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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?

#81

Post by flacon »

percept wrote: post #79
flacon wrote: post #75

Looking for a developer with startup exp? I am a developer with startup experience and skill in Ruby, JS, and frontend technologies. I have 6+ years experience and a BA from UC Berkeley. I created a post related to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786901

If you haven't already, check out Authentic Jobs--they appear to have a number of remote jobs listed with your skillset: http://www.authenticjobs.com/ Good luck with your search.

Thx. Authentic Jobs looks useful. I am currently employed at wellknownstartup.com and looking for a change. Thanks for the tip.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#82

Post by kls »

tarmstrong wrote: post #64
kls wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a true eye opener to see someone making 500$ an hour working a 40 hour week and know they could raise their rates Right some how we make the moral argument that one person should not be making that much. But when you realize a good developer can do the work of a team. Because the how you do it, is more important than how much you do of it. Couple that with the fact that a developer can automate 100-1000 peoples…

Who makes the moral argument that one person should not be making that much?

A lot of people do. I can't tell you how many potential clients offices I have sat in and been lectures that I am not worth that much, I have a lot of gaul to charge the rates I do and that no one should make that much. It seems the moral argument only comes when you have to pay the rate not when they are out in the market making money hand over fist from the fruits of that labor, that I don't get a recurring cut of. And that is how I explain it to them, their potential upside to my labor is virtually limitless. Mine is fixed, I charge accordingly, if you would like to talk about a partial equity swap for a reduced labor price we can. This usually gets them back on topic pretty quick. They know their upside and are just trying to further maximize it. It is my job to maximize mine while providing quality service. I do that at a particular rate which is not exorbitant by industry standards. The only negotiations I do on it are reductions for equity.

There was a good article from one of the early Apple guys who wrote the switcher. Apparently both Jobs and Gates where after it and him and both as soon as he entered the room started out with a critique as to why it was not worth that much, how he only put 100 or so hours in to it because he was a "good" developer. It is pretty typical of what you see out there. I will try to dig it up, it has been posted on HN a few times.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#83

Post by rgrieselhuber »

lbrandy wrote: post #59
iamelgringo wrote: post #13

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 mont…

I suppose by the mathematical nature of the situation, people and their social graph end up at one of the two "equilibria". 1) either they know a bunch of people who can't find any good people to hire, or 2) they know a bunch of smart people who work at crappy jobs they'd love to leave. I have a group of friends (from University of Florida) who mostly graduated just before the west coast was really recruiting there.…

The best advice I can give to people looking for a "cool" job in the valley is to simply move there and get to know people. If they aren't willing to take that admittedly risky step (almost a rite of passage) then the valley might not be the best fit for them. From what everything on this thread is saying, this is a great time to do it.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#84

Post by kls »

illumin8 wrote: post #60
iamelgringo wrote: post #13

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 mont…

What that says to me is that there is another tech bubble starting. Right now the hiring standards (hopefully) haven't slipped too much. When the only requirement to get a Python/Django job is that you read a Python for dummies book and can fog a mirror, welcome to 2001 again.

It may be starting, but with at about 20 years in the industry, I would say that we have reached what has been about the norm. With the greater economy in the state it is in though, it is almost certain to bubble again. Development or Nursing are about the only two decent prospects of drawing a decent salary now without a decade of education investment. It is only a matter of time until people smell blood again and start running this way. Which will mean a return to the worse than bad developers of the .com boom. We are a few years out if it happens though as it takes some time to go from, I know how to power a computer on to slapping together some code.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#85

Post by rdouble »

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 did this. If you are a single, straight guy, NYC is indeed better for dating. I didn't find dating in San Francisco to be completely horrible, just kinda weird. For example, in SF the women I would meet were very averse to 1-on-1 dating and everything had to be done as part of a group outing. On the other hand, I've gone on a lot of dates in NYC, but have not been successful in locating a crew of friends to hang out with. I guess one of the beneficial side-effects of "group dating" was that I ended up meeting a bunch of bros.

In San Francisco, he numbers were definitely not in favor of the male. I remember going into any bar in SF and it would be groups of say, 6 guys, sitting with 1 woman. Certain bars, like Toronado, did not have any women in them, ever. In NYC I've actually gone into a bar during happy hour and been the only male in there... an experience I've never had before in my life.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#86

Post by gte910h »

Sukotto wrote: post #54
aneth wrote: post #33

I'm an RoR/Java/etc developer/entrepreneur. I get recruited heavily 2-3 times a week, and yet half my non-tech friends (which comprises most of my friends) are under-employed or jobless. That dichotomy is disturbing and very difficult personally to deal with. Here I am making 10 times what the employed ones make hourly, while talking about making millions on a startup. I try to encourage them to get some product or i…

I suggest you try to add some high achievers to your circle of friends. People who are successful in the way you you dream of becoming. If your current group of friends are not interested in actually working hard to make those dreams a reality, there's a very real danger they will inadvertently poison your own chances of success.

He's not exaggerating the market there for people of other skillsets.

Fresh new young people trained in other professions are having a very hard time of it as their more experienced peers in industry are taking the entry level positions rather than nothing at all.

Now his friends might be unmotivated tools, have the wrong skillset for the area in which they live, or any number of things, but the economy is hard for some highly trained people even these days.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#87

Post by kmak »

kls wrote: post #82
tarmstrong wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who makes the moral argument that one person should not be making that much?

A lot of people do. I can't tell you how many potential clients offices I have sat in and been lectures that I am not worth that much, I have a lot of gaul to charge the rates I do and that no one should make that much. It seems the moral argument only comes when you have to pay the rate not when they are out in the market making money hand over fist from the fruits of that labor, that I don't get a recurring cut of.…

The Switcher story:

http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Switcher.txt

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#88

Post by benmccann »

iamelgringo wrote: post #46
jscore wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never met anyone who was not technical and then became a coder. In pre-2000 dot.com you could've gotten a job with a word 'Internet' on your resume, but nowadays you should at least know decent coding.

Mind you, I was programming Basic when I was 7, but I left it behind for years. I went back to school for software engineering when I was 33. I've been working as an ER/Critical Care nurse for 18 years. I'm currently bootstrapping a search engine for economic/financial news at http://Newsley.com . (alpha of search is here: http://newsley.com/search )

Your tagging is pretty cool. How'd you figure out for each tag whether it was a person, country, city, etc.? Did you just look them each up on Wikipedia? E.g. http://newsley.com/articles/eu-threatens-to-block-chinese-bi...

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#89

Post by kaiwren »

illumin8 wrote: post #62
GFischer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What's the solution for you companies desperate to hire?" How about looking abroad? I know, it's fraught with perils, but as someone from "abroad" from the U.S. point of view, it needn't be that bad. And your dollars will go a LONG way in hiring top talent (of course, you need someone local or whom you trust to choose the top talent. 90% of the local programmers are crappy too!).

You can't hire an H1B unless you are willing to document that you were unable to find local talent that had the required skill set. HR departments usually work around this by wording the job requirement in such a way that only their hand-picked H1B applicant has every exact skill. "Oh, you need a Python/Django/Ruby/Java guy with 2 years .NET? I just happen to have a resume with that exact skill set in front of me; so…

Leave just the core business people in the first world and move everyone else to the third world. Finding good engineers is a lot harder, though, and they won't be as cheap as you'd think. In India, for example, you can expect to pay roughly 1/3 of what you'd pay in the US for a good dev. SlideShare.net does this to the best of my knowledge.

Re: Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

#90

Post by aberkowitz »

LogicX wrote: post #14
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.

Would you mind linking to a job listing?
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