What kind of developers do you want?
-
I've never understood that saying. Surely if you pay peanuts, you'd get elephants? Or drunken barfly's.
-
Just want to hear some opinions... When you need more developers, you always have a choice between young ones right from school, and older ones that actually knows what they are doing. The young/new ones are pretty cheap, while the older ones costs a lot of money. With a young programmer you, ofcourse, have to spend some time learning him the stuff you need him to do, but when he learn it from you, he does it the way you want it to be done. The older programmer knows (hopefully) how to do things, but ofcource at a lot higher salary... Just wanted to hear what kind of developers do you want to hire... - Anders
An approximate translation of Mike's commander (those who read Sven Hassel's Monte Cassino know what's all about) speech before an attack: "This is not about rank but experience. I don't care who the *** is going to climb inside the turret of my Panzers, it is enough to be an old monkey that was at Stalingrad. It is enough that one is coward and the yankees will terminate us." Unfortunately, I have seen this a lot of time, although I'm only 29 (I'm the oldest in the company...). Most of the newcomers are so happy to call an esoteric COM routine, then they forget to release the interface pointer etc. Neither the smart pointers was an improvement, because they are declaring a variable TCHAR, use sprintf instead of _stprintf and after an UNICODE build the SQL statement is "S" instead of "Select ...", or trying to track a NULL menu an 200 cm above screen... And this is every day. I had to stop what I am doing every 10 minutes because an young talent is passing a stack variable as thread parameter...
-
Just want to hear some opinions... When you need more developers, you always have a choice between young ones right from school, and older ones that actually knows what they are doing. The young/new ones are pretty cheap, while the older ones costs a lot of money. With a young programmer you, ofcourse, have to spend some time learning him the stuff you need him to do, but when he learn it from you, he does it the way you want it to be done. The older programmer knows (hopefully) how to do things, but ofcource at a lot higher salary... Just wanted to hear what kind of developers do you want to hire... - Anders
the trick to being a successful old dinosaur in this business is to not be the dinosaur part ... nothing is certain but change (in life and coding) so unless you can embrace change forget it having said that i think that staying on top of the wave is a hell of a lot easier than climbing it in the first place ... i get reminded of how many things one has to know to be a 'good' developer when i try to teach people the 'zen' (if you like) of producing good systems young coders are great as they can work all hours of the day and night (ummm just like the old ones ... sheesh) and they have no baggage to distort their view ... for example when windows first came out (well windows 3.0) all the programmers had to learn a completely new paradigm they said ... except of course the games programmers of the world who already knew all the multitasking,graphical, event-driven ways of doing things so after a short time most made damn fine windows programmers dunno ... in this world nobody wants to train others as they will up and leave when they can get better wages by being headhunted but i think you must invest some effort if you want to get some payback "every year we invent better idiot proof systems and every year they invent better idiots"
-
An approximate translation of Mike's commander (those who read Sven Hassel's Monte Cassino know what's all about) speech before an attack: "This is not about rank but experience. I don't care who the *** is going to climb inside the turret of my Panzers, it is enough to be an old monkey that was at Stalingrad. It is enough that one is coward and the yankees will terminate us." Unfortunately, I have seen this a lot of time, although I'm only 29 (I'm the oldest in the company...). Most of the newcomers are so happy to call an esoteric COM routine, then they forget to release the interface pointer etc. Neither the smart pointers was an improvement, because they are declaring a variable TCHAR, use sprintf instead of _stprintf and after an UNICODE build the SQL statement is "S" instead of "Select ...", or trying to track a NULL menu an 200 cm above screen... And this is every day. I had to stop what I am doing every 10 minutes because an young talent is passing a stack variable as thread parameter...
