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I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

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Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#241

Post by Banana699 »

KingOfCoders wrote: post #162

I think "developer shortage" depends on your expectations of developer skills. I currently recruit a lot for several different positions and there is no shortage of applications. But 50% can't do FizzBuzz and many do not fit into our environment of a small team where we do not need (can't use) specialists (yet). If you only want to recruit from the "best 20%" [1], you can only recruit the best 20% of the people who a…

>50% can't do FizzBuzz

How can someone possibly call themselves a programmer (let alone a developer applying for a job) when they can't even pseudo something like fizzbuzz ? How can they use any API, tool or even copy code from SO without knowing how to write a foreach and a conditional inside?

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#242

Post by pm90 »

akg_67 wrote: post #123
MattGaiser wrote: post #23

> Furthermore, if you really want a C++ developer you can just expect a developer to learn C++ on the job if they have any adjacent experience with any other language. Is this really accurate? C++ is a very different language than even Java, not to mention Python or JS. Languages have their own quirks and attributes that often matter at some point. Especially C++. I am on a team where we are constantly building stuff…

People undervalue other people’s skills and contributions and overvalue their own skills and contributions. I notice this more and more in hiring process. Teams expecting new member to perfect fit wrt hard skills over soft skills. Frankly, hard skills can be taught, soft skills can’t be taught and take long time to modify behavior.

I haven’t been able to articulate it as succinctly as you did, but this is so true and Ive used the principle to push for many hires who didn’t do so hot in their technical round.

If a person is excited about technology and is familiar with translating ideas into code, that’s really all that I’m really looking for. Writing good code, understanding OS, networking etc are things that can be looked up and learned by people who are motivated to do so… there are so many resources to learn from.

One caveat here is that for “senior” hires, the expectation is opposite: not that they write perfect idiomatic code, but they’re able to write solutions. I think the practice of less technical interviews for higher level seems somewhat paradoxical: you want your Software architects and Principal Engineers to be able to code with a degree of competence.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#243

Post by trinovantes »

jmknoll wrote: post #172
throwaway104076 wrote: post #63

This person sounded really experienced, so I looked them up on LinkedIn. 7 months at their first company. 9 months at their current company. That's it, aside from non-programming jobs before their bootcamp. The whole thing reads like inventing scenarios that didn't happen or embellishing them. > A bad interview is when you ask them the definition of some specific thing in some specific framework like “Tell me what a…

Somewhat relevantly, a closure isn't a "specific thing in a specific framework." Its a concept that exists in many languages, and has no real relation to frameworks. I would never treat someone like they're stupid in an interview, but being completely unfamiliar with common programming concepts and treating them as irrelevant or trivial things is definitely a red flag.

The person may know what is and how to use it without knowing its formal definition in programming language theory. I personally find interview questions that ask you to regurgitate definitions like an exam to be poor indicators of real world skills. It would better if the interviewer first established terminology to avoid confusion and then ask how they would use such language constructs

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#244

Post by ditonal »

anchpop wrote: post #204
ditonal wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically both. When I graduated with my CS degree, I was _thrilled_ to be offered 50k. Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC. So hard not to say that the market hasn't adjusted somewhat. At the same time, part of the reason companies even have to pay so much is because they've made interviewing so damn hard. I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change…

> Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC As a new grad, was I supposed to feel lowballed at getting an offer quite a bit less than that? I know senior devs who make less than that. Is this just for stanford/mit grads?

Yes, a new grad "feeling lowballed by 200k" was hyperbole because I waste too much time on Blind. But FAANG new grad TC is pushing that number, which is a stark contrast to my new grad numbers ~2010. But it was probably confusing for me to phrase it that way.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#245

Post by anticristi »

dasil003 wrote: post #110

Hard to take this seriously with all the straw men and broad generalizations. Reality check: there has never been a hotter seller's market for software engineering talent. The fact that you have not landed a job does not mean that supply is not short in general. Rather than blowing your stack at some recruiter who you heard on a podcast interview, you might want to reflect on yourself and how you might be coming off…

Totally agree. I have an acquaintance in "evolutionary biology". She is unemployed for 1 year and trying hard to get a job. I get a "hey how are you" on LinkedIn at least weekly.

