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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

#191

Post by stephenhuey »

quantumhobbit wrote: post #94
jdavis703 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true in certain cases, but not all. I just offered an unemployed family member (and recent computer science grad) a freelance opportunity worth $100 an hour to build out a simple e-commerce site. They didn't want the work. I think part of the problem is that you can have a lot of "fun" these days for very cheap (video games, YouTube, etc). Maybe it's time for us to reexamine why people don't even want high-pa…

I'm in a pretty small secondary market and was recently advised by someone who knows what he is talking about to never accept less than $200/hr for contract work. That is the going rate around here and accepting less signals that you don't know what you are doing. Perhaps the $100/hr isn't as much as you think it is. More so if you are somewhere expensive like San Francisco or New York.

Care to share which secondary market you're in?

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

#192

Post by WalterSear »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #170
WalterSear wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I always find this an interesting argument; while company foo has more power than a random job seeker, they certainly don't have more power than all the other companies seeking that employee. In order for companies to wield their supposed salary-depressing power there would have to be massive collusion. For an example of how (in)effective that is, look how much salaries increased while Apple Google et al were colludi…

Companies are certainly beholden to the market: one of the ways the power asymmetry is unfolding is in their successful manipulation of H1 visa legislation.

None of this is all-or-nothing. Companies use their power over the individual applicants as a response to the vagaries of the market. However, the basic logic divide and conquer ing means that they always have more power than individuals selling their services to them.

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

#193

Post by dabockster »

tcbawo wrote: post #23
crispyambulance wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Job postings are ridiculous, but one would think employers would gradually learn a lesson when not enough applicants come forward and relax puffed-up requirements. But if anything, job "requirements" in postings have been getting even more absurd and persnickety in the last 10 years or so. Are employers simply not adapting or is there something else more complex going on? I suspect the latter.

I believe many companies want to portray the image that they are successful, growing, hiring. Job listings are cheap. What is the real cost of advertising for many positions and hiring the good people that come along irrespective of the advertisement?

> What is the real cost of advertising for many positions and hiring the good people that come along irrespective of the advertisement?

If by "good people" you mean desperate workers willing to work for peanuts, then the cost is almost nonexistent. And that's the problem. Since real workers don't like to be fished.

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

#195

Post by qaq »

expertentipp wrote: post #116
qaq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

? Total misinformation. As applicable to Ukraine salaries are US salary - US tax -(20-30)% take into account cost of living and special tax treatment (3-4%). Workday is normal workday and not some unknown number of hours offices are way nicer then in US minus the usual suspects (Google FB etc.). You get way more time off plus there are like 3X official holidays in Ukraine. Running recruiting biz. on the side we had r…

> As applicable to Ukraine salaries are US salary > remote product work 60K/year 60k USD gross anually in Ukraine? No. Sorry, but it doesn't exist. An unicorn salary, dozen of those lucky perhaps have.

To reiterate we had trouble hiring at that rate good senior Java engineers. Not sure what you are basing your opinion on I lived and worked there for over 10 years including running my own company and working for other companies. I also know good number of founders/owners of the top outsourcing outfits.

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

#196

Post by jensvdh »

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…

$250k base or $250k INCLUDING stock??

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

#197

Post by Balgair »

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…

It really reminds me of a power law distribution : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law

Some are very well paid/employable/competent, but the vast majority are not. Many people think the job search should be like a normal/Gaussian distribution, most people rambling about the mean. But it's not that for the searcher nor the employer; the employees you want are to be paid on a power law, and the jobs you want are as a common as a power law.

Curiously, this works for populations of cities, star luminosity, start-up success, and many other things.

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

#198

Post by cynicalkane »

jensvdh wrote: post #196
cynicalkane wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

$250k base or $250k INCLUDING stock??

The second one, but if you're not thinking about salary in terms of total comp, you're doing it wrong.

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

#199

Post by flachsechs »

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…

> I know it's considered bad negotiation

it's not. the more assertive you are with your compensation requirements, the more likely you are to get paid what you want.

i don't know where this crazy idea of "don't tell anyone what you want to be paid" came from, it sounds like some real amateur hour nonsense that will get you passed up in favor of someone who is more straight forward with the entire process.

imagine trying to buy a product or service, but nobody will tell you how much it costs, but instead tries to subtly hint that you should name your price.

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

#200

Post by stephenhuey »

jasonlotito wrote: post #146
alain94040 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That dam has burst years ago. Facebook, then Google, significantly increased their pay to software engineers and it lifted all the salaries in the bay area. What's interesting is that this tide hasn't propagated very far outside California yet.

Are you sure? Google participated in an anti-poaching deal that would result in lower pay because of less competition. Even if they did increase pay, it could still be below what they would have paid if they had not had this policy in the first place. I'd need to see something that takes this into account before I believe it.

Exactly. It began at least a dozen years ago and the case lasted a long time:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-requires-s...

http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/

Most likely the $5K payout per employee was 5-10 times lower than what was lost by all the employees collectively. Maybe that's not true and the tech giants wouldn't have hired as many people but I think all those companies collectively could've easily afforded an extra $5 billion over that timespan. Perhaps they would've innovated even more! I expect the effects of this to last a lot longer.

Edit: I changed "nearly a dozen" to "at least a dozen"

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