There is no talent shortage

Not that it's wrong to evaluate based on that criteria. However, for people like the hypothetical John it's quite hard to keep up with a good CS program and manage to do impressive things on the side. So you end up with people with strong potential, much of it not yet actualized, who spend the first years of their careers in a job of questionable usefulness (excel macros?). I think there are more of those people than commonly assumed, and I do think they can contribute well in much better places. They may be slow at first, but give them 6 months and they will be strong members of the team. Granted, a startup may not have 6 months to give, but once you've got some resources under your belt a green-but-talented engineer can be a great investment.

That said I'm now actively building a portfolio by working nights on real products and leveraging what experience I do have as heavily as I can. I also try to present how quickly I picked up the skills I do have in things like Ruby, coffee/node and all that 'sexy' stuff to show that I can pick up anything anyone throws at me really quickly.

Hopefully by the end of the year I'll be where I want to be.

* you can replace code with almost any other employable skill

"Talent shortage" usually refers to people who fall in a).

Every company claims to want to hire only a) but most companies need b) or c). Very early stage startups ideally need a), but they don't always manage to hire people in that category. They can temporarily bypass this requirement by hiring people in b) and using frameworks like (Rails, Django, etc) built by other people who fall in a) until they get to a point where a) types will be willing to join.

When people talk about shortage of talent, they usually mean shortage of a) people. This is mostly because two of the three things that people in b) and c) need to become a) are hard to acquire and come with 'experience'(for those who try).

3 things you need to become a):

1. Acquiring a good base - data structures, algorithms, design patterns etc - learning languages/specific skills - interview skills

2. Acquiring good mental models - working with smart programmers - reading code by smart programmers - learning to make tradeoffs - actually building stuff

3. Acquiring reputation - Building stuff - Talking about stuff you build - Having other people talk about you - Collecting badges that other people recognize i.e. working at well known startups/companies, winning programming competitions, going to Berkeley, etc.

Most people manage to succeed in 1) eventually. 1) is also where most college/other training programs focus. But, 2) and 3) are much harder to acquire.

If a company is big enough they will assign an a) to mentor someone who is a b) or c), but this is often not viable for startups (and, imho, slightly unreasonable to expect from a lot of startups).

If we figure out a way for b) and c) people to learn 2), we can solve a lot of the talent shortage. But, this requires either a b) or c) person to spend time on their own looking at work by a) people (not always possible and extremely time consuming), or an a) person mentoring the b)/c) person outside companies (100x faster, imho).

Until we build social systems that enable b) and c) to transition to a) easily, the alarms for 'talent shortage' will continue to ring.

Caveats: 1. A lot of jobs only need b) or c). Employers could adjust expectations. 2. Luck is a huge factor. You don't actually have to be a) to be hired or considered a) because perception(3) plays a big role.

"From what I understand it's due to two things-- at 34, I'm older than others going for junior positions."

I hope any HR people who have had your resume cross their desk are sweating at the thought of age discrimination scrutiny.

It may be there's a shortage of HR talent, not tech talent.