I Don't Agree That There Really Is a Tech Worker Shortage • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by lafar6502 » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 3:31 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #65

lafar6502 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what did you geek about then? Programming is all about algorithms and data structures, irrespective of application domain.

>Well, what did you geek about then? Parsers, grammars, computability and complexity, source-tree optimizations, intermediate representations, intuitionistic logic, type theory, PL design, microkernels, macrokernels, message-passing, locking and semaphores, scheduling algorithms, the x86 kernel-level instruction set, interactive theorem proving, functional programming, game-type vector graphics and raster graphics. N…

Impressive, but you probably see it as well as everyone else that every problem domain on your list is connected with particular set of well-known algorighms. There are no 'algorithms in the wild' - they always solve some problem.. So, i don't see any clear difference between geeking about a hashtable vs geeking about some compilation step. The key word here is 'geeking' vs 'not being interested at all how that stuff works'.

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

#72

Post by dalke » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 3:41 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #29

lafar6502 wrote: post #12

I'm afraid there's a shortage of good programmers, with proper education in computer science, understanding of how the OS and programs interact, knowing how to use at least one programming language proficiently, fluent in algorithms and data structures - i mean people who know their tools and know what they're doing. Instead we've got lots of excited, half-educated but enthusiastic ctrl-c/ctrl-v specialists, doing wh…

There's a wide spectrum between copy+paste no-hopers and people with a PhD from MIT who know Knuth and SICP backwards. I would rather employ a self-taught developer with some experience and pragmatism born out of real-world experience than I would someone with impeccable academic credentials. Forgive me if I sound touchy but I'm self-taught, my knowledge of algorithms is extremely patchy - but I think I'm a competent…

I think you mean only impeccable academic credentials. Self-taught developers do enter MIT graduate school, including after several years of working in industry. For that matter, Chumby hired Andrew "bunnie" Huang as a freshly minted MIT PhD in EE.

Or perhaps you mean that the types of problems you work on, like the vast majority of problems in the world, don't require knowing Knuth and "PCIS", or a PhD education?

I develop algorithms as part of my work. For example, given 20 molecules, find the largest substructure which is in at least 15 of them. I opened up v3 of Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" last week because it has several pages about a topic that I don't understand.

It would take a lot longer to train you to the point where you could be effective at the task, than a Knuth-knowing MIT grad. Which is quite reasonable - I'm in a rather obscure corner of the programming world. Though it's one where Knuth plays a much larger role than SICP.

Forgive me if I sound touchy ;) but I'm self-taught, followed by education, followed by experience, and feel exactly the same as you.

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

#73

Post by MichaelCrawford » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 3:41 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #56

glesica wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A possible solution here is for countries to treat labor the way they have started to treat capital and goods and services. Start signing reciprocal free-labor agreements. If country Y is willing to allow anyone who can legally live and work in country X to legally live and work in country Y, then country X will do the same for people who can legally live and work in country Y. In my mind, if companies were serious a…

Such exists between many countries in the EU. It's not so simple though. Free movement of labor also requires a correspondence in the national health care and retirement programs, so for example totalization agreements to eliminate dual Social Security coverage. The US has such agreements with only a score or so countries (see http://www.ssa.gov/international/agreements_overview.html ). It gives an example of a 66% t…

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) established such a free labor market under the TN-1 visa, which is extremely easy to get, however it only applies to twenty different occupations. It's commonly thought that Computer Programming or Software Engineering qualify, but they don't - the TN-1 provides for Systems Analysts, who are commonly programmers as well, but Systems Analysis is really quite a different thing.

Before we were married, my Canadian ex-wife obtained a TN-1 so she could live with me in California. She has a Biology degree, and so was able to find work as a Biological Lab Technician, which is one of the twenty on the list.

In general, Canadians, Mexicans and Americans can get a TN-1 if they have a written offer letter for one of those twenty kinds of jobs and a four-year college degree. The visa expires in a year, but is renewable. Canadians and Americans just show up at a port of entry, request the visa, present the offer letter and their diploma or college transcripts, then pay a fifty dollar fee. The visa itself is a small card that is stapled onto one of your passport pages.

For a Mexican to work in the US, they must request the visa at the US embassy in Mexico City. I don't know what they must do to get a TN-1 for Canada.

For my ex-wife's TN-1, the whole process of applying for her TN-1 only took ten minutes and cost fifty bucks. By contrast, an H1-B costs thousands of dollars in attorney fees, one must apply months in advance, and one must qualify before the cap is over its limit.

