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We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

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Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#261

Post by repler »

pascalxus wrote: post #60

But HR isn't the only problem. In my experience having worked for a company that hired heavily for several years, it was the engineers who lacked the talent necessary to conduct proper interviews. Great candidates were being rejected by the truck load. Us engineers, we're great at engineering but many of the junior and mid-level ones don't have much experience interviewing people and usually no training whatsoever. S…

I ask candidates to tell me about something they created they are proud of, and why.

All you have to do after that is listen.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#262

Post by antoinevg »

no1youknowz wrote: post #27
jobthrowaway420 wrote: post #9

Made my first ever HN throwaway account to respond to this. I have been running a successful business, but it's not "tech". I want to get back into the software industry. I didn't have a software business idea, so I explored some tech company jobs. I am well-qualified at the VP/Director level for startups and even larger companies. I did go so far as to do an on-site interview for one company. I have verifiable proof…

If no equity was available, but profit sharing was? i.e if you brought in X million you get a % of that. Would you have taken the position? I'm starting a company, but want to retain 100% ownership. I don't want to give equity as I don't want to lose control. Been there, done that. I'd much rather go down the road of profit sharing based on the results.

Explain to me again why I want to make you rich at my own expense? Really?

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#263

Post by RubberbandSoul »

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #43
burtonator wrote: post #5

I had a recruiter call me a year ago with what sounded like a really amazing offer. Working for a well funded startup on a problem in which I happen to be a domain expert. They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set and they said the right things to get me to interview (compensation won't be a concern). Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview wit…

I find it strange, as software developers, that we discuss the effects on automation all the time, but no one seems to understand that automation has made searching for new employees incredibly inexpensive and efficient compared to the past. So in technical roles there are a lot of companies that are always hiring. Recruiters work for free until they find you someone and placing job listings online is so inexpensive…

I wonder if automation actually distorts the recruitment market? As the initial cost of recruitment goes down, thanks to automation, more recruiters gets involved because it's cheaper to enter the market.

As more recruiters offers their services to employers the employers starts to feel like there are more potential hires than there actually are.

As a thought experiment we could assume that there used to be two recruiting firms for each employer but then costs went down and now there are ten. This gave the illusion that there are five times as many potential hires even if everyone should take a step back and realize that the recruiters are still all trawling in the same pool in their search for talent.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#264

Post by pm90 »

fma wrote: post #193
revvx wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thing happen to me a couple times. Long and tiring process. Blackboard, make a project, lots of dirty laundry about "long gone incompetent developers" that made the current system a giant mess. Lots of red flags but lots of promises including a large maximum salary, including bonuses and stock options. The final offer, however, was 60% of my current pay. Lower than the average for someone with my exper…

I've posted this elsewhere (forgot here or reddit). I'm gainfully employed. A former colleague who is now in a hiring position at a new company reached out to me. Said they have several openings and are having a hard time hiring good people. It would be a much longer commute, working/rewriting some older tech to be cloud ready (I did that at my current and previous employer). We started talking about salary. I told h…

> I told him what I made.

Never make that mistake. Never ever disclose your salary information to someone that you potentially could work for.

I think a situation where we were required by law to disclose, or a company where such a thing was common (GitLab) would be exceptions. But otherwise, I've found it to be a huge mistake to disclose your exact salary or numbers to anyone.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#265

Post by lgleason »

It does not surprise me that this is out of Atlanta. One of the former Atlanta Business Chronicle writers that covered tech rightfully calls it the Bangalore of the South. https://twitter.com/Urvaksh/status/1092948535627137024 https://twitter.com/Urvaksh/status/893087188451196928 Tech in ATL is a second class citizen and the salaries reflect that, plus there is a glut of marketing and business people. The other issue with Atlanta is that from an IT/corporate headquarters perspective (which is a significant driver for the job market) Suntrust just merged with BB&T and is moving the headquarters out of Atlanta along with Turner combining with AT&T. Layoffs will ensue at some point. Most tech companies located in high cost areas such as New York, San Fran etc. that open up a location in ATL do it to reduce costs.

That said, in general, all of these efforts to "learn to code" etc. are all just trying to increase the supply and lower wages. The challenge is that there often is a difference between the developers what will accept the lower offers and the ones who will hold out for more. Many still believe the a larger number of cheaper people is better than a few top devs... Despite the fact that this was proven be a bad strategy over 30 years ago in "The Mythical Man Month".

