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The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

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Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#21

Post by ericb »

doktrin wrote: post #8
JimboOmega wrote: post #4

And here I am, a rails developer trying to move to SF, and I only get maybe a few nibbles a week. I must not be on the right job boards. Or something. Is the meetup.com ruby list the place to go? Someone also suggested changing my location on LinkedIn to SF - however, I am hoping to relocate, but haven't done so yet, so that seems dishonest.

When I was in the market, I never saw the kind of rabid attention the OP is describing. Sure, occasional recruiter spam, but no more or less than anyone else. I can't argue with the OP's experience, but I would take all claims of "super massive talent shortage oh em gee" with a good pinch of salt.

It is real. I've had companies calling me after I brush them off.

I do the interviewing for my current company, and we have had a senior role open for 10 months. We have gotten to the offer stage 3 times but lost nonetheless. This is for a rails role.

edit: my boss makes the offers, and I suspect we have been losing out on these positions while making offers around 130-140.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#22

Post by cletus »

Honestly this is just a PR piece for DeveloperAuction. "How to win the bloodthirsty battle for tech talent"? Why come use our site of course!

This strip from 1995 sums it up pretty well:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-05-22/

I see a number of problems (on both sides):

1. There is no shortage of talent. There might well be a shortage of talent for the price you're willing to pay but that's hardly the same thing;

2. What constitutes "talent" seems to be largely based on social proof. 25 year old Stanford graduate? Offers galore I'm sure compared to, say, the 45 year old University of Iowa graduate. Hell, I get an awful lot of cold calls based simply on listing "Google" on my online profiles (as my employer).

Social proof can be a useful indicator. The problem is that groups tend to self-select down to nothing this way where you end up with a tiny fraction of the group being over-subscribed and the majority struggling;

3. People like to employ people like themselves. So find a company full of MIT graduates and they're likely to hire... more MIT graduates. This isn't just a question of social connections or geographical area either (IMHO);

4. If you pick a high-demand high-cost area like the Bay Area you're obviously going to have a harder time finding and retaining talent and it'll be more expensive;

5. Larger companies tend to treat talent as interchangeable where the only units are the number of warm bodies, perhaps stratified into "junior", "midrange" and "senior" whereas we all know there can be a 10x or greater difference between two engineers in terms of productivity, hence the more productive talent is harder to attract and retain.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#23

Post by tomp »

PixelPusher wrote: post #16

We've been hiring for a little while in Los Angeles. The problem is that there are some Rails developers, but most of the ones I've met are pretty entitled. They expect 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, etc. The problem is that most of them are fairly incompetent when it comes to everything else. Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares. This…

Well, I've been programming since I was 13, I know everything about how computers work, from asm to HTTP, I've tried databases, parallelism, Haskell, distributed map/reduce, ... but I'm not a Ruby/Rails developer (yet, I grok Django ATM) and not from the US (so remote is the only option), so mostly uncompatible... :(

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#24

Post by thibaut_barrere »

VeejayRampay wrote: post #11
thibaut_barrere wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not my experience: I'm in France doing Ruby/Rails since 2004/2005, and I'm most likely booked until end of 2014... So it's more a matter of niches and networks I believe.

Are you in Paris? Maybe the market is getting bigger for Rails devs there? I left France 5 years ago and the picture was grim then, Java/PHP had a literal death grip on the market. Well, since I'm coming back I guess that's good news :)

I left Paris 3 years ago, since then I've been doing all my work remotely from a very rural place (http://goo.gl/maps/UTIzF).

That said Paris is the best place to get started networking again. Be sure to go to the Paris.rb group which is very dynamic if you come back!

http://meetup.rubyparis.org/

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#25

Post by ericb »

PixelPusher wrote: post #16

We've been hiring for a little while in Los Angeles. The problem is that there are some Rails developers, but most of the ones I've met are pretty entitled. They expect 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, etc. The problem is that most of them are fairly incompetent when it comes to everything else. Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares. This…

> 100K+, benefits, telecommuting,

So, a not particularly high salary considering cost of living and benefits too? Where would they get these crazy expectations?

