Finding Talent

[Carl Coryell-Martin]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 8:40 AM, Ruslan Khafizov <ruslan....@gmail.com> wrote:

BTW, speaking of talent, anyone knows where is easy to find talent?

I think this isn't the right question. Talented people, by definition are rare and therefore hard to find. As someone looking to hire, I think you have a couple of broad strategies for building a team:

1) Pay well above market.

2) Create an attractive environment for talented people and advertise that environment publicly and through social networks. This can be better than paying well as the people attracted to the kind of craftwork we do in software engineering are often motivated more by good work than by money.

3) Play the 'money ball' game and identify undervalued traits in people and develop them into talent. I call this resume arbitrage because you're hiring people who don't look traditionally valuable and putting them into an environment where they can become very valuable.

So, some examples:

For strategy 2,  I create a work environment where the deadline pressure is the responsibility of the product owners and the engineers are responsible for estimation and quality execution.  This time and encouragement to do good work gives people the space to develop and practice their craft and they find that very valuable.

I also discourage people from working more than 40 hours in a week so that they can have a life outside of work and they can build a career out of engineering.

For strategy 3, we interview largely for aptitude and how much fun someone is to pair with.  The market loves to pay for experience with particular tools and technologies, but I find that pair programming lets me give people relevant experience very quickly and I can sometimes avoid paying an experience premium.

We also consciously have developed a non-macho, non-cowboy programming culture, which I think means that we're an attractive place to work for a much more diverse population.  This enlarges the pool of people available for us to hire.

For strategy 1, you need to find an interesting and valuable problem to work on, succeed in creating that value and share that value creation with the company. This is, unfortunately, hard to do as a startup where you are searching for and testing value propositions rather than exploiting them.

Best,

Carl C-M

Regards,
Ruslan

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[Yasith Fernando]

I think this is one of the best responses i've seen so far for this question. As a developer myself i think Carl is spot on. Its a pity that most companies in the market don't understand this.

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[Wille Faler]

I had a discussion with some very talented developers as late as Friday afternoon about finding and retaining talent.

We came to a pretty unanimous conclusion:

Pay well ("pay peanuts, get monkeys"), but most importantly, instead of telling people what to do ("managing") and giving them tasks, fill their job with purpose and give them the autonomy and power to fulfil that purpose as best they can without resorting to command-and-control management.

It's really the same thing as entrepreneurship on a micro-scale: like a lot of talented people resort to entrepreneurship because they can't take/don't want to take the slow, bureaucratic ways of corporate life, talented people want the same things even if they are employees of a startup.

Allow talented individuals to be "startups of one" with a clear purpose within your company and you at least won't have to deal with constant churn of employees leaving.

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[Jason Ong]

Yasith, if bandwidth's willing, you could do the 'paired programming interview' - skype + screen session + give them a do-able task from a real project and see how they deal with the problem.

Wille, agreed! I don't necessary see myself as an 'entrepreneur', rather someone who loves the autonomy associated with it. That's why I love working with one. :)

Cheers,
JasonOng

---
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[Zehua Liu]

strategy 3 reminds me of the book "The rare find" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Rare-Find-Spotting-Exceptional/dp/1591844258). I think one problem is that younger start-ups might not be able to afford hiring many "potential" talents and let them prove themselves after sometime.

Zehua

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[Martin Bähr]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 06:14:34AM +0800, Jason Ong wrote:
> give them a do-able task from a real
> project and see how they deal with the problem.

that's what i did.
not knowing how to 'test' or what questions to ask, and also considering
a language barrier, i figured a practical example would be best. i just
gave them a specific problem and watched them how they'd solve it. this
also tested if their language understanding is good enough to understand
my request.

this wouldn't really test for talent, but at least i was sure that i was
able to work with this person.

greetings, martin.
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Martin B�hr http://societyserver.org/mbaehr/

[Martin Bähr]

On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 02:00:17PM +0800, Carl Coryell-Martin wrote:
> 1) Pay well above market.

would you apply this to fresh gradutates from university too?
as far as i can tell, most students look at the salary first, so that
doesn't really help to attract talent. a gut feeling tells me that
paying less at the beginning might weed out those who are only after the
money.

my collegue here in china suggested to look for those students that
didn't specifically study computer science but learned programming by
themselves or by taking classes on the side as a way to recognise really
talented students.

another issue i can think of might be that students don't have the
experience yet to tell what a good workplace would look like, so they
might not recognize the offer.

joel has some interesting ideas:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.html
http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html

[Carl Coryell-Martin]

see comments inline

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Martin Bähr
<mba...@email.archlab.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 09, 2012 at 02:00:17PM +0800, Carl Coryell-Martin wrote:
>> 1) Pay well above market.
>
> would you apply this to fresh gradutates from university too?
> as far as i can tell, most students look at the salary first, so that
> doesn't really help to attract talent. a gut feeling tells me that
> paying less at the beginning might weed out those who are only after the
> money.

