Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony • Hacker News Board

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#61

Post by Eridrus » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

asuffield wrote: post #31

crdoconnor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training.

The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in pay…

> Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training.

Yes, once you train a person you need to pay them more. You might feel like they owe you, but unless there is a real understanding between the two of you that you are investing in them and expect to pay them less for some period of time to recoup the cost (eg in the form of a contract you both signed stipulating a minimum term after training, with claw back provisions), this is what you should expect.

Depending on how much it costs you (besides their salary) to train them, it can still be cheaper to hire and train than getting someone experienced, since everyone needs some time before they're really effective and you're paying them at a lower rate while you train them.

There is something to be said for small startups just not being able to support that kind of load, but I feel like once you hit about 20 engineers it's just people being lazy and not wanting to do things any differently, rather than any true constraints.

The fetishization of the 10x developer leads us to ignore the fact that lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#62

Post by supercanuck » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

asuffield wrote: post #31

crdoconnor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training.

The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in pay…

I work at a Fortune 5 Company and our director sent us some YouTube links because there isn't any training budget.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#63

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

asuffield wrote: post #31

crdoconnor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training.

The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in pay…

[deleted]

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#64

Post by currentoor » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

There is a major flaw in this article. Software developers are not cogs. Just because someone has an engineering degree does not make them just as good as any other developer. Being able to write great software usually comes from passion and practice, not a piece of paper that says "Computer Science BS". Some of the best developers I know didn't even get an engineering degree. Is there a shortage of people with pieces of paper? Maybe not. Is there a shortage of people that love writing software enough to spend most nights and weekends doing it? Yes.

This is based on my experience interviewing candidates for two small tech companies.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#65

Post by roymurdock » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:20 AM UTC

npalli wrote: post #52

roymurdock wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would posit that Starbucks example is the exact reverse of what you're seeing in the tech industry. Starbucks is hiring, but a lot of the workforce that is unemployed is overqualified with bachelor degrees that they thought would guarantee them a safe job on a nice career track. Upon graduation, they are finding that there is a shrinking pool of jobs for them, and that they'll either have to retrain (do a masters o…

This is an interesting viewpoint about Starbucks that I have heard many times. So here is an article [1] talking about how 75% of Starbucks employees don't have a college degree. If you go up the Starbucks hierarchy 50% employees are baristas. 35% are shift supervisors 15% assistant store manager or higher in the hierarchy Which means the odds are overwhelming that every employee you interact with in a normal Starbuc…

Thanks for the insightful comment.

I avoided singling out the larger corporations at the end of my comment (Starbucks, McDonalds, Dunkin Donuts) as I don't have any friends who will be working service jobs for these chains.

I graduated undergrad a couple of months ago, and I do have a fair amount of friends who gave up looking for work in the finance/startup field full time and are now working at trendy restaurants/bars in the SF NY area to make ends meet while searching on the side. Anecdotal evidence, but that's what I've seen.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#66

Post by jedmeyers » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:21 AM UTC

asuffield wrote: post #26

This article makes the persistent assumption that any graduate is the same as any other engineer. Having worked for a whole bunch of companies over the past few years, one thing is a constant in the tech industry: there is a limitless supply of candidates for any given job, all of which are bad. It is a huge, challenging problem to find the small number of people you want to hire. I'm not sold that "10x developers" r…

If only those bad developers were "0x developers", it would have been the problem of spending money on their salaries. In reality there are many "-10x developers" which may increase the costs for maintaining the software, or cause a lot of performance problems with the results of their work.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#67

Post by crdoconnor » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:21 AM UTC

chetanahuja wrote: post #50

crdoconnor wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the reason behind this too: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-gates... Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates, Drew Houston, Tony Hsieh and Gabe Newell and Mark Zuckerberg aren't throwing their name and money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face - wages.

