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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

#351

Post by pmiller2 »

throwaway210222 wrote: post #310
jasonshen wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While property prices have definitely risen, consider that every other industry has not seen the same level of income growth. We are still privileged to command this kind of salary as tech employees. (Yes we worked hard etc but I also try to remember that the median household income in NYC, where I live, is $63k).

> the median household income in NYC, where I live, is $63k. What's the median NYC houshold income for investment bankers and radiologists?

How is that relevant to anything?

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

#352

Post by namdnay »

JAlexoid wrote: post #210
karmasimida wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually had quite the opposite experience, Apple absolutely grilled me at the spot for its interview, even though I did pass it, but I didn't take their offer.

They definitely grilled me... It's just that they actually had humans talk to me and answer questions, not just throw a website with an automated judge and intentionally confusing problems. (My first language isn't English) Facebook was very robotic in their process, with a lot of demands for preparation. Google and Amazon aren't that far off.

> just throw a website with an automated judge and intentionally confusing problems

Who did that??? Never heard of automated tests

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

#353

Post by mannerheim »

pjerem wrote: post #282
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.

Yes if you have infinite money. Do you ?

Infinite money is not required. As you raise the price of engineers, the quantity supplied of engineers may or may not increase, but more importantly the quantity demanded of will decrease. Once that happens, every employer willing to pay the market clearing price for an engineer can employ one, and every engineer willing to work at the price has a job. Hence, no shortage.

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

#354

Post by rmk »

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.

If you claim to be very experienced in JavaScript but then say that you are ignorant of closures, then that's definitely a red flag. That language relies heavily on closures, more than others, and almost every programming pattern in the browser involves capturing some sort of state about enclosing scopes etc. given the asynchronous nature of things.

The inordinate amount of space the article devotes to complaining about 'credentialism' just reinforces the impression that the writer hasn't taken the time to know his tools/languages/frameworks at a deeper level, and is dismayed to have been found out in interviews.

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

#355

Post by nxpnsv »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #248
nxpnsv wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Both of these statements are true. Neither of them is what I meant.

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

#356

Post by namdnay »

xlii wrote: post #341
MangoCoffee wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't mind the idea of people paying their dues, and I think I'm better for my experience. Careers aren't supposed to start with you having a big corner office. It is surprising to me how many people feel entitled enough that they truly believe they ought to start at the top. he is trying to pay his dues. its an intern position. at the very low level.

As usual - it depends. FAANG internship is way more valuable than other big names and big names are much more valuable than anonymous web shop hiring 3 people. So if they went directly for big name that isn’t exactly paying their dues.

It’s not like you’re supposed to work your way up the internship ladder.

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

#357

Post by rahimnathwani »

MattGaiser wrote: post #286
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…

Is there a book about transitioning from junior to senior? I'm at a company which has no more senior devs, so am looking at alternatives for my growth. Obviously it is not a perfect substitute, but the senior is not likely to be replaced soon.

Yes: https://www.learninpublic.org/

The author describes their motivation in the comment that's the first result here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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

#358

Post by ditonal »

adventured wrote: post #316
ditonal wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I agree to the extent that it might not last and "make hay while the sun shines."

At the same time, I disagree it's that unprecedented. There's about as many lawyers as software developers and the compensation distribution is surprisingly similar (including some bimodal aspects). Yeah they put in 3 years and took some debt but it's not that significant big picture, many CS students get an MS.

There's a lot of doctors in my family. It used to be a gold mine field and now it's much less so, as hospitals have a lot more power over the doctors than they used to.

If you want a really good bang for your buck, look at salaries for nurses who get some specialization like CRNAs, who can make similar money to SWEs, with about 2 years extra school work.

I mostly agree we're in a golden age of software engineering compensation and as I mentioned in my first post, these companies have a right to be picky. Still, to some extent I think engineers of all stripes were relatively underpaid relatively to some other white collar professions historically and its just been catching up a bit.

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

#359

Post by nxpnsv »

namdnay wrote: post #334
nxpnsv wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s like saying that if you can’t pay Ronaldo’s salary you shouldn’t be running a football team

Am I not understanding what "market rate" means. I bought my care at market rate, it costed less than a lambo. But it also didn't cost $10.

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

#360

Post by trhway »

pm90 wrote: post #203
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…

There are very good reasons why developer compensation has swelled to the levels that we are seeing today. Technology firms have grown astronomically. They’ve also built processes and systems to onboard new developers and enable them to generate a lot of value. Developers are being compensated higher to reflect the efficiency gains made my technology firms. Is it unfortunate that firms that are unable to generate tha…

absolutely. Google generates $1.5M/employee/year in a high margin business. Considering that the engineers is the main revenue producing asset it is not surprising that Google pays $600K+/year to the best engineers they can get to continue generate those $1.5M.

>Is it unfortunate that firms that are unable to generate that much value suddenly can’t hire developers? Must be for those firms.

yep. Our BigCo generates paltry $350K/employee/year. Looking at our salaries - we're relatively cheap engineers, and the company wastes our time in a myriad ways, and it is no wonder that we can't hire anybody here really - one can say we do experience the shortage of engineers. In SV we regularly lose people (who get 2-3X increases at new places, and only morons like me (even when i got an offer from Google it was just L5 and a very low one, basically just a match of what i have here) are still sitting here), and we're able to hire only in cheap remote locations.

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