The Myth of America's Tech Talent Shortage

The offers being thrown around by Facebook, Google, et al, aren't anything to scoff at, and as another poster pointed out already, have gone up substantially in a just a few short years (that 50% number is accurate for new grads, it's higher for those with experience).

But the bulk of programmers in the country don't work at Facebook, or Google, or Microsoft. Nor are they forging the bleeding edge future of consumer/enterprise tech. They're doing the unglamorous, not often discussed IT grunt work in the back office of some corporate headquarters.

Their salaries are stagnant, and they are stagnant regardless of H-1B numbers specifically because the supply-demand curve in that leve of the industry sucks. And because our statistics put the $45K VB6 coder in the same category as the $200K+ Google engineer, the rise in one segment of the industry is largely hidden.

There is a danger to making decisions based on averages.

It's strange to me how every time the tech immigration debate comes up Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and co. are beaten to a pulp. They're the ones actually importing people at above market rates, they're the ones handing out $110K offers to new grads and $150-200K offers to even intermediate level coders. They're not the boogeyman under your bed.

Whereas actual exploitative employers like Infosys are barely mentioned. In fact, none of the infamous programming sweatshops are even named in this article. How is that the actual bad actors are facing none of the media scrutiny while the only good (or neutral) actors get all the blame?

Are you looking for a developer who is smart and experienced and can intelligently talk while whiteboarding stuff? Solve problems, figure out solutions, self teach continuously and knows how to use google search with a proven successful track record?

Or are you looking for a Redhat admin who uses mac minis and codes sysadmin stuff in python and uses puppet for systems administration and the play framework under Java?

I'm not looking for work, I'm cool where I'm at. Under criteria #1 I'd be be your dream candidate. Under criteria #2 I, along with 99.999999% of the tech population, would never make it past the HR filter...

Lets see I've only got 15 years experience with Debian of which 11 is a Debian Developer, you and I know I could figure out Redhat almost instantly but HR will filter me out by keyword. I shut off my last mac mini last month although my wife still has one intel one running so that's probably not going to make my resume, you and I know that's not a huge issue but HR will filter me out for not having current mac experience (last booted 2 months ago or so). I mostly code little sysadmin scripts in Perl (CPAN, really) or just shell script and you and I know that a guy who understands Perl, Ruby, C, and a couple other languages will figure out how to use the tab key and a couple google searches later I'll be productive in python, but HR will filter me out. Shockingly enough we both use puppet so we'll get along famously and HR won't filter me out, at least for that, unless they do something stupid like filter on version number, I'm using 2.7 here at work so if you're still using 2.6 I'll get filtered out by HR. I've been fooling around with the Play framework but I've been using Scala, really as a tool to learn Scala, that and project euler puzzles in Scala, so you and I know that someone who knows Play can probably transition from Scala to Java with little effort, but HR will surely filter me out. By criteria #2 in this paragraph I'd be amazed if you find even one fully qualified applicant in the entire world, as you claim is happening.

At my current job while talking to tech people I can say that any middle to high end LAMP jack of all trades guy with some DBA and some systems analyst background could do the majority of it, and/or figure out the rest on their own if they are smart and have google handy, just like I did. But you know HR would describe my job as an insane laundry list that virtually no human being in the world other than myself actually simultaneously knows.

Or you might have pay issues. I don't live in a sand state so I don't make much compared to SV or Manhattan, but depending on if you use suburb, county, or state income I'm making somewhere around 90th to 95th percentile family income and expect to continue to be rewarded at a similar level. I talked to an employer in Mountain View who offered substantially more money, unfortunately not enough as that would literally mean moving my family from a (small) landed estate in the 2nd wealthiest suburb in the region to, unfortunately, something like chef boyardee every day in a cardboard box under an overpass in silicon valley. So its possible you might have salary issues. If no one applies maybe you're offering $15K for a $150K job. There's a local network admin position that hasn't been filled for years advertising $60K for a CCIE, which means they're paying a H1B $50K/yr and using the non-response to the ad to "prove" they have to import. That doesn't mean there's a shortage of network administrators in the area.

But who are Facebook, Google, Microsoft (not to mention, Infosys, Wipro, etc.) trying to hire through the H-1B program? Top talent? Average coders? Why doesn't Facebook, Google, Microsoft, etc., first recruit from the masses of underpaid Infosys developers? This would force the "bad actors" to improve as well.

That's the reason they're generally not trying to recruit from the masses of underpaid infosys developers.