Employer claims a "No Jerks" policy

[datagirl]

Hi all.

I ran across this: http://www.npr.org/2011/09/05/140194803/for-software-developers-a-bounty-of-opportunity  I read the print article, but haven't listened to the radio report.

Here's the job openings page at HubSpot: http://jobs.hubspot.com/start-up-jobs-boston/
The "software engineer" job is the one where it says "no jerks."

I'm a little suspicious though that there is really such a high demand as represented here.

Thoughts?

-DG

[The Gorn]

Hubspot and that NPR piece were just raked over the coals here: http://crazyontap.com/topic.php?TopicId=123964

To bottom line what the article says, yes, there's a huge demand for SW engineers who will settle for $35K per year.

That was my 1986 level salary.

I don't see any SW engineering nirvanas. At companies where the work environment and the complexion of the staff is so all-important, they seem to practice rampantly intrusive social engineering of the "play Nerf-toy games with us" variety. And the workplaces available to grown adults are brutal places to work.

[Peter Gibbons]

To bottom line what the article says, yes, there's a huge demand for SW engineers who will settle for $35K per year.

That was my 1986 level salary.

I guess this should make me feel a bit better ... At the time I was making $15k/year and thought junior engineers were making at least 3 times more.

I guess I shouldn't start using the "On Startups" forum?

Speaking about rates - I just got e-mail from a broker about contract to hire opportunity with major bank. The salary starts from $75k/year and requires expert level of C++ and STL and expert level of Java and Grid Computing. Plus domain knowledge of course.

In 1986 the advertised salaries for C / UNIX developers were $60k/year.

In terms of real estate, transportation and food it's safe to say that the prices have at least trippled in this metro area compared to 1986.

[The Gorn]

My quoted salary was in the US, in a DoD company, with highly relevant experience... I thought it was lowish compared to many around me with similar experience levels and backgrounds. But I was in a one horse town with only a few major DoD employers, and most people considered moving and living there sort of a hardship posting. If I'd been working in non DoD work in the same region my pay would have been more like around 30.

Anyway, yes, in 1986 a person that knew and could use C very, very well was well paid, comparable to $100K+ today. Today most software skills are low level commodities with extremely capped junior grade salaries.

I think today's focus on get rich quick (or rapidly) startups a la "OnStartups.com" is that traditional salaries and career options are so poor today that you now have legions of unqualified wanna-bes vying to be the oppressor themselves, with utterly laughable credentials and knowledge to back it.

In other words the startup world is clogged with n00bs and entry level types with stars in their eyes and attitudes of entitlement that they should be rewarded like royalty, when actually in another era they would be low paid interns or entry level workers. The startup world seems to be 90% young kids without a clue and perhaps 5-10% serious contenders.

I've been cruising the OnStartup boards (sounds like I am hanging out at bars  ) looking for decent questions to answer, and many of the questions bespeak idiots with really antisocial thinking posting them. The actual language of such questions is much less specific than I am indicating but many of them are really looking for suckers to con out of a bunch of work. Or they want something else very valuable such as marketing assistance, content creation, or programming, with no strings attached. Then when you replay their question back in an answer with more succinctness, they get bent out of shape and mortally offended that you see through their real agenda.

IE, questions abound like "how can I get volunteers to help me create content and then screw them out of any royalty payments when I hit the big time?"

In the internet startup world it appears that the concept of transferring as much risk as possible to another party without providing them much of any upside is the core "lift" behind many business plans. It's like fair pay for a day's work is an obscenity.

Dharmesh Shah is the co-founder of Hubspot as well as OnStartups.

[Peter Gibbons]

My quoted salary was in the US.

The one I quoted was in Canada.

My previous salary in Elbonia was ~$2k/year.

[Peter Gibbons]

In the internet startup world it appears that the concept of transferring as much risk as possible to another party without providing them much of any upside is the core "lift" behind many business plans. It's like fair pay for a day's work is an obscenity.

Yeah, that's way I am very interested in startups ... but only if I am one of the founders.
Chances of being one of the first employees of Google, Facebook type of startup is really really really small. And even then ...

There was a thread recently on Hacker News and somebody mentioned the sale of Authonomy to HP:

As one data point, following the recent sale to HP, Autonomy staff in Cambridge split £30m between 175 people[1].

I'm in Cambridge and know various people who work/worked there, so I'm fairly sure that those 175 include many of the remaining "early employee" group. They'll be getting a nice windfall, obviously, but it's not never-work-again money.

For contrast, founder and CEO Mike Lynch has reportedly netted a tidy £500m or so for his share of the company.

For those not familiar with the numbers, Autonomy was basically the most successful software company in the UK, and the sale valued its shares at around a 60% premium give or take market fluctuations at the time of the announcement. It was founded in 1996. HP is the currently the biggest IT company in the world.
In other words, this exit is as big as anything in its generation is going to get in my country, and if you weren't founder/investor/board level, you weren't retiring from it.

