gringofyx

There's some poor English and they list a Chinese office too. Probably not Heroku.

Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol, Liverpool... probably in that order. I've heard good things about Glasgow, Birmingham and Cardiff too. The North West has been good to me and I've never really had to leave the area because there's pretty good transportation links over a wide area with a large population.

And I've lived and worked in Berlin too, it's nice, but by no means the perfect solution. And y'know... it means I can live close to family by being in the UK.

Reading some of the amounts listed is a bit depressing, I thought that the increased cost of living in London would justify salaries and rates much higher than the average.

By contrast I know from personal experience you can earn the same or better than what's listed here outside of London and enjoy the lower cost of living.

Conflating political ideology with corporate structuring was not my point, nor my intent. Attracting staff after 100 years of operations was my point, to clarify; I said "could" (implying risk)... not "should" (implying ideology)

I think we're taking the extremes as the norm, and it is clouding the argument. Let's just say there is risk on both sides, nobody is entitled to anything except the chance to receive remuneration that is deemed fair, whether that's through investment or salary.

Your last point is the most interesting, though, coal-miners were paid very well and by contrast I know (good) developers that earn less than the national average. I am not arguing (in this case) about software developers, but all employees from all backgrounds.

See my previous comment to you (above) - also play out the proposal in the article over, say, 100 years, ultimately it could end up as an employee owned company.

I did not say Google is a problem, I said that either the current mechanism or the proposed mechanism would present a problem for companies (such as Google) when hiring new staff.

1. Not all employees are paid above market value

2. Working somewhere that software engineering talent is highly respected is no measure of fiscal compensation

3. Those advantages of upward mobility are learnt, or acquired skills that people work at. There is no opportunity for them to be in the same position as a 1%er living off their parents money to invest and then continue to get rich(er)

4. You imply that employees have the ability to negotiate on-par with any investor

5. Your last point about $100k is odd, that's just supply and demand in a free market - and the sentiment is doubley-odd given that employee salaries have stagnated since the 70's, SV salaries have been proven to be (somewhat) rigged, also it is in any companies corporate interests to pay the lowest possible amount for any resource.

Lastly, your point about the 1% of the 1% is off-topic - and I agree that they're not necessarily to blame for the widening gap between rich and poor - but without proper incentives for the 99% to go to work, then that 1% of wealth could become worthless if society revolts because of the disproportionate distribution.

My point is simply that alternative vehicles for employee remuneration need to exist beyond the status-quo that's legally existed for decades.

Your argument is surely moot because it assumes that startup employees take on no risk. Not to mention conflating IPO with startup options/shares. There are many companies out there that have never, nor will, take investment or IPO yet are still successful. There's also an argument to say that any company that isn't profitable from day one shouldn't exist in the first place. Your argument also suggests that founders must go "cap in hand" to investors to beg for startup capital. In all scenarios I do not see a positive outcome for the employee, and it seems only more and more difficult to attract new talent

Either way it's a losing game, consider a company like Google - how would they attract new employees on either scheme given that the company has been around for 15+ years? The only people who win are those who get in early, or invest big. Any IPO ultimately results in people earning money who don't "work" for that money - that means the actual workers lose out everytime.

I know I'm going to get some backlash for this comment so hold on to your hats. By going for a degree you're going to the route most often travelled by most developers, you'll spend three or four years trampling over territory frequently covered and thoroughly documented, you may be required to specific materials and use specific languages. Three to four years is a long time and during that time many things may have happenned in the IT industry, you may also find that your enthusiasm might have dwindled somewhat. And then you'll be faced with the biggest dilemma...

How do I get a job?

Sure, having a degree might add some weight to your CV/Resume but it will not have the same weight as three to four years of experience in a skillset that is modern and relevant.

The problem with the approach of avoiding the degree route is what some might see as a lack of depth/insight into computer science. And that really all depends on what career you want. If you want to build mobile Apps and Websites then you probably don't need the in depth computer science knowledge. On the flipside, if you want to get into games programming or device driver programming or programming of computationally intensive tasks then you need to know that computer science stuff.

People here might say that the computer science you'll learn from a degree is invaluable, but honestly it's mostly boring junk that most people sat in an lecture hall of three-hundred people will struggle to get through because of the tediosity of it's presentation. In educational institutes you (the student) are expected to go out and seek the answers to the lecturers questions - makes sense right? But you're doing the work there, and most of the time students don't know why they need to know what's been asked of them.

A few final points: most of the self-taught programmers I've known have been head-and-shoulders above their CS counterparts. They have had an insatiable appetite to learn and most have learned from a young age.

I started programming at a very young age, and actually wanted to study Physics at University because I was slightly tired of computer programming by that age... little did I know I was going to make a career out of it.

