Then train them!
Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
31–40 of 81 posts
Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#32It's not abnormal for a company to have senior-level openings and no junior openings. My company for example is also "desperately" in need of a senior developer / architect to fill in a role.
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Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understand, the issue that describe happens because the company doing the training doesn't re-evaluate the now trained developer as more experienced, and therefore, more valuable and deserving of better compensation. A junior is a junior, until they're not. Pretending that the now trained new developer is still worth the same is foolish, but that's exactly what some employers do to their own detriment.
So, say you hire a junior developer and spend a year training them to the next level of seniority, at significant training / opportunity cost expense. They now command a much higher market rate - you can pay the higher salary and retain them, or not and they'll leave. Either way, the company is out the training cost relative to hiring someone senior from the beginning. (I say this as someone who hires 90% junior peop…
Yes. It's called an investment. I don't see it as being that different from companies expecting an employee to be doing the work of the next level for a while before they get the promotion/raise of that level.
Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#34Nobody in this Twitter thread seems to know or understand what a commons problem is. Training up new devs is good for the industry, sure. But your own company doesn't capture all of that value. If you are trying to solve this problem by yelling at companies to be more altruistic, then, as previously stated, you don't know or understand what a commons problem is.
Employees aren't fish or trees. If you train an employee and treat them well they stay with your company longer. Your training increases the value the provide to you. Unlike a fish, which is sold and consumed one day and needs to be replaced the next.
It's easier to give a higher salary, filter candidates, and then don't invest into training.
Training must be done by someone, and that person's time is valuable too, so there're also other things for consideration.
Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I understand, the issue that describe happens because the company doing the training doesn't re-evaluate the now trained developer as more experienced, and therefore, more valuable and deserving of better compensation. A junior is a junior, until they're not. Pretending that the now trained new developer is still worth the same is foolish, but that's exactly what some employers do to their own detriment.
So, say you hire a junior developer and spend a year training them to the next level of seniority, at significant training / opportunity cost expense. They now command a much higher market rate - you can pay the higher salary and retain them, or not and they'll leave. Either way, the company is out the training cost relative to hiring someone senior from the beginning. (I say this as someone who hires 90% junior peop…
You need to balance the training cost (offset by revenue generated) of growing juniors against the cost of acquiring and onboarding senior hires.
Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#36Nobody in this Twitter thread seems to know or understand what a commons problem is. Training up new devs is good for the industry, sure. But your own company doesn't capture all of that value. If you are trying to solve this problem by yelling at companies to be more altruistic, then, as previously stated, you don't know or understand what a commons problem is.
That is called an apprenticeship: you work for very low wages while learning the trade, so the company gets something out of the deal.
Of course then the people you hire are not also college educated.
Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you train an employee and treat them well they stay with your company longer. That's a huge assumption.
Seems fairly rational. I recon two of the most common reasons people leave are boredom and unsatisfying career progression. So all you have to do is ensure people have interesting work and pay/promote them at a rate that is competitive with their option of switching jobs to achieve that goal.
> So all you have to do is ensure people have interesting work and pay/promote them at a rate that is competitive with their option of switching jobs to achieve that goal.
I think similarly. But these are also the two things that require companies to restructure in order to be able to reliably offer them to employees.
I went through this two years ago with my last employer. When it came right down to it, I didn't really have a place there. When my job was made redundant, my departure was bittersweet.
There was a time when they were open to expanding my role and giving me a direct report. But they decided to move in another direction.
It's more than just "treating employees well." A lot more.
Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you train an employee and treat them well they stay with your company longer. That's a huge assumption.
I don't think so. How many people do you know who feel they are being treated well leave their companies?
Happened to me. See my above comment.
Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#39I know this is targeted more towards student but I also find similar issues if someone with some work-experience wants to switch away from a dwindling tech towards a new tech. People say, well you don't have "relevant" experience.
Getting a job is about taking a ton of rejections until you don't get rejected any more.
Re: Tech Industry: “We desperately need more developers”
#40First day: "Hey welcome to the team hope you got everything setup when you have a minute do you mind going through your contacts we cannot find any good engineers lately."
Me: "Ookaay.. thanks? Sure here are 5 people I've studied and/or worked with. They're literally rockstars. I personally vouch for them and I know most of them are in the market and interested."
"Hmm they look too junior thanks anyway."
One month later: after spending plenty of time interviewing and rejecting some wildly overqualified candidates because they're not culture fits, hiring manager brings in their "80% but can get the job done" (that is a quote no joke) friend from previous job. Or they bing on a far more expensive contractor.
Meanwhile my five recommendations all get hired at competing or peer companies.
This has happened in some form or another at most every place I've worked. To date I'm extremely disillusioned with the "tech" hiring process. I've seen everything from perfectly qualified candidates getting rejected because the interviewer woke up on the wrong side of the bed and, in the span of less than an hour, developed a vendetta against the candidate, to plain old nepotism. I've even seen people vote to pass because they wanted the job the candidate came in for and thought they could do a better job even though there were no plans for such an arrangement to ever happen. I've seen interviewers fail a candidate because they couldn't solve a problem the interviewer (who is in a marginally related domain) was having trouble with last week and wasn't making progress on because google didn't have a copy paste answer.
Interviewing is entirely subjective. Humans are humans. They only person that truely matters at the end of the day WRT interviewing is the hiring manager and maybe their boss.
Edit: I forgot my main point, excuse the rant. The point is I don't see how the industry is going to overcome this hurdle when it's neigh impossible for a front line engineer to bring in good people who wouldn't already appeal to whatever processes/humans are in place--which clearly isn't working because they can't find good engineers.