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The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

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Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#121

Post by x0x0 »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #91
tosseraccount wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cut down on administration costs.

I work in higher Ed as an app developer with a focus on standardizing web apps across the college and it is very very hard to get the disparate forces within to work together. My parents have been academics their entire careers and have told me throughout my childhood the very same thing. Trust me when I say that it is much more complicated than you think. There is no "cut down on administrative costs" magic wand. We…

No, no we don't.

Administration spending has massively increased over the last 30 years. Spending on faculty that does teaching hasn't. Somehow we managed to run colleges 30 years ago w/ half the administration.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#122

Post by _lex »

neogodless wrote: post #120
_lex wrote: post #19

There are strong economic disincentives to training employees in transferable skills: the second you do, their market value increases, which means that if you don't pay them more, they will be recruited by other companies willing to do so. So you wind up paying for both their education and an increased salary because you educated them. It's cheaper to just hire someone who's already educated. For example, consider th…

So on the one hand we have this general sense that "there aren't enough talented people to hire" but on the other hand we have this idea that "it's easier to hire someone talented than to train them ourselves." Can it be both? Any time a business is saying they are having trouble hiring someone talented... maybe they just have to look inward and improve their own training processes.

When companies complain of shortages, they generally mean "shortage at the price I would like to pay". The talent is there, they just need to be willing to pay the _true_ market clearing price, and to advertise as such. Having trouble hiring an iOS lead? Advertise the job with a $200k salary, and you'll see many more applicants.

Granted, there's going to be related costs of sifting through many unqualified applicants; but that's part of the cost of doing business.

Finally, I explained above why businesses don't want to train employees. It really is that simple. Th e math is basic and as inescapable as gravity. (note that planes do fly, aka, you can defy it by devising a clever contraption).

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#123

Post by J-dawg »

citizens wrote: post #58
jwoah12 wrote: post #15

I think the major disconnect here is in the industry's general inability to recognize ability through the standard interview processes. On one hand you have the common whiteboard coding interviews popular among the big tech players (and much of the rest of the industry). I'm definitely biased here, as someone who is average/below average at these types of interviews but an above average (I hope) developer, but I don'…

> "On the other hand you have many startups who won't even interview you if you don't have side projects or open source contributions to show" In my experience having too many side projects can be perceived as a negative for some employers.

Why would too many side projects be perceived as negative? I'm genuinely struggling to think of a reason.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#124

Post by rco8786 »

jdmichal wrote: post #77
rco8786 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of companies do that, fwiw...though I agree that many companies may benefit from doing it more instead of blindly following the "big tech" whiteboard style. Here's the thing about the whiteboard coding interviews: A) There's a huge false negative rate. I.E. a lot of good engineers get turned down because of a bad whiteboard exercise. B) The "big tech" companies know this and do not care . They have people who wa…

> The "big tech" companies know this and do not care. They have people who want to work there lined up out the door. Also importantly, the big companies seem to purposefully have a short memory to help counteract this. The chances you even interview in the same division are relatively low, much less with the same team. So why not let people try again and again and again? If they really are good, they'll eventually fi…

Yep, I made note of that in my OP as well :)

edit oops, no I didn't. I had a note about it originally but deleted before posting. Either way, that is correct.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#125

Post by rco8786 »

jwoah12 wrote: post #78
rco8786 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of companies do that, fwiw...though I agree that many companies may benefit from doing it more instead of blindly following the "big tech" whiteboard style. Here's the thing about the whiteboard coding interviews: A) There's a huge false negative rate. I.E. a lot of good engineers get turned down because of a bad whiteboard exercise. B) The "big tech" companies know this and do not care . They have people who wa…

Totally agree that the aim is to minimize false positives. although I think you could devise the pair programming type interview to still allow for 1 hour chunks with many different people doing the sessions. A good phone screen should be able to filter out candidates who obviously don't have the foundation, and watching them code in a (semi)realistic environment can tease out things like resourcefulness, search IQ,…

> I think you could devise the pair programming type interview to still allow for 1 hour chunks

I try and do my interviews this way. While I am required to use the whiteboard and the interviewee is required to write on it, I try to make it as clear as possible that we can brainstorm/strategize on the problem together.

Of course I've asked the same few questions probably 100 times now and have seen them solved every which way so I have to play a little dumb sometimes.

Same problem occurs in a "real" pair programming environment too, though.

Interviewing is hard, and it's easy to throw stones at companies who don't do it the way you want it done.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#126

Post by rco8786 »

nulltype wrote: post #59
rco8786 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of companies do that, fwiw...though I agree that many companies may benefit from doing it more instead of blindly following the "big tech" whiteboard style. Here's the thing about the whiteboard coding interviews: A) There's a huge false negative rate. I.E. a lot of good engineers get turned down because of a bad whiteboard exercise. B) The "big tech" companies know this and do not care . They have people who wa…

Part B there is why I suspect this tech talent shortage is not as real as it's made out to be. If there was a shortage, they would totally care.

I don't know if it's necessarily mutually exclusive. It's only a handful of company's that can afford to do this sort of interviewing.

Judging by the amount of recruiter activity in my email/LinkedIn I'd say there's plenty of non "big tech" companies out there that are really struggling to find people.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#128

Post by neogodless »

_lex wrote: post #122
neogodless wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So on the one hand we have this general sense that "there aren't enough talented people to hire" but on the other hand we have this idea that "it's easier to hire someone talented than to train them ourselves." Can it be both? Any time a business is saying they are having trouble hiring someone talented... maybe they just have to look inward and improve their own training processes.

When companies complain of shortages, they generally mean "shortage at the price I would like to pay". The talent is there, they just need to be willing to pay the _true_ market clearing price, and to advertise as such. Having trouble hiring an iOS lead? Advertise the job with a $200k salary, and you'll see many more applicants. Granted, there's going to be related costs of sifting through many unqualified applicants…

I guess what I really wanted to communicate is this:

If 100% of the companies decide it is not worth it to train employees because it's easier to hire already trained employees... there would be no trained employees to hire.

So it's like a market force - as long as some companies are paying to train employees, other companies can take advantage and hire externally. But not all companies can do that.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#129

Post by ci5er »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #13

I have said it a million times before and I will say it as long as necessary to fix our employment-education conundrum: you do not learn how to work by sitting in class, you learn to work by going to work. We need publicly subsidized apprenticeships to replace the assumed role of the outrageously expensive 4 year college degree as the primary means of acquiring skills for the modern labor force. There is a place for…

> We need publicly subsidized apprenticeships to replace the assumed role of the outrageously expensive 4 year college degree as the primary means of acquiring skills for the modern labor force.

Public assistance and loan guarantees is how we got outrageously expensive college programs in the first place. Any system will suck up any free floating dollar made available to it.

Re: The Tech Talent Shortage Is a Lie

#130

Post by gwright »

xlm1717 wrote: post #112
tosseraccount wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public subsidized? Government spending on schools is enough; maybe too much. Tech can afford to train their workers, regardless.

Agreed. If apprenticeships were that good of an idea, tech companies wouldn't need a government subsidy to implement them. What we are seeing is the rise of more coding "bootcamps", roughly semester-long courses to get someone started with coding. Maybe federal loans/grants can be allowed for these, but definitely not giving companies subsidies to train their workers.

Federal loans or grants will simply cause the average price for the bootcamps to go up. The subsidy money will be captured by the vendors. It won't result in lower cost for the student. Just look at what has happened in the college/university marketplace with student loans.
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