equity package with a post-startup in a very good place with regards to an IPO in the near future, here in Boston. I'm good, but I'm not the best. The best--and somebody who has Haskell and Rust chops may not be the best, but might not be far off--is going to get whatever they want from one of the big tech companies if they pop their head up and look.

 

[NortheasternPJ]

There's a serious lack of quality IT talent on the market and in general in New England right now from what I've seen and my customers are telling me daily. Your job description is a pipe dream and if it isn't you're vastly underpaying.

Ask why 10 years experience? You're excluding a whole market of people who may be rock stars, you can afford but they're in their twenties.

Id kill for a 26 year old rockstar than a good 35 year old in IT.

 

[Blacken]

Id kill for a 26 year old rockstar than a good 35 year old in IT.

Anyone who takes you seriously when you use the word "rockstar" is not worth hiring. FWIW.

 

[NortheasternPJ]

Anyone who takes you seriously when you use the word "rockstar" is not worth hiring. FWIW.

I wouldn't use that term in front of anyone obviously. It's a pretty common term though in IT.

 

[HillysLastWalk]

They may be excluding the younger "rockstars" but what about the older "rockstars"?  Meaning, people that are good, can adapt easily, have been working for a while, but can't check a lot of the "skills" boxes?
 
I know he mentioned something like this: "We believe the top developers should be able to learn, apply, and support any technology in front of them", but that's kind of buried.
 
To use me as an example (not that I'm looking - I love where I work), I can't check off any of those checkboxes.  Well, maybe Oracle (but that's more of as a programmer that has to query against it).  And maybe I'm fooling myself (though my work history might say otherwise), but I think I can step into anywhere, with any technology, and with some quick guidance - be one of the better members of the team by say the six month mark.  It's not like a developer doesn't have a whole shit load of source code to look at, for guidance, when they get there.  I'd gather that if I posted my resume it would be tossed aside in seconds.  The only chance being if I had an "in" at the company (so referral), hoping that I'd win people over.
 
I mean, companies just don't take those chances?  I'm curious.

 

[JimBoSox9]

They may be excluding the younger "rockstars" but what about the older "rockstars"?  Meaning, people that are good, can adapt easily, have been working for a while, but can't check a lot of the "skills" boxes?
 
I know he mentioned something like this: "We believe the top developers should be able to learn, apply, and support any technology in front of them", but that's kind of buried.
 
To use me as an example (not that I'm looking - I love where I work), I can't check off any of those checkboxes.  Well, maybe Oracle (but that's more of as a programmer that has to query against it).  And maybe I'm fooling myself (though my work history might say otherwise), but I think I can step into anywhere, with any technology, and with some quick guidance - be one of the better members of the team by say the six month mark.  It's not like a developer doesn't have a whole shit load of source code to look at, for guidance, when they get there.  I'd gather that if I posted my resume it would be tossed aside in seconds.  The only chance being if I had an "in" at the company (so referral), hoping that I'd win people over.
 
I mean, companies just don't take those chances?  I'm curious.

Just takes too long, even for 'easy adaptors'. The devil is in the details for many of these skills, as you know, and at that salary level the bosses are looking for plug-and-play today, if not that plus leadership tomorrow.

 

[Blacken]

I think it's an extremely tall order to learn modern web development on the fly. At this point it has changed so radically even from a decade ago that general programming knowledge is only part of the problem. The amount of bullshit you need to know, right up front, is immense, to the point where the language and the tools are basically whatever (well, the tools are garbage, so they're not really "whatever"), but rather having to eat, sleep, and breathe how a browser works, how evented programming works, and so on and so forth. It's doable, if you're good enough, but a senior/staff/principal who needs to be trained up on that stuff has not, in my experience, shaken out to be a good investment. (A senior/staff/principal who's never done it professionally, but has a Github demo that shows that, yes, they get it? That's a different story.)

I definitely don't think anyone can step into a lot of those "extras". Distributed computing is a really, really tall order. Zookeeper is a tool to make distributed computing easier (and Kafka builds on top of it to provide a consistent log database), but these are academically challenging disciplines with leaky abstractions in prod. You have to know why these things work, and that's much harder to learn on the job. I couldn't have done it--this is one of the main reasons I have a ridiculous home server, to be able to virtualize the environments I needed to learn these tools (because a very large part of learning them well enough to do them in a production environment is consciously breaking them, and nobody wants to pay for you to do that). Which is why waving one's hands and hoping to hire a frontend JavaScript dork who has those skills is wishful at best, but whatever.

 

[locknload]

Anyone who takes you seriously when you use the word "rockstar" is not worth hiring. FWIW.

 
Only if they are crushing it:
 

 
Hiring is so hard right now.  I've only been able to bring in 2 new FTE in the last 6 month where I need 6.  Lots of terrible talent looking but very hard to find good people.  Referrals have been our best bet.

 

[axx]

I think the OPs problem is Medford. I think it'd be extremely inconvenient to get to. Plus all the BS that goes with a startup... it shouldn't be surprising.