If you can. and especially in Singapore.

1) Singapore has a special Visa status with the US so it is
particularly easy for SG citizens to work in the states. Top
candidates here have access to the global talent pool and starting
wages in the valley are really quite high, roughly analogous to
6-7K/month in Singapore (factoring in taxes). If we want to build an
industry here, we need some of these people to stay (or come back to
singapore).

2) A significant barrier to building the talent pool in Singapore is
that the perceived value among parents and grandparents of software
engineering as a profession is low. They then pressure their kids to
look for traditionally lucrative fields like banking and medical
professions.

Also, I think that the desire to make money is orthogonal to the
ability to do good work and I'd focus on matching for that first.

> my collegue here in china suggested to look for those students that
> didn't specifically study computer science but learned programming by
> themselves or by taking classes on the side as a way to recognise really
> talented students.
>
> another issue i can think of might be that students don't have the
> experience yet to tell what a good workplace would look like, so they
> might not recognize the offer.

This is definitely an issue and one that I don't really know how to
solve. One way is to develop relationships with faculty in the
relevant departments as they really like to place students into good
environments.

> joel has some interesting ideas:
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.html
> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html
>
> greetings, martin.
> --
> cooperative communication with sTeam      -     caudium, pike, roxen and unix
> services:   debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
> --
> pike programmer      working in china                   community.gotpike.org
> foresight developer  (open-steam|caudium).org              foresightlinux.org
> unix sysadmin        societyserver.(org|net)                       realss.com

> Martin Bähr          http://societyserver.org/mbaehr/
>
> --
> Chat: http://hackerspace.sg/chat

[Jason Ong]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 9:29 AM, Carl Coryell-Martin <ca...@coryellmartin.org> wrote:

This is definitely an issue and one that I don't really know how to
solve.  One way is to develop relationships with faculty in the
relevant departments as they really like to place students into good
environments.

Blow the horn loud enough and they (passionate students) will come.

[Martin Bähr]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 09:29:08AM +0800, Carl Coryell-Martin wrote:
> > as far as i can tell, most students look at the salary first, so that
> > doesn't really help to attract talent. a gut feeling tells me that
> > paying less at the beginning might weed out those who are only after the
> > money.
>
> If you can. and especially in Singapore.
>
> 1) Singapore has a special Visa status with the US so it is
> particularly easy for SG citizens to work in the states. Top
> candidates here have access to the global talent pool and starting
> wages in the valley are really quite high, roughly analogous to
> 6-7K/month in Singapore (factoring in taxes). If we want to build an
> industry here, we need some of these people to stay (or come back to
> singapore).

true, but this affects everyone so it should just raise the base level
everyone is willing to pay. there is still room to pay a little less
than average if that actually helps weed out the greedy types.

> 2) A significant barrier to building the talent pool in Singapore is
> that the perceived value among parents and grandparents of software
> engineering as a profession is low. They then pressure their kids to
> look for traditionally lucrative fields like banking and medical
> professions.

i'd expect a talented person that really wants the job to stand up to
that pressure, but i may be to naive about this (i didn't experience
such pressure)

but to me these are factors that only make it harder to choose singapore
as a startup unless there is a low risk of failure or investment already
available.

greetings, martin.
--
cooperative communication with sTeam - caudium, pike, roxen and unix
services: debugging, programming, training, linux sysadmin, web development
--
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foresight developer (open-steam|caudium).org foresightlinux.org
unix sysadmin societyserver.(org|net) realss.com

Martin B�hr http://societyserver.org/mbaehr/

[Ruslan Khafizov]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 10:44 AM, Martin Bähr
<mba...@email.archlab.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

> i'd expect a talented person that really wants the job to stand up to
> that pressure, but i may be to naive about this (i didn't experience
> such pressure)

Actually a lot of talented kids interested in everything :-) Or at
least areas of their interest are quite wide.
As an example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Kolmogorov was
interested in history as a student. Had he meet more passionate
historians he could turn to history but instead he become one of the
best mathematicians of the 20th century.

You cannot exactly push vocation down their throat but smart parent
can sell profession. And no good parent would want they kid to become
software developer over doctor.