That! Is how oversupply on one side and shortage on the other side looks.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#246

Post by efnx »

bern4444 wrote: post #205
ditonal wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically both. When I graduated with my CS degree, I was _thrilled_ to be offered 50k. Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC. So hard not to say that the market hasn't adjusted somewhat. At the same time, part of the reason companies even have to pay so much is because they've made interviewing so damn hard. I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change…

IME, yes people are hesitant to leave sometimes out of a fear of the interview process, but I think this is no different than other industries where people generally are hesitant to take action that has a chance of of 0 payoff with a lot of upfront investment. I don't think that's unique to software engineering, and I don't think its more pronounced in our industry. The standard tenure of most engineers is about 3 -…

I had a VP of Engineering tell me once that 17 months is a standard tenure and that we should be happy with that. I think turnover was part of the strategy at that point though...

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#247

Post by puchatek »

devin wrote: post #161
spike021 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I interviewed at a small company just for an internship several years back. It was an iOS position, but again, internship/jr. level. I said I wasn't an expert but wanted to learn and had spent some time developing some basic iOS apps on my own. Guy proceeds to seriously ask me about low-level memory management, i.e. ARC (Automatic Reference Counting) vs. other methods (this was roughly 2013 or so). I attempted to giv…

I have a feeling this will get me a downvote, but I grew up in a very blue collar town and the idea of paying one's dues is not crazy to me. I see a lot of people entering the tech market as if they don't have anything to prove, like their degree says it all. In any industry, you shovel some shit early on, IMO. I was a good programmer, but I got my start racking servers in a data center. I crawled under raised floor…

As long as that same company doesn't complain about are shortage while they have their talent crawling in the crouch space it's ok

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#248

Post by johnnyanmac »

nxpnsv wrote: post #239
dasil003 wrote: post #110

Hard to take this seriously with all the straw men and broad generalizations. Reality check: there has never been a hotter seller's market for software engineering talent. The fact that you have not landed a job does not mean that supply is not short in general. Rather than blowing your stack at some recruiter who you heard on a podcast interview, you might want to reflect on yourself and how you might be coming off…

If you can’t pay market rate salaries, your business is not working... EDIT: It seems people took this to mean I think everybody should get maximum salary, when what I meant was you should get a fair salary. Maybe I don't understand what market rate means in the US.

market rate =/= "most extreme salaries from the largest tech companies". By statistical definition, the highest salaries can't be the median income for newgrads.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#249

Post by KingOfCoders »

Banana699 wrote: post #241
KingOfCoders wrote: post #162

I think "developer shortage" depends on your expectations of developer skills. I currently recruit a lot for several different positions and there is no shortage of applications. But 50% can't do FizzBuzz and many do not fit into our environment of a small team where we do not need (can't use) specialists (yet). If you only want to recruit from the "best 20%" [1], you can only recruit the best 20% of the people who a…

>50% can't do FizzBuzz How can someone possibly call themselves a programmer (let alone a developer applying for a job) when they can't even pseudo something like fizzbuzz ? How can they use any API, tool or even copy code from SO without knowing how to write a foreach and a conditional inside?

I wonder too, and I do not know.

From some developers I've worked with in the past, they ask their colleagues a lot, try cut & paste until it works and ask detailed questions on StackOverflow or similar sites.

The bigger the team the longer they can stay with the company until they are made to leave. In some very large companies I've worked with, with large teams, they stay forever even when colleagues are unhappy with their performance. In those companies it is often more important to have all positions closed than have (good) developers in every position.

When looking at CVs - not scientifically - some stay only some months with a company or stayed for a long time with a large enterprise.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#250

Post by JAlexoid »

cupofcoffee wrote: post #76
imstate wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. A good programmer could learn it, but it exposes concepts that python and java abstracts from the programmer. C++ requires you to think quite a bit about memory. Modern C++ not so much. However the kind of job that requires C++ will probably require you to know some hardware / embedded which is a completely different domain than web devs and could make java / python transitions even more difficult.

In any decent CS school they actually teach you low-level stuff. Transitioning from Java to C++ for such a person is trivial.

Low level stuff, I happily code off the top of my head in pure PIC and AVR assemblies, is not same as C++ low level stuff.

(IMO) C++ is quickly becoming that middle ground language that is destined to be a niche language in a decade. It's not low level enough and not high level enough to give people dealing with assembly code or business logic code a reason to switch.

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