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Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

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Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#51

Post by MartinCron »

antidoh wrote: post #35
sosuke wrote: post #21

There doesn't seem to be a shortage at all. We've gotten plenty of good candidates in our doors that turn us down because our pay is barely competitive and our health insurance is terrible. Pay more money and you can attract more tech workers. Or lower your standards and make a plan to promote in company education, make the specialized work force you need yourself!

"lower your standards" If I understand your intent, I would prefer to read this as "widen your standards." You're not deciding to intake less capable people. Rather, you're deciding to intake people of more varied specific experience.

the phrase that I use is "favoring aptitude over experience"

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#53

Post by Torgo »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #4

Aren't there still a lot of devs in flyover country who complain about finding few positions? Or is the fact they chose not to relocate being weighed against them?

Maybe Microsoft should open some offices in the Midwest.

I moved out of the Midwest because, while there was work, it was sparse, and frankly, not interesting. There are decent paying jobs but I found the ceiling was low compared to other places. I would have preferred to stay. I saw many excellent friends that have languished there because it's culturally unpleasant for many Midwesterners to move away from their families.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#54

Post by MartinCron »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #15
prodigal_erik wrote: post #4

Aren't there still a lot of devs in flyover country who complain about finding few positions? Or is the fact they chose not to relocate being weighed against them?

They can hardly be blamed for not wanting to go live in rainy Seattle, work under someone as uninspiring as Steve Ballmer, and put up with awful stack ranking BS.

The stack ranking BS is (allegedly) a thing of the past, and the rain in Seattle is overblown. There are plenty of US cities that get more rain than Seattle.

I won't challenge your opinion about Steve Ballmer, though.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#55

Post by salem »

incongruity wrote: post #5

If it were a genuine crisis, rather than a 'genuine crisis', wages would be genuinely rising more than they are, for anyone with anything close to the skills sought. Instead, this strikes me as a push to get cheaper workers, rather than actually paying for a scarce resource. But maybe I'm just cynical.

It's not just wages, but the time it takes to find and employ a candidate, especially when the H1B quota is exhausted, and a foreign candidate cannot start work until late 2013.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#56

Post by rayiner »

txttran wrote: post #10
jquery wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't high enough to make up for working at an unpopular, stagnant, and fumbling company.

the issue msft is trying to address is the scarcity of tech people in general. They could certainly pay more and fill their positions, but paying more wouldn't create 10k new engineers (or however many positions they need filled).

Yes it would.

Someone Goldman, JP Morgan, etc, manage to fill their entering classes just fine each year. You think those companies have a stellar public reputation? No. They just pay enough to attract the kind of people they want.

If MSFT paid more, they would attract people away from other companies, they would attract people away from the banks and from the consulting firms, and they would encourage people to go into engineering instead of business or law or any of the other fields with more upside potential.

Engineering companies have this bizarre aversion to competing on salaries and competing for workers, as evidenced by all the no-poaching agreements and non-competes that go on. In banking, consulting, law, medicine, etc, salaries get bid up to deal with constrained supply. Blackstone isn't paying fresh grads $300k out of the goodness of their hearts, or because they think it's "fair" but because that's what it takes to get the kind of employees they want.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#57

Post by MartinCron »

RyJones wrote: post #26
pnathan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle seems like a great place to live to me. I would jump at the chance to move there! But MS might be a tougher sell. ;)

Have Microsoft relocate you, wait a year for your relo payback contract to expire, quit. Or you could find a position at the many Seattle-area employers willing to relocate you: Google, Adobe, Boeing, Valve, a whole grip of game companies. The world, as it were, is your oyster.

A few of my friends here in Seattle call Amazon the "travel agent for developers" because so many people relocate to Seattle to work for Amazon and leave immediately after they no longer have to pay back their moving expenses.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#58

Post by luser001 »

drpgq wrote: post #45
luser001 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've encountered this sort of response citing the high pay in healthcare before. So I wanted to throw a thought out there for feedback. A relevant point is the "carrying capacity" for healthcare professionals. The USA can probably double the number of people employed in healthcare (using a handwavy argument that that 40 million [edit: I earlier wrote 40%] of the population is uninsured). Note the number of people wit…

Wait are you saying that there are fewer people working in health care in the US compared to STEM? I don't think that's true at all.

Yep, that's what I'm saying.

I'm too lazy to look into this, but intuitively it makes sense to me. Healthcare is basically an "exception handler" (default state of humans is to be health), whereas STEM is the "real code".

I would expect more "real code" than "exception handlers".

Also sq. ft. of physical space devoted to healthcare (e.g., hospitals) seems to be far less than sq. ft. of space devoted to STEM (e.g., office parks).

If dig up info to disprove me, I would be very grateful to get a correction to my worldview.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#59

Post by untog »

mdkess wrote: post #22

As a Canadian, one thing that I don't understand is why companies don't move to Canada. I feel like working in the states, I've priced myself out of the Canadian market (since salaries in Canada for engineers seem to be about 60-70% of what they are in the US), but I can't imagine that Vancouver or Toronto would be that hard to build an office out of. Yet for the most part, companies don't. From my understanding, the…

I lived in Canada for two years on a "working holiday" visa, which eventually ran out. There are two reasons why I moved to the US:

- No-one really seemed to be doing startups. More importantly, there didn't seem to be many investors, either. I understand that is changing these days, but it's not surprising that companies don't move to Canada when the support infrastructure isn't there.

- No companies wanted to sponsor me. Most had never done it before and were very nervous about the idea. American companies approached me and offered to sort out a visa for me. The difference was like night and day.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#60

Post by [deleted] »

mdkess wrote: post #22

As a Canadian, one thing that I don't understand is why companies don't move to Canada. I feel like working in the states, I've priced myself out of the Canadian market (since salaries in Canada for engineers seem to be about 60-70% of what they are in the US), but I can't imagine that Vancouver or Toronto would be that hard to build an office out of. Yet for the most part, companies don't. From my understanding, the…

[deleted]
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