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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

#201

Post by X86BSD »

jdhn wrote: post #22

"They're just asking for the moon, and not expecting to pay very much for it," Cappelli says. "And as a result they [can't] find those people. Now that [doesn't] mean there was nobody to do the job; it just [means] that there was nobody at the price they were willing to pay." In my opinion, this is the key paragraph in the article. I see this all the time when recruiters send me job postings, and they want someone wi…

That is NOTHING new. This was going on in 1990. Recruiters wanting you to pad your resume, "Oh you've only used x for 2 months, put it on your skills section!", and employers wanting you to be a DBA, network engineer, security engineer, Unix admin, developer and yet only pay you for one of those jobs.

This has been the norm. There has NEVER been a shortage of qualified American labor. The problem is, just like farm workers in California, everyone refuses to pay what Americans demand. So you get "let's just go hire some Indians at 20 cents on the dollar and have them beholden to us because we control their visa, and make them do all those jobs for one person's salary! Screw Americans! BRILLIANT!"

So there is no shortage of qualified American labor, corporate america just refuses to pay market rate for americans.

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

#202

Post by orthoganol »

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…

That tier distinction is way too fluid in my experience to claim it as a real thing; a large (not small) number of people I know who've worked at or work at Google easily belong in the 'minor leagues', but it's just an over the top confidence even arrogance, often combined with a lot of years of sticking with tech, that got them their job. Seriously, a lot of mediocre developers if you add a bunch of years (or a post grad degree), maybe a month of leetcode if they haven't already, and double their ego can a get a job there. (New hires get assigned to the uncompetitive, boring projects at Google, so there's that negative compensation too).

Btw talking about total comp and not base salary is highly misleading. Yeah sure, by that standard with recent valuations I'm making >250k at a post Series A startup.

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

#203

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#204

Post by expertentipp »

watwut wrote: post #181
expertentipp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other opportunities are not any better. Better opportunities are in more developed EU countries. It's a perfect environment for corporate America to thrive in. You will not find any exploited programmers there because the signs of underperformance are picked up early (mid level management is so efficient!), the employee labeled as "unhappy", and let go. There are only fulfilled and happy people working there.

The super efficient middle management in EU companies is even more extraordinary claim then the exploited poor eastern European programmer.

Middle management is oftentimes remote, in another EU country with higher salaries and job security (Sweden, Germany, Netherlands). "Efficient" is sarcastic - meaning more "manipulative" and "micromanaging".

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

#205

Post by expertentipp »

qaq wrote: post #195
expertentipp wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> good senior Java engineers

duh! they left for Germany

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

#206

Post by Danihan »

petraeus wrote: post #80
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'll pay you $100/hr but the whole budget is 5 hours"

Is there a word for laugh-cringing..? So spot on.

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

#207

Post by flachsechs »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #120
toomuchtodo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If employers were required to pay for someone's time for an interview, you would see this fixed right quick. But because an employer can leave an unreasonable job req out there and interview as many candidates as they want, with the only cost being their own time, this continues.

Here's something I wrote on a different discussion about hiring: Imagine I cost my company $50 an hour in salary, and earn them $150 an hour (revenue of 3-5x salary is ballpark for most companies, we'll go for the low end for some perspective). As a senior dev, I have to sit in all the interviews of people potentially joining my team. Imagine we have 10 people that make it through the HR round. I have to participate…

smaller companies avoid interviewing like this out of pure practicality, it's only the larger ones that can afford to waste $100k filling a position.

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

#208

Post by learc83 »

icebraining wrote: post #115
learc83 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most cases, you don't want to take a job that's worth say $100k, but not $150k to an employer. Either the value you're bringing to the company is somewhere less than $50k, or the company is irrationally tied to not paying more than $100k.

So what if the value is less than $50k?

You want to work for a company where you cost them $150k in salary and benefits and only add $50k in value? That's a very insecure position to be in, it doesn't leave much room for growth, and it means you have very little leverage overall.

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

#209

Post by chrisbennet »

dabockster wrote: post #175
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.

If a company can find "other labor sources" then they really don't have a reason to say "we can't find labor".

Employers are saying "there is a shortage of workers" when what they really mean is "the market price for workers is more than we want to pay" or "we don't want to share more of the profits with the employees (who actually make the product) then we used to". To "fix" this, they want some sort of special treatment that will decrease the cost of employees - like being allowed to employ more indentured servants (H1-B) at below market rate.

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

#210

Post by Danihan »

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #120
toomuchtodo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If employers were required to pay for someone's time for an interview, you would see this fixed right quick. But because an employer can leave an unreasonable job req out there and interview as many candidates as they want, with the only cost being their own time, this continues.

Here's something I wrote on a different discussion about hiring: Imagine I cost my company $50 an hour in salary, and earn them $150 an hour (revenue of 3-5x salary is ballpark for most companies, we'll go for the low end for some perspective). As a senior dev, I have to sit in all the interviews of people potentially joining my team. Imagine we have 10 people that make it through the HR round. I have to participate…

I don't get why companies can't just hire a bunch of more "questionable" applicants at a lower rate, say $45k - $60k or so for junior devs in most cities.

No need to spend much effort on the interview process, just make sure they can solve a couple standardized problems, and then "hire" them as contractors for a 90-day trial.

Put them onto teams and throw them in the deep end, then get rid of all the ones who can't swim, which will probably be like 75%. But you'll also find quite a few unexpected gems that way.

I mean, that's exactly what we did in Call Center management and it worked great. Hired people at $10 / hour for the first 90 days, then a $2 raise up to $12. We did have super high attrition for brand new employees (since we didn't technically do a contracting period,) but who really cares.

We just kept on filtering and eventually had dozens of shockingly intelligent and competent call center employees for like, $13 / hour. (This was in the Midwest.)

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