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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

#311

Post by ivalm »

nradov wrote: post #233
pas wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are different markets. It's easy to hire full remote juniors on upwork for next to nothing. Hiring a senior staff superhero full-cyber stack-ninja who happily relocates to where you are... now that's not that easy. And thus on the low end you have a market glut and on the high end you have a shortage.

But that's still not a shortage. The government hasn't imposed a wage cap. Employers can just increase wages to the market rate.

No, sometimes there is no zone of possible agreement (value produced is below market rate). In this case you can both have shortage and unemployment at the same time.

Example, you have labor force of 10 people. All jobs have mandatory stay of 2 years. 6 companies have an opening each that pays 1 mil/year. The openings are staggered so 3 jobs are available on odd and 3 on even years (and last 2 years). 50 jobs are posted with a salary of 100k/year. These salaries represent value produced to company and cannot be raised. All applicants have equal chance to get a job they apply to.

The minmax solution is to not take a 100k job because of opportunity cost (you won’t get a chance at the 1 mil job next year). So you have both 40% unemployment and massive labor shortage (56 openings but only 10 viable candidates).

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

#312

Post by JAlexoid »

tracer4201 wrote: post #164
JAlexoid wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC senior engineers typically earn $150k-$250k in salary. Unless you want to be a lifeless drone for a HFT fund. But then living expenses aren't that high in NYC, compared to Bay area.

Personally, I’d happily accept being a lifeless drone, at least for a few years. Save the extra income and invest it. Reap the dividends. Having said that, I don’t know how bad those roles actually are. Obviously, it’s not worth it if it affects your mental health… and unfortunately yeah, that is an issue working in this field.

Nope. You don't.

The difference between both taxes and the "next in line" isn't large enough. Hedge funds pay as much as Google/Facebook, but work and life balance at SV companies is much better.

Compare my two offers from a few years ago - well known hedge fund in CT vs a food delivery tech company.

Well known hedge fund paid $250k+50k bonus for expected minimum 50hour weeks and 20 days of vacation time. Food delivery company offered $170k+200k in stock over 4 years for 6 hour work days in a relaxed environment and unlimited PTO.

It's at the point that it's not worth the money. Sure it's about $3k extra monthly income.... and if you're not burdened with student debt, it's not a game changer.

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

#313

Post by sangnoir »

Cheecheepoopoo wrote: post #213
sangnoir wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone who's complaining about how the developer shortage is fake should spend some time sitting on the other side of the interview table. Author's faith in people's innate goodness won't last beyond the 3rd interview/screen. I've been on both sides of bad interviews: sometimes it's a mismatch, or the interviewee is having a bad day, but sometimes, the interviewee is just bad. Filtering out bad candidates a…

> The man could talk himself into (or out of) anything Why is he in the tech industry?

I doubt he's still in industry, but my guess was it provided good, "easy" money while he was laying low for previous misdeeds. When I said "bonafide conman" - I meant he was using a fake identity and was quite literally on the run. The police got in touch with the org not too long afterwards asking after him - he was re-using an alias the police knew, and his employment/background-check likely popped him right back onto their radar. The police had wanted to set up a sting operation, but found no takers on staff - his alleged past crimes were linked to organized crime, so I can't say if the fears were overblown.

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

#314

Post by JAlexoid »

trainsplanes wrote: post #259
JAlexoid wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your profile lacks clear coding experience. And your highlighted recent experience as a game designer would just make me disqualify from any engineering role.

Discarding applicants for game dev experience and claiming there's a dev shortage is completely bizarre. It's like starting a restaurant and banning chefs with baking experience.

Do you know what a game designer is?

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

#315

Post by durnygbur »

iLemming wrote: post #192

What's not emphasized in the article is that these days nobody wants generalists anymore. Companies don't even want front-end/back-end devs. They are specifically looking for React/Angular/Vue; or "GraphQL proficiency"; or Spring/Django/Node/etc. On the one hand, recruiters spam you with emails without a single mentioning of any language stack. At the other end of the spectrum - "at least 10 years of experience worki…

Google pours piles of money into Angular. Businesses want Angular developers. People aspiring for Google salary pay fortunes for Angular bootcamps. Instructions unclear, stuck sending CVs.

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

#316

Post by adventured »

ditonal wrote: post #149
_2d30 wrote: post #14

I literally can’t relate to this on any level. I’m an HM at a company that pays on the order of a FANG and at best matches one of these credentialist barriers and yet we can’t come close to hiring targets on devs. I don’t get how people can see the plethora of individuals under 10yrs experience in SWE and other tech roles in SV/NYC/SEA with incomes of $250-600k/yr and think this happens without a “shortage” of talent…

I've mentioned this on HN before, but I have 10+ years experience, a BS in CS from a top 10 school, worked as SWE at Google for over 3 years, I've done 100+ leetcode questions, studied grokking the systems interview/designing data intensive applications, I live in the Bay Area, and I've _still_ failed 90% of my onsites last few years at the top tech companies (Stripe, Lyft, AirBnB, Square, Dropbox, etc). Reasons for…

> The interview bar has gotten insanely high it seems.

