December 2, 2015 at 8:35 am
Gary Varga (12/2/2015)
It's tricky.Companies do not like paying vastly different salaries/rates yet need different valued people. All of whom need both time to keep any necessary skills up to date or to gain them (previously discussed) AND time to perform their tasks to an adequate level of quality (not previously discussed). Different people work at different productivity rates, offer differing levels of flexibility and have/have the potential to have different skill sets.
When people hire they tend to go for the "cookie cutter" method.
...
True, but we also need different levels of skills. We can't hire all superstar coders. There are menial, less involved tasks, and we need people to do them. We also need to be growing the skills of lower level people.
December 2, 2015 at 8:35 am
ian.lee 73912 (12/2/2015)
Negative thinking senior manager: "What if we invest in training and developing our people and they leave us?"Positive thinking senior manager: "What if we don't and they stay?"
This should be a poster each of our teams gives to every new manager.
December 2, 2015 at 8:37 am
Dalkeith (12/2/2015)
The older I get the more I realise the shear inefficiency of people's ability to communicate both what they want and what they can provide.Certificates have in the past been a legitimate proxy however it is quite possible for people in organisations to never have been truly tested in their disciplines.
Best you can do is I think hire and let go quickly and try and not make it personal. Even if you have a good candidate you can put them in the wrong roll.
Also I think it is good to be a bit flexible - jobs in areas quite often overlap and I think it is good to let the applicant adapt the job to their strengths.
Great points. Communication is certainly a problem.
However I think part of a good screening process tries to tease some of this out of the candidates. Get them comfortable and try to understand them. Try to get the best out of them you can.
It's what a good manager should be doing every day.
December 2, 2015 at 8:43 am
Sean Redmond (12/2/2015)
The qualities that I look for in interviewees are willingness to learn, ease with logical thought and thoroughness. Being able to the job quickly is good, too, but, if given the choice, I'd rather thorough workers to quick workers.For junior DBAs it doesn't matter how little they know about databases, it's how willing they are to embrace them and the tasks at hand. I don't care about the certificates and diplomas that they have or haven't received up to this point. I am interested in how well and how quickly to strive to master the tools they will have to use. If they study for and achieve the Microsoft exams, then I will be proud of them.
Rethinking re-hiring means getting Personnel/H.R. out of the hiring-process. The direct manager of the hire-to-be should be conducting the interviews and choosing those to be interviewed. I admonished our Personel department for the stupid qualification requirements they put in (Junior DBAs had to have a university degree; senior DBAs had to have at least a Masters' degree and so on). In the end, we got a superb fellow a year or two out of school with 6 months' experience in Access. Within a year he was capable to doing most of the work that was sent our way. He rarely made mistakes. His ability to learn and implement new features within SQL Server was impressive.
I agree with most of this.
However. How do you get HR out of the business when a call for resumes (public or through recruiters) gets you 50 resumes for a spot. Going through them is a task, and it's hard. There needs to be some guideline that you can use. Perhaps it's hiring managers taking a sample, say 10, and sitting with HR for 20 minutes, giving them guidelines on what they like/don't like.
Maybe it's a scorecard of some sort. You get points for a degree, more for a masters. A point for a previous job of the same title. A point for a year of experience. Points for doing the job in the same industry, etc. Reach some bar and then they get an interview. At least a phone screen with a few people.
However, you need to have time set aside for this, as it's a chore and a drain on staff/managers.
Some companies use networking to do this for them, getting recommendations from employees. Works ok, but not easy to do in a crunch. IF you need 5 people, this is hard.
Some companies keep reqs open, always looking to hire a good person. That's a good technique if you can grow slow.
However no matter what, you also have to be aware of pruning out people, even if you need someone doing work.
December 2, 2015 at 8:43 am
Oh Steve, man have you said a lot here that I'd like to respond to. But I think prudence forebears me from saying everything I'd like to. Generally speaking I've worked for different companies over the years which gave no importance to training their staff. Their software systems suffered for it, but either they were happy with that or ignorant of the effect their refusal to train anyone causes.
But I appreciate your bringing up the responsibility of the employee, too. We've got to do whatever we can to train ourselves.
I'd best stop right there. Good article, thank you Steve.
Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.
December 2, 2015 at 8:49 am
lnardozi 61862 (12/2/2015)
Here is the problem in a nutshell - salary opacity and salary equality.Demigod of SQL = x$
Seat Filler = x$
Unfortunately, just as much money is allocated by management for the seat filler as for the demigod. Both are hired as cheaply as they can be got, leaving open the very real possibility that the seat filler (who happens to be good at negotiation) makes more than the demigod. Further, neither the demigod nor the seat filler know what each other makes, providing absolutely zero incentive for the seat filer to become a demigod.
Solution? Make all salary information public. When someone asks, "Why does so and so make so much", the answer will be, "Go look at their code and then you tell me."
I tend to agree that transparent salaries are good here. They do help, though as social creatures, it becomes to understand this. Because it's not like the quote above. It's more like.
