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

latimes.com

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

#171

Post by morgante »

enraged_camel wrote: post #140
morgante wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever actually hired an intern? I've literally never seen a company make a net profit on interns. Talk to people running intern programs: it's explicitly seen as a hiring funnel for full-time, not as an end of itself. > A class action lawsuit by tech employees broke the cartel. The lawsuit came after the cartel had already stopped functioning. Facebook refused to play ball and started recruiting aggressively…

You should work at a law firm sometime. Interns are very, very profitable for them, because they work insane hours and do everything they are told without question.

I should have been clear that I only meant for the tech industry.

Other industries (law, finance, fashion, media, etc.) heavily exploit interns to profit off their desperation.

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

#172

Post by LoSboccacc »

kev009 wrote: post #148
cellis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. You want to know of a true shortage of workers? 7 ft centers who are aggressive, not injury prone, and can hit a free throw. They're so rare that 17% of all 7footers in the US play in the NBA. It's why Deandre Jordan is making 100 million over the next 5? years. A shortage of programmers, ha! There is one kind of shortage though, and one that is adequately compensated; programmers willing to work at below av…

This so much. Let's also consider that the middle management layer is earning 2x and upper management at least 3x a senior developer who's stuck somewhere in the 100k range. Trim the fat and you can have as many developers as you want.

add in that all the show offs have made programmers aware that the system they build for 90k years is making millions and valued at billions.

it's about time for (good) engineers to get an appropriate share of the pie.

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

#173

Post by LoSboccacc »

throwaway342526 wrote: post #141
orthoganol wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly one of the more absurd comment I've read on HN. 3 month bootcamp attendees shouldn't make more than $75k. They are junior as hell, and add little if not negative value for a long stretch of time. Even $75k is a reflection of the crazy job market, not their actual value. Your COL & salary analysis for SF is incredibly off. Yeah you'll probably have to sacrifice the excesses of your upper middle class SF life…

$1600/mo can get you your own 2br in San Leandro in a safe (though not prestigious) neighborhood. The commute on BART into SF is about 45 minutes.

so what it gets you is being modern proletariat?

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

#174

Post by chiefsucker »

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…

> Is there a shortage of people that love writing software enough to spend most nights and weekends doing it?

And this is actually another, if not part of, the problem. I’m passionate, I would even return to pull a couple of all-nighters. But I would never do it again for a company which I don’t own. I have a family, I want to spend time with all people who matter to me. I don’t want to to spend my time with your company, your engineering problems, and in the end probably get replaced by a cheap outsourced worker who is competent enough to maintain my code and add a couple of smaller features.

Degrees are no guarantee, but that’s how it rolls. You believe people more if they have some evidence, and you even believe them more than a friend of you recommended her. Blindly trusting people you don’t know while hiring is a recipe for disaster.

I don’t trust you. Give me money and you’ll eventually gain my trust. In return I’ll give you solutions for your problems. You probably don’t trust me, too.

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

#175

Post by chetanahuja »

rewqfdsa wrote: post #54
chetanahuja wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Well, they are, aren't they? Cynicism isn't somehow automatically wrong.

Well it's not "wrong" in the sense of being factually incorrect but wrong in the sense of being just pathetic for a professional to be thinking such thoughts. Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students taking interest in your field, and instead of encouraging and teaching them, all you see is a threat to your livelihood... well... the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else, less competitive, to do.

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

#176

Post by currentoor »

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…

I think you misinterpreted what I said. All I said was, a degree is not a necessary or sufficient condition for being a great developer. Evidenced by the fact that there exist great developers without degrees. I'm not drawing any whacky conclusions about one group being "better" than another.

Also, for what it's worth I graduated with two technical degrees from descent university. Most of the developers I know have engineering degrees.

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

#177

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

codeonfire wrote: post #111
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.

Yes, but everybody thinks they are a 10x developer and everyone else is shit. Big companies know exactly how to take advantage of these dummies. "What you're not done yet, I thought you were a 10x developer. Better get it working this weekend."

Huh. FWIW, I do consider myself 10x. I've only rarely met developers who claim 10x but who weren't at least good developers. And I have met developers who were crap, but I don't think it of everyone else. Just the ones who were crap. ;)

It is true that I think of myself as particularly good. For reference, I was working for one of those companies I listed above, and I put in less than 30 hours in a typical week, and still got heaps of praise for how quickly I got things done (in calendar time). I kept asking for more to do, but never really got enough to keep me busy full time. Ultimately I ended up helping with related projects, or company-wide tooling, just because I enjoyed helping and had the time.

I didn't feel the need to prove anything, exactly, but sometimes things would go south and I'd put in more hours because I felt like something should have taken less time, yes. That's not "prove to me you're 10x!", but my work ethic coming out and keeping me on task until my expected workload was actually complete.

But even then I don't think I went beyond 45 hours in a week in my time there as an employee. And I didn't work on a weekend even once. If something really hadn't gotten done in what I felt like was a reasonable work week, I would have let it slide. That may have happened once, but only once. Making the proprietary company build system do things it wasn't precisely designed to do ... well, I just can't talk about it, since I don't swear in public posts. ;)

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

#178

Post by crdoconnor »

chetanahuja wrote: post #175
rewqfdsa wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they are, aren't they? Cynicism isn't somehow automatically wrong.

Well it's not "wrong" in the sense of being factually incorrect but wrong in the sense of being just pathetic for a professional to be thinking such thoughts. Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students taking interest in your field, and instead of encouraging and teaching them, all you see is a threat to your livelihood... well... the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else, l…

>Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students

...then you were looking at something else. That was a group of billionaires advertising their naked greed and self interest.

When normal school-kids take an interest in computer science it doesn't appear in Forbes magazine.

>the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else to do.

Now that's pathetic.

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

#179

Post by crdoconnor »

morgante wrote: post #171
enraged_camel wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should work at a law firm sometime. Interns are very, very profitable for them, because they work insane hours and do everything they are told without question.

I should have been clear that I only meant for the tech industry. Other industries (law, finance, fashion, media, etc.) heavily exploit interns to profit off their desperation.

The tech industry isn't that different. The only reason kids get a not-horrible salary interning at Google and jack shit at Marie Claire is because of the prevailing industry salaries.

(which is something the tech titans are trying to "fix")

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

#180

Post by curiousnoob123 »

The idea here seems to be that there are vacancies for people that are good at the craft, care about it and are generally skilled. And that a lot of visas today are being taken up by inexpensive foreign labor that may not be accurately described as highly skilled. So, HN, what if the government raised the cap for US educated international students? The average quality of STEM education and the average skill is certianly higher in the US. The issue is that the international students that go through US education have to compete with other foreign workers and often don't end up getting visas even though they are able to fill those skilled position vacancies. Curious to know the pros of cons of such an approach.
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