Software developers are starting to commonly earn doctor-like salaries. Doctors typically burn ~12-15 years between school and residency before they start getting paid serious salaries.

A top 20%-30% software developer can be earning $150k in their mid to late 20s, outside of the Bay Area.

It's no surprise that the hurdles are going up for such high compensation. Software devs in the US as a mass employment field (1.5m people) are the best paid large group of people in world history. Combined wages (not total compensation, that's far higher) for the 1.5 million software devs in the US is in the neighborhood of $215 to $250 billion per year. It's doubtful anything like this concentration of huge globally important industry dominance + very high pay will ever been seen again anywhere else in the world, it's an outlier economically to put it mildly. Enjoy it while it lasts.

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

#317

Post by bryanrasmussen »

015a wrote: post #73
Tossrock wrote: post #20

> The general rudeness is ridiculous. I once had an interviewer ask me if I was a wizard with GO, C++, Rust, and C over the phone. Then when I said I had some experience with rust, he immediately cursed at me and hung up. > This experience is fairly common. Is it? I've done a fair bit of interviewing on both sides of the table, and can say with complete honesty I've never heard a curse said in anger in any of them. I…

I once, 30 minutes into what was supposed to be a 1 or 2 hour phone interview, had an engineer at Google cut me off in the middle of their standard "write code in a Google Doc" with a "oh, I have a meeting I have to run to, good work we'll get back to you." I assume it was not, in fact, good work, as I did not progress to the next interview. I think a phrase like "typical" would be inaccurate; possibly "common" as we…

I think it depends somewhat on what the cursing at me really means - if the recruiter said something like:

"Screw you, you little shit, I can't believe I wasted my time with your worthless ass!" and hung up that would be one thing, if they said "oh damn it" and hung up that would be another, both still rude but quite different. I'm assuming of course it was probably something like the second but the phrasing makes it sound like the first.

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

#318

Post by ergocoder »

sldksk wrote: post #97
bit_logic wrote: post #55

The article doesn't mention the #1 problem with tech hiring: leetcode. Some advice for recruiters: try starting your emails with "NO LEETCODE" in the subject line and watch your response rate from senior experienced engineers skyrocket! There is an artificial "shortage" caused by this barrier.

>senior experienced engineers Companies use Leetcode because they don’t want to pay for experience.

Which is normal.

Many companies pay for raw skills, ability to learn quickly, ability to hone their skills, attention to details.

If you can ace leetcode, topcoder, codejam, and alike in a short period of time, you probably have a very high capability of learning.

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

#319

Post by mannerheim »

Rapzid wrote: post #271
nradov wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's still not a shortage. The government hasn't imposed a wage cap. Employers can just increase wages to the market rate.

What's a shortage?

> In economic terminology, a shortage occurs when for some reason (such as government intervention, or decisions by sellers not to raise prices) the price does not rise to reach equilibrium. In this circumstance, buyers want to purchase more at the market price than the quantity of the good or service that is available, and some non-price mechanism (such as "first come, first served" or a lottery) determines which buyers are served. So in a perfect market the only thing that can cause a shortage is price.

> In common use, the term "shortage" may refer to a situation where most people are unable to find a desired good at an affordable price, especially where supply problems have increased the price. "Market clearing" happens when all buyers and sellers willing to transact at the prevailing price are able to find partners. There are almost always willing buyers at a lower-than-market-clearing price; the narrower technical definition doesn't consider failure to serve this demand as a "shortage", even if it would be described that way in a social or political context (which the simple model of supply and demand does not attempt to encompass).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortage

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

#320

Post by KhoomeiK »

noodlenotes wrote: post #256
KhoomeiK wrote: post #225

I honestly don't think pay is an issue in tech, but most of the others the author brings up are valid points. The crux of the issue in my opinion is the fact that NO ONE HIRES JUNIOR DEVELOPERS . Companies don't want to take on the burden of training junior devs and then complain when there aren't enough senior devs to go around. Obviously it makes sense from a business perspective, but taking a step back, training j…

When developers change jobs after about 2 years at a company, what's the incentive for any individual company to take on the burden of training junior talent? By the time they've got the experience to contribute on their own, they're gone.

Totally agree and I thought about mentioning this in my comment. Yeah, part of the blame for this problem is on us as developers for creating a culture that encourages constant company hopping.
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