[toddan]

I dont get it. Why do they not invest in hiring less experienced developers and make them the best employees.

It may cost more in the short run, but if you invest early in a developer with little to no experience you get the opportunity to shape that developer into your tech stack and company.

[yummyfajitas]

Some people do that. A friend of mine took such a job - her first developer job ever. I told her to take the job, learn from the training and earn 2x-3x her previous salary as a secretary. Then I told her that a year from now she should start looking for an employer who will pay market rate and won't spy on her reddit account.

If you do invest in less experienced devs, make sure you can recognize the ones that are too naive to realize when their value has gone up. Maybe also use psychological tricks to give them impostor syndrome.

[chralieboy]

And that's why companies don't provide a lot of training. Turnover is incredibly high in SV. Most people stay at jobs for 2 years, so if it takes a year to get them to the equivalent level you're making a large investment for little return.

To answer the question of "why not just pay them more to keep them?", it isn't always that simple. Two years is a long time in startup land, meaning the equity component offered by a much smaller company can be really compelling and unreasonable for the parent company to match.

It may make sense for the employee to take that job, but it also therefore makes sense for the employer to not train them if they think they're going to leave.

[anbotero]

To be honest, yeah, you stated EXACTLY one of the reasons they would never want to invest in training you: because the first thing you are thinking when you join what seems to be a nice company is leaving.

Of course they can simply make a calculation on how much time is required to get that training costs out of you, and I believe companies which offer the real absurd perks already have so much money that they just need to flush it out and maybe save taxes on the way of people leaving.

[artmageddon]

> because the first thing you are thinking when you join what seems to be a nice company is leaving.

Of course it's a risk, but there are two things to consider in counterpoint:

1). If the employee gets adequate training and the chance to contribute to his/her work with said training, that may improve their happiness and desire to stay. Both parties win. They win, you lose.

2). Suppose the exact scenario above plays out, you spend money on training, and they leave sometime thereafter.

3). What if you don't train the employee, but that employee stays? Everyone loses.

Obviously, scenario 2 is the one you're most worried about, but imo if the environment is structured in such a way that that employee is looking for ways to leave at some unspecified point, there are probably bigger problems with the environment that need to be addressed.

[anbotero]

All those things can and probably will happen at some point. It doesn’t take away that no matter how “good” the company seems to be, the first advice we are selling to fresh soon-to-be-employees is to look for jobs as soon as they get into one. We are selling the idea that we don’t even have the will to keep being where you are comfortable, and simply negotiate better terms when something starts to rub off. Also, if they leave as soon as possible, like in #2, the company would have still lost some money.

To simplify, because everyone’s a Hipster now (yeah, pun intended), since now it’s trending to move every X years from job to job, a lot of neonates do not even consider simply renegotiating extending or improving the terms of their current comfort zone.

[artmageddon]

> because everyone’s a Hipster now (yeah, pun intended), since now it’s trending to move every X years from job to job, a lot of neonates do not even consider simply renegotiating extending or improving the terms of their current comfort zone.

My experience has been with larger companies of the non-startup variety, so I think we're looking at this from two different perspectives. Anyway, it seems like it's been this way for awhile given the way the industry works, I wouldn't necessarily say it's trending. I do agree that people should leave for a good reason(better pay, opportunity, whatever), rather than just passing some specific time frame. As for renegotiating though, in my experience, it's been difficult if not impossible to try to negotiate the terms of one's current comfort zone, as you put it. At my last job, I couldn't even be allowed to adjust the window blind covers due to mid-day sun blinding me, let alone ask for a raise, because the CEO thought that having the blinds at different heights looked ugly.

[anbotero]

I’ve seen or had such experience in both kinds of companies. It’s happened in all of them, although in a high percentage on the startup-kind, but remember this “startup” mentality also invades the employees minds, not just the company’s. Most of all if one of the new employees has had the “pleasure” of working on a project with a lot of perks that maybe their colleagues didn’t or stopped considering given the big company policies, and boasts of them; quickly everybody starts getting out their stable comfort zones and demand all these awesome perks. At least those with the will to do so.

As you said, if you couldn’t adjust the window blind covers so you can work better (not having to succumb to squinting anymore), there is no longer the adequate comfort zone you’d wish you had, and a good enough reason (believe it or not) to start looking at other options. It’s happened to me on a job, where my colleagues would turn off the air conditioning belonging to our whole isle because 22ºC was too cold, but 34ºC was awesome? Heck that! Complained to Management after my (I swear I was polite) suggestions to simply bring jackets were seen as a joke. I do not joke on working environment conditions. I ended up working at home with most benefits (AC, Internet, etc.) being paid by the company. From time to time I let out one or two “troll” comments to those having to work at the office, but I stopped since I realized I don’t really care about obtuse people feeling offended.

If nothing had happened, I would have definitely started looking at other options, or who knows, maybe I received an option offer, like I eventually did.

Risks are everywhere, you just need to be ready to stand up to them and assume them with responsibility and tenacity.

[yummyfajitas]

To prevent (3), you simply don't hire untrained employees. You let the employees handle their own training and merely pay them their true (improved) value. I.e., the owner of the human capital is also the one to invest in it.

Also, the only employee who isn't looking at their outside options is a foolish one. Companies go out of business, they let their wages get out of sync with the market, employees become redundant, etc. I'm hoping to stay where I'm at for quite a while, but such things are hardly guaranteed.

[anbotero]

By all means. I’m all for options. I hate it when they leave their jobs simply because they have been X amount of time there. Sometimes it isn’t because there are no challenges, or the salary is bad; no, it’s simply because now it’s trending to just leave your comfort zone every 2, 3 years tops.

Every employee, every entrepreneur should always be on the lookout of better options, either improvements to their current states, or through an external source (another project).

The risk will always be there for your return of investment to just come back with... less than what you hoped for. No matter what, and much more with people being motivated by “trending”.

[pjc50]

Conventional answers to that question:

- hard to select based on "potential", especially in a nondiscriminatory way

- devs are hard to teach; risk it may not work out, which is additional risk startups do not want

- process is time- and energy-consuming at the best of times; detracts from growing the product and business

- if you train people, they will expect to be paid more

All three of these are somewhat true. Really it's the giant employers (Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, IBM, Oracle) that should be training graduates, rather than startups with tiny funding. But employees don't appear on the balance sheet as an asset, just a liability.

[brlewis]

I don't know which part of the article you're referring to, but in general it's best to have a variety of experience levels together, and that's how you help less experienced developers grow. Hiring only one or the other isn't a good option.