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Front Matter

© 2019 Peter Skirko. All rights reserved.

Revision History

  • Version 1.0 - 2019/01/29 - Initial commit (grabbed from website).
  • Version 1.1 - 2019/05/14 - Grab updates from website.

Info For Recruiters

The opinions stated here are my own, not those of my company.

Image courtesy of NASA Commons

This page contains information that should be useful for recruiters. Last updated Feb 2019.

tl;dr

Right now, I am not looking for a new role, at my current employer or elsewhere.

Here’s why:

  1. I’m happy with my current role and manager chain (my manager, their manager, etc). However, this is a happiness that I only marginally control the destiny of–more on this another time.
  2. Personal reasons.
  3. The macroeconomic environment. The US is in the longest bull run in market history. But a whole bunch of startups are set to IPO in 2019: Lyft, Slack, Uber, etc. Look, I know “market timing” is anyone’s guess, but my simplistic prediction is that the bull run could very well end in 2019-2021, so “winter is coming“.
  4. In my “spare time”, I am retooling my career to focus on machine learning. At roughly 2-4 hours of free time a week, I predict this will take me 4-6 years; more on this another time as well. In the best case scenario, I may very well stay off the market until I’ve made significant progress on this front.
  5. Interviewing is an enormous time sink. Unless a new role is literally 10x (for some combination of role and comp) better than my current one, I rather spend that time (3-6+ months of intensive prep, if not more) hanging out with my family—my kids are kids for only so long before they become rebellious teenagers.

How I Segment the Software Developer Labor Market

I segment the software developer labor market somewhat simplistically into:

  • Cash-flow-rich companies. These are generally the FAANG companies or equivalents (e.g. NYC finance), or later-stage huge startups that are close to IPO and are basically making FAANG-competitive offers (e.g. AirBnb, Uber).

  • Cash-flow-conservative companies. These are generally startups, and are either strictly cash-flow-poor (i.e. limited runway) or cash-flow-conservative (i.e. have strong cash flow positions, but are spending it shrewdly).

Both segments have a section below, so read on!

Info for Recruiters From Cash-Flow-Rich Companies

I currently work at a FAANG company. As long as I do, here is my guidance to other cash-flow-rich companies that are trying to recruit me:

It’s highly unlikely (i.e. ~90% of the time) you will offer me a markedly better compensation story than what I have currently. Chances are, your level of spend is based on the market rate, plus a few quantiles, so I can predict with some accuracy what these numbers can be.

Thus, if you are trying to recruit me, the most attractive situations for me to consider are opportunities that are strictly better than the one I have now. Since I work in “Cloud AI” currently, which is a pretty hot space, the only thing that’s strictly better at the moment is a chance to move into an immediate position of management of a team size >= 7 in a growth area (cloud, ML, etc).

Info for Recruiters from Cash-Flow-Conservative Companies

I further segment cash-flow-conservative companies into:

  • Early stage startups (< 10 employees and < 3 years old)
  • Everything else

I generally don’t hear about early stage opportunities. If you are one and reach out to me, please just have a clear “Why me?” story.

The “Why me?” story from the vast majority of recruiters is basically that “you work at Google”. That rationale is highly incomplete. Google announced in their 2018Q4 earnings call that they now had > 98k employees. So in 2019, being Google or ex-Google without further qualification is insufficient. In 2005, this mattered; in 2019, not so much. It does not take a recruiting genius to spam the thousands of engineers at companies like Google and then point out the obvious.

For the cash-flow-conservative, non-early-stage startups, the situation is really unclear. What’s the narrative? Are you just hiring bodies to scale out? Are you starting a bold new product initiative? Etc.

If this is your segment, please focus not only on a strong “Why me?” story, but also clearly identify the “X-Factor”. Here are some examples:

  • Located somewhere I’d like to live that’s not the Bay Area (NYC area, for example)
  • Or, is a thriving remote-friendly team (e.g. Buffer, GitLab, WordPress, etc)
  • Or can offer me a radical career change (i.e. into machine learning)

And, a strong stock options grant. A startup job without a strong options grant is more often than not just an economically inferior job.

Conclusion

Since I am fairly happy now, I am not engaging extensively with recruiters unless I:

  • Suddenly need to (i.e. because I’ve been laid off, which I hope never happens, but I have no control over “reduction in force” actions by any employer, current or otherwise)

  • Or really, really want to (i.e. you’ve clearly identified an X-Factor that makes sense for both me and my family)