-
Just want to hear some opinions... When you need more developers, you always have a choice between young ones right from school, and older ones that actually knows what they are doing. The young/new ones are pretty cheap, while the older ones costs a lot of money. With a young programmer you, ofcourse, have to spend some time learning him the stuff you need him to do, but when he learn it from you, he does it the way you want it to be done. The older programmer knows (hopefully) how to do things, but ofcource at a lot higher salary... Just wanted to hear what kind of developers do you want to hire... - Anders
Ones that don't think being in a union is a goog thing. I'm being serious. If I was hiring I'd take the indication of wanting to be in a union as a sign that the individual lacked confidence in their ability, and rather than rely on their own strengths as a developer they want the help of others to boost their salary. I've yet to meet a good developer that thought being a member of a union would be a good thing for them. Stephen Kellett
-
Just want to hear some opinions... When you need more developers, you always have a choice between young ones right from school, and older ones that actually knows what they are doing. The young/new ones are pretty cheap, while the older ones costs a lot of money. With a young programmer you, ofcourse, have to spend some time learning him the stuff you need him to do, but when he learn it from you, he does it the way you want it to be done. The older programmer knows (hopefully) how to do things, but ofcource at a lot higher salary... Just wanted to hear what kind of developers do you want to hire... - Anders
Well, a good team needs a broad spectrum of developers. Imagine if you wanted to build a bridge. Would you hire all architects? Would you hire all Engineers? Would you hire all grunts? No, you would need a certain amount of all three, further you would need people that are good at managing others, and you would need people with enough specialized knoweldge to oversee certain parts of the construction. The same applies to software. If you have all experienced people on your team, you're likely to just have arguments over how things should be done. You need people that can follow orders, and do what they're told. You need people that can do the hard problems, and you need people that can do the easy stuff so that your good coders don't get bogged down by stupid problems. You also might consider hiring more people than you actually need to get the job done. If you can reduce their workload, then they can devote more time to things like code reviews and mentoring younger developers.
-
Ones that don't think being in a union is a goog thing. I'm being serious. If I was hiring I'd take the indication of wanting to be in a union as a sign that the individual lacked confidence in their ability, and rather than rely on their own strengths as a developer they want the help of others to boost their salary. I've yet to meet a good developer that thought being a member of a union would be a good thing for them. Stephen Kellett
I consider myself a good developer (as obviously my old boss does as well, as when he left the company that we worked for and when to the US, he helped to organise me to come over as well) and if there was a programmers union I would join. Why? Because fundamentally companies are there to screw employees. Now this sounds like a harsh statement, but it is just sound economic sense. Now screwing with employees doesn't necessarly mean things are going to be bad, but it does mean that the company will endevour to pay you as little as possible (which once again doesn't necessarily mean being paid poorly). Now, I'm a decent "people person" so I have no trouble standing up for myself and negotiating, but I see some great developers who are just not "people persons" and they have trouble asking for their dues. I would join a union to support such people. So maybe you comment above "being a member of a union would be a good thing for them" is true, I don't necessary believe it is good for me, but I do believe it is a fair thing, which to me is of prime importance. (But then I also believe that taxes shouldn't be cut until things such as public infrastructure are properly delt with as well [re. In US Republican's plan to cut taxes, wrt quality of roads, bridges, schools, health system, etc. etc.] These things don't affect me very much, because I have money, but they do affect the fabric of society, ie. the "common" person [ie. someone with median wage and lower]) I think people have a negative opinion of what unions do. Obviously you seem to think that unions are only there so that crap workers can keep their jobs. A good union would not support such a person. A good union will find out what the problems are and be an assistance in fixing the problem. But, like a lot of things in life, a few bad apples have spoiled the image for a lot of cases. (to me a union is more like a HR department, but without being affiliated with the company, as the affilication is kind of a stupid thing considering what you want the union to be doing for you.) (To me a union is like paying my car or health insurance, it is something that I hope I will never need to call upon, but it is something that does exist for a very good purpose.) Have fun, Paul Westcott.
