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Software engineers hard to find

articles.chicagotribune.com

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Re: Software engineers hard to find

#71

Post by bhoung »

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #8
GooseFlyFox wrote: post #2

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.

Can't remember where I read it but the good developers are hiding in good jobs and not actively searching...

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#72

Post by zeemonkee »

pedanticfreak wrote: post #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.

Exactly. I get a lot of job offers which insist on me moving to London. Since I have (for a number of personal and practical reasons) no intention of ever moving to London, I won't work for them, period.

On the other hand, I would be readily available as a remote worker - in the same country. So what's exactly stopping these companies ?

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#73

Post by dagw »

ck2 wrote: 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.

I've met lots and lots of programmers who have no personal interest in programming or computers. To them it's just a skill they've learnt well enough to get paid for. It's not a hobby or interest and certainly not a passion. It's just a job like any other.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#74

Post by Unosolo »

What I can see is that most companies and especially these where software developement is viewed as a necessary evil rather than a business model are very bad at telling bad candidates from the good ones and don't really hire based on merit. They might believe they do, but the outcome of the hiring process is usually erratic as far as it comes to the actual abilities.

However once a developer is hired even a company with a flaky interviewing process tends to recognise the actual worth of a given programmer fairly quickly. Then an intresting thing happens - even though the developers might be explicitly treated as a commodity resource the very same managers would go far beyond the declared rules to retain the best: regularly up the package, give a lot of slack, turn a blind eye on minor "breaches of established rules".

As a result most good programmers I know after about five years in the industry end up enjoying a package far in excess of what is being declared on the job sites.

It's not uncommon for a hiring manager to moan about the lack of good candidates whilst paying the best developers on their team 50% more than they advertise when publishing the same job. What the management don't seem to realise is that just about every other company does that: actually paying more to the existing programmers than the declared range they would be prepared to pay for the new hires.

As a result after a while there is little or no incentive for good developers to put their CV's on a market. They're well above the market rates.

As a workaround sometimes companies hire good programmers as independent contractors and carry on extending the contracts forever - paying double or triple the rate they would pay their permanent staff. It's a funny game when becoming "an independent" consultant with a single customer is one of the few options for an experienced developer to help company management justify paying them the true market worth.

There is no lack of good programmers, they just cost much more than most companies are prepared to admit.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#75

Post by andrest »

ShardPhoenix wrote: post #24

"JumpForward interviews three to five engineers a week as it tries to fill four to six technology jobs, but most candidates don't have current skills or they lack the passion to stay on the cutting edge" In other words, there's no shortage of software engineers, there's a shortage of perfect candidates. If these companies were actually willing to train people, they'd have a lot fewer problems. The trend seems to be t…

This is the point the article seems to make. The difference between a good candidate and an excellent one is huge. Like it was mentioned before, a good programmer can do in a day what a team of mediocre programmers can do in a week.

You say that companies should train mediocre programmers to be excellent programmers. This is not as straight-forward as it sounds, (a) the mediocre programmers might have already reached the limit of their capability (i.e no matter how much time they'll spend learning, the improvements will only be marginal), (b) it could take long time and as we all know, time is money.

I like to think of it as a simple exponential graph. Programming Skill on X-axis vs Time Spent Learning on Y-axis. In the beginning the progress will be fast for everybody, but at some point the progress will slow down indefinitely (i.e you've reached your maximum capacity). The point at which this will happen varies from person to person and there is unfortunately no way you can determine where that is. The only hint of the maximum capacity you can get is to compare how long the guy has been programming for and how skilled he is at given time.

As a result, it is more cost-effective to search for very good candidates for longer than to take handful on mediocre ones, take the risks, and train them.

It should be noted that a programming is without exceptions self-thought. Therefore there is no need for training per se, you will just need to take your time and do it yourself, as programming can not be taught, it can only be learned.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#76

Post by zeemonkee »

lelele wrote: post #51
elliottkember wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, it's also very easy for an engineer to jump ship after their training - meaning a very expensive loss of time and effort. Personally, I think the "shortage" has something to do with increases in job-hopping. If there were some guarantee that an engineer were going to stick around for a few years after training, perhaps training new recruits wouldn't seem so unreasonable.

> Unfortunately, it's also very easy for an engineer to jump ship after their training - meaning a very expensive loss of time and effort. Keeping your employees is your job, not theirs. No relationship lasts when one partner starts neglecting the other and another interested partner comes in.

Another reason for job-hobbing, especially among hackers, is that they don't want to be pigeon-holed into a single job for too long. You can become too complacent, too specialized, and too tied down to a specific system. After 5 years of maintaining a legacy ERP application how do you get a job working at the hot new social networking company ?

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#77

Post by wglb »

rdtsc wrote: post #29
gaius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem there will be that the competent engineers - if they have any - will have been burned by too many dud candidates wasting their time, and have gotten HR to pre-screen the CVs...

The job of a good HR department is to at least be able to screen the really dumb ones and pass the rest up the technical chain for evaluation. The good engineers might be burned out but if they know that not spending time interviewing and reviewing resumes will result in having to deal with a dud that gets hired, having to babysit them, teach them the basics of programming and watch them slowly destroy the code base,…

In my long career, I have yet to meet anyone with a title anywhere in the neighborhood of "HR" with the ability to tell the difference.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#78

Post by brown9-2 »

fhars wrote: post #32
brown9-2 wrote: post #7

Supply and demand. If you're having trouble finding people with what you're offering, raise your offer.

But that raises the false positive rate of unqualified applicants that are only in it for the money. Given that such a programmer may have net negative productivity, underpaying qualified developers migth even be beneficial for the employers, as they can be sure that the remaining pool of applicants will only contain persons with a qualification level commensurate with the offered wages (which can easily be filtered…

I'm not sure I'm following this line of argument but if they're intentionally keeping what they're offering low, they lose the right to complain that they can't find good enough candidates.

Besides the company on the article already claims to be able to seperate duds from stars.

"What you're offering" includes more than just money as well n

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#79

Post by Unosolo »

rdtsc wrote: post #29
gaius wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem there will be that the competent engineers - if they have any - will have been burned by too many dud candidates wasting their time, and have gotten HR to pre-screen the CVs...

The job of a good HR department is to at least be able to screen the really dumb ones and pass the rest up the technical chain for evaluation. The good engineers might be burned out but if they know that not spending time interviewing and reviewing resumes will result in having to deal with a dud that gets hired, having to babysit them, teach them the basics of programming and watch them slowly destroy the code base,…

As I see it the job of a good HR department is:

1) Make sure that job ad reaches people who are likely to be good candidates.

2) Job ad is attractive enough so that good candidates will actually apply.

3) Handle the administrative side of the recruitment process: paperwork, visas, appointments, expenses, tickets, re-location, contract, security checks etc.

4) Make sure the whole process complies with the legislation.

5) Streamline and expedit the whole thing from the very start to finish.

In my eyes HR is not qualified to make a judgement if a candidate is any good at programming.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#80

Post by GBond »

ck2 wrote: post #13
Tangurena wrote: post #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. Mos…

I think the secret is that part of good programming is an art, and not only something that can be taught, like accounting, with just logical rules and regulations (apologies to skilled accountants who feel there is an art to their work). That is probably why big business can't fulfill their desire for a large pool of cheap but good developers. You can't just pour people into the college machinery and churn out develo…

>apologies to skilled accountants who feel there is an art to their work

Although not an openly advertised role, "Creative Accountants" are abound.

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