He didn't mention 9/11 - he mentioned the WTC "bombing"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing

There are two schools of thought at work, and you need to decide which one is for you:

1) You're paid to do a job, in a hierarchical management structure each tier must delegate and trust the tier below it. It's not your job to criticise your manager, it's the job of your managers manager, at the end of the day none of the developers are at fault for simply being told what to do.

2) You're personally and emotionally committed, you know you shouldn't do it but you want to take on the problems of the team, and by proxy, the problems of the company. If that's the case then voice your concerns because it'll stress the fuck out of you otherwise. Don't voice them to your manager, voice them to your managers manager. Don't get all emotional when voicing your concerns just lay out the facts calmly and impartially and go with whatever they say.

My opinion on this is that if you've taken the time to submit to HN, then you're Option 2 and it's going to eat at you. Even if you leave like many people have suggested you're going to feel bad for your team. Voice your concerns and then try to emotionally distance yourself from the company (unless they get the hint and fire the idiot manager). Then start looking for another job and advise the same to your colleagues.

Lot's of people here are saying to look for a job first, if you voice your concerns now, in the UK, it's unlikely they'll just fire you without any notice or any severance pay. If you're in London and half decent, you'll find employment pretty quickly.

Best of luck ;)

OP here - that's not the company in question

OP here. That's not the company in question, and if they ever read this it could cost me my job - it was a previous employer - a travel company.

For the record, my interview at Kaonix was probably the best conducted interview I've ever had. Me and the CTO sat down and basically just chatted about technology - he had some technical questions but soon gave up on them when he realised they were a peice of cake for me. Kaonix should be praised for their approach - the other company, not so much.

Hopefully, I've fixed the grammar.

Yes, that sentence in the first paragraph stood out to me too, but I really didn't expect for the article to gain traction.

I want to add that I can't suit everyone, there are things that annoy me about American English grammar that I can't change, and I wouldn't think about writing in the comments suggestions on how to fix it. Maybe that's just me.

I'm a little offended - I wrote, the community upvoted - is grammar more important than the story?

Additionally, it's hypocritical to comment on ones grammar and then use bad grammar yourself.

I think the test was Myers-Briggs based http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator

Even when I saw my own results, towards the end of my employment there, there wasn't a single overall metric result.

Maybe she did some kind of averaging, or maybe she was told by management to invent a reason to reject him... since about 96% of the company was of British White origin - I shouldn't speculate though.

I like to read what I write aloud as a sense check before submitting it - nothing stood out immediately. My wife often tells me my (written) English is terrible.

There were two tests - I don't know the names but maybe someone here knows more than I do about them.

Firstly: You had to write a personal statement, something to describe yourself

Test 1: Involved ticking (agreeing) with a list of statements from two perspectives. The first perspective was how you see yourself. The second perspective was how (you think) others see you

Test 2: Involved rotating the letter R many times in a fixed time period. I was given a grid of about 100 R's all at different angles and had to count the number of clock wise rotations for it to be normal.

The end-result was basically a bunch of weightings that gave personality traits. Followed by a really well written auto-generated description of that individuals traits.

Typically when people had the chance to read their results, they'd say "ooh, actually I agree". But of all the things it said - there was a hell-of-a-lot that it didn't say.

Agree with the first bit.

Doubtful about the second bit - beaurocracy seems to become magnified in London.

Same here, humbled

Here here, I'll second-that. Most management types are disconnected from the processes that their staff are instructed to follow. I've ran through application demos and walkthroughs with senior managers before where at the end they ask "Why do we do that?"

If I had the money to fight the lawsuit, I'd be right there.

Also, I formally let them know I disagreed with the psychometric testing.

Double also... I used to apologise to new hires for the psychometric testing, and tell them "this is not how the real-world works, this is a micro-community"

This has not been my experience - this is not intended as a slur against my employer (who are fairly awesome). But when you're in a recruitment company you get to see all the processes and the problems with those processes. I would probably recommend that all companies do their own recruitment.

You're right, smarter people who were hired before the introduction of the psychometric test became frustrated and weren't recognised for their abilities. I knew one very anti-social but exceptionally skilled developer that rage-quitted in a spectacular "hissy-fit"

It was at a (large/medium sized) company I used to work at, not the company I work for at the moment (recruiter). To be honest my interview for this position was just a really good conversation - my interviewer started out with a bunch of technical questions and eventually I said to him "Don't you have anything harder?". And then after that we just chatted about tech, it ended with him saying "I'll give the good news to your recruiter"

I was going to post this on Medium too, but thought it might be in bad taste

Uh oh http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/amazon.com