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U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

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Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#291

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

ep103 wrote: post #283
cynicalkane wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there's two tiers of the software industry: those employable at AmaFaceGoogFlix or a competitor, and everyone else; but the "everyone else" is completely unaware that the first tier exists. It's like if minor league baseball had no idea about major league baseball. You even see it on HN. Someone will come along and talk about how a senior dev at Google can expect $250k a year. You'll get two categories of…

Who are the competitors to AmaFaceGoogFlix? I'm based out of nyc, and the common logic here is that dev salaries start maxing out in the 150-170 range. If you go to a hedge fund, you can get more, maybe pop 200. But for more than that? You have to go to AmaFaceGoogFlix.

If you're working for finance total comp (if not base salary) is definitely going to rival the biggest tech players. From what I've seen 150-170 base is the minimum for senior devs then you talking bonuses or stock for at least another 25-50%. If you're working for a hedgefund you're talking bonuses of X00% so it almost doesn't make sense to compare base salaries.

The startup story, at least in nyc, is pretty different. Best I can tell few of those players are willing to even try to compete on a base salary (or total comp) with any of the larger players.

This is a relatively small sample size, ymmv etc.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#292

Post by X86BSD »

HillaryBriss wrote: post #126
jdhn wrote: post #22

"They're just asking for the moon, and not expecting to pay very much for it," Cappelli says. "And as a result they [can't] find those people. Now that [doesn't] mean there was nobody to do the job; it just [means] that there was nobody at the price they were willing to pay." In my opinion, this is the key paragraph in the article. I see this all the time when recruiters send me job postings, and they want someone wi…

during my first real salaried job out of college, a coworker told me that they thought they could have done their work with nothing more than a high school education. that was true about my job as well. companies have been spoiled with degreed employees who do routine coding and testing. in a lot of cases the degree is unnecessary. but hiring processes can't break out of this pattern, this groupthink.

Oh I totally agree. I can't even tell you how many times I have had degreed folks or people with certification do the dumbest things that break stuff that someone who didn't go to college but spent age 8-25+ with computers, and hacking, and living technology come up and go, "um that breaks X because of Y".

I've always personally favored self taught over degrees.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#293

Post by learc83 »

icebraining wrote: post #240
learc83 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want to work for a company where you cost them $150k in salary and benefits and only add $50k in value? That's a very insecure position to be in, it doesn't leave much room for growth, and it means you have very little leverage overall.

Six months ago, I was making about 1/6 of that working as a software developer, and I wasn't badly paid for the area. I'm pretty sure most of my colleagues would sign up for that in five minutes.

I'm assuming you mean 1/6 of $150k (150k was salary plus benefits, the salary was only 100k).

25k is very badly paid for any area in the US (outside of a few territories) as a software developer. If you're not in the US, then obviously that changes things.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#294

Post by [deleted] »

jcadam wrote: post #273
wwalser wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that you actually don't believe it? As in, "I think that's a false statement"? Or do you mean that you're jokingly in "a state of disbelief", as in… surprised or taken aback? I have friends in low cost areas that make around what you're describing. They don't continue doing that because of willful disbelief, they understand that they could move and make 2.5x their current income. They just like the lifest…

Perhaps somewhere in between. While $250k sounds high for a pure code-slinger, I'm willing to believe a few companies (Google, Microsoft, et. al.) choose to pay a small number of their top devs that kind of money. On the other hand, competition for dev jobs in general is so fierce (as in the supply of great devs outstrips the demand by a large margin) that I can't imagine it would be difficult to fill those same posi…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#295

Post by corporateslave3 »

dkhenry wrote: post #17

The tech sector is the worst at this. The skills we test for are the ones that can be figured out in about a month, and the ones we don't test for are the ones that need to be learned over a lifetime

Google and FB know this, the problem is that its far too inefficient for them to screen for those hard earned skills. The algorithms tests are pretty close to IQ tests that you can study for. For mass hiring of decently intelligent employees, they are actually very effective. Worst comes to worst, you put the bad employee on a PIP or boring project and just hire someone else. Large corporations have definitely thought through this.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#296

Post by throwaway911233 »

sjg007 wrote: post #279
throwaway911233 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly related. I openly share my salary information with all of my friends in tech, 90% share their history back with me. I refuse to let social mores depress my wages or those of my friends. I recommend all engineers do the same.

Ok, how much?

I make ~$200k in an affordable city not on the coast. I could make $300k - $400k in NYC. I write and maintain programs for finance.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#297

Post by spbaar »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #6

Insert comment about requiring 5 years of experience in a 3 year old language HR gating really is the worst thing going in American hiring practices today. "Do you have multiple years of experience with 99.9% of the skills listed as requirements, which only a handful of people in the country have? Yes, but I see that on our web form that you had to use to submit your resume you didn't check the box next to 'Degree in…

This is really not an exaggeration. When I was looking for android jobs a few jobs had requirements that only aosp google or amazon kindle people would really have.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#298

Post by trustfundbaby »

jcadam wrote: post #273
wwalser wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that you actually don't believe it? As in, "I think that's a false statement"? Or do you mean that you're jokingly in "a state of disbelief", as in… surprised or taken aback? I have friends in low cost areas that make around what you're describing. They don't continue doing that because of willful disbelief, they understand that they could move and make 2.5x their current income. They just like the lifest…

Perhaps somewhere in between. While $250k sounds high for a pure code-slinger, I'm willing to believe a few companies (Google, Microsoft, et. al.) choose to pay a small number of their top devs that kind of money. On the other hand, competition for dev jobs in general is so fierce (as in the supply of great devs outstrips the demand by a large margin) that I can't imagine it would be difficult to fill those same posi…

Believe it. I'm based in Austin, and a few years ago was making about $125k as a senior dev when Apple came calling. They wanted me to move out to California which I didn't want to do, so to blow them off, I did a small calculation (cost of living, california taxes, etc) to arrive at the conclusion that at the very minimum I'd need $180k for that move to even start to make sense for me.

The recruiter explained how they could easily pay me a $140-160K base and give me about $40k in RSUs to get me up to $200k if I was the right candidate. I'd never heard of RSUs before that and he had to explain what they were to me.

The easy with which it was offered definitely helped me understand why $250k in total comp was definitely something that could be done at the bigger tech companies

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#299

Post by jaggederest »

5trokerac3 wrote: post #6

Insert comment about requiring 5 years of experience in a 3 year old language HR gating really is the worst thing going in American hiring practices today. "Do you have multiple years of experience with 99.9% of the skills listed as requirements, which only a handful of people in the country have? Yes, but I see that on our web form that you had to use to submit your resume you didn't check the box next to 'Degree in…

I think it's interesting that few/none of the "Technical hiring done right" startups I'm aware of deduplicate the process of attesting that a person can accomplish some software development. So far as I can tell, they outsource the process of screening, but they don't provide the same screening to multiple companies.

Re: U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs

#300

Post by stevenwoo »

maxerickson wrote: post #159
stevenwoo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I graduated from college 30 years ago and every engineering major at every state university I ever heard of had a coop program.

Waterloo places much more emphasis on it. The program is built around every student doing coops.

That part I did not know, most of our professors in our first year engineering classes strongly recommended it, though. I co-oped at a company only about 100 miles from my university, though other students were from out of state schools.

The other thing I just thought of was I co-oped at IBM for three semesters which was the max for a location but they had openings in a different country, I probably should have done that instead of staying in the USA for my last co-op, are most of the Waterloo students going to Canadian companies?

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