Compensation & Benefits

Discussing Pay Compensation

This article discusses how to approach a conversation about earning more money. It suggests researching the company's compensation authority, providing a list of accomplishments, and comparing market salaries to demonstrate why a raise is deserved. It also suggests being honest about other offers and emphasizing the value of staying with the current company. The article emphasizes the importance of making noise and letting the manager know that compensation is important.

Overcoming Hiring Constraints

This company faced the challenge of not finding potential candidates fit for positions available within their company when expanding. To overcome hiring constraints and meet their goals, they devoted their time to researching different target locations, conducted surveys, and created a cross-functional team. They also hired local recruiters and invested in marketing strategies to target potential talent. Lessons learned include allocating resources to a professional local recruiter, understanding the qualities the company is looking for in prospective employees, and investing in marketing strategies.

Being a new manager

This article provides advice on how to transition from a tech lead to an engineering manager, including performance reviews, compensation levels, and prioritization. It emphasizes the importance of soft skills, deep knowledge of the company, and focusing on bigger problems. It also suggests involving a group of managers in semestrial reviews to help objectively measure performance.

Preparing Your Pitch and Specifying Your Process for Hiring

When hiring software engineers, it is important to have a well-honed pitch that explains the company's mission and the engineering team's opportunities for autonomy and mastery. The hiring process should be kept to a minimum of interactions, and the candidate should be checked for close-ability from the start. Time-boxing the offer and tracking the process are also important. Other best practices include practicing the pitch often, being responsive and sensitive to the candidate, and using an online tool for code challenges.

Sourcing Interested Candidates in QA

This article discusses how to identify candidates who are truly interested in a QA career. The author suggests posing an interview question that requires the candidate to think about how an architecture will break, and looking for a system level thinker who can think at the component level and introduce chaos into the system. Additionally, the author suggests leveling all QA engineers at the same level and salary range as software engineers, and creating a company culture that supports QA career growth.

Saying ‘Not Right Now’ Instead Of ‘No’ to Pay Raise Requests

A design intern was offered a full-time position, but asked for more money. The company decided to not cave in to the request, but instead laid out a series of goals for the intern to prove himself. After 6 months, the intern had met those goals and was given the pay raise he had asked for. The company also learned that their cutting-edge and fast-paced environment helps them attract and retain junior employees.