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Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

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Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#31

Post by asuffield »

crdoconnor wrote: post #23
gkoberger wrote: post #5

So, I can't speak specifically to Qualcomm's case, however there's a weird paradox in Silicon Valley. There's both an excess of jobs and excess of employees. This is probably true in every industry (every Starbucks is hiring, yet everyone complains how hard it is to find a job), but it's especially true in tech. The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. Salaries have gotten so high that even the most…

>The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training.

The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively). Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it.

Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money instead of training.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#32

Post by crdoconnor »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #8

Until the law is passed that releases all restrictions on visa-workers and simply grants them citizenship or an extremely permissive stay-while-looking-for-a-job situation, increasing the h1-b quota is simply a means to create a reduced-rights cheaper workforce. It really fills me with disgust to see influential people present this issue as a skills shortage, while hiring workers at reduced wages and burdening them w…

That's the reason behind this too:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-gates...

Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates, Drew Houston, Tony Hsieh and Gabe Newell and Mark Zuckerberg aren't throwing their name and money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their investments face - wages.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#33

Post by paulhauggis »

crdoconnor wrote: post #23
gkoberger wrote: post #5

So, I can't speak specifically to Qualcomm's case, however there's a weird paradox in Silicon Valley. There's both an excess of jobs and excess of employees. This is probably true in every industry (every Starbucks is hiring, yet everyone complains how hard it is to find a job), but it's especially true in tech. The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. Salaries have gotten so high that even the most…

>The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training.

"The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training."

This is a sad excuse. Companies should be paying for training of specific skill sets to the company, but not for knowledge and skills you should already have to get the job.

This would be like asking a hospital to pay for medical school to get a qualified doctor. It's absurd.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#34

Post by ams6110 »

fivedogit wrote: post #6

All arguments aside, there's one fundamental way to answer whether companies' talent shortage complaints are "phony" or not: pay. If there really were a shortage, pay would be rising dramatically. Average engineers would make 200k, 300k... Just like doctors do. But it isn't happening. These BigCos just want more supply so they can pay even less than they do now. Plain and simple. Edit: Doctors and lawyers make so muc…

If competent developers are willing to work for whatever "BigCo" is paying, why would BigCo pay more?

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#35

Post by shahryc »

I think the idea that “Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony” seriously misses the point. First, since it usually takes a considerable amount of time to specialize in high skill labor markets (ex. Doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.) ---- there is a gap in the signal (present vs. future). So, today there may not be enough workers that are familiar with designing chips for wearables (subset of hardware engineers). Then, because of limited supply --- prices go up. Other people see this, and are incentivized to train for the role (takes time, investment, etc.). Then, what usually down the road that causes such layoffs --- the industry changes and there’s more labor in that market because of the previous signal. This gap in the signal is a basic feature of such makrets, which makes the tech industry’s claim of worker shortage more likely true than not.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#36

Post by roymurdock »

gkoberger wrote: post #5

So, I can't speak specifically to Qualcomm's case, however there's a weird paradox in Silicon Valley. There's both an excess of jobs and excess of employees. This is probably true in every industry (every Starbucks is hiring, yet everyone complains how hard it is to find a job), but it's especially true in tech. The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. Salaries have gotten so high that even the most…

I would posit that Starbucks example is the exact reverse of what you're seeing in the tech industry.

Starbucks is hiring, but a lot of the workforce that is unemployed is overqualified with bachelor degrees that they thought would guarantee them a safe job on a nice career track. Upon graduation, they are finding that there is a shrinking pool of jobs for them, and that they'll either have to retrain (do a masters or do a crash coding course) or take a job well below what they expected with their degree.

Most of these people will have to rely on connections or networking to get a decent job, and the unlucky ones will join the services industry and work as a barista or a waiter, providing the infrastructure for the tech gold rush.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#37

Post by learc83 »

nichochar wrote: post #7

Wow... as a VISA immigrant, who had a VERY hard time getting through the visa process, this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating. When a company lays off 20,000 people, those are _not_ the same people as the ones coming in on visas. They are probably very low skill engineers. The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled than their american counterparts. America is _win…

>this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating.

I'm not sure accusing the other side of holding silly opinions is the best way to start a debate

>The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled than their american counterparts.

This may be your experience, but it hasn't been mine. Sure the ones working at Google are exceptional, but in my experience, companies outside of the top tier are using H-1Bs to recruit indentured servants who are tied to the company under penalty of deportation.

>Come on. Really? All the young indian and chinese talent I meet is way above average.

There are plenty of other anecdotes to refute this. I've worked with (and went to school with) many very talented and exceptional young indian and chinese programmers, but they weren't above average as a category.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#38

Post by gkoberger »

crdoconnor wrote: post #23
gkoberger wrote: post #5

So, I can't speak specifically to Qualcomm's case, however there's a weird paradox in Silicon Valley. There's both an excess of jobs and excess of employees. This is probably true in every industry (every Starbucks is hiring, yet everyone complains how hard it is to find a job), but it's especially true in tech. The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. Salaries have gotten so high that even the most…

>The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in training.

Salaries are, in part, a way of reimbursing people for their educations. Sure, large companies can (or, more accurately, need to) train people. But, look at, say, my startup. I'm the only engineer. How am I supposed to find the time to train someone who can barely program? Things would get done significantly quicker if I just did everything myself.

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#39

Post by volaski »

ForHackernews wrote: post #30
ChuckMcM wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. The complaint was people who want big money and don't create a lot of value. The ones who want $130K and you ask them why page loading is so slow and they tell you its because the bubble sort they run on every update takes forever. They create negative value.

Then companies better start paying more. This is how supply and demand works. If $130k only gets you incompetents, then it's time to start offering $200k, or whatever the magic number is. Remember: Any time you hear an employer whining about "lack of qualified candidates" be sure to mentally append "...at the rate we want to pay."

Please explain how offering $200k will keep those incompetent guys from applying. I don't see how your "solution" changes anything

Re: Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony

#40

Post by dkarapetyan »

First, I don't know how this even started. Why did tech companies all of a sudden decide there was a shortage of knowledgeable and competent workers? I'm asking because throughout my career as a programmer I've worked with people from all sorts of backgrounds that have not had a traditional CS degree. They have come from fields like math, IT, physics, mechanical engineering, etc. Engineering disciplines but not really computer science.

The kind of work I've seen all those people do has also varied from things like control software for fields of heliostats to frameworks for server orchestrations to search and data mining. So how is it that I've managed to work with so many competent engineers and yet these giant corporations can't figure out how to hire semi-competent engineers to do some of the drudge work that I'm sure they need done? Maybe the problem is not with the workforce and the availability of knowledgeable and competent workers? Maybe the problem is their shitty hiring practices?

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