"throwing money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face" Wow that's a unique level of cynicism even for this generally cynical forum. I'm speechless. So you see all these efforts to raise interest in computer science in younger generation of Americans and all you can think of is how all these new, enthusiastic pr…

I don't see the vast majority of these young programmers recruited by this type of propaganda as being enthusiastic, sadly.

They see the salaries, see that all of the other good middle class jobs have dried up and think "well, it's either learn javascript or be stuck in Starbucks forever". The fact that so many persist at it even while hating it makes me sad.

These kids should have a multitude of options to a good middle class job, not just one.

That's thanks to decades of vicious economic policy directed by billionaires like the ones smiling at you in that promotional video.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#68

Post by cgearhart » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:22 AM UTC

asuffield wrote: post #31

crdoconnor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training.

The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it. Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in pay…

>...quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training.

This shows up a lot, and it's worth debunking. Salary is not the only reason that people take a job, and it's not the only reason that people switch jobs. There can be huge costs (for all parties) to casually switching jobs, and most employees stay put longer than the training period. Additionally, there are standard contract terms that enforce retention periods in exchange for certain types of training (e.g., advanced degrees, etc.). Finally, "salary for engineers" and "training for engineers" are not the only headings in the ledger for running a company - and the value of a company is not a zero sum game; a well-trained technical workforce is more valuable than the alternative, but it has lately been more cost effective and lower risk to transfer that responsibility to (prospective) employees.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#69

Post by bradleyjg » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:22 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #5

So, I can't speak specifically to Qualcomm's case, however there's a weird paradox in Silicon Valley. There's both an excess of jobs and excess of employees. This is probably true in every industry (every Starbucks is hiring, yet everyone complains how hard it is to find a job), but it's especially true in tech. The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. Salaries have gotten so high that even the most…

>> The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. ... I've been trying to hire, and my inbox is full of people who know half a language and want a starting salary of $130k. The money isn't the issue; I'd pay way more than that for someone good. But six figures is crazy high for the average developer in SF. >>

How much more? $250,000? $500,000? $1,000,000? $3,000,000?

Sure, it is plausible that if all the companies in SF tried to pay virtually unlimited amount of money for exceptional programmers, they'd eventually run out of those programmers. After all even in major league baseball there are only so many 100 MPH pitchers to go around. But it's hard to credit claims that we are in that situation rather than one where the money _is_ the issue, when you aren't seeing numbers that would make a BigLaw junior partner or investment bank managing director jealous, much less a professional baseball player.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#70

Post by closure » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 4:25 AM UTC

nichochar wrote: post #7

Wow... as a VISA immigrant, who had a VERY hard time getting through the visa process, this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating. When a company lays off 20,000 people, those are _not_ the same people as the ones coming in on visas. They are probably very low skill engineers. The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled than their american counterparts. America is _win…

Your experience is not my experience.

First, when a company lays off 20,000 people there is generally little regard for who the individuals are. You see this over and over again. Except for the very top performers who end up protected, these are usually projects / divisions / etc. getting killed en masse. Sometimes people have the opportunity to spend a few months interviewing to obtain another job in the same company, but not always.

I've not been out of work for a moment of the 22 years since I left school, and have no problem with the Visa programs, etc. I personally believe we all benefit from opening up competition for positions.

Having said that, what I've seen is that looking strictly at technical ability I would say that Visa employees have in general been no better and no worse than the average US employee, but when it comes to "soft skills" are typically much worse off (and not just communication because of language barriers, but in other areas as well). They've fared no better when it comes to upkeep of their skills. They've fared no better when it comes to "leveling off" and hitting a ceiling where they no longer advance in terms of salary, etc. Like the typical US worker, they get married, have kids, get a social life, and generally stop improving their skills. By that point most have green cards and/or citizenship.

All of the companies I've worked for are large prestigious companies, some of which have set records for number of resumes received per month in the industry at different points in time, so again your experience might be different if you're talking about IT shops or start-ups.