-
I consider myself a good developer (as obviously my old boss does as well, as when he left the company that we worked for and when to the US, he helped to organise me to come over as well) and if there was a programmers union I would join. Why? Because fundamentally companies are there to screw employees. Now this sounds like a harsh statement, but it is just sound economic sense. Now screwing with employees doesn't necessarly mean things are going to be bad, but it does mean that the company will endevour to pay you as little as possible (which once again doesn't necessarily mean being paid poorly). Now, I'm a decent "people person" so I have no trouble standing up for myself and negotiating, but I see some great developers who are just not "people persons" and they have trouble asking for their dues. I would join a union to support such people. So maybe you comment above "being a member of a union would be a good thing for them" is true, I don't necessary believe it is good for me, but I do believe it is a fair thing, which to me is of prime importance. (But then I also believe that taxes shouldn't be cut until things such as public infrastructure are properly delt with as well [re. In US Republican's plan to cut taxes, wrt quality of roads, bridges, schools, health system, etc. etc.] These things don't affect me very much, because I have money, but they do affect the fabric of society, ie. the "common" person [ie. someone with median wage and lower]) I think people have a negative opinion of what unions do. Obviously you seem to think that unions are only there so that crap workers can keep their jobs. A good union would not support such a person. A good union will find out what the problems are and be an assistance in fixing the problem. But, like a lot of things in life, a few bad apples have spoiled the image for a lot of cases. (to me a union is more like a HR department, but without being affiliated with the company, as the affilication is kind of a stupid thing considering what you want the union to be doing for you.) (To me a union is like paying my car or health insurance, it is something that I hope I will never need to call upon, but it is something that does exist for a very good purpose.) Have fun, Paul Westcott.
Unfortunately, all organizations exist to keep themselves alive. Unions are no different. When it comes down to the welfare of the union over the welfare of the worker, the union will win. This is not to say that unions don't do good things for people. I just don't see the need for standardizing pay scales based on things like seniority over actual worth of the employee. Unions don't push employees to be the best they can. Why should an employee put in 110% when they can put in 75% and still get paid the same? (While i'm sure you'll interpret that as claiming that dead weight get's pulled along, my point was that the person putting in 110% doesn't get rewarded for their extra effort). In this industry, we get pay raises by switching jobs. If I stay at the same company, I can look forward to a steady 3-5% salary increase (with inflation nullifying that or even taking a pay cut because inflation is growing faster than the pay raise), but if I switch jobs I can get a 50% or more pay raise. Companies just don't get it. If they want to retain people, they need to give them what their competition is willing to give them. A union won't stop that.
-
Unfortunately, all organizations exist to keep themselves alive. Unions are no different. When it comes down to the welfare of the union over the welfare of the worker, the union will win. This is not to say that unions don't do good things for people. I just don't see the need for standardizing pay scales based on things like seniority over actual worth of the employee. Unions don't push employees to be the best they can. Why should an employee put in 110% when they can put in 75% and still get paid the same? (While i'm sure you'll interpret that as claiming that dead weight get's pulled along, my point was that the person putting in 110% doesn't get rewarded for their extra effort). In this industry, we get pay raises by switching jobs. If I stay at the same company, I can look forward to a steady 3-5% salary increase (with inflation nullifying that or even taking a pay cut because inflation is growing faster than the pay raise), but if I switch jobs I can get a 50% or more pay raise. Companies just don't get it. If they want to retain people, they need to give them what their competition is willing to give them. A union won't stop that.
I don't believe in standardizing pay rates, except for a standardised minimum. I believe more that the union should be there to help in the case of you not getting fired if you have bad things happen to you (an accident, RSI, etc.) And yes, the way to get pay rises is to move... Have fun, Paul Westcott.
-
I don't believe in standardizing pay rates, except for a standardised minimum. I believe more that the union should be there to help in the case of you not getting fired if you have bad things happen to you (an accident, RSI, etc.) And yes, the way to get pay rises is to move... Have fun, Paul Westcott.
In the case of an accident at work, or RSI, the prevailing health and safety at work legislation will be enough to see you through. I had RSI so bad in late '93/early 94 that I was off sick for a while. Even though there was no law in thee UK for RSI (there is now) at the time, the company were scared stiff there would be a lawsuit. I wasn't interested in that so long as the medical bills were paid and I was sorted out. I was very up front about that, but also made it clear that should they decide not to pay the medical bills then a case would be made. Companies can be bad and can be good. If they are paying you well, you'll find they treat you well in other respects. Paul, your description of a union is more what I'd call a representative body and not a union. I've never heard of a union that doesn't tolerate slackers. Red Robbo anyone? Stephen Kellett