Really good T-SQL code = 15$
Great at SSIS flows and data warehousing, not good tuning code = $12
Excellent admin, always on call = 8$
Reliable tester, finds issues and deals with customers very well = $7
Seat Filler = 4$
How do you measure skills and jobs v each other? How do you determine who should get a little more v a lot more? At the extremes, we can do this, but even then, what's the scale? Is someone that's much better at code worth 4x someone that's just barely getting by?
This is much, much harder than you think. Look at your teams now. How would you rank them, and then how would you distribute salaries?
I'll also say that having been in management, individuals and first time managers, always want to spend more. They always want to get the best, but their needs, justified or not, need to be budgeted along with the rest of the organization. How do we value an excellent bookkeeper v an above average developer in C# or T-SQL?
These are hard business decisions, and it does help to have salary surveys and averages across industries and locations to understand how to spread things out.
December 2, 2015 at 8:54 am
JustMarie (12/2/2015)
There's far too many companies that want a senior level person with a lot of experience only to make an offer that is more in line with a junior level person. Then they get upset when the person they want won't take a LOT of money less than they want to pay.The laundry list of qualifications is also a peeve of mine. Especially when they want 5 years of experience in a product that came out 2 years ago. It shows they don't know what they want or they let HR write up the job listing.
Wasting time interviewee's time because they already decided to hire an internal person but need to interview X candidates per company policy.
Posting for job A then interviewing for job B. Bait and switch is a waste of everyone's time.
All of these reflect badly on the hiring company and show a disconnect or outright dishonesty in their hiring practices. And I've been on the receiving end of all of them. There's a lot of good companies out there but they don't get the visibility that the bad ones do.
The flip side of your first item is that some companies pay more to get someone, distorting the salary structures. I like the NFL arbitration that puts a person at the average of the top 5 people when they get a franchise (valuable employee) tag.
More salary disclosure, with more job responsibility disclosure would help, but our jobs vary widely, so a DBA isn't a DBA.
The laundry list is separate. This is because companies want different things for what they perceive as a different job. My advice, if you meet 50% of the things in the list, apply. Rarely have I ever met 100%.
Interviewing, to me, isn't a waste of time. Sometimes it's useful to get other candidates. HR often requires this because it's easy to say I'll take Joe, who works on the Help Desk to fill this position. However you might find that Sally or Steve who applies is a better fit. You never know until you interview them. This is why you should treat interviews as a chance to shine. Sell them on yourself, but also make them sell you. If you both agree, you move forward.
IF you don't, think about what you could do to shine better. Maybe nothing, but I've always come out of interviews thinking I could have done something better. The same goes when I pitch for xxx item internally in a meeting. Usually I think of something I should have done 10 minutes after the meeting.
December 2, 2015 at 8:56 am
Rod at work (12/2/2015)
Oh Steve, man have you said a lot here that I'd like to respond to. But I think prudence forebears me from saying everything I'd like to. Generally speaking I've worked for different companies over the years which gave no importance to training their staff. Their software systems suffered for it, but either they were happy with that or ignorant of the effect their refusal to train anyone causes.But I appreciate your bringing up the responsibility of the employee, too. We've got to do whatever we can to train ourselves.
I'd best stop right there. Good article, thank you Steve.
Cheers, Rod.
See the two line quote above. I'd make sure my manager, and upper management, saw that.
I really wish I had good references/stories published on where a good developer makes money for the company and bad developers cost money. Too many legal implications for anyone to truly disclose much of this data.
December 2, 2015 at 9:01 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (12/2/2015)
Gary Varga (12/2/2015)
It's tricky.Companies do not like paying vastly different salaries/rates yet need different valued people. All of whom need both time to keep any necessary skills up to date or to gain them (previously discussed) AND time to perform their tasks to an adequate level of quality (not previously discussed). Different people work at different productivity rates, offer differing levels of flexibility and have/have the potential to have different skill sets.
When people hire they tend to go for the "cookie cutter" method.
...
True, but we also need different levels of skills. We can't hire all superstar coders. There are menial, less involved tasks, and we need people to do them. We also need to be growing the skills of lower level people.
That was my point. You put it much better than me. Thanks.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
December 2, 2015 at 9:56 am
One problem that's still on-going, though I think it's diminishing, is that some at the C-level have the perception that IT costs and is not a profit center. It's bad thinking because we support ALL of the other profit centers. Thus training is increasing a cost without a chance of increasing a profit.
I have personally never seen a person get training or a cert and immediately jump ship for a better paying job, though I saw an attempt to lock someone in: company bought a CRM web site app that was totally inappropriate for their business, sent someone to get trained and certified, but they tied him to a three year contract as part of getting him his H1B. Surprisingly he didn't jump ship when he hit 36 months, he did at least another 6-12 months before leaving to MUCH better money.