Regards,
Ruslan

[Jason Ong]

Maybe the reverse works better.

I vividly remember the fateful biology lecture where my lecturer invited a working profesional to inform us of life as a doctor. That was enough to make me close that option.

Regards,
Ruslan

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[Ruslan Khafizov]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Martin Bähr
<mba...@email.archlab.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:

> joel has some interesting ideas:
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDevelopers.html
> http://www.inc.com/magazine/20070501/column-guest.html

Wow, he has really deep pockets! 75 000 USD for a fresh grad!
He has some good ideas indeed :-)

Regards,
Ruslan

[Carl Coryell-Martin]

That was in 2007. Offers now are more like $80-100K USD.

It's not so much deep pockets, as thats how things work in the valley
and New York.

-ccm

[Alvin Jiang]

I understand that's barely enough money to survive in the valley or New
York. I know of someone who moved from $120k in SV to $100k in Virginia
(and a colleague who fought to stay in Dallas rather than move to
Boston) due to the cost of living.

It'd be interesting if anyone with experience working in US as a
foreigner could comment on the rent/cost of living situation now.

[Meng Weng Wong]

On Fri, Mar 9, 2012 at 2:00 PM, Carl Coryell-Martin <ca...@coryellmartin.org> wrote:

I think this isn't the right question. Talented people, by definition are rare and therefore hard to find. As someone looking to hire, I think you have a couple of broad strategies for building a team:

Thanks everyone for this very illuminating thread.

I have linked to it from http://www.quora.com/How-should-Singapore-startups-hire-development-talent

which is also linked on http://rtfm.jfdi.asia/hiring-and-firing/

An actual printed white paper around these subjects is coming soon!

regards

meng

[Wille Faler]

Alvin makes a good point, you can't compare nominal salaries without comparing actual purchasing power.

In London for instance, at 75K USD/year you would struggle to find accommodation that would be anything more than a dingy studio flat in a worse part of town. Getting a simple lunch out can easily set you back 10-15USD. Those 75K USD just don't go very far in a lot of places..

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[Ruslan Khafizov]

On rankings Singapore is more expensive city than NY.
http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/1311145

So if you can make it here you can make it there :-)

Regards,
Ruslan

> --
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[Alvin Jiang]

The cost of living survey takes the currency difference vs USD into
account, so it's applicable for an expat choosing between countries (it
answers the question, "If I'm paid x USD, which would be a cheaper place
to live?").

"...is designed to help multinational companies and governments
determine compensation allowances for their expatriate employees"

http://www.mercer.com/press-releases/1420615
http://www.mercer.com/costofliving

As far as I can tell it doesn't account for taxation either. Unless you
also have to pay taxes back in your home country, the tax rate of Hong
Kong or Singapore would be substantially lower than Finland or many
states in USA.

Having said that I don't dispute that Singapore is a rather expensive
place to live for a foreigner. We appear to be in a transition where
expat packages are no longer offered, instead a "Local+" or just local
package is offered. I'm no economist but I'd suspect this causes
inflated salaries (that also passes down to locals). Everyone wants to
earn more money but when everyone earns more money the cost of
everything goes up.

�Most Asian cities have moved up in the ranking as availability for
expatriate accommodation prices is limited and demand is high.�

[Martin Baehr]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 06:33:51PM +0800, Alvin Jiang wrote:
> Having said that I don't dispute that Singapore is a rather expensive
> place to live for a foreigner.

i think it als depends on the expectations.

looking at
http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Singapore&city1=Singapore&country2=United+Kingdom&city2=London&displayCurrency=SGD
for example lists rent prices for singapore that most likely point to the
higher end estates. i have certainly seen lower rent prices.

and even despite that london appears more expensive, so i really wonder
how mercer can rank singapore as more expensive than london.

[Isaac]

As someone who has lived in Singapore and New York, I feel comfortable
to say that Singapore feels slightly cheaper, despite the obscene
rental market and ridiculous price of alcohol (the two things expats
notice most). My personal hypothesis is that the reason it is ranked
so high is due to the cost of owning a car, which many people do
choose to do. The cost for a car in Singapore is at least 2X the cost
in New York due to price of the vehicle plus the various taxes and
fees.

The point above about taxes is also well taken. This is a HUGE
difference maker in Singapore's favor. Here I pay an effective tax
rate of something like 12%. In New York it was above 40% with taxes
going to the feds, state government and even city government. So even
if the "nominal cost" of the two cities is similar, the "effective
cost" is very different due to the differences in take home pay.

