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Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

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Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#11

Post by staunch »

moultano wrote: post #3
kacy wrote: post #2

Is it time for this soon-to-be computer science grad to move to the Valley? Is this a good or a bad thing for new grads?

If you are looking for a big company job, it shouldn't be too hard to get one before moving. The burn rate on living expenses is pretty high out here unless you have a valley-sized salary too, so I recommend that. Apply to Google. :) You can always leave for a startup once your short-term finances are secure.

Or just rent a room in an apartment with roommates for $700/mo and don't get a car. Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#12

Post by queensnake »

cageface wrote: post #10
kacy wrote: post #2

Is it time for this soon-to-be computer science grad to move to the Valley? Is this a good or a bad thing for new grads?

If you're looking for a first job then probably yes. Quality of life for a young, single male in the Valley is pretty low though. After 10 years in the Bay Area I'm moving to NYC where women actually exist.

'Sunnymale'; 'Man Jose'. (Well /I/ laughed when I heard them :) )

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#13

Post by iamelgringo »

Running Hackers and Founders Silicon Valley, I get asked all the time if I know of people who are looking for work, and startups are having to work increasingly hard to hire. A few months ago, I was offered a $5k referral bonus for a Python/Django engineer. ( That's not the business I want to be in, btw. And it's not why I do H&F. )

There's easily been 100 startups getting angel money in the Valley in the last 5 months. And, if all of those are looking for 2-3 RoR/PyDjango/JQuery/iOS devs, that means startups alone are competing for 300 engineers. And, that's not mentioning Yelp, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Google. The Valley could easily accomodate 1000 new engineers in the next 6 months.

From what I've seen of the Hackers and Founders NYC scene, the situation is similar, except startups have to compete for engineering talent with finance companies, which pay a lot better than your average startup.

What does that mean? Founders, always be hiring. Devs, our value as an engineer is going up. Founders, build on more productive languages/platforms. Dev, consider joining a startup as an angel investment where you're pouring in time and effort instead of cash. So, interview a lot, and join carefully.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#14

Post by LogicX »

aberkowitz wrote: post #9

If startups branched out from Silicon Valley more often, new technological epicenters would form, alleviating the shortage.

Right... like the talent shortage is any better in Boston. We've been trying to hire a Ruby on Rails developer for nearly 6 months: Everyone is happily employed, or doing their own startup.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#15

Post by moultano »

staunch wrote: post #11
moultano wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are looking for a big company job, it shouldn't be too hard to get one before moving. The burn rate on living expenses is pretty high out here unless you have a valley-sized salary too, so I recommend that. Apply to Google. :) You can always leave for a startup once your short-term finances are secure.

Or just rent a room in an apartment with roommates for $700/mo and don't get a car. Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers.

$700 per month is still exorbitantly expensive relative to most of the country. In Columbus Ohio that gets you a three story house with beautiful wood floors, or a furnished multi-room apartment in downtown Cincinnati. Only in the valley is that kind of expense living frugally, and it's something someone with a student's level of savings ought to take stock of before making the leap.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#16

Post by nhashem »

I have a theory that the dot-com bust in 2000 and the outsourcing/offshoring hype in 2004ish basically wiped out two generations of computer science students. I graduated in 2004 and I remember the number of students in my major decreased dramatically between my freshman and sophomore year (some of that is the usual engineering major attrition, but I didn't see nearly the same decline as my friends in electrical/mechanical/etc). A coworker who graduated in 2007 told me his friends kept telling him to change his major "because all the jobs are going to India anyway." Meanwhile, the exact opposite thing happened. Growth on the web continues to explode and the demand for skill workers to support that growth continues to climb. Could this by why the shortage seems especially pronounced?

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#17

Post by jscore »

cageface wrote: post #10
kacy wrote: post #2

Is it time for this soon-to-be computer science grad to move to the Valley? Is this a good or a bad thing for new grads?

If you're looking for a first job then probably yes. Quality of life for a young, single male in the Valley is pretty low though. After 10 years in the Bay Area I'm moving to NYC where women actually exist.

I almost thought I wrote that.

When you get to NYC, lemme buy you a beer.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#18

Post by patrickaljord »

staunch wrote: post #11
moultano wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are looking for a big company job, it shouldn't be too hard to get one before moving. The burn rate on living expenses is pretty high out here unless you have a valley-sized salary too, so I recommend that. Apply to Google. :) You can always leave for a startup once your short-term finances are secure.

Or just rent a room in an apartment with roommates for $700/mo and don't get a car. Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers.

Facebook and twitter are advertising companies too ;)

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#19

Post by jmspring »

As someone who has been an early engineer (sixth employee at two and ninth at most current) at a couple of startups, watching the current talent situation is interesting. Companies are definitely hiring with smaller or more agile companies being more proactive about the diversity of people the bring in. Some of the larger networking/software firms are continuing to stick to their laundry lists.

I enjoy seeing the plethora of dmaller startups and the ideas and enthusiasm they bring. Things definitely have a different feel than dotcom bubble one. I hope that this job recovery is longer and more sustained.

For me, it is an interesting crossroad - having a house and marital responsibilities, do I jump on someone else's startup bandwagon again, try and get an idea funded (knowing angels, etc) or go the big company route to give personal time to flesh out ideas.

There certainly are options out there.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#20

Post by seldo »

The national unemployment rate is over 9% while Silicon Valley is fighting tooth-and-claw to hire. What's wrong with this picture?

Software engineering is technical, sure, but it's not that hard -- if some of the idiots I've worked with in the past could hold down jobs, then anyone can. Which dying industries should we be looking at to fill the gaps in the software industry?

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