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There is no talent shortage

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Re: There is no talent shortage

#61

Post by kahawe »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #20
xiaoma wrote: post #13

It is a weird market. I've been job searching pretty hard for the past month in SF and the response has been a bit frustrating. I get tons of people reaching out to me after meeting me at tech meetups, etc, but I'd say over half of those leads end up cutting me at an HR filter before I can even get an interview! From what I understand it's due to two things-- at 34, I'm older than others going for junior positions. I…

You've been searching for a month, you've been getting interviews, even repeat interviews, and you are complaining? Not to make little of your situation, but I don't think you really have a whole lot to complain about, especially because any place with a real HR department is going to take at least a month to get you into a job. Also, SF is expensive, and if you are staying somewhere expensive in the city while tryin…

> Move out to Oakland

From all that I have heard and read, do NOT move to Oakland.

Re: There is no talent shortage

#62

Post by rmc »

dspeyer wrote: post #10

This article is playing word-games. When employers and economists talk about talent, they mean capability, regardless of whether it's natural or comes from hard work. Your dictionary may say "natural aptitude or skill", but that's irrelevant to the job market.

"Dictionary defintions" are usually a red flag during an argument,

Re: There is no talent shortage

#64

Post by sanxiyn »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #58
sentinel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might be missing the point of the article.

Not really, no wonder companies have problems hiring if they are after some mythical person who does not represent the top 1% of programmers, more like the top 0.001% (even Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates don't tick all the boxes here). In fact I would be surprised if someone with that level of accomplishment so young would even consider taking any job with any company, more likely they are already putting together an M…

You may be surprised, but it is possible to be very talented in programming without much entrepreneurial ambition. Well, the original article mentioned "started two companies" so probably Norman is not looking for jobs.

But I do know a person who's been programming since ~12, wrote a 3D game in C++ at ~16 (multiplayer one, thousands of players), and wrote his own OS, and happily employed.

Re: There is no talent shortage

#65

Post by jiggy2011 »

sanxiyn wrote: post #64
jiggy2011 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, no wonder companies have problems hiring if they are after some mythical person who does not represent the top 1% of programmers, more like the top 0.001% (even Linus Torvalds or Bill Gates don't tick all the boxes here). In fact I would be surprised if someone with that level of accomplishment so young would even consider taking any job with any company, more likely they are already putting together an M…

You may be surprised, but it is possible to be very talented in programming without much entrepreneurial ambition. Well, the original article mentioned "started two companies" so probably Norman is not looking for jobs. But I do know a person who's been programming since ~12, wrote a 3D game in C++ at ~16 (multiplayer one, thousands of players), and wrote his own OS, and happily employed.

Out of curiosity what were the game and OS?

Re: There is no talent shortage

#66

Post by zithtar »

xiaoma wrote: post #40
juiceandjuice wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've been searching for a month, you've been getting interviews, even repeat interviews, and you are complaining? Not to make little of your situation, but I don't think you really have a whole lot to complain about, especially because any place with a real HR department is going to take at least a month to get you into a job. Also, SF is expensive, and if you are staying somewhere expensive in the city while tryin…

I didn't mean to be complaining. It's just an unexpected outcome for me. I can't remember ever having to look for this long before. About half the work I've done has been under my own employ and 80% it has been in Taiwan or China. Truth be told, I've never dealt with a "real HR" department before! I've got a $500/month place in Chinatown, and really haven't found anything near that price with English speaking landlor…

Just don't tell prospective employers about doing programming gigs for $11/hr, that certainly doesn't speak very well to your judgment.

Re: There is no talent shortage

#67

Post by einhverfr »

coryl wrote: post #50
te_chris wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two pseudo-scientific books as proof. Seems legit. In all seriousness, this is ridiculous, of course natural talent exists, what gladwell et al are really getting at to me is that it's not enough to have natural talent and execute once. That isn't how success works in the real world, even if it outwardly appears that way. I have Los of friends who are artists and I moved cities last year from one where the local ar s…

of course natural talent exists Well then, what is natural talent, how do you objectify and measure it in a person, if it so obviously exists? Success is best correlated with time invested in skill development. Natural talent is bullshit, it's like attributing height to a basketball player's success.

I disagree with you here.

There are some areas where I am quite frankly talented. Once I get Perl coding on accounting software, there is very little that can stop me and quite frankly I can outperform nearly any programmer I have ever worked with.

On the other hand, there are also things which I cannot do very well no matter how hard I try. When I was in college for example I used to be able to help struggling students in areas like analytical geometry understand the problems and go from getting C's to getting A's. But I couldn't get above a C myself.

Re: There is no talent shortage

#68

Post by Wilya »

There is no talent shortage. There is a shortage of Berkeley/Stanford/MIT grads.

Just look at the difference between grads of those school, who basically get money thrown at them, and the rest of graduates, who have a hard time finding a job at all.

Re: There is no talent shortage

#69

Post by esonderegger »

xiaoma wrote: post #13

It is a weird market. I've been job searching pretty hard for the past month in SF and the response has been a bit frustrating. I get tons of people reaching out to me after meeting me at tech meetups, etc, but I'd say over half of those leads end up cutting me at an HR filter before I can even get an interview! From what I understand it's due to two things-- at 34, I'm older than others going for junior positions. I…

I'm in a pretty similar situation (30 years old, no full-time programming on my résumé, but a long history of technical problem solving).

One thing I'll add is that, at least for me, the problem of employers only looking for people with X skill right now is not as bad in SF as it is elsewhere. I'm in Washington, DC and the only interest I've gotten has been from companies in the Bay area.

Re: There is no talent shortage

#70

Post by einhverfr »

hpatel wrote: post #27

Talent at any company can be divided in to following categories: a. People who make code* frameworks b. People who extend code frameworks c. People who maintain code frameworks * you can replace code with almost any other employable skill "Talent shortage" usually refers to people who fall in a). Every company claims to want to hire only a) but most companies need b) or c). Very early stage startups ideally need a),…

But if that's the case the problem is different than it is portrayed to HR and that's the problem.

What you need is someone for a) is someone who is both a software engineer (i.e. thinks hard about design) and is a coder/developer. The amount of experience doesn't really matter though experience is an important guide. What really matters is attitude. How does the programmer approach design questions? Is the individual someone who just wants to code? Or is the individual one who is always addressing his or her code for maintainability and pursuing perfect in that regard?

I have seen projects built by people who coded for a dozen years and never got to the point of actually thinking hard about design and maintainability. I have even been stuck in the nightmarish position of maintaining such code (and of course deciding to refactor with a chain saw!).

Again a lot of it is a question of priorities and, I hate to say it, ego. One has to both have an ego enough to question prevailing wisdom but have a small enough one to understand that one's coding style is never perfect. Such individuals are rare, in my experience.

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