Reply to: Where to source top talent?

[Fraidycat]

In situations like these, bob's your uncle. Top talent on the cheap.

90% of the market is cheap these days. Contract rates aren't what they used to be.

[baen]

In situations like these, bob's your uncle. Top talent on the cheap.

[zonkkk]

I don’t think he’s looking for real, he’s not replied to me

He did say TOP talent!

[GitMaster69]

I don’t think he’s looking for real, he’s not replied to me

[perplexed]

"Competitive rates".

Well, if they are so competitive, give them then. "US rates? Who gaf about US rates...

"Awards for culture..."

Well, maybe people see through the bs, style over substance?

"Rockstar talent?"

Rockstar talent have their pick of gigs... something you don't seem to understand. Maybe you're just not attractive to top talent?

[NotAllThere]

Re the term Rock Star. Unless your package includes the industry's equivalent of a private jet, maybe avoid saying rock star.

Nicely put. It reminds me of the kinds of BS Dominic Cummings would use.

[CalmEddie]

I am trying to fill 18 engineering roles on my team. We are US based (with a LDN office) and are willing to pay US rates which is incredibly competitive in today's market. We have a number of recruiters working on the roles but are not really seeing many good candidates.

The company is a great company to work for and has won lots of awards for culture and WLB but we can't seem to attract great engineers. Does anyone have any advice on how to attract rockstar talent?

Maybe consider changing your adjectives.

I'm afraid that "Competitive" is bull. Even conceptually it's wrong. Whether it's a race or whatever, the thing about any competition in most people's minds is that the leader is just marginally better than others. Rock stars are not interested in being marginally ahead.

Stating the rate is good. Although I'm not all about the money, any role I've ever enquired about where the rate / salary is not stated in the advert, when I get through to whoever, it's clear they are desperate and needy. And the rate has never been what I would have called "competitive". Or at least it's not competitive for me, it's competitive for them. After 20 years of contracting it has not even once turned out to be productive following any advert which doesn't state the rate.

Agencies will often defend this with the argument that they get 1000s of time-wasters. But they have no way of measuring the top 5% who don't apply, so they think that's effective. My view is that agencies get paid to do that sort of handling and if the agency is lazy then the client isn't very discerning. Again more reasons not to apply.

Re the term Rock Star. Unless your package includes the industry's equivalent of a private jet, maybe avoid saying rock star.

Whenever I need to put a team together with top specialists, we just advertise for the top end rate, and put wording in the job spec which makes it easy for the agents to weed out the chancers.

[Fraidycat]

They probably refused because they didn't have the resource you were asking for. I just don't understand how they can continually deliver crap day in, day out yet still bag the big contracts. Someone somewhere must be getting a huge stack of kickbacks cos the tulip just doesn't stick.

Im my experience companies outsource when the in house team is below average or even just average.

Management has lost faith in the in house team and so looks externally and then falls for the sales pitch.

Why pay locals around 100K each for a poor project delivery when you can pay offshore bods 20K each for the same poor standard

But if you have a proven talented in house team then it makes no sense trying to do things on the cheap with a higher risk of failure.

[ladymuck]

All the best "talent" (god I hate that word) I've worked with was UK or Eastern Europe.
Never any Indians. I don't understand why. I'm sure there are plenty of very good Indian IT people, but they don't seem to work for any of the outsourcers I come across (TCS & WiPro mainly).

I did a project where we needed one day of SAP consultancy from Crap Gemini. They provided a bob for £150. I, and the customer said, "no way. We want top talent. This is a £600,000 project and the main cutover is critical and we will happily pay £2k. They refused and told us how good their Indian staff are."
Long story short. He fooked it up.

They probably refused because they didn't have the resource you were asking for. I just don't understand how they can continually deliver crap day in, day out yet still bag the big contracts. Someone somewhere must be getting a huge stack of kickbacks cos the tulip just doesn't stick.

[Lance]

London and the UK is also the obvious place to expand your business to - no awkward language difficulties.

But London isn't cheap - if you were hunting the cheapest place you would be heading towards Sofia as GoDaddy and Experian amongst others have done.

Problem is if you want the best skill set you probably do need to head towards the UK / parts of Eastern Europe or India.

Heading to India though will give you an entirely different set of issues (you need people on the ground as well).

All the best "talent" (god I hate that word) I've worked with was UK or Eastern Europe.
Never any Indians. I don't understand why. I'm sure there are plenty of very good Indian IT people, but they don't seem to work for any of the outsourcers I come across (TCS & WiPro mainly).

I did a project where we needed one day of SAP consultancy from Crap Gemini. They provided a bob for £150. I, and the customer said, "no way. We want top talent. This is a £600,000 project and the main cutover is critical and we will happily pay £2k. They refused and told us how good their Indian staff are."
Long story short. He fooked it up.

[eek]

Although sometimes i think they opened the London office because Senior management fancied flying over to London a few times per year.

London and the UK is also the obvious place to expand your business to - no awkward language difficulties.

But London isn't cheap - if you were hunting the cheapest place you would be heading towards Sofia as GoDaddy and Experian amongst others have done.

Problem is if you want the best skill set you probably do need to head towards the UK / parts of Eastern Europe or India.

Heading to India though will give you an entirely different set of issues (you need people on the ground as well).

[Fraidycat]

I got cold-called by a US company opening in London recently, it sounded good until it got to the money. I do think American business have a naive view of the London market and living costs.

I actually work for a midsized US company with a London office. They also opened the office to hire the best talent in London.

At current exchange rate I cost them around them around $950 a day USD including the agent fee.

That is a relatively low rate for the US, but i think thats the whole point of setting up an offshore office.

If I were to cost them the same as a US contractor, say $1200 a day (and much higher in Silicon valley), they could just hire talent locally in the US instead, why bother will the hassle of setting up and maintaining a London office with all the overheads.

Permies here are well paid though, around 90th percentile. Contractors only 50th percentile.

When they setup offices here, they lucked out, they hired a development manager from a European tech firm (one that was in decline because Google ate their lunch).

The manager then bought in his old team of Architects and Software Engineers as the core team for the London office. A bunch of really talented guys who work well together.

I would hate to think how hard building up a team completely from scratch would be. Even more so if the OP has been told to do it fast. The OP needs all the luck he can get.

[ChimpMaster]

Yep those rates are average to below-average, especially if you're talking London. £650/day is reasonable but probably not enough to convince someone to leave another contract midway through for it.

I was a "rock star" in my previous contract and my rate was £1k/day reducing down to £900/day for various reasons. I don't know what the React market is like but £650/day won't buy you the best of the talent pool unless times are desperate.

[TwoWolves]

It is 5 years since I last contracted so I may be out of date with what market rates are.

The ranges we are offering are:

Engineer (2-4 years experience) - 300-330 pd
Senior Engineer (4-7 years exp) - 450 - 550 pd
Lead/Staff Engineer - (7+ years exp) 550 - 650 pd

I thought they were pretty competitive.

These are rates I was seeing in London (Finance) in around 2000, you haven't got a clue.

I got cold-called by a US company opening in London recently, it sounded good until it got to the money. I do think American business have a naive view of the London market and living costs.

About to start a London gig, from my study in Gloucestershire.

[JohnM]

I think it was Bill Gates who said, “ a great writer of software code is worth 10,000 times the price of an average software writer.”

Steve Jobs was a little less hyperbolic when he said a top software developer is "50 maybe even a 100 times" better than an ordinary developer.

My own claim of being worth just £2000 a day (about 4 times average) is pretty humble in comparison, i'm actually worth way more than that.

I bet in reality you are earning £220 a day on an NHS contract