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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

#221

Post by 5trokerac3 »

cynicalkane wrote: post #215
5trokerac3 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but $1 of stock isn't worth $1 of liquid assets. It may be worth more than $1 in the long run, but when you're first handed it, you have to undervalue it, compared to hard cash. I'm a theoretical millionaire several times over, from stock options in startups that suffered the fate of the 99%. You can obviously put more value in the stock of a SV megalith, but even then, you're putting a lot of eggs in one baske…

Stock from a public SV firm is almost as good as cash, and comes with a large amount of lifestyle intangibles.

If you sell it as soon as you get it then it's good as cash. As for the lifestyle intangibles, does having to live in Los Gatos or Gilroy if you want to raise a family count as a perk?

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

#222

Post by logfromblammo »

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.

> jobs where they are project-managed to a degree that every minute needs to be accounted for

Having been in such a job, I can say without reservation that the manager demanding such precise accounting has no idea what you do or how you do it, and is ultimately relying on you to be both honest and supernaturally accurate with respect to estimates.

What ends up happening is that you pad an hour of actual work out to a week, because you can justify any amount of delay by pointing at the spaghettified, debt-riddled code base, and start looking for a new job immediately. That boss will make a show of keeping an eye on you, but you quickly learn that they have no idea whether you are working or slacking just by looking at you, or looking over your shoulder at your screen. The incumbent lead developers have already developed a system for maintaining the status quo indefinitely. You can follow them down the primrose path, to the complete destruction of your professional ethics, or you can become the squeaky wheel that gets fired.

Even if you can't generate some slack yourself, you can certainly pick up new skills at your next job, which you should be seeking without further delay.

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

#223

Post by habosa »

There are a lot of comments in this thread about how recruiters are bad at their jobs, they want X years of experience in framework Y and they want to pay for X/2 years of experience.

What can we really expect from recruiters though? They get paid a fraction of the salary of the jobs they are recruiting for, and they're asked to evaluate someone's potential competency in a field that's complex and rapidly changing. So of course they pick proxy metrics. They just ask "do you have 10 years of C++ experience" because it would be impossible for them to, say, read your GIthub code and see that you're really good at C++ even without the years of experience.

The only way you're going to have a good experience with a recruiter for a technical position is if the recruiter has the technical aptitude to make judgement calls on your qualification.

So maybe we need to pay recruiters more and then convince people with software engineering degrees to become recruiters? Of course the companies would have to be willing to invest in their recruiters, and they won't do that.

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

#224

Post by stale2002 »

chrisbennet wrote: post #209
dabockster wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trea…

If bread costs 100$ per loaf, and people are literally starving to death in the streets because they can't pay for food, is this just the "market clearing rate" for bread where supply is meeting demand, or is there a shortage of bread?

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

#225

Post by qaq »

qaq wrote: post #37
expertentipp wrote: post #7

There is flood of American outsourcing centers in post-Communist EU countries. Top salaries for software devs/eng, including seniors, are USD 40k gross annually. They can treat the employees in the worst "corporate America" ways - their offices, available hardware, policies, laughable benefits, annual leave, create a perfect package for miserable professional and private life.

? 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…

Another cool thing about Ukrainian market due to competition interview to job offer is generally few days often offer is made on the spot and you will have in person interview most often same week you applied. Another cool feature all recruiters have bonus structure so they created informal skype channel where they "trade" candidates and then split bonuses. So even if you were not a good fit for a particular position or company their recruiters will often find you an appropriate position in a different company :)

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

#226

Post by 0xBABAD00C »

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'm in the first camp, and there are people who think we are ridiculously underpaid. "If you're so good, how come you haven't hit seven figures?" is something I've heard a couple of times already. So there is a tier above us too. Go figure...

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

#227

Post by jcadam »

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 still don't believe the $250k figure :)

I make exactly half of that here in Florida (a fairly low cost area) as a senior dev and my salary has definitely plateaued (and I haven't had a raise in a few years).

I know I make more than most of my peers and local recruiters scoff when I tell them my current pay (I had to talk my current employer up about $30k just to match my salary at my previous employer to get me to switch -- and they only did so because they were quite obviously desperate).

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

#228

Post by basseq »

stale2002 wrote: post #211
tunetine wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because doctors have unlimited demand and are considered more highly skilled?

How about 100$ bread? Is that a shortage? People literally starving to death, because they can't pay for food? But supply is meeting demand at that point, right?

  But supply is meeting demand at that point, right?
It implies a shortage, because of the price point. Because demand far outstrips supply, which drives price up.

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

#229

Post by crispyambulance »

dabockster wrote: post #172
crispyambulance wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Perhaps, but I have NEVER heard of somebody getting fired for "up-skilling" while still getting work done.

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

#230

Post by dkhenry »

stale2002 wrote: post #220
jayd16 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic, no one should hire senior developers as they are just a waste of money.

Being a senior dev is more about high level soft skills and architecture skills, as opposed to knowing the intricacies of whatever programming language the company uses. Coding syntax can be learned to master level in a couple weeks. "designing software" and "managing a project" skills cannot.

Just to pile on, I have had people who complained that they should have been a senior dev because they knew the most about algorithms and the internals of compilers, languages, libraries, and CPU's. Those same people couldn't communicate that knowledge to others and couldn't design complex systems containing multiple independent components, but they felt since they had strong technical skills that was all they needed.
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