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U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

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Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#171

Post by dabockster »

chrisbennet wrote: post #59
5trokerac3 wrote: post #6

Insert comment about requiring 5 years of experience in a 3 year old language HR gating really is the worst thing going in American hiring practices today. "Do you have multiple years of experience with 99.9% of the skills listed as requirements, which only a handful of people in the country have? Yes, but I see that on our web form that you had to use to submit your resume you didn't check the box next to 'Degree in…

H.R. Interviewer: "Now Mike, may I call you Mike? Pope Julius II is looking for someone to paint the ceiling of the new Sistine chapel. Frankly, I passed on you initially because you didn't have any ceiling painting experience but I've been told to talk to you anyway. To start, I'd like to ask you to take a test with some Egyptian art history questions..."

I've had a interview like this. It was for a web dev position at a local business, but the interviewer had used a copy/paste algorithms question from Leetcode that reeked of CTCI influence and "Google used it, so it must be good at filtering candidates".

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#172

Post by dabockster »

crispyambulance wrote: post #152
maxxxxx wrote: post #131

Maybe they should allow people a little time to learn the exact skills needed? These days you need to have done already what you will be doing on the new job. No time for learning anything even if it would take only a few days or weeks to get up to speed. How are people actually learning new stuff? If Uber had looked for a CEO that way they would have rejected any candidate that hadn't run a fast growing ride sharing…

> How are people actually learning new stuff? You just do it. On the job. Without asking for permission. This doesn't work for all skills, unfortunately, and some people have jobs where they are project-managed to a degree that every minute needs to be accounted for. But mostly, there's some slack to pick up new skills.

> You just do it. On the job. Without asking for permission.

And hope your boss is forgiving.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#173

Post by Frondo »

altotrees wrote: post #91

Recently had a recruiter call me, interview me over the phone once, in-person once, and via skype once. The job seemed to be a great fit, the pay was there, everything seemed to be lined up. The recruiter called me again to tell me that they were going to be taking the next steps with me very shortly. A week of silence goes by, then another. I email, inquiring about the position. "Oh, we gave that to someone we had b…

That's it in a nutshell.

There are people here who'll do the work, do any work, for the right money.

Employers don't want to pay, though. You've seen those charts about productivity graphed against worker pay, and how for the last 40 years, the productivity has gone up while the worker pay has stayed mostly flat?

That's the problem.

And why pay more, when you can sink a tiny fraction of what you would be spending on labor, to fund a congressional campaign and have the laws changed in your favor?

If there's an answer to this besides unionization and better pro-worker laws, I'd love to hear it.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#174

Post by monksy »

ikeyany wrote: post #121
TuringNYC wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a shortage of workers in as much as there is a shortage of BMW 7-series sedans for under $30k. I looked everywhere at that price. Massive shortage.

We need to bring in cheaper, more desperate H1-BMWs from overseas.

We need to start bringing back more American-BMWs. Those foreign BMWs are taking our cars!

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#175

Post by dabockster »

chrisbennet wrote: post #60

I love what Joel Spolski said about this "problem" in his article "Whaddaya Mean, You Can’t Find Programmers?" back in 2000. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-you-... "Now, let’s review some microeconomics. In a free market, it is almost axiomatic that the market always clears. That’s a technical term that means that when somebody tries to sell something, if they are willing to accept the market…

But, when the price of other labor sources is cheaper (eg H1-B, interns, your nephew, etc), economics dictates that you should use those instead of the local population.

The solution, imo, is to raise the price of the other sources somehow. That way, the local population is cheaper.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#176

Post by bit_logic »

cynicalkane wrote: post #113
altotrees wrote: post #91

Recently had a recruiter call me, interview me over the phone once, in-person once, and via skype once. The job seemed to be a great fit, the pay was there, everything seemed to be lined up. The recruiter called me again to tell me that they were going to be taking the next steps with me very shortly. A week of silence goes by, then another. I email, inquiring about the position. "Oh, we gave that to someone we had b…

I feel like there's two tiers of the software industry: those employable at AmaFaceGoogFlix or a competitor, and everyone else; but the "everyone else" is completely unaware that the first tier exists. It's like if minor league baseball had no idea about major league baseball. You even see it on HN. Someone will come along and talk about how a senior dev at Google can expect $250k a year. You'll get two categories of…

The main reason for this is RSU. The base salary at those companies is not much more than rest of industry. But at senior levels the RSU matches or exceeds the entire base salary.

Other companies have a hard time matching this. Startups try but the common wisdom now is to value those at zero. It seems only public traded companies stock is now considered as having value. And only public SV tech companies give these massive RSU to engineers. Other public companies don't do this. And they are not willing to match the RSU amounts with cash. It's possible this situation will only exist as long as this bull market. When the stock market bear comes, will these tech companies continue the massive RSU? And if not will they replace it with cash?

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#177

Post by RealityNow »

The reality is that you need your job more than your employer needs you. We're all replaceable, and this is further exacerbated by technology and outsourcing. Hiring in the tech industry where senior engineers have to go through multiple rounds of answering data structures & algorithm riddles is probably the epitome of this absurdity.

As long as this is the case, employers are always going to demand the moon, only hire the "best", and offer as little money as possible. If employers really needed you, they wouldn't be holding out for the diamond in the rough willing to work for peanuts.

It boggles my mind that we as a society still cling on to this notion that everybody must rent themselves out to somebody else to survive. Wage slavery should not be the backbone of our economy. Something like a basic income would go a long way towards evening the playing field, so that desperate workers can walk away from this nonsense.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#178

Post by KGIII »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #151
WalterSear wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until the entity with more power starts bending the rules of them game in their favour.

Until the class which does all the work decides to get rid of our parasites.

Historically, that hasn't been very successful. Purges never seem to be a good solution.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#179

Post by monksy »

expertentipp wrote: post #124
molestrangler wrote: post #2

Go and read "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O’Neil. This has an excellent chapter of the use of ATS software the majority of recruiters use these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applicant_tracking_system

Resume optimization to get the foot in the door, take home assignments, automatic platforms verifying programming skills, algorithm and data structure teasing. This is getting inpenetrable. I wonder how many of those smartasses inventing another question or an assignment would be able to get a job again.

I would argue that the reliance on technology have made people worse off and enables them to do the worst/laziest behavior.

The ATS are that bad because people spam their resume out. It's basically a spam filter. People skills matter. Most people don't want to do the work to get to know other people.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#180

Post by ikeyany »

damnfine wrote: post #144
ikeyany wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The industry chases away all the talented people with soft skills by telling them those skills aren't "merit-based".

And vice versa, chases out many with the hard skills, because they are socially lacking. They want some weird in between that doesnt seem to exist in nature.

That's why it's essential to have a well-rounded education, even if you're a technical wizard.
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