I Don't Agree That There Really Is a Tech Worker Shortage

My company does not care what language you know, or technology you use- we want people who are smart, capable of working with any technology. And we want the very best of those people, without lowering the quality bar for the sake of having people in seats.

We will let people go while we also are hiring for open positions on the same team if we realize the person isn't s good fit after all. I have little job security, but I work with only fantastic people. It's a deal I'm happy with. The pay is nice, and I never feel like the smartest in the room.

There are lots of companies like this. We have to complete with them for those top tier people. And we frequently find those good people outside of America.

The result? They often come work in our non-USA offices. That's one less job that would have existed in America, with the salary of it being taxed in America. It's a loss for the USA.

The example is to point out how this quote is not true, as two such engineers were not hired by Facebook. You point out that it depends on more than coding competency. While true, neither I nor the author of the piece suggests otherwise. The author, for example, suggests that ageism is one factor, and further quotes Zuckerberg as saying “Young people are just smarter. Why are most chess masters under 30?”

So I don't see how it's a poor example. You argue that they were a poor fit for the position. That essay brings up “purple squirrels” several times, to highlight how a generic "poor fit" can be a surface excuse for other reasons.

I don't really know how to structure it yet. I don't want to be a recruiter or headhunter. What I would like to do is to offer folks such as yourself, who already have resumes, my opinion as to the qualifications of each candidate.

I myself got the very highest-paying job of my career, writing Mac OS X I/O Kit Kernel Extensions - what Apple calls device drivers - because I was the first candidate in six months who knew how to do synchronization in the kernel. That's a very basic requirement for writing a device driver, so it's covered in detail, and quite clearly by the tutorials on Apple's developer site.

I expect lots of people figured they could get a cushy, high-paying job, so they just added fake device driver work to their resume. Ironically, the guy who asked me that question was their windows driver engineer.

More or less the way it would work is that you'd send me some candidate resumes, and I would tell you which ones I think were worth your time to interview.

Quite commonly, references are only checked after an interview, as the last step before making an offer.

I wouldn't check their references, so as not to annoy them, but would call or email the HR departments at each of the employers the list, to verify their employment. "Did they work for you from this year to that year?" is a simple yes-or-no question.

Also I would verify that those who claimed to have college degrees, really graduated.

In my entire life, the only time I've been asked to supply my transcripts to anyone, was when I applied to graduate school, and so I could qualify for a discount on my auto insurance. I've never had a potential employer ask for my transcripts.

Would you regard such a service as valuable? If so, have you any suggestions as to how I could get started, or how to market such a service?

A lot of people have told me I'd make a good headhunter. I expect I would, but I don't want to do that, because I want the whole practice of third-party technical recruitment to just go away.

That's both pretty trivial, and there are lots of companies that already provide that service. They're usually marketed as background checks to do just before the offer, as you say, but I'm sure they could also do it up front as you're proposing.