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#266

Post by d4mi3n »

gwright wrote: post #229
rubicon33 wrote: post #208

I feel like a broken record, but I'm going to say it anyways. There is NOT a shortage of software developers. That myth was developed by big tech, and pushed all the way up the ladder, to the top of government. The goal? Reduce labor costs. Big tech has always been 1 step ahead of the employee, just like coal, and metal working was. They saw the huge need for developers and realized their costs would increase unless…

There is so much to disagree with here, but #1 is the disparaging attitude towards manual labor.

I can’t agree with this enough.

The field of software is growing. It will change. That change may be for the better or worse.

But I feel it’s unethical for those of us privileged to be in this field to act as gatekeepers and prevent others from having the same opportunities I (and I suspect many others had) when I entered it.

If you want to keep making the big bucks, continue to provide meaningful value and skills that justify it.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#267

Post by lotsofpulp »

mooreds wrote: post #103
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

searching is easier in terms of internet ads and reviewing candidates. But hiring dev candidates is extremely hard. Virtually everyone has a job who is experienced already, college students get offers somewhere in the early junior year, so you hire them with at most 2 internships. It's very difficult to pull people out of an existing job, it's kind of begging them to consider you. Then for random applicants to a comp…

Are you in the Bay area or Seattle? That's higher rates than what I have seen for new college hires (I have seen in the 40-60k range).

$60k seems low to me for any decent size city in the US too. From experience, new grads were offered much more even in late 00s, after recession started.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#268

Post by jmartrican »

I agree with this article. But maybe not so much HR but the hiring managers that is the root cause. HR takes its marching orders of who to recruit/hire from the hiring managers.

What's going on here? What we have here is a min-max problem. In one case, the hiring manager would like to reduce risk of a bad hire and reduce amount of time needed to train an engineer. On the other side of the scale, the hiring manager needs to hire someone and get a butt in seat to get the work done. So what to do?

A couple of things come to mind. First, there is an algorithm for this, the optimal stoppage problem. That is you review a certain amount of candidates, lets say X, then pick the best one after X. The problem comes down to solving for X. I forget the solution, but there is one out there that is based on how long you want to wait.

Second thing that comes to mind is relying on core attributes, like hard work, motivation, overall intelligence, team-player, etc... versus overly specific skills.

Yes in both cases a lot is still left up to subjectivity and can still lead to long lead times in filling a position.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#269

Post by retiredcoder »

jobthrowaway420 wrote: post #30
no1youknowz wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If no equity was available, but profit sharing was? i.e if you brought in X million you get a % of that. Would you have taken the position? I'm starting a company, but want to retain 100% ownership. I don't want to give equity as I don't want to lose control. Been there, done that. I'd much rather go down the road of profit sharing based on the results.

I might have been interested, depending on the startup. One way to solve for both preferences, in tech, is to create an option pool. I broached this with an executive. He said they were looking into it, but it wouldn't be available until next year at the earliest. My interest in working full-time for them declined to 0 at that point.

Sounds like one of jobs I had. They treated options/warrant as something really really special, like awards/gift.

I couldn’t make them realize it was part of my compensation expectations and for that I wanted to know company valuation and dilution, even if a ballpark.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#270

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

riazrizvi wrote: post #231
rubicon33 wrote: post #208

I feel like a broken record, but I'm going to say it anyways. There is NOT a shortage of software developers. That myth was developed by big tech, and pushed all the way up the ladder, to the top of government. The goal? Reduce labor costs. Big tech has always been 1 step ahead of the employee, just like coal, and metal working was. They saw the huge need for developers and realized their costs would increase unless…

1000X yes. It’s the result of a PR campaign to increase the H1B Visa allotment. Love H1B employees, they are just delicious! Low wages and zero bargaining power otherwise it’s out of the country with you. It’s also funny because this creates a problem where wages have been driven down to a point where skilled workers can barely afford to support a family in tech zones. So because of these depressed wages in software…

> Low wages and zero bargaining power

Yeah, I also make a lot of money fixing their fuckups.

They don't care, and as soon as they get sufficient grounds to become a citizen, they'll fuck off :)

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