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Software engineers hard to find

articles.chicagotribune.com

1–10 of 105 posts

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#3
I wonder if the dismal housing market and the rising demand for software will finally force corporations to figure out how to manage remote developers.

It's not like wages for the common programmer are going to keep skyrocketing until companies are buying your house to relocate your family.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#4
The many trading companies in Chicago also offer software developers interesting problems to solve and attractive compensation.

There's certainly a lot of web work being done in Chicago too, but the trading companies offer developers the chance to focus on enterprise software systems and proprietary high-performance trading applications.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#5
I find it dubious someone can just decide to be a "software engineer".

You'd have to already have a personal interest in programming and be doing it on your own as a hobby.

Are there people who seriously just go to college for 4 years and learn coding like accounting and then just do a 9-5 job?

There are thousands of decent hackers out there, maybe just uptrain.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#8

Only if you persist in looking in the wrong places.

Cool. Can you suggest where the right places are? My past searches for decent software developers have been long, arduous and time-consuming, and I'd love to know where all the good developers are hiding.

Out of interest, how many developers have you employed? I'm sure it's not entirely relevant, but I'd be interested to know how you found them.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#9
post #5

I find it dubious someone can just decide to be a "software engineer". You'd have to already have a personal interest in programming and be doing it on your own as a hobby. Are there people who seriously just go to college for 4 years and learn coding like accounting and then just do a 9-5 job? There are thousands of decent hackers out there, maybe just uptrain.

There are lots of people who just went to college for four years and then got jobs writing code. I didn't keep a track of many of them but none of the ones I know of turned out to be good at it.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#10
I'm an older developer. I was eating lunch at a restaurant near my new workplace. Sitting at the table next to mine, a college senior (at Colorado School of Mines - which is a pretty decent engineering school) was talking with her father about her boyfriend interviewing for a job as a software developer. The BF had a 4 hour long programming test as part of the interview.

Something is very wrong with our industry. Most of the time that articles come out like this, industry executives are trying to get more kids to go into programming in order to lower the cost of employees: they want protection from the free market.

The last company I worked for (for 5 years, and it was a Fortune 100 company) was complaining publicly that they were unable to find developers - yet people who quit over the past 2 years were never replaced, nor were we allowed to interview candidates.

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