As a hiring manager outside the Bay Area (Tahoe), I can say that the hiring situation is worse than I have ever seen it.
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The myth of America's missing software engineers
71–80 of 143 posts
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#72From 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…
You took that sentence out of context. This is the full paragraph: > To be sure, using data to argue about contentious policy issues should always prompt skepticism. It's too easy to focus on particular aspects of any data analysis to prove one's point and overlook those items that may raise more questions. ... which is a very valid point.
It's a very valid point if you are not doing research but instead doing viewpoint validation.
Research is gathering all of the data you can in as much of an unbiased manner as you can and then asking what conclusions you can draw from that data. Viewpoint validation is starting from your conclusion and cherry picking data to support that conclusion. There is no evidence that viewpoint validation is what went on here, and in fact the article mentions later the rest of the data that was gathered and analysis of the points in the data that may contradict this conclusion.
However, the writer also spends most of his time saying, "Welp, there's all of this data, but can a brother get a programmer? Nope? INVALID CONCLUSION DOES NOT COMPUTE," which is a pretty shitty way to do journalism.
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#73I 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…
This is really a tough sell as a policy issue. I'm supposed to be all upset that wages are being depressed from $200,000 to $100,000 for people who happened to have fallen out of their mothers on one side of an invisible line even though it means opportunities for people to make $100,000 who would otherwise be making $25,000 but happened to be born on the other side of the world?
Sorry, far from being upset, that sounds to me like a great trade-off. Sure the companies aren't doing it out of altruism, but the net result is quite positive. All those 'underpaid' American born engineers working in silicon valley can comfort themselves knowing that they will still be among the 1% richest people in the entire world.
N.B. Look up PPP before objecting based on how much an apartment in SF costs.
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#74My 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.
Part of the problem is that the salaries are just too damn low right now. If you offer a competitive or even above-average salary that's _livable_ in the Bay Area then talent will beat a path to your door. Try to lowball or meet other offers and you'll be stuck without candidates.
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Absolutely.
Several years ago I was at a company and we were hiring for a position. One guy came in, who was maybe in his mid-50s. His technical skills were excellent, he could answer any question thrown at him in detail. Aside from that he was a normal, genial guy with a solid resume - we has passed on another guy with good tech knowledge but who did not act normal. I was desperate to have the position filled as people had quit and I was handling a large load.
Two managers said they didn't want to hire him. I really protested this - we had interviewed so many people and had finally found someone decent. I said he was perfect, what more could they want, what was wrong with him? I asked that last question repeatedly. Finally one said, "I think if we called him up in the middle of the night to fix a problem, he would be unhappy with that". Months later we hired a guy in his 20s, who had less technical talent.
That's the position companies are in. They pass over perfect candidates like this guy in his 50s, and then bemoan they can't find candidates.
These companies fund think tanks who have economists who tell us that value is determined by supply and demand, that if there is enough demand for something, the price for it will rise until a supply comes about. This is their philosophy, yet now they're saying there is a shortage of engineers. It is total BS. Engineers are being overworked and underpaid. People talk about high engineer salaries, they don't talk about how engineers have to pay for their own college degrees, do all that studying, then go to work, make a starting salary, then have death marches on projects etc.
Engineers are usually undercompensated for the work they do. The only exceptions to this are during tech bubbles (say 1999), but those only last for a short while. They're also made up for on the other side by tech slumps, where IT workers employable during normal times, but perhaps without a college degree, are out of work.
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#76My 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.
Even if they could "locate" the engineers, that doesn't mean the engineers will want to work for the companies paying.
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#77"Qualified applicants" takes on a different meaning if you're looking for someone to crank out a CRUD app or write operating system kernels. For example, we've been looking for an entry-level web developer for almost a year. They actually put "computer science degree" and "2 years experience" on the job ad. We found a pretty smart kid with an associates that blew the interview by mentioning he kept up with industry t…
blew the interview by mentioning he kept up with industry trends on Reddit ..as opposed to not keeping up with industry trends at all? Sometimes, I feel like middle management in America is the problem.
That's a comment that probably merited further delving into.
There are some decent sub-reddits.
It's a totally different thing if he's following the programming subreddit than say the gonewild subreddit.
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#78My 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.
Even if they could "locate" the engineers, that doesn't mean the engineers will want to work for the companies paying.
Who would rather stay unemployed than take an engineering job?
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#79It's always an eye opener to look up companies at http://www.h1bwage.com/ and compare their salaries. Plenty of SF companies hire 'senior software engineers' in the range of 78K.
Base salary is almost meaningless, you have to consider total comp. You'll see the same seemingly low wages at finance firms that have h1b visa's, but in reality those people are making significantly more.
Re: The myth of America's missing software engineers
#80My 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.
Seems like you could make some easy money by going to the nearest college and gathering engineering students email addresses.