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The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

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Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#31

Post by achompas »

pg wrote: post #18
achompas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. What about the assertion that companies are struggling to fill these roles because (a) they demand more from potential candidates while (b) offering no more in wages than what we saw 10…

The finance companies competing for programmers are also American. So even assuming that SV companies could draw star programmers away from Goldman Sachs by paying them more, there would still be exactly the same net shortage of them in the US.

The article is addressing a shortage of workers for STEM jobs. Quote from the article:

"If you're a high math student in America, from a purely economic point of view, it's crazy to go into STEM." The best of these students flock to Wall Street and corporate law firms and the rest end up employed in non-STEM jobs which often pay less and underutilize their skills.

If SV companies could draw star programmers away from Goldman, we'd then be talking about a finance shortage, no?

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#32

Post by lukeschlather »

I don't have a problem with the guest worker programs, but I think the way they are implemented is seriously screwed up for a number of reasons.

The laws are written so that guest workers are basically indentured servants to the companies they work for. Furthermore, we basically give guest workers 6 years of well-compensated on the job training after which point we say "go home and enrich your home economy." If I were to say the things that need to be fixed:

1. Once you've been working at a company for a year, you should be free to remain in the country whether you have work or not. Companies shouldn't be able to hold you hostage. Companies should probably even have to sponsor you for some sort of H1B level 2 to keep you around past 1 year. (Bear in mind, I'm not looking for the current bureaucratic nightmare, I'm looking for companies to have to give guest workers their freedom well in advance of the current six-year mark.)

2. If you've been gainfully employed in the country for three years under an H1B, you should get a green card automatically. No waiting around, no nothing.

If we do this, wages will rise naturally, and we'll see whether companies have a legitimate shortage or they're just looking for cheap labor.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#33

Post by bpodgursky »

dvt wrote: post #11
nazgulnarsil wrote: post #4

What if employers aren't being "picky". What if deterioration in academic standards means most graduates are not competent? A CS graduate being unable to do fizzbuzz is a travesty, and should be grounds for a school losing their accreditation if widely seen.

Academia has (literally) nothing to do with real-life software engineering. I hope I'm not bursting your bubble, but if you think otherwise you're severely mistaken.

The word "literally" does not mean what you think it means.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#34

Post by jvrossb »

achompas wrote: post #9
pg wrote: post #2

It's not bogus. Many if not most of the big high tech companies have open positions they can't find people for. If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech…

If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. What about the assertion that companies are struggling to fill these roles because (a) they demand more from potential candidates while (b) offering no more in wages than what we saw 10…

I don't think there's granular enough information in there to support your conclusion.

To illustrate, imagine that IT workers used to get paid a $100k real wage in 2000 and a $50k real wage today. Imagine computer scientists and programmers got paid a $100k real wage in 2000 and get a $150k real wage today. Bundling them all into IT would lead you to mistakenly conclude that a computer scientist would expect to make as much today as they did 10 years ago.

Can someone confirm this logic is correct?

I don't know what the real stats are, but you haven't provided them. I also notice that the Brookings article you linked states that real wages have increased for those occupations in the past few years, but I don't how if at all they are bundling professions differently.

"Or is the hidden truth quite simply that large supplies of guest workers allow many firms to swap out higher-paid, high-skill domestic workers for lower-paid, high-skill guest workers?"

The Brookings article you cited states the opposite. Foreign workers get paid more. If there truly are enough good programmers and computer scientists available in the states is there a conspiracy to subject oneself to the nightmarish visa system and pay high legal fees to be able to hire foreign workers and pay them more than Americans, all the while not offering high salaries to qualified Americans? What would motivate one to do that other than a shortage of qualified candidates?

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#35

Post by muzz »

RyJones wrote: post #5
pg wrote: post #2

It's not bogus. Many if not most of the big high tech companies have open positions they can't find people for. If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech…

can't find people for the wage they're offering. The people they want are doing other things.

Indeed. It's Econ 101, essentially.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#36

Post by achompas »

blhack wrote: post #20
pg wrote: post #2

It's not bogus. Many if not most of the big high tech companies have open positions they can't find people for. If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech…

That's a perfect analogy. Lots of people also want to play pro ball. They can't, and no matter how much they train, they never will be able to. Their body just isn't built for it. Similarly, there are people who can study their ass off. They'll probably become pretty good, not great, but pretty good. Then there are a tiny, razor-thin minority of people who were born as some sort of intellectual freak, who will also s…

I'm not a fan of this analogy, as it perpetuates the idea that SV companies need a humongous collection rockstar ninja h4x0rs. I suspect that's not the case for the majority of positions--there's probably a shortage at the tail of the job distribution, but not at the mode.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#37

Post by aidenn0 »

blhack wrote: post #20
pg wrote: post #2

It's not bogus. Many if not most of the big high tech companies have open positions they can't find people for. If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech…

That's a perfect analogy. Lots of people also want to play pro ball. They can't, and no matter how much they train, they never will be able to. Their body just isn't built for it. Similarly, there are people who can study their ass off. They'll probably become pretty good, not great, but pretty good. Then there are a tiny, razor-thin minority of people who were born as some sort of intellectual freak, who will also s…

Except the league minimum for an MLB player is quite high, and has been going up. Why is the starting salary for highly recruited devs relatively flat?

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#38

Post by megrimlock »

jmduke wrote: post #25
dvt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Academia has (literally) nothing to do with real-life software engineering. I hope I'm not bursting your bubble, but if you think otherwise you're severely mistaken.

Academia has an awful lot to do with real-life software engineering. It might not be as good of a preparation as spending those four years in internships or as a junior developer, but saying that there's (literally) no difference between the software engineering capabilities of a CS grad and an English grad is hyperbole.

Meta: One funny thing about online discussions is that the activation energy required to make a post means they tend to be by people with extreme positions. The same phenomenon that leads to bimodal amazon review distributions of 1 star / 4.5 stars, or blog posts about how golang sucks/rules, means that an open-minded reader needs to continuously apply this huge smoothing windowed filter over the point-sampled views you read.

Some schools give good industrial training; some are still bemused that machines exist that perform the computations that are so fascinating to study in the abstract. We need both. It's true that schools can't manufacture stars, but they can help train those with latent ability, just as Real Madrid players are certainly helped by coming up through smaller teams.

Likewise, some places (YC startups, or forward-looking splinter groups in larger industry) need rock stars who can do a lot; but there's a huge swathe of megacorps that just need warm bodies that can tab-complete API calls; the problem with debates like this is that arguments are so rarely anchored by a clear context. Are we doomed to always argue straight past one another?

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#39

Post by wunna »

pg wrote: post #2

It's not bogus. Many if not most of the big high tech companies have open positions they can't find people for. If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech…

pg - I would urge you to write an essay or article in some prominent magazine. Someone of your stature voicing is critical to the high-tech industry.

Re: The Bogus High-Tech Worker Shortage

#40

Post by [deleted] »

bennyg wrote: post #19
pg wrote: post #2

It's not bogus. Many if not most of the big high tech companies have open positions they can't find people for. If anyone is curious where the mistake is in this article's reasoning, it's in the assumption that people are more or less interchangeable, and that all you have to do is train them to be Xes, and you can have as many Xes as you want. Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech…

It's kind of bogus. There's more reasons than what you're listing - and some help the author's statements. For starters, why throw a résumé away because it doesn't have [Top-Tier CS Program] listed? Make the potential employee pool bigger, and statistics says you'll get better candidates thrown in the mix as well. For companies that emphasize innovation and thinking out of the box, they really want a cookie cutter mo…

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