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The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

techcrunch.com

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Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#31

Post by birken »

The author is making a lot of statements without any evidence. For example:

> Unsurprisingly, this has spawned an arms race where companies like Facebook and Google keep swapping engineers like they’re pawns in chess. It’s also closed the doors for talented people who need an opportunity to develop and demonstrate their skills.

The "closed the doors" point links to the anti-poaching agreement that stopped 5 years ago and Facebook wasn't even involved in.

My experience at Google was also exactly the opposite of what he is saying. I was hired as a new-grad who knew very little and was extensively trained via my more experienced coworkers and a bunch of classes that Google has explicitly set up to train new engineers.

Not to say that Google doesn't have its faults, but to argue that "even the large prestigious tech companies don't train their employees" is just not correct.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#32

Post by spyspy »

aianus wrote: post #14
trishume wrote: post #8

> Few businesses give interns real coding assignments or support them adequately. Many can’t or won’t pay interns, which erects a privilege barrier by excluding anyone who doesn’t have savings to weather working for nothing for a few months. I'm a university student in a co-op CS program and most of my classmates, many with no previous programming experience, found good jobs that pay well where they get real experien…

Can confirm, I don't know a single person who studied CS at Waterloo and graduated with $1 of debt. Most had cars and hefty savings accounts along with job offers by senior year.

The cost to attend college in Canada is nothing compared to the US.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#33

Post by cortesoft »

_lex wrote: post #19

There are strong economic disincentives to training employees in transferable skills: the second you do, their market value increases, which means that if you don't pay them more, they will be recruited by other companies willing to do so. So you wind up paying for both their education and an increased salary because you educated them. It's cheaper to just hire someone who's already educated. For example, consider th…

This seems so obvious, I can't believe others aren't seeing this. It is a clear collective action problem - the free loader (the company who doesn't train and just hires the trained worker away from the other company) will always have the advantage.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#34

Post by kenko »

kenko wrote: post #21
brianlweiner wrote: post #3

Definitely tech companies don't do enough to recruit and train novice programmers. Cue the "Junior level" position with a 3 year experience requirement. That said, certainly the group that face the most racial inequalities and lack of institutional privilege in the American job market are humans who had the unfortunate luck of being born outside her borders.

The phasing out of on-the-job training is an atrocity, IMO, especially since what tends to replace it is training at a university, which ought (imo) be a place where people can get some education that isn't oriented primarily toward making them better workers. It's especially ironic since often the university is a public institution, and the tech world (and the business world generally) tends to be so down on the pub…

Ha and I see that pinboard just tweeted sth relevant: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/665235613373718528 "Recurring theme this morning is Minimum Viable Education, how to train future tech professionals without the baggage of reading English lit"

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#35

Post by quaffapint »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #13

I have said it a million times before and I will say it as long as necessary to fix our employment-education conundrum: you do not learn how to work by sitting in class, you learn to work by going to work. We need publicly subsidized apprenticeships to replace the assumed role of the outrageously expensive 4 year college degree as the primary means of acquiring skills for the modern labor force. There is a place for…

The whole idea of you need to be well-rounded and take those $$ general ed courses is such a money grab. You want people to be able to speak, so let them take speech courses.

I'm all for apprenticeships - you learn by doing - but will there be enough companies willing to participate?

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#36

Post by dboreham »

wellpast wrote: post #20

I disagree with this article's thesis, that the industry is incorrectly framing the talent problem. Whether people are talent or have talent is philosophical; the truth of the matter is that it is really hard to find software practitioners that can come in and do the job and do it well. The problem, IMO, is that we don't have a good and clear understanding of what is the professional skill set. Even companies like Go…

Agree. If you compare to for example lawyers and doctors there is a highly structured, consistent (even consistent across different countries and cultures) route to achieving "made man" status (apologies for using a sexually biased term, but I couldn't think of a better one). This consistent structure, beyond university, is what's missing. This of course is hardly surprising in a field that is roughly 100X less mature.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#37

Post by theklub »

mbesto wrote: post #24

The tech talent shortage is a lie when you don't know what tech talent actually looks like. It also doesn't exist nearly as strong as it does in SV. Remote is a solution, but not everyone knows how to run a company with remote employees. > And therein lies the problem: The real shortage isn’t of talented people; it’s of employers (and, by implication, society) who are willing or able to nurture talented people. When…

Do you know how long it takes to outsource workers? You might as well just train new one's in house. Most of the time these companies just want cheaper employees.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#38

Post by NoCulturalFit »

makesnosense wrote: post #29

I cringe every time I hear someone say it's hard to find talent. I've been a software engineer for over 12 years now and I know I'm good at it. My problem is that I truly suck at interviewing. I have no social issues whatsoever, I'm just a normal guy outside the interview room, but when I do get in there - I'm at my absolute worse. I've been out of work for going on 8 months now and I just don't get it. I've tried ma…

I know how you feel man and I wish I could help you. Been talking with a former colleague of mine who blows most devs out of the water to apply to some jobs where he would be an amazing technical fit but it's hard to convince him to take the "humiliation".

I'm sorta the same..

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#39

Post by vukmir »

Of course it is a lie.

There's a shortage of talent willing to work 80 hours a week and get paid for 20. There's a shortage of talent with 5 years of experience in technology that is 3 years old. There's a shortage of talent willing to jump through an absurd number of hoops in order to work for you.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#40

Post by lukeschlather »

_lex wrote: post #19

There are strong economic disincentives to training employees in transferable skills: the second you do, their market value increases, which means that if you don't pay them more, they will be recruited by other companies willing to do so. So you wind up paying for both their education and an increased salary because you educated them. It's cheaper to just hire someone who's already educated. For example, consider th…

I don't contest your math, but I think this suggests the experienced employee is under-priced.
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