Those are pretty far down on the likelihood scale, though we have had instances of that, especially near river dikes in the last couple of years. We do not have a lot of dams here.
The more likely cause for such an alarm is chemical pollution from either an accidental release or a fire. Their old use was for air raids but those are even more unlikely (at the moment, of course this can change).
Perhaps msluyter was thinking of big companies that smaller ones can't match on spending power.
Either way - if you trained/grown someone to become much more valuable for other companies and still can't create enough value working for you... Then you have a different problem.
This the technically true, but also a very tough starting position.
If my six person startup has issues squeezing as much value out of my Dev than FANG companies with all their support structure and research into this, this is only to be expected, imo.
So yeah, it's a problem, one on the list of many problems most companies have though, so it's oversimplified to simply say:"Let's just pay for expensive training and hope they stay."
Yes, you can foster a culture, build a sense of loyalty etc.
but at some point in time even the most loyal employee feels underpaid if he's paid below market because the company can't afford someone at the stage they've reached by working there. I've seen this play out too often to ignore the counter argument.
The incentives of the company and the worker often simply don't align when it comes to career growth.
Let’s imagine that I work a job for three years, and a company spends $30,000 training me over that time period, when I then leave because that training helped me reach a better career position.
If they hadn’t paid for that benefit, I would have left after only two years — because the need to transfer for career advancement would happen sooner. This would save them $20,000-30,000 depending on how you count.
So what’s the net difference?
In scenario 1, they received a ROI of 1 year of improved labor, and 1 year of doubly improved labor. Additionally, the fixed costs of hiring are amortized over three years instead of two, and so decrease by 33%.
So for $30,000 they decreased my hiring costs by 33% and received two years of increased quality labor — say 5-10% productivity. Hiring an engineer is 25-50% of their yearly salary, so they’re saving 8-15% of my salary over three years. The productivity of an engineer is going to be like twice their salary, just to pay overhead and profit. So we’re looking at a boost of 10-20% my salary in their revenues.
So they’re looking at ~15-25% of my salary as the return for spending $10k/year. Naively, it seems like that pays off in many cases: it just requires you operate in a trust based manner.
> If they hadn’t paid for that benefit, I would have left after only two years — because the need to transfer for career advancement would happen sooner.
That depends on whether employees will switch just to get training, and not just for a bigger salary. If not, then training you will just increase your market value, making you more likely to switch.
What infrastructure do you have in mind? I guess if you employ people from everywhere, there's a bunch of overhead for handling international work contracts, payment etc.
All kinds. From your mentioned international work contracts and payments over structuring the work/code so that in can easier be distributed worldwide,using standardized hardware and software configurations so that adminstration/updating can be done automatically etc.
Exactly - though speed keeping is nice for long road-trips simply not to get foot cramps.
Anyway, I'm yet to see a video of Tesla doing emergency breaks because of highway pileup where it's not only a couple of seconds after human driver could see a row of red breaking lights in front.
In practice it just doesn't happen to the level that makes changing jobs worth it.
When it comes to base salary - sure you might get salary that's bigger than existing employees in same role. And then on first annual cycle they'll be in the same ballpark as you through combination of salary increase and annual bonus. That's because bigger companies usually look at "total compensation".
I guess if you play it right you might "inflate" pending RSUs and ask them to match it.
Though how much can you "inflate" it in the age when employeers too can go to glassdoor and check what that other company usually gives?
Based on author's name it seems we came from the same country.
I used "came" and not "come" since it just feels more appropriate considering it's two different countries countries now.
I don't think I've ever heard about "split infinitive" before.
Perhaps I did - and it's just that the "school way" of learning foreign languages always confused me.
My first foreign language was German and at this point I basically can't have a conversation using it - at best I can kind of understand what someone is saying.
Though to be fair living in The Netherlands Dutch kind of highjacked it.
The way I learned English was simply pure interest. Watching Hollywood and British movies and TV series, reading computer/programming books and other "stuff on the Internet".
Teachers were equally confused by the fact I have had problems with recognizing/naming different tenses and grammar forms - and still getting it (mostly) right just by "gut feeling".
And actually I've been able to "think in English" for a long time. So long that these days I occasionally have trouble coming up with idiomatic way to say something in my native/mother tongue (Serbian).
I wish I had it 5-6 years back when I stepped up as TL (it wasn't written yet).
Actually you might as well get your team members to read it too. Unlike the title might make you think - book covers both management and tech (individual contributor) paths.
Reading through your comments/replies (e.g.: "knack for listening to customer", "generalist", "can setup machines"...etc) make me think I'll be in your shoes once I reach your age... Hence I have to ask - any advice you would give to younger self?
Should I focus on having some/one/few "unique selling propositions" - something I can say I'm expert in? And what would those be?
Anyway back to trying to give you (and other younger folks) some answers.
I've been interviewing candidates for a while. From technical phone interviews, over F2F, and now mostly so called Fit interviews.
And first time I interviewed someone with CS PhD that they have since around the time I was born - I was happy to be paired with another older colleague.
Not that I was scared/intimidated or felt inadequate. I was really worried about candidate getting impression we're a bunch of "teenagers" ;)
So actually on that point I've got nothing for anonOver60 - other than saying to others that instead of being intimidated, you should just be yourself and there is nothing to worry about.
If the candidate is good - being more experienced they'll know how to handle situation in a way that won't make you feel like 2nd class compared to them.
I second the idea of different/customized CV for different roles/positions. In fact each place/position you apply for should be it's own tuned/customized veraion of generic CV..
The advice I've given to younger generalists like me is to force yourself to become an expert on something. That's what people are used to seeing when they are hiring. Pick something long-lasting like databases or search or machine learning.
A lot of cities in the Netherlands are easy to reach by public transport. Car is also fine.
Pay is of course lower than in the Bay area.
Culture wise it's sometimes hard to make friends with the Dutch. It depends on how you spend your spare time. Playing a sport, going to parties, going to group lessons in a gym, etc. is essential to make Dutch friends later in life.
> A lot of cities in the Netherlands are easy to reach by public transport.
Easy to reach and very close to each other.
In particular, the Schiphol airport also has a major train station; it's very close to Amsterdam and Haarlem, but suitable for most of western Netherlands.
I guess depends on the height of your house - though in quite a few places even rooftop might be below or close to sea level.