As the owner of a fully remote, revenue-funded, and profitable startup that wants to hire, my concern is one that won't be particularly well received. I don't want to hire people, yet, because they're still thinking that https://levels.fyi is realistic. I'd rather wait a few rough months, have the pool of talent grow rapidly and people will start realizing that maybe paying $350k to a green React dev isn't very sustainable.
We're going headlong into a recession and I imagine an overwhelming number of firms are going to take the same stance.
IMO, if you are fully remote, you might look at it the other way around. The ridiculous salaries are mostly in California and one or two other places.
Those places might realize that they can get react devs for a dime a dozen out of bootcamps all over the country for a third of that in a few months once they have let people do fully remote work for a while.
The smart thing would seem to be to hire them now before the companies with bigger pockets start driving remote salaries up in the other 45 states.
My bet: remote-only for most companies won't last. If there's one thing I've learned over the past 8 years running this company, is most people really struggle at remote. They don't have the dedicated work space, they lack the necessary self-discipline, and many people really start to falter without face time and social interaction. I suspect once this virus is solved, we'll see a flood back to in-person jobs.
React was just a glib example anyway, I purposefully stay far away from anything trendy. I'm hiring people who are data smart, can think in SQL, and fully understand that AI/ML/NLP is smoke and mirrors bullshit in the vast majority of contemporary applications.
Anyway, I guess my broader point is: When every single PE/VC is battening down the hatches, firms are preemptively laying off people by the thousands before their clients even start missing payments, and a large number tech employees are in mortgages/leases they cannot sustain without those aforementioned salaries? We're about to see a tech bust and housing crash far worse than dot-com. Things are going to get really bad. Programmers are about to be competing head-to-head with front-of-house restaurant employees for gig-economy jobs. Thus, I can afford to wait a bit to find the right people.
I agree with you about remote reverting to a large extent.
I have been working 90% remote for a while, but most of my co-workers have not and it is driving them crazy after only a few days.
We know that a large subset of companies would prefer to have visibility and control.
I still think that even if only 5% of the tech employees forced to work remotely for the first time these next couple months get a taste for it, it will change the landscape of remote work in a noticeable way.
Even if just a few decent sized employers see and acknowledge good productivity in these next couple months and the talent pushes the issue, it could end up with a lot of 300k positions in california being replaced by 130k remote positions basically anywhere else.
After being forced to do it for a while, it's hard to imagine this not happening to some extent, especially in areas that aren't especially strongly affected by stock market news bites.
I used to think that, but now that circumstances are forcing me to work remote, I'm amazed at how much I get done, even with the crap communication due to the overloaded VPN at work. And that's while also trying to homeschool two children.
Alright, this is a weird situation that's not comparable to anything else, but still, velocity seems remarkably high in my team.
Paying $350k to a junior just starting out isn't sustainable but those numbers look closer to what the numbers should like like or even be low. What your work is worth is a function of the level of value you produce so software developers are probably still ridiculously underpaid.
What is it that owners do that is worth billions exactly, when developers should be happy with less than the numbers you presented?
It’s kinda scary people with the ability to react and reduce suffering whilst also benefiting in kind are willing to exploit a global emergency and use that suffering to justify coming out a little ahead.
I see your point, but let's not attack each other like this here, especially not right now with stress and fear running so high. Better to treat this as an opportunity for an uptick in how well we treat each other.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
He doesn't have to pay Google wage rates. He also doesn't have to wait it out for a bigger candidate pool so he can 'negotiate' lower baselines.
Business owner is using a turtle strategy. Opportunistic yes but also seeing people as numbers on a spreadsheet.
OP stated that he feels fear. Fear is a reasonable reaction when a Business Owner closes doors for conversation to wait out catching google 'talent' at a bargain.
Some people are in a situation where they need work now or very soon.
>but also seeing people as numbers on a spreadsheet.
Looking at numbers in spreadsheets is how you stay in business.
>Some people are in a situation where they need work now or very soon.
Then they should lower their rates until they find a market clearing salary.
I'm flabbergasted at the argument that a business should pay a potential employee whatever they demand, because that person "needs work". It flies in the face of all logic.
> I'm flabbergasted at the argument that a business should pay a potential employee whatever they demand, because that person "needs work". It flies in the face of all logic.
I think the general issue with my post is that the moderators want this to be a "place of ideas". So that tends towards the appearance of decorum being more important here than actually treating people better in the current crisis.
We're going headlong into a recession and I imagine an overwhelming number of firms are going to take the same stance.