Senior PHP Developer

Ancalagon said:
I've never worked in South Africa for less than 21 days of leave and I never will. Even as a relatively junior developer with 3 years of experience, I had 21 days of leave. Last company I worked at offered me 18, I negotiated 21.

I personally wouldn't get too hung up on free lunches. I think decent coffee and a clean working environment with good equipment (desks, chairs, computers) are more important. Get the basics right before you start thinking about free lunches in other words.

Obviously this has a little less relevance now due to COVID.

Also, your client wants senior PHP skills but doesn't want to pay senior money. This is made even worse by the fact that PHP is on its way out, which means that only senior (and expensive) people will have decent PHP knowledge, or dabblers. Your client doesn't want dabblers, which leaves the expensive people which they don't want to hire.

I'd suggest to your client that they hire a promising junior and teach them PHP rather than pay for a senior. When I was hired in my current role, I didn't know the language or technology environment that they used. I've still done pretty well.
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Love the feedback thank you.
 
abzo said:
Lol love the way the devs are artificially inflating the salaries. Expect some guy from Boston College to show up with 5 years experience demanding R65k pm
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A proper senior should be earning at least that, note proper, not some guy who has been a dev for just 5+ years.

senior != time served
 
Ryan Innes said:
Lastly yes the middle to top end of the Dev community is very tight with not much room to move when looking for someone, I don't like phoning and harassing people or spamming via LinkedIn or email. I'd rather grow my network passively and if a role that I share interests you hopefully there will be a quick DM from the interested Dev to get the ball rolling.
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As a dev on the top end of the spectrum, one point is that I have never ever applied for a job or DMed a recruiter. The vast majority of jobs advertised are too generic, and too poorly compensated to be of interest to me. I just don't read them at all (the only reason I ended up reading this one, was because there were already several replies to it, so I was curious as to the nature of the discussion).

I don't like getting poorly researched cold calls/spam either - it's quick to dismiss them. The moment I see it is boiler plate I skip it. "We are trying to fill a number of roles...", "Competitive salary...", "Would like to discuss some opportunities...", etc.

Generally, the jobs that I have taken or proceeded to telephone conversation or interview with have come from someone directly contacting me, specifically, while having a good idea of what my skill set and compensation are by virtue of the companies I've worked at, tenure, title, length of employment, indirect references, LinkedIn profile, qualifications, locale, etc.

I've had conversations with recruiters who almost knew what I had for breakfast (well, which team I worked in, who I worked for, who I worked with, and what I had done in the company). This was actually, perhaps a little too creepy, but it certainly did tell me that if they were contacting me, it wasn't because they were shotgunning it. I've even had recruiters put the proposed salary range in the subject line, which funnily enough was somehow both crass and refreshing at the same time.
 
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cguy said:
Generally, the jobs that I have taken or proceeded to telephone conversation or interview with have come from someone directly contacting me, specifically, while having a good idea of what my skill set and compensation are by virtue of the companies I've worked at, tenure, title, length of employment, indirect references, LinkedIn profile, qualifications, locale, etc.

I've had conversations with recruiters who almost knew what I had for breakfast (well, which team I worked in, who I worked for, who I worked with, and what I had done in the company). This was actually, perhaps a little too creepy, but it certainly did tell me that if they were contacting me, it wasn't because they were shotgunning it. I've even had recruiters put the proposed salary range in the subject line, which funnily enough was somehow both crass and refreshing at the same time.
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Guess I better get my big girl panties on and start adopting the direct approach instead of the passive one I've adopted in fear of being tarred and feathered for making unwanted contact.

Thank you to everyone again for the constructive feedback given.
 
My 2c as a mid (hopefully near-senior) PHP dev - The role is called senior but "working knowledge" of XYZ things makes it sound like a very mid role. If you're rebuilding an entire backend and need a senior dev that can do some architecture and has worked with different sorts of systems.

In other words, your candidates applying may be of lower quality because the job sounds easier than it actually might be.

Salary wise - It's fine. Average for a mid-range PHP dev is ~R40k pm according to the Offerzen surveys. Past that 50-65 range it's about team leads or wearing more hats than just backend developer (architecture, devops, etc) and being both a subject matter expert and actually having a product-minded head on your shoulders.

lol @ the other post "php is on the way out" when Laravel is eating the MVC world and every year PHP gets more and more great features.
 
NGinCreator said:
My 2c as a mid (hopefully near-senior) PHP dev - The role is called senior but "working knowledge" of XYZ things makes it sound like a very mid role. If you're rebuilding an entire backend and need a senior dev that can do some architecture and has worked with different sorts of systems.

In other words, your candidates applying may be of lower quality because the job sounds easier than it actually might be.

Salary wise - It's fine. Average for a mid-range PHP dev is ~R40k pm according to the Offerzen surveys. Past that 50-65 range it's about team leads or wearing more hats than just backend developer (architecture, devops, etc) and being both a subject matter expert and actually having a product-minded head on your shoulders.

lol @ the other post "php is on the way out" when Laravel is eating the MVC world and every year PHP gets more and more great features.
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Thanks for the 2c, every bit helps.
 
Heres the other argument that crops up from time to time :

If you posted the job at R3m a year , how many good candidates would you get?
How about R2.5m?
How about R1.5m?
How about R1m?
How about R800k?
How about R600k?

At what point does the answer become 0?
 
retromodcoza said:
Heres the other argument that crops up from time to time :

If you posted the job at R3m a year , how many good candidates would you get?
How about R2.5m?
How about R1.5m?
How about R1m?
How about R800k?
How about R600k?

At what point does the answer become 0?
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True
 
adamjones said:
I work for a software/marketing company, great company. I have been here for a year and now am in charge of the development part of the company. We are growing like crazy and I need to hire developers. I had no idea it would be this hard to hire. The area where the company is located is in a part of southern California that is not known for tech and is in the middle of nowhere, I’ve tried posting on indeed, linkedin, twitter, facebook, but so far have gotten no results. I am now trying to hire remote developers but not sure how to go around doing so. Any good sources on remote developers? Overseas or North American Based, I just need good developers.
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How about being more specific, languages, frameworks....
 
adamjones said:
I work for a software/marketing company, great company. I have been here for a year and now am in charge of the development part of the company. We are growing like crazy and I need to hire developers. I had no idea it would be this hard to hire. The area where the company is located is in a part of southern California that is not known for tech and is in the middle of nowhere, I’ve tried posting on indeed, linkedin, twitter, facebook, but so far have gotten no results. I am now trying to hire remote developers but not sure how to go around doing so. Any good sources on remote developers? Overseas or North American Based, I just need good developers.
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Plenty developers here in South Africa, although the timezone might be an issue.
 
adamjones said:
I work for a software/marketing company, great company. I have been here for a year and now am in charge of the development part of the company. We are growing like crazy and I need to hire developers. I had no idea it would be this hard to hire. The area where the company is located is in a part of southern California that is not known for tech and is in the middle of nowhere, I’ve tried posting on indeed, linkedin, twitter, facebook, but so far have gotten no results. I am now trying to hire remote developers but not sure how to go around doing so. Any good sources on remote developers? Overseas or North American Based, I just need good developers.
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What is the JD?
 
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