The IT department must be involved in hiring, HR lacks too much information as to what we do. I like Steve's suggestion of IT taking a bunch of resumes then meeting with HR to tell them what qualifications are good, which ones are rubbish. My current position they wanted experience or a resume, I have 20+ years experience and they still wanted me to print out a transcript showing that I'd earned an Associates degree. *sigh*
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
December 2, 2015 at 10:50 am
My problem is dual edged sword of technology. Businesses are quick to want to use new technologies to meet customer needs and expectations, but refuse to use the same technologies to increase the productivity of the their employees.
We have the technology to support and develop geographically disparate teams but too many managers believe that if your butt isn't in a seat at a desk in the office then you aren't working or being productive.
I spent almost twenty months in Afghanistan for my current employer supporting their main product in theater. When I first got there we supported servers in at least twelve geographically disparate locations on several distinct networks. We had to support these servers remotely but also had people located at these sites that could physically touch the systems when needed. Those people worked closely with the user communities and were not necessarily trained to the jobs we did as system administrators or DBA's. We also worked closely with development staff back here in the USA. Google Hangouts, Adobe connect, and other technologies to facilitate the communication needed.
If we could do it there, why can't (or more importantly won't) businesses do the same here? I have talked with a few recruiters in other areas and what I have heard is the pool of applicants is small after a time, everyone has been seen by everyone so they start looking else where for new talent. One problem is that some companies aren't willing to pay for relocation of new hires. The other problem (which is the one I have) is that the position is of great interest but the qualified applicants aren't interested in moving as they enjoy where they are currently located.
I would love to find a position that would use my current skills to the their fullest and offer me the opportunity to learn new skills in SQL Server while enjoying my life where I currently live and providing me the flexibility to perhaps move somewhere else (my choice) later (like maybe Prescott, AZ while my youngest attends college there). Read this to say being able to work from home, wherever I happen to decide home is.
This isn't to say I don't like where I currently work, I do. I am the only pure database professional with my company. There are some with some experience but not with the depth of knowledge that I currently bring to the table.
And please note that working from home for my currently employer isn't an option available to everyone. Those that have the option were given the opportunity in order to keep them with the company for their skills. Does this mean I could possibly wrangle it, maybe but not going to test the waters just now.
December 2, 2015 at 2:05 pm
Steve, you touched a lot of topics that irk me. Because all those points are right.
Worked for a company for 8 years that never did anything but provide lip service for continuing education.
Throw in 40-60 hr weeks that left you burnt on being at a computer. Making it extremely difficult to find time outside work to learn new tech.
The boss had an opinion that he didn't want to send developers to conferences and training to keep them from networking. During which they might realize how crappy the work place was.
Now here I am, having done a lot of interviews, while doing contractor work and what am I finding? That 7 out of 10 questions on technology I am asked are of things I don't know. I keep a list of them now, and every time I get a spare hour not focused on a client. I pull an item off that list and learn it. Due to that I aced a tech screening recently. I think because i can debate the merits of EF6 versus Linq to SQL. Still waiting on a real interview though.
Till then, I am a back end .net senior developer who knows a ton of stuff about sql server that I learned the hard way. Open for freelance and consulting jobs.
December 2, 2015 at 2:30 pm
The problem with programming jobs is that the work is not measured or graded. Doctors. lawyers, accountants, etc. all have to go through a formal degree and certification process to do what they do. Programmers do not really have any accepted formal crediting system.
If there was a formal process that was like getting a license, then Joe could justify more money because he has gone thorough the process and has x years of experience.
If you have been working for many years in programming, an interviewer should not ask you to write a basic select statement. That has happened to me, I just just think is this guy for real. Too many jobs are posted like they are looking for a car mechanic. What software do you know? What version? Any good programmer can pick up something and run with it if given the chance. I have never worked on a project where I did not have to learn something. However, the underlying principles and ability to solve problems never changes.
Too many employers do not interview in ways that would help them promote problem solving and business solutions.
December 2, 2015 at 2:37 pm
Agree 100%. To many job descriptions are written by HR. I have seen some that look like they were pulled off of some generic web page list as the descriptions make no sense many times. The classic do you have 5 years experience in something that has only been out for a few years.
One of the problems is the job description is written by someone that can not write well. They should be saying we need someone with 5 years of experience building databases in xyz platform. More current version preferred, but not required as we know you can pick up the latest technology.
December 2, 2015 at 2:48 pm
Iwas Bornready (12/2/2015)
ian.lee 73912 (12/2/2015)
Negative thinking senior manager: "What if we invest in training and developing our people and they leave us?"Positive thinking senior manager: "What if we don't and they stay?"
Funny but true. I have to remember this.
Actually for those who stay yet under-perform, it is relatively easier to get rid of than to keep those who out-perform (because the company cannot match other competitors in compensation or promotion.)
On the other hand, I do believe it is more individual's responsibility to invest on one's OWN skills. However, I do know in early days, some companies will invest on employees (like paying for one's MBA total tuition) but the employee needs to serve for the company at least X years. Otherwise, the company will be reimbursed for the total investment cost.
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