Another item in Singapore's favor - no tipping :-) In NYC the norm is
pretty much 20% on the bill, and not to mention at least a dollar on
every drink at the bar. Ouch.

Cheers,
Isaac

On Mar 12, 7:28 pm, Martin Baehr <mba...@email.archlab.tuwien.ac.at>
wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 06:33:51PM +0800, Alvin Jiang wrote:
> > Having said that I don't dispute that Singapore is a rather expensive
> > place to live for a foreigner.
>
> i think it als depends on the expectations.
>

> looking athttp://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Sing...

[Ruslan Khafizov]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 9:58 PM, Isaac <isou...@gmail.com> wrote:
> As someone who has lived in Singapore and New York, I feel comfortable
> to say that Singapore feels slightly cheaper

I think "slightly" is the key word here.
One might argue about is Singapore cheaper over NY/London but
difference is not that dramatic really.
So I think for single fresh grad is manageable to live on 75K in NY.
I was living on less in London and even saved some money :-)

Regards,
Ruslan

[Martin Baehr]

On Mon, Mar 12, 2012 at 11:01:09PM +0800, Ruslan Khafizov wrote:
> So I think for single fresh grad is manageable to live on 75K in NY.
> I was living on less in London and even saved some money :-)

but compare that to singapore:

my wife and me lived in singapore on a SGD 2.5k salary. that's 30K a
year.

it's the minimum salary to get a dependents pass for your partner, and
just enough to live there. of course we didn't have a car, and weren't
running aircon most of the time. maybe that saved us a bunch of money.

[Meng Weng Wong]

Ben Scherrey makes a good point that lower income taxes and higher consumption taxes (alcohol, cigarettes, cars) on discretionary expenses is pretty reasonable – not everybody drinks, smokes, or drives, and if I choose to do other things with my take-home pay then more power to me.

Rational humans prefer this situation to the (European) alternative – cheap booze but high income tax.

Predictably irrational humans (Tversky, Kahneman, et al) don't think that way of course. They'd prefer cheap booze and high income tax, because they pay taxes once a year but drink every night. Exposure bias. Out of sight, out of mind...

> --
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[Wille Faler]

..actually most Europeans don't pay taxes once a year, their employers deduct taxes transparently from their net wages, with large portions of what amounts to income taxation not being called that and being hidden as a "tax on the employer" in newspeak (see "national insurance" in the UK, which is just another income tax).

Not only out of sight, out of mind, but also expertly hidden from taxpayers to disguise the real amount of income tax they pay.

Most brits think they pay 20% base rate of income tax when in actual fact more than 33% is taken.

Sent from my iPhone

> --
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[James Tan]

Comparing the cost of living and average salaries across different
cities is always a tricky thing. There are many "hidden" costs or
factors that surveys often overlook, or fail to accurately capture
without specific demographic and lifestyle assumptions.

I blogged about the "tax wedge" 2 years ago
(http://jam.sg/blog/2010/05/the-great-tax-divide/), which describes
some non-income taxes that people often overlook (in Germany as an
example). I'm definitely not an expert in this area so please let me
know if I got things wrong.

Health care/insurance is an important topic. From what I understand,
In USA healthcare is generally very expensive and you must have good
health insurance (often as a perk from the company) otherwise major
illness will make you bankrupt. In Germany, most are forced into the
public health insurance system and pay 7% of their gross salary
(company pays another 7%), capped at 350 EUR per month. This is very
high compared to Singapore, but the coverage is extended to your wife
(or husband) and kids. You also get a lot out of it.

If you have children, cost of education can be a significant factor in
USA. In Europe education is mostly free or very affordable even up to
university level. There are also many holidays
(http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2011/12/daily-chart-2)
in return of the high taxes. For example, my friend in Holland gets 34
days of paid leave per year, on top of the sick leave and bank
holidays. The paternity/maternity leaves in Europe are also amazing
compared to USA/Singapore - up to a year of paid leave for both
parents, and up to 3 years of unpaid leave shared among them
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave).

> --
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>

[Jason Ong]

So yesterday I was at Starbucks chatting with an old schoolmate whom I haven't seen in years. He had been living in NYC for the past 7 years and is now managing his own investment fund operating out of the east coast. He shared with me of his intentions to move back here. When asked why, he said something along the lines of familiarity and bringing his wealth (in finance and experience) back. Sparing the details, we concluded that people go to places for opportunities rather than money, coz the latter will come in time.

The grass is greener where you water it. But first go out and fetch some water.