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The myth of America's missing software engineers

management.fortune.cnn.com

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Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#61

Post by pekk »

seldo wrote: post #23

"It would make sense that an employer would try to offer a lower salary to an employee it helped move to the United States since that employee also gains the benefit of getting sponsored, but the analysis found the opposite." This makes me want to punch the screen. It is ILLEGAL to pay an engineer on an H-1B less than the median salary for that position, precisely because people were worried that foreign labour would…

No, it isn't illegal.

By 'that position' do you mean the position being replaced, or the new position created in order to hire the H1B? And are you taking account of the market price of the additional skills that employee brings, or is that not relevant?

So here's just one loophole: companies find a lower-paid title, and base the 'prevailing wage' on beginning level employees. Now that the 'prevailing wage' is set, try to hire young people with advanced education, special skills, etc. Congratulations, you now have a legal way of paying about half of what a comparably experienced citizen would cost. Bonus: sponsorship does provide good leverage.

Consider H1B employees getting paid the prevailing wage. Is this how you compensate the best talent during a talent shortage? No. It implies you'd pay less if you were confident you could get away with it.

You can't honestly dispute that the program is being used to undercut wages. Legally.

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#62

Post by jnbiche »

m_ke wrote: post #31
shreeshga wrote: post #14

Important factor is how many of the "qualified" candidates clear the interviews? The problem is not the lack of people to interview, it's the lack of people who clear interviews.

A lot of people assume that learning Java makes you qualify for the title of software engineer. Every time one of these articles pop up it gets flooded with comments from upset ITT tech graduates who are pissed that H1-bs are stealing their jobs.

If someone knows Java, and knows it well -- and all that that entails (good engineering practices like code organization, commenting, testing, optimizing if needed, security, corner cases) -- then why wouldn't they qualify for the title of software engineer?

Actually, my problem in this (non-Bay area) region of the country where I now live is that I don't have a ten-year Java history, and most managers here don't seem to believe that my background in C, Python, Lua, and JavaScript would allow me to pick it up in a very short period of time (and indeed, I've since picked it up for Android development, and it turned out that the Android API was harder for me to learn that Java itself).

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#63

Post by redblacktree »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #38

I always ask myself if the unemployed engineers are indeed employable. If so, then there is no shortage. If they just appear unemployable, then maybe. If they are not, then there is a shortage regardless of the simple numbers.

Is an unemployable engineer really an engineer at all?

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#64

Post by nobodysfool »

evgen wrote: post #54
cantankerous wrote: post #25

I used to have dreams of moving out to the valley after I finished school, but after checking, rechecking, and then rechecking again the cost of living out there, I pretty much scrapped the idea. The Bay Area may be a cool place to live, but it's not a 250% housing-cost-increase cool to me. Moreover, the pay doesn't match that housing increase. Forget it. For that price I'll wait for somebody to offer a telecommuting…

You will be renting, not buying. This means that they monthly housing cost differential will be more than made up for in the salary differential. The sad fact is that if you are not in the top slice of a particular subfield you are not going to be getting telecommuting options unless you get very lucky: by being in Missouri you both limit your opportunity to find the lucky break and limit your ability to get into the…

>You will be renting, not buying.

Exactly why the OP won't choose to move there. Why should he have to pay someone the privilege of living, and get none of that money back when/if they decide to leave? At least when you buy you get some equity.

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#65

Post by hga »

tootie wrote: post #60
zeteo wrote: post #15

My company (which, according to Glassdoor, is paying above-average tech salaries) recently started offering ~$100 per lead for software engineering referrals. If the person ends up being hired, their referrer also gets a ~$2000 bonus. A recruiting firm that can truly locate these missing engineers would be making a killing in the marketplace right now.

Same here. Data notwithstanding, I've done a lot of job interviews for candidates with the right resume and most are not hirable. Software engineering is a field where quality is hugely important.

We share this experience, or as I put it, a majority who "can't program their way out of a paper bag".

But that doesn't tell if there are enough candidates out there if the salaries and conditions of work were better. The latter is very possibly a big issue with H-1B employees, seeing as how they've a modern version of indentured servants.

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#66

Post by dep_b »

I can not imagine anyone that's able to find a pinned shortcut to Visual Studio and double click it being without a job in the United States if I'm honest. It's hard for me to visualize what kind of total retards would get rejected on a regular basis. Could somebody find one of them for me? I would like to speak to somebody like that.

The only people I can imagine are PDP-11 assembly specialists nearing their 60s. And still I have a feeling there could just as well be even a screaming shortage for them.

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#67

Post by geebee »

FedRegister wrote: post #3

From the article: >To be sure, using data to argue about contentious policy issues should always prompt skepticism. Death of journalism right there. Data be damned! On a more serious note: >"There is, indeed, a shortage of tech workers in the Bay Area." That's because it's so darn expensive to live in the Bay Area, and almost impossible at the wages that tech companies generally want to pay for talent. They're knotti…

That sentence was poorly written. What they mean, of course, is that you can't just blindly accept data, especially in a highly contentious debate.

The way they wrote it, yeah, it almost sounds like they think it's "bad" to rely on data in a policy issue. Kind of funny, but based on the rest of the paragraph, clearly not what they mean.

Kind of an aside here, but it drives me nuts when people quote "lies, damn lies, and statistics" or talk about "lying with statistics" as a way of dismissing data out of hand. Yes, anything that can be used to communicate can be used to lie. You can lie with words, that doesn't mean you should disregard any argument made with words! It just means you have to be careful - or, as this article put it, skeptical.

It is important to take a very careful look at data in a contentious argument. So I agree with them... sheesh, though, very badly phrased.

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#68

Post by hga »

redblacktree wrote: post #63
bayesianhorse wrote: post #38

I always ask myself if the unemployed engineers are indeed employable. If so, then there is no shortage. If they just appear unemployable, then maybe. If they are not, then there is a shortage regardless of the simple numbers.

Is an unemployable engineer really an engineer at all?

Given that in this field of "engineering" you become unemployable for conventional salaried positions at around age 35-40, it's a less debatable point than you're positing, I think.

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#69

Post by jbooth »

aryastark wrote: post #32
jcnnghm wrote: post #5

I posted this in response to a comment the last time this came up. That article was killed, so I'm reposting: Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech companies is that these companies want star programmers Maybe they should try paying like stars. What percentage of engineers that aren't founders or within the first five employees make over $300,000 a year? The money is in Silicon Vall…

Yep. This is how backwards our industry is. It wants to pay peanuts for rockstar coders, but doesn't realize that no one is both dumb enough to work for snack food Tuesdays and smart enough to have a PhD in CS. The problem is exasperated by these companies treating engineers like children. "Toss them another Mt. Dew, and they'll work another all-nighter." With all the VC and buyout money out there, a true rockstar is…

Well, don't work for those companies. There's plenty of companies around that actively discourage hero coding by anybody (aside from exceptional circumstances) because it illustrates a deeper flaw in their system.

Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers

#70

Post by m_ke »

jnbiche wrote: post #62
m_ke wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people assume that learning Java makes you qualify for the title of software engineer. Every time one of these articles pop up it gets flooded with comments from upset ITT tech graduates who are pissed that H1-bs are stealing their jobs.

If someone knows Java, and knows it well -- and all that that entails (good engineering practices like code organization, commenting, testing, optimizing if needed, security, corner cases) -- then why wouldn't they qualify for the title of software engineer? Actually, my problem in this (non-Bay area) region of the country where I now live is that I don't have a ten-year Java history, and most managers here don't see…

There's a difference between someone who has ten years of experience and a guy who just finished a 2 year degree at a for-profit school.
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