It's not well-understood that, in Canada and the US at least, it's completely legal for foreigners to work without a visa provided they are paid in their home country. That's how I myself was able to work in Canada. I'm a self-employed consultant, so I deposited all of my clients' payments in a bank back in the US, then withdrew Canadian currency from ATM machines in Canada.

I don't have a clue whether this last applies in other countries.

Strictly speaking I overstayed my Canadian tourist visa. I started paying Canadian taxes after I got a work permit, as I had applied for landed immigration - what the US calls a Green Card. However, no one actually objected.

Just being married to a citizen of some other country does NOT automatically permit one to reside or work there! That fact is also poorly understood. That's not right, but that's the law in the US, Canada and the UK that I know of, I expect many other countries as well. One must apply for a visa after getting married; before one is wed, one can apply for a fiance visa.

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

#74

Post by MichaelCrawford » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 3:45 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #61

xixixao wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very simple fix: instead of lottery, award the visas to the highest paid employees in each field. That salary cannot drop more than 10%. (I'd add, the employee can switch companies, instead of being tied to one, given they are again paid the same amount in salary). The "offending" companies are not the likes of Facebook or Google, or small start ups (other HN discussions mentioned the concrete companies that get the…

Such a lottery would give priority to areas of the country where the cost of living is highest. While I believe that the "apparent shortage" is artificial propaganda, and used as a strategy to keep wages low, if it does exist, what evidence is there that the shortage isn't most severe in Alabama, South Carolina, and New Mexico, which are some of the poorest states in the US? If it were the case that those states were…

The Canadian Province of Nova Scotia "bet the farm" when it built a really well-equipped Computer Science facility at Dalhousie University in Halifax. It's really easy to get financial aid in Canada as well.

Of course the province was hoping to build a robust software industry.

What actually happened is that most of Dalhousie's CS grads get jobs in the US. I lived in Nova Scotia for several years, I was only able to get one job there. All of my other jobs were remote work for clients in the US.

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

#75

Post by snewman » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 3:46 PM UTC

smikhanov wrote: post #42

bigtimber wrote: post #38

There is only a shortage of cheap / entry level tech workers. There are plenty of experienced and over-qualified tech workers, but most short-sighted employers don't value older employees.

Correct. I'll steal someone else's comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7761424 ) that illustrates this and corresponds to the OP's experience: Junior programmer (22): makes $80-100k, 120k in the Bay Area. Easily gets jobs. Senior programmer (28): 5-10 times as valuable as the junior. Makes $120-140k, possibly 150k. Serious stock options possible with the right company. Three- month job searches. Expert pro…

(47 year old technical founder here; about to plug my startup so feel free to skip)

Maybe this is true in general but it's not true everywhere.

We're looking for a few great engineers, are happy to pay what they're worth, and understand the value of experience -- where experience means "every year I get better at writing code", not "now I'm an architect and don't have to write code". If you or anyone you know is interested, check us out at scalyr.com. Small team, cool tech (e.g. [1]). We are early stage so equity is a significant portion of compensation, but we can pay a significant cash wage as well, and we have 1.5+ years of runway.

[1] http://blog.scalyr.com/2014/05/searching-20-gbsec-systems-en...

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

#76

Post by MichaelCrawford » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 3:53 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #19

MichaelCrawford wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the specific reason that resumes are often, if not actually outright faked, at least "enhanced", I've been contemplating starting a business in which I would perform resume screening for folks like you, for a fee. 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 qual…

The only concrete things that you've suggested you would do is call colleges and previous employers' HR departments. 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.

I've never so much as heard of someone verifying employment and graduation before interviewing a candidate. If it's done at all, it's the last step, after the interview but before the offer.

While it's common for references to be contacted, it's quite uncommon for employment to be verified. Note that that's quite a different thing: "Did Bart Simpson do a good job for you?" is checking a reference. "Did Bart Simpson work for your company in 1999?" is verifying employment.

One's references must be people who one actually knew, usually direct managers but sometimes coworkers.

The person who supplies the employment verification need not have ever met the candidate.

And yes I know this is not rocket science - but consider what I just said, that AMCC interviewed candidates for six months before they found someone who actually had done what the claimed, in my case writing OS X drivers. AMCC did a background check on me, but only AFTER I got the job offer, and with my written permission.

While it might still have required six months to find a qualified candidate, AMCC could have saved a lot of effort and expense by sending some emails or making some phone calls before inviting candidates in to onsite interviews.

