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

#151

Post by Eridrus » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:20 AM UTC

rewqfdsa wrote: post #78

Eridrus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired. Then why the fuck isn't work automated away? We're developers, for God's sake! We develop things!

Because automation isn't magic.

The fact that something is repetitive and intellectually unchallenging doesn't mean it is mechanical and doesn't require human involvement and/or judgement.

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

#152

Post by SilasX » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:21 AM UTC

crdoconnor wrote: post #103

SilasX wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics of that theory don't (seem to) make sense. If you expand the supply of a factor of production, you expand the supply of the output. The employer pays less, but has to sell for less too. If widget specialists flood the market, their wages go down [1], but so do widget prices. The factory owner doesn't necessarily benefit, just like grocery stores don't benefit from higher tomato prices. (In fact, they ma…

>If widget specialists flood the market, their wages go down [1], but so do widget prices. Only if we make the patently unrealistic assumption that the widget manufacturers have negligible market power (a perfectly competitive market). That assumption would also lead us to believe that they have negligible profits. They don't. Those billionaires have a lot of market power between them and make a lot of profits. If we…

True: depending on the parameters of a particular market, things may go one direction or the other. I acknowledged as much in the footnote referenced in the part you quoted, and indeed gave a scenario where the input prices go in the opposite direction as profits!

So your theory [1] would require that this "make everyone a better programmer" is more like wage-fixing (in terms of economic incidence) than the tomatoes, even though

a) the wage fixing affected demand, and this education program affects supply, of programming labor; and

b) the big companies are a much bigger fraction of the SV labor market than of the workers that would learn through this program.

It's also not clear to what extent the wage fixing agreement was mitigated by driving programmers to non-conspirators.

Getting the full picture would require a careful assesent to the sensitivity of these markets to all those parameters, not simply assuming that any increase in the supply of programmers purely benefits employers of them and doesn't affect the relative scarcity of their final output.

And FWIW, I don't get your insistence that one theory requires "perfect competition"; it might require some level of competition, but why perfect? The tomato result would hold true even in very lumpy markets. (Or were you just exaggerating?)

[1] I know, not "your" theory, but it's much simpler than "the theory you offered in your previous post", and I add this footnote only to fend off a possible indignant reply about "hey, that's not just my theory".

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

#153

Post by clessg » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:25 AM UTC

codeonfire wrote: post #120

currentoor wrote: post #64

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 piece…

>Some of the best developers I know didn't even get an engineering degree. How do you know this is just not confirmation bias on your part. You like to think that degree-less people are somehow vaguely 'better.' You know some developers that don't have a degree. Consequently they must be the best developers you know. I think most would agree that you would need actual double blind research including some way to order…

> You like to think that degree-less people are somehow vaguely 'better.'

I don't think that he or she said that.

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

#154

Post by michaelchisari » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:30 AM UTC

nevdka wrote: post #100

Not all tech companies are the same. Google needs engineers with skills that most tech workers don't have. You might have a CS degree from a great school and 15 years experience with J2EE, but you're not experienced with say... reactJS. If Google (or Facebook, or startup that just raised $25M) is looking to hire a team of reactJS devs, then they can very quickly exhaust the supply of locals who have used it. From Goo…

If you want the absolute best for the job, in a very specific skill-set that has only existed for two years, then you'd best be willing to pay considerably, or you're going to have to be willing to train people with the proper fundamental skills in that specific toolset.

A lot of companies are unwilling to do either of those. Offering $110k for a ReactJS developer? Better be willing to hire someone with a good understanding of software development patterns and a solid history of shipping code with the understanding that some on-the-job training will be required.

Won't settle for anything but the best? Then set the salary to somewhere it would pull the level of talent you need. And if you're not willing to do that, then consider how you can get by with the first candidate.

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

#155

Post by fluidcruft » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:38 AM UTC

tmuir wrote: post #137

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…

Something I've thought a lot about at my current job is the relative nature of the 10x engineer. Half of the developers on my team consistently require over a week to accomplish tasks that would take me half of a day. That's a 10x difference. Some of these people have several more years of experience than I do. Everyone has over five years of experience. The very fact that the disparity is accepted and allowed to per…

You're not a 10% programmer, you're a 90% underworked programmer. ;-)

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

#156

Post by ScottBurson » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:43 AM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #98

rewqfdsa wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What skills in which areas are routinely worth north of $250k? Anecdotally, it's not a specific skill, but a talent for solving problems using any tools and skills necessary. The 10x developer is real, and he's not afraid to read a damn textbook or go to the library and study CS papers if that's what it takes to do the job.

"go to the library and study CS papers if that's what it takes to do the job" EXACTLY! I've been knocking them off for years. Most modern problems are variations on older ones. First step is to see if someone solved it already, how, and if I can use it. So, stopping code injection for example, I find that all kinds of hardware from 1960-1980 tagged memory & used CPU in ways that prevented it. Stack overflowing S.P.?…

As glad as I am to see someone mention all this great old technology, I feel compelled to point out that the GC on the MIT Scheme chip was not pauseless. It was a fairly simple mark-sweep collector.

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

#157

Post by simoncion » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:56 AM UTC

orthoganol wrote: post #145

j_baker wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is that it's "crappy programmer entitlement" to: * Expect to earn the median income * Expect to have a decent lifestyle. * Expect to be able to have a family Sounds like crappy employer entitlement to me.

Well yeah... it's completely delusional to think a 3 month developer should earn the median income for programmers. It's also unfair to your family to decide to support them as a completely inexperienced developer. Have some savings for a couple years until you can add value. I don't know what Ivy League school you went to, but for relatively normal people an excellent lifestyle can be had on $75/k in SF. An upper mi…

Does your definition of "excellent SF lifestyle" require a roommate?

If it does not, then $75k/year gross will be cutting it pretty close. You'll also be required to have next to no savings.

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

#158

Post by superuser2 » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:56 AM UTC

morgante wrote: post #84

This article makes the perennial mistake of assuming all "STEM graduates" are equal. This is flawed in three main ways: 1. STEM graduates includes many fields where there genuinely is a huge surplus of labor (we don't really need more physicists). 2. Talent is critical and sadly a large number of CS graduates do not have the talent to be good developers. Many fresh graduates just don't have the skills to cut it as a…

The market doesn't "need" any physicists. Hiring in sciences basically scales with available federal grants for research, which basically scales with the success of liberal politics.

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

#159

Post by simoncion » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:57 AM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #135

digisign wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent is high because there is not enough housing.

Not enough housing because high salaries draw more workers.

o-O

Not enough housing because next to no housing is being built, let alone construction anywhere near the rate required to meet demand.

Honestly, $120->150k gross (pessimistically ~$72->90k post-tax) doesn't go all that far when you're paying anywhere from $24,000 [if you're lucky] to $48,000 (or more) per year in rent.

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

#160

Post by chipsy » Mon, Aug 03, 2015, 6:59 AM UTC

DGAP wrote: post #83

In this thread there's a lot of complaining about mediocre developers. I'm still finishing my undergrad, and looking to go the PM route, but how do I avoid being the type of developer complained about here?

As long as you have a healthy measure of anxiety to keep your skills current, and are sincerely concerned about the ramifications of your code, you'll be in the above-average range.

It's entirely possible to land a coding job by being a persistent bullshitter(operative word: persistent), but the very most top-notch folks feel pleased to stray outside of their comfort zone and into something unknown.

If you're ultimately aiming for a PM role, you can limit yourself to doing a few technology skills well, and otherwise focus on other aspects of product.