Oh right, the open market.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#26

Post by PixelPusher »

tomp wrote: post #23
PixelPusher wrote: post #16

We've been hiring for a little while in Los Angeles. The problem is that there are some Rails developers, but most of the ones I've met are pretty entitled. They expect 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, etc. The problem is that most of them are fairly incompetent when it comes to everything else. Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares. This…

Well, I've been programming since I was 13, I know everything about how computers work, from asm to HTTP, I've tried databases, parallelism, Haskell, distributed map/reduce, ... but I'm not a Ruby/Rails developer (yet, I grok Django ATM) and not from the US (so remote is the only option), so mostly uncompatible... :(

Honestly, I'd more likely work w/ someone like you and teach them Rails than the opposite. MVC frameworks are very similar and a good developer should be able to switch easily.

I suspect that employers who only look for Rails developers are hurting themselves.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#27

Post by bmelton »

PeterisP wrote: post #14

Hire telecommuters outside of SF. For example, I personally could get a drastic increase in income by moving to USA/SF, but I won't consider physically moving since it would be a great disruption to my wife and babies and I can afford not to move, as developers are wanted everywhere (though not so piranha-style). And there are many more developers like me. Long-range telecommuting is an option, and it's easier to be…

Completely agreed. I work in Mountain View, CA, but live on the other coast in Maryland. At pycon, I had a couple of companies trying to poach me (despite being a relative nobody), all paying good money™ to get me, but none of them were offering telecommute.

Aside from the fact that I love my company, and my job, the raise offers are always worth considering, but knowing that I'd have to move or go into the office every day made the offers much less appealing.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#28

Post by PixelPusher »

ericb wrote: post #25
PixelPusher wrote: post #16

We've been hiring for a little while in Los Angeles. The problem is that there are some Rails developers, but most of the ones I've met are pretty entitled. They expect 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, etc. The problem is that most of them are fairly incompetent when it comes to everything else. Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares. This…

> 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, So, a not particularly high salary considering cost of living and benefits too? Where would they get these crazy expectations? Oh right, the open market.

That's why i said it's a good thing. It bumps up the base developer salary and makes experienced developers even more valuable. At least those who are able to properly market themselves as such.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#29

Post by benjaminwootton »

PixelPusher wrote: post #16

We've been hiring for a little while in Los Angeles. The problem is that there are some Rails developers, but most of the ones I've met are pretty entitled. They expect 100K+, benefits, telecommuting, etc. The problem is that most of them are fairly incompetent when it comes to everything else. Ask them about database design, sockets, parallelism, map/reduce, memory allocation, etc. and you'll get blank stares. This…

I don't think expecting $100k+, benefits, telecommuting etc necessarily indicates entitlement.

Most people in finance, senior managers, doctors, lawyers, architects, management consultants etc wouldn't get out of bed for less than that, especially in a big city with high cost of living.

I think its great that techies are starting to realise their value and grab a piece of that for themselves.

Re: The Bloodthirsty Battle For Tech Talent

#30

Post by yesimahuman »

pnathan wrote: post #20
PeterisP wrote: post #14

Hire telecommuters outside of SF. For example, I personally could get a drastic increase in income by moving to USA/SF, but I won't consider physically moving since it would be a great disruption to my wife and babies and I can afford not to move, as developers are wanted everywhere (though not so piranha-style). And there are many more developers like me. Long-range telecommuting is an option, and it's easier to be…

Some/most companies have a real problem with the concept of telecommuting/remote working. It's really quite astounding to me: the internet is in more places than ever before, video conferencing, text conferencing, etc, are at all-time highs, yet for some reason companies simply think remote work is unacceptable. Blows me away.

I've worked remotely with a strong distributed team. It worked quite well, and I formed relationships on par with the year I worked in-person at another company.

That being said, I'm not very interested in it for my company since it just seems less fun to not be able to hang out with your employees in person. And fun is the reason I do this. I'm still on the fence about it though.

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