Consider that it's quite common to pay for plane fare, car rental and hotel accommodation if the candidate has to travel. The employer still pays even if they don't make an offer.

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

#77

Post by MichaelCrawford » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 3:57 PM UTC

wmkn wrote: post #31

nolok wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent, but I've sat though way too many interviews where the candidate failed the "FizzBuzz" test, either through super convoluted code that barely works or with complete failure to produce the expected results. And that is while sitting at a desktop computer, full internet access and no one eyeing behind them.

So you are saying that many people failed to type "FizzBuzz code" in Google? I do not really buy that.

I am commonly asked to reverse a C string.

The first time I did that, I wrote out what I regarded as the obvious solution. The owner of the company pointed out that I had paid attention to performance. That had me puzzled - while I could see that there are lots of really slow ways to reverse C strings, I found it hard to believe that anyone would provide slow solutions to such a simple problem in a job interview.

I got an offer the very next day.

It was not long after that I discovered that many of that company's other coders were, while not actually clueless, just not very adept. Like they really would be challenged to write a fast C string reverser.

At least I got the fizzbuzz test right. I've only been faced with that challenged just once, but three times now I've had to reverse strings.

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

#78

Post by MichaelCrawford » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 4:01 PM UTC

justincormack wrote: post #32

chrisseaton wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only concrete things that you've suggested you would do is call colleges and previous employers' HR departments. 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.

HR departments normally have legal advice to say as little as possible. It would be hard to get a tech opinion out of them.

I once worked for a company that got sued by my predecessor, and won. However they spent so much in legal fees, that the lawsuit nearly bankrupted them. The code that my predecessor wrote worked very poorly, so they got bad press reviews, lots of product returns and so on. I was hired specifically because I said I was really good at debugging.

After that, the company owner had a specific policy of not providing references. He gave a very neutral answer: "Our policy is not to provide references." However he was completely cool about verifying employment.

His concern of course was that my predecessor would sue him again, were the company owner to give that guy a bad reference.

Ironically, that same company owner is one of my own references. He's always happy to say good things about me.

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

#79

Post by MichaelCrawford » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 4:04 PM UTC

dalke wrote: post #13

argonaut wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatively moderate nit: Using the WhatsApp founders is a very poor example. If you look at their resumes (VP of Eng at Yahoo for Brian, presumably a very senior/architect-level engineering role for Jan), I have no doubt they were interviewing at Facebook for architect/engineering director-level roles. Whether or not you get hired at that level obviously depends on much more than baseline coding competency.

I'll pick some at that nit. In the link, the author contrasts it to the quote from Zuckerberg: "Our policy is literally to hire as many talented engineers as we can find. The whole limit in the system is just that there aren’t enough people who are trained and have these skills today." 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 depen…

In the US, Federal Law, and the law of all the US states that I know about, forbid discriminating for reasons of age against people over forty.

I'm puzzled as to how Zuckerberg could have been so ignorant as to say such a thing. All I would have to do is to apply to Facebook and I'd have a good case - it's pretty obvious from my resume that I'm olde and greyye.

That's not to say such discrimination does not happen, actually it's quite prevalent. It's quite common that I am asked to come in for an onsite interview, but the instant they see me in person, the way they talk it's plainly apparent that I'm not getting the job - before I even say anything. I really do have grey hair, you see, and wrinkles.

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

#80

Post by wmkn » Sun, Dec 07, 2014, 4:20 PM UTC

nmjohn wrote: post #46

wmkn wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are saying that many people failed to type "FizzBuzz code" in Google? I do not really buy that.

How many interviews have you conducted? If the answer is more than 0, I feel you have gotten lucky in the candidates you interview or are far more selective on who you actually interview. If the answer is 0, then you would be incredibly surprised. It isn't quite as simple as this dialog is making it sound, but essentially, yes, a not-insignificant number of candidates cannot solve problems with a fizzbuzz level of di…

I have done about a dozen or so interviews. I can totally imagine some people not being able to do a simple fizz buzz from scratch. But when they have full internet access and no one is watching them. "Solving" fizz buzz is then as simple as performing a search and copying the results.

I'll probably get down voted because it seems people on HN are incredibly attached to the FizzBuzz story. Possibly I am totally wrong and I am too positive about the skills of people with a CS degree. But it seems the crazier the anecdote (full internet access, coding at home, etc.) the more eager people are to believe it.