[datagirl]

Thanks, Guys.  You validated my thinking. 
-DG

[ilconsiglliere]

Yeah, I am not buying it. I have seen these fluffy kind of articles in the past year and its pure nonsense. There is no shortage of anybody except people the need for people to work CHEAP. I made 35K around 1990 or so. If I want to make 35K I can go work at Home Depot and do a completely mindless job.

Here in NJ there is no mecca of any kind once Ma B*ll cored itself out around the time of the dot com collapse. Every single company here in NJ is full of H1Bs, you will be the minority. AND they will want to pay you DIRT.

My friend has been interviewing for system testing jobs and in the job ads they want the purple squirrel (ie. the PERFECT candidate that doesnt exist) - every single technology known to man + many you have never heard all for a whopping 40K. Yeah thanks I will pass on that.

This whole work is a playground is nonsense as well. I dont go to work to "play" and it doesnt get my creative juices flowing to play with nerf toys. This is how they sell it to the youngins to get them to work mega hours for low pay. Thanks, been there, done that and I got the t-shirt for that. This is the mentality behind having gyms, coffee shops, dry cleaning and everything else on site - YOU NEVER LEAVE. You just work, work, work and work some more. This kind of stuff will fly until they wise up after they have been burned a few times.

After Ma B*ll cut me loose the first time I have been very careful not to co-mingle my personal life and work life in big corporations. In other places I was continually harassed about how come I dont use the corporate gym (umm because I already belong to a gym and dont have stare at the faces of my coworkers), the use of their credit union, insurance and other crap. Work is work, personal life is personal life. HINT: When they cut me loose I wont be traumatized because its a JOB, not my LIFE.

Frankly I figure all these articles are corporate propaganda to increase the H1B Visa count and the offshoring. This is a sales job to the public to get them to buy into it when they do it.

[The Gorn]

There seem to only be two types of IT work environments available:

1) The "work is play" model of Nerf bats, beer blasts, company masseuses (yeah, right). Everything caters to 23 year olds and their egos.

2) The Stalinist plan of corporate uniformity. Work arrangements are oriented to reduce overhead costs as much as possible. You wind up with things like seating arrangements for programmers like one member posted a picture of here where all contractors work at a single desk and are lined up along a long public hallway.

There are two corresponding management styles:

1) Management is your friend and is there to empower you, help you, and give you all the family time off you need. Gay pink unicorns and bouncing chubby cheeked Disney critters festoon all meetings.

2) Management towers over your laughable humanity and is to be feared. If you want an image of the future of programming, imagine a boot stamping in the face of engineers - forever. Dammit, somebody recognize that abridged quote!

There are no other choices. Choose 1 or 2.

1 is Google and every wanna be dot com. 2 is every place I have ever worked in the last 20 years.

[Carrie Cobol]

Yep, my career has always been in #2 type places, too. 

I'm also squicky about company gyms.  It just seems way more intimate than I want to be with coworkers and management.  I don't want to see them sweaty, grunting and in shorts and I don't want them to see me like that.  Eons back in one loser job I had, we happened to be outside in a picnic area at lunchtime.  I saw this guy jogging down the street toward the building.  The sunlight glistening off his rock hard chest, looked pretty darn yummy.  Then he got close enough to see his face and it was my supervisor who I didn't like or respect.  Ewww.  (Need a puking emoticon!)

[Peter Gibbons]

There are no other choices. Choose 1 or 2.

There is option #3:
Work for yourself and be your own boss.

The problem with this arrangement is as somebody put it:

"The toughest boss I ever had was when I was working for myself."

[Walter Mitty]

Peter,

If you don't have a boss,  then who or what determines whether you get paid?  The answer is, of course sales.  Does sales become your boss when you work for yourself?  This happens to some people.

[The Gorn]

Does sales become your boss when you work for yourself?  This happens to some people.

God. What do YOU think?

That sentence was so insightful that it gives me physical pain. 

(I'm being quite serious.)

[datagirl]

Does sales become your boss when you work for yourself?  This happens to some people.

God. What do YOU think?

That sentence was so insightful that it gives me physical pain. 

(I'm being quite serious.)

Well, one could hire *these guys* http://www.hubspot.com/ 

(Talk about a conversation coming full circle )

[unix]

2) Management towers over your laughable humanity and is to be feared. If you want an image of the future of programming, imagine a boot stamping in the face of engineers - forever. Dammit, somebody recognize that abridged quote!

There are no other choices. Choose 1 or 2.

1 is Google and every wanna be dot com. 2 is every place I have ever worked in the last 20 years.

And #1 isn't always better than #2.   Poorly structured dot coms with kids running around playing ping pong at 7pm and then having dinner delivered on site so you stay and work some more. I worked at a dot-com and I missed the rigid structure of the Big Brother type environments. They wanted you do everything and at once.