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

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

#191

Post by gwright »

T2_t2 wrote: post #147
ForHackernews wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then companies better start paying more. This is how supply and demand works. If $130k only gets you incompetents, then it's time to start offering $200k, or whatever the magic number is. Remember: Any time you hear an employer whining about "lack of qualified candidates" be sure to mentally append "...at the rate we want to pay."

And that's a big deal. But if the cost of an employee is > their value, you get massive off-shoring. That's the danger, and as an Australian the opportunity, of Bay Area pricing being so crazy. If the Bay Area wants to keep its advantage - in a world where Alibaba is the lead IPO of the last 5 years - it needs to remain competitive in all ways. Rome wasn't built in a day, but it fell in one.

No need to 'off-shore'. Presumably companies in the Bay area could start (or grow) branch offices in other places in the US that don't have such a high cost of living.

It may be that the cost to attract talent to the Bay area is now too high for all but the most profitable businesses. I have no idea if this is true or not but conceptually the giant payrolls needed may finally be overwhelming the benefits of locating a company in the area.

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

#192

Post by Vendan »

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…

That's odd, cause I just left a job where I was juggling 4 programming languages on a weekly bases (AS3, Go, PHP, JS) and I was getting paid shit (sub 50k). I tried and tried to find a programming job, but nobody wanted me, so I ended up going computer security. Love the new job, love the field, but you can't tell me that there's nobody in the US that has the skills and want somewhat decent pay. I was one of those people, and no one wanted me.

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

#193

Post by sliverstorm »

1971genocide wrote: post #134
sliverstorm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not clear how a country can deserve a fixed portion of global GDP, no more, no less. It's not a zero-sum game, and how exactly do you apportion productivity? And FWIW, in GDP per capita, the US is only #10.

5% +- 1% I am a strong believer that all people have equal ability, and if all countries were on a equal footing then their GDP size would be more of less reflective of their labour force. Ofcourse it gets complicated if countries have resources only to their geography. GDP per capita is a weak measure since america has high inequality, some people in america are as poor and hungry as the worst conditions in africa.…

The unfairness comes when we talk about investment. A lot of counties like India invested heavily on education. What happened to the talent produced by that investment ? They all ran away to US.

...*

It also allows america to get away with it by not investing in their own education or labour force.

One of the two us is missing a part of the picture. I have met many immigrants from India and other countries. Many are sharp. But here's the thing; none of them have capstone degrees from India.

They may have attended high school in India, and maybe undergraduate. But universities in India do not have a good reputation in the United States. So people who want to work in the United States frequently come to get degrees in the United States.

In fact the "problem" as I heard it recently was exactly the other way around. Foreigners come to the United States, spend twelve years getting a BS & PhD on grants, and increasingly elect to return to their home country. In years past, more of those students would stay in the US, but barriers to citizenship are apparently as high or higher than ever.

I am not at the forefront of hiring and international labor politics, but this is what I have seen & heard in the past ~8 years in America.

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

#194

Post by pc86 »

jazzyk wrote: post #185
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #27

This is a difficult problem to discuss, in large part because not all developers are created equal. There is a reasonable supply of entry-level and low-skill developers. I refer to them as commodity developers: Developers who have a very basic skill set, who can do only a few specific things, none of them with extreme skill, but some of them reasonably competently. They typically do web front-end work, but sometimes…

"There also is a shortage of high-skill developers. Compensation north of $250k-$500k is becoming standard" I don't see it at all. At least in Boston, salaries seem to top out at $170K, perhaps a bit more if you have a _really_ rare skillset. But in a stagnant economy getting $180K is not easy. Usually a lot of hand-wringing about the cost, etc. The just-released Employment Cost Index (ECI) rose a record-low 0.2% las…

Surely you don't expect us to take your hard data over the one poster and a few of his friends, do you?

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

#195

Post by pc86 »

physguy1123 wrote: post #73
ForHackernews wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compensation north of $250k-$500k is becoming standard in some areas for such developers. Do you have any more data on this? What skills in which areas are routinely worth north of $250k?

HFT firms pay very well for systems and HPC developers, especially when you count the bonuses. I'm not sure when/if the total salary reaches 500k, but I've heard that total salaries from 200-300k are fairly common. A recent graduate friend of mine just started in the field and he has a base salary of 160k (don't know what the bonus is), so 250k for a senior developer doesn't seem out of the question.

HFT seems to be its own beast, for better or worse. I've heard from pretty much everyone I've spoken to with any experience in the field that if you have the skills to be there in the first place you'll be over the $200k mark within the first year or two.

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

#196

Post by pc86 »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #177
codeonfire wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> FWIW, I do consider myself 10x.

Shocking.

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

#197

Post by allworknoplay »

ZoeZoeBee wrote: post #58
allworknoplay wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using a real wages figure for the entire workforce, not engineers. Engineering salaries are extremely healthy, while the real minimum wage has also fallen. Unless you have data on inflation adjusted engineering wages, this is a totally misleading/inaccurate argument.

Not at all, as the entire work force has felt the effect of immigrants tripling as a percentage of the population, so to will Engineers with the increase of immigrants via H1-B visas

Did you read/understand my comment? I didn't say you're abjectly wrong, I just asked for actual data about engineering wages. We know average real wages have slipped, but we also know the real minimum wage has fallen a lot, and also that our GINI coefficient is up.

In the absence of better data, the logical supposition here is that real incomes amongst lower-income employees have fallen more than amongst higher income employees.

Again: Unless you have data on inflation adjusted engineering wages, this is a totally misleading/inaccurate argument.

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

#198

Post by urda »

ForHackernews wrote: post #41
SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #27

This is a difficult problem to discuss, in large part because not all developers are created equal. There is a reasonable supply of entry-level and low-skill developers. I refer to them as commodity developers: Developers who have a very basic skill set, who can do only a few specific things, none of them with extreme skill, but some of them reasonably competently. They typically do web front-end work, but sometimes…

> Compensation north of $250k-$500k is becoming standard in some areas for such developers. Do you have any more data on this? What skills in which areas are routinely worth north of $250k?

There isn't, the number is made up.

But don't worry, the response of "can't say what he / she is working on" is the only reference you'll get.

This is a ridiculous claim HN, we should be above buying into this garbage.

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

#199

Post by [deleted] »

orthoganol wrote: post #121
j_baker wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but you know what? The cost of living has also skyrocketed dramatically in Silicon Valley. I mean, you make it sound like engineers here are on a gravy train where we spend 3 months learning a language and can suddenly move to San Francisco where we just let the money roll in. The truth is it costs a lot to live in the Bay Area these days, and that means that if companies want people to move here they need to p…

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…

[deleted]

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

#200

Post by Leon »

morgante wrote: post #92
thaumasiotes wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hospitals do have to pay for medical school. If they didn't, nobody would go through it. Here's a cleaner example: suppose getting an M.D. required a filing fee of $800,000. You don't think that would show up in what hospitals paid doctors?

> The hospitals do have to pay for medical school. If they didn't, nobody would go through it. What? As far as I know, hospitals don't directly pay for medical school. Rather, the cost of medical school is reflected in doctor salaries. (Just as the cost of training is reflected in developer salaries.)

This isn't entirely what happens. For most doctors at their first jobs the hospitals will write out most, if not all, of their medical school loans depending on how much there are. They use this as signing bonuses and to tempt doctors to their hospital.
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