Comment by Aurornis

Comment by Aurornis 12 days ago

22 replies

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> The problem is when the job (or work-trial in our case) actually starts, it's just excuses upon excuses as to why he's missing a meeting, or why the PR was pushed late. The excuses become more ridiculous and unbelievable, up until it's obvious he's just lying.

I worked with an overemployed person (not Soham). It was exactly like this.

Started out great. They could do good work when they knew they were in focus. Then they started pushing deliverables out farther and farther until it was obvious they weren't trying. Meetings were always getting rescheduled with an array of excuses. Lots of sad stories about family members having tragedies over and over again.

It wears everyone down. Team mates figure it out first. Management loses patience.

Worst part is that one person exhausts the entire department's trust. Remote work gets scrutinized more. Remote employees are tracked more closely. It does a lot of damage to remote work.

> Other people in this thread are incorrect, it's not a dev. shop. I worked with Soham in-person for 2 days during the work-trial process, he's good.

I doubt it's a dev shop because the dev shops use rotating stand-ins to collect the paychecks, not the same identity at every job. This guy wanted paychecks sent directly to him.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to hire other devs to outsource some of his workload while he remained the interaction point with the company.

> He left half of each day with some excuse about meeting a lawyer.

Wild to be cutting work trial days in half to do other jobs. Although I think he was also testing companies to see who was lenient enough to let him get away with all of this.

gyomu 11 days ago

> However, I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to hire other devs to outsource some of his workload while he remained the interaction point with the company.

What a silly waste of his time and reputation (in addition to other people's).

If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?

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  • tomp 10 days ago

    > If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?

    Much much easier said than done.

    99% of companies that want to hire employees won't hire a contractor/consultant instead for that job.

    How do I know? 15 years experience, top candidate in many interviews, great salary / employment. Yet every time I've tried to get a consulting arrangement set up it's been extremely hard and ultimately unprofitable (i.e. pays significantly less than full-time job, on average).

    Reply View 14 replies
    • jokethrowaway 10 days ago

      I think this is a US specific thing.

      I work as a contractors with all my clients (who know of each others) and they all pay significantly more per hour compared to an employee. As an employee I could expect to make 1/4 of what I actually make.

      The only exception in this arrangement was when I worked with an US company, they wanted to hire me as an employee and paid 1k per month to some company in my country just to hire me. An insane waste of money, not to mention taxes on my side.

      Reply View 5 replies
      • altairprime 10 days ago

        Yes: US salary costs include having to pay healthcare fees (it’s not universal here), so work contracted prices are generally discounted by that amount relative to salaries.

        Reply View 0 replies
      • mh- 10 days ago

        US tech salaries are so much higher [at tech companies] that it closes much of the gap on how much more you could earn in a consulting arrangement.

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      • seattle_spring 9 days ago

        In the US it's not uncommon to have a $200k base. Not even taking into account stock compensation and benefits, you'd need to command about $400/hr contracting to fit your 4x figure. Does that sound comparable to your setup?

        Reply View 2 replies
    • aleph_minus_one 10 days ago

      > How do I know? 15 years experience, top candidate in many interviews, great salary / employment. Yet every time I've tried to get a consulting arrangement set up it's been extremely hard and ultimately unprofitable (i.e. pays significantly less than full-time job, on average).

      Sounds like a legit negotiation strategy:

      - You prefer a consulting arrangement over being hired.

      - The company prefers to pay less for the job.

      So both involved sides get a part of the pie that is negotiated about, and has to compromise on another aspect.

      Reply View 7 replies
      • saulpw 10 days ago

        You say this like you can just talk with the VP and CFO and have a nuts and bolts conversation about big systems things as an pre-hire IC. You can't negotiate with even medium-sized companies at that level. They have a fixed idea of what the 'role' looks like, and almost always it's full-time, long-term. You can negotiate maybe 10-25% salary increase, but that's it. Good luck even getting more PTO (the "standard" amount is always "generous" and if you got more it would complicate "team dynamics").

        Reply View 4 replies
      • krageon 9 days ago

        Companies don't want contractors because they're perceived as (and often are) unreliable. Lower pay won't fix that, and a good hiring manager won't let someone weasel their way through that with this kind of prestidigitation.

        Reply View 1 reply
        • ashoeafoot 6 days ago

          Contractors like CEOs send clear signals they refuse self exploitation and are willing to exploit others .

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  • Aurornis 11 days ago

    > If he's that competent, he could hire/mentor juniors and just use his skills to run a contracting business and keep making big bucks while not having to lie all the time?

    I've worked with several small contracting businesses, including some that came highly recommended.

    They were all very inefficient relative to having someone in-house. They also came with the problem that institutional knowledge was non-existent because they had a rotating crew of people working for you.

    Hiring someone in-house is more efficient and better for building institutional knowledge. The companies he applied for specifically did not want to contract the work out to a body shop.

    Reply View 3 replies
    • jokethrowaway 10 days ago

      That's what happens when you hire bad contractors. There are so many bad contractors and selection bar for contractors is much lower compared to employees.

      If you keep your standards high when hiring contractors you'll get the same level of quality you have with employees. Contractor agencies are also pretty happy to have long lasting clients (I have been with my current clients respectively for: 4 years, 3 years, 1 years and 1 month).

      Reply View 0 replies
    • dzhiurgis 11 days ago

      You just described why consulting makes big bucks

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    • aleph_minus_one 10 days ago

      > Hiring someone in-house is more efficient and better for building institutional knowledge.

      Then make it part of the contracting deal that the contractors have to give the in-house people sufficient training about the code/project that they worked on.

      Reply View 0 replies
  • burnt-resistor 9 days ago

    Or work at Meta or Microsoft and make $600k-950k and become a sr production engineer or principal engineer quickly.

    Being disloyal and breaking trust and reputation for temporary gain is crazy.

    Reply View 1 reply
    • nemothekid 9 days ago

      >Or work at Meta or Microsoft and make $600k-950k

      Getting that kind of pay at Meta at least, is less skill and more politics. If he had the soft skills to get that job he would be probably doing that.

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