[BangPypers] [chennaipy 1126] [XPost][Slightly OT] Could you share your experiences about Python Freelance programming, from a programmer's perspective

[Rajeev J Sebastian]

On Wed, Nov 2, 2011 at 11:05 PM, Sidu Ponnappa <lorddaemon at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Do you do your tests in Python, or whatever language the fresher
>> knows? So far, we have not received a single resume mentioning Python.
> Any object oriented language the candidate is comfortable with is fine
> by us. Unit tests are, however, mandatory. TDD is a huge plus.
>
>> Question is, how much to pay?
> Figure out who your competition in the hiring space is (this could be
> very very different from your business competitors). Find out how much
> they pay. Then do your best to pay more. For us, this means companies
> like ThoughtWorks, Amazon and co. We try to pay salaries that are
> close to these firms (though matching Amazon is still slightly beyond
> us for now).
>
>> From the freshers point of view though, their friends making insane
>> salaries at MNCs always make them dissatisfied. Any recommendations?
> Yes - pay more than the MNCs or at least get close and compensate for
> the delta with a brilliant work environment. Unfortunately, I have no
> better answer than this. Folks typically evaluate a prospective
> employer on salary, work environment (including how awesome
> prospective colleagues are, how much they can learn, and how
> transparent and honest the organisations is) and the work itself.
>
> There is no magic formula that allows you to hire better people while
> paying significantly less than your competitors, but you can usually
> swing it by being somewhere close on salary and doing better than them
> on the last two parameters. Honestly, a small company that can't
> trounce an MNC on work environment is doing something seriously wrong.

We have a rather good work environment. But trying to convince
freshers of this is close to impossible, as they have inflated ideas
about what the IT industry is really like.

>
>> There is also the tug of "Bangalore".
> Identify why this is the case and look to plug the gaps. If the
> attractiveness lies in the lifestyle, then you may wish to open up a
> branch in Bangalore. I should warn you though that on the hiring
> front, things are no better here :)

Thanks Sidu. All of this is really good advice.

Regards
Rajeev J Sebastian