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Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

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Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#81

Post by ThrustVectoring »

rhelz wrote: post #70
h02 wrote: post #14

And we're having a hard time finding experienced and skilled engineers... trying to hire for a senior nodejs role, over a thousand applicants (most people just hit apply without reading the description, over half are disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements), dozens interviewed, and we've only managed to hire 1 person that seemed close to being qualified, and he quit after 2 months of barely working. We're…

Not to put too fine a point on it, but...out of a thousand applicants--who presumably had college degrees/and or years of experience programming for other companies--there just has to be some who would have been successful at your company. I mean, if you lined up 600 random people grabbed from off the street, you'd find 6 to 10 of them with a genius level IQ. In fact, you'd have a good chance of finding somebody smar…

The applicant pool is not randomly selected, though. The 6-10 randomly selected geniuses are likely all happily and productively employed elsewhere, there's a competitive filter against high-level talent that you have to also get through.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#82

Post by bb88 »

hayst4ck wrote: post #62

I remember being a naive college student and hearing about a "software engineer shortage." I was too young and dumb to understand that meant that the owners of companies that needed software engineers wanted cheaper labor and that I was to play a part in the devaluation of engineering labor by helping supply exceed demand, thereby allowing company owners to commodify software labor to ultimately pay wages proportiona…

I was a contractor for a large financial institution -- one you've heard of. They fired a number of their employees during a layoff a year before my contract ended.

They did it, not because I was cheaper (my contract certainly wasn't) but because they could get rid of the bottom 15%. And company rules limited my contractual ability to remain on.

I was kinda shocked at this. "Why wouldn't you keep the people you hired on over the contractors? Don't you hire the best?"

It turns out they hired to fill seats, not to hire the best.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#83

Post by timeon »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #76
whstl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation on the hiring side. I understand that people gotta hustle to eat, but we get hundreds of applications, and so many resumes are fake and just an attempt to get through the screening... plus lots of cheating, sometimes just good old ChatGPT or someone whispering behind the screen, other times with people giving perfect memorized answers but not a peep when I go off script. Makes me want to hold on to thi…

Same. I used to really like interviewing, but the AI cheaters combined with development as just a job has destroyed the experience. I did participate in interviewing an intern a few weeks ago who showed some passion and energy, and they got the role, so a small victory.

> development as just a job

Hobbists are discarded at the first pass I guess.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#84

Post by rhelz »

sinatra wrote: post #71
hayst4ck wrote: post #62

I remember being a naive college student and hearing about a "software engineer shortage." I was too young and dumb to understand that meant that the owners of companies that needed software engineers wanted cheaper labor and that I was to play a part in the devaluation of engineering labor by helping supply exceed demand, thereby allowing company owners to commodify software labor to ultimately pay wages proportiona…

Usually it’s much easier to be liberal when doing so doesn’t cost you meaningfully. I’d encourage you to evaluate for yourself if your stances are truly fair and if you’re truly liberal considering how painful it is for an H1B to lose their job vs you. It’s also easy to say “but H1Bs get exploited!” Considering how many H1Bs come here, maybe they’d rather face this exploitation vs staying in their own country?

In a free market, there's no such thing as a shortage. This isn't a 1980's soviet grocery store. The market for programmers is not centrally planned. Its one of the least-regulated markets extant today.

So anybody complaining about a "shortage of programmers" is just a cheapskate.

In a free market, what signals to us that more of something should be produced? Buehler? Buehler?

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#86

Post by nytesky »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #76
whstl wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation on the hiring side. I understand that people gotta hustle to eat, but we get hundreds of applications, and so many resumes are fake and just an attempt to get through the screening... plus lots of cheating, sometimes just good old ChatGPT or someone whispering behind the screen, other times with people giving perfect memorized answers but not a peep when I go off script. Makes me want to hold on to thi…

Same. I used to really like interviewing, but the AI cheaters combined with development as just a job has destroyed the experience. I did participate in interviewing an intern a few weeks ago who showed some passion and energy, and they got the role, so a small victory.

My impression is that lots of developers are now much more motivated by money than tech passion (I entered the field in the Office Space era where programmers were considered nerdy accountants who love computers).

Instead over the last 2 decades, we’ve seen the finance bro pipeline diverted to tech bros.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#87

Post by cageface »

patresh wrote: post #21
cageface wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trend here is unmistakeable: https://hnhiring.com/trends Only one source of course, but I think it's indicative of the state of the overall market.

How can one explain the graph you linked given the recent bull market in stocks? Wouldn't this mean that capital is flowing in which should lead to more hiring? Is the job market response delayed or are there other factors?

Good question. My theory is that companies overhired during the pandemic and are now correcting.

AI is another wildcard. It remains to be seen exactly how much it will reduce the demand for developers but it seems very likely to at a minimum cut into the entry level job market.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#88

Post by Simulacra »

memset wrote: post #66

I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup. However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and inte…

Wow, maybe it's just Silicon Valley salaries? Or Silicon Valley hubris?

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#89

Post by phillipcarter »

memset wrote: post #66

I am actively looking to hire - either freelance or full-time - an engineer to write open source golang code for my YC startup. However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and inte…

400k salaries would also be on quite the high end for your average FAANG! While they may take home that (or more) in total compensation per year due to stock, they'd have to be on the very high end of seniority at a big tech company to have that much in cash.

Re: Experienced engineers are struggling to get hired

#90

Post by rhelz »

alphazard wrote: post #35

Not all experience is equal, but people expect to be compensated for the "experience" (time since entering the workforce) they bring to the table regardless. That's the issue here. There is plenty of software that needs engineering, but we can't make a market. This specific person has 17 years of experience. Are they a staff level engineer, critical to their group? 17 years is more than enough time to become more com…

> unless management is totally incompetent

Sooo...how do you measure how good a programmer is? You've got to cut $200,000 from your budget. You can lay off 2 junior programmers, or 1 senior programmer.

How, exactly should management determine whether or not the senior programmer is worth twice what a junior programmer is?

This is not a rhetorical question, and generalities like "keeps the juniors unblocked" are not an answer, unless you can give some objective metric which really tracks that. And even if he "keeps the juniors unblocked"--how can a manager tell whether keeping the juniors unblocked is worth $200,000 a year?

Management doesn't agonize for months of who stays and who goes. The directive comes down from Olympus and they have to be executed quickly so that P.R. can move on to another narrative.

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