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Software engineers hard to find

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Re: Software engineers hard to find

#41

Post by nostrademons »

amock wrote: post #9
ck2 wrote: post #5

I find it dubious someone can just decide to be a "software engineer". You'd have to already have a personal interest in programming and be doing it on your own as a hobby. Are there people who seriously just go to college for 4 years and learn coding like accounting and then just do a 9-5 job? There are thousands of decent hackers out there, maybe just uptrain.

There are lots of people who just went to college for four years and then got jobs writing code. I didn't keep a track of many of them but none of the ones I know of turned out to be good at it.

I know a bunch of people at Google who started programming in college. I also knew a few people in college who started there and are now getting CS Ph.Ds.

Curiously, it seems to be mostly women who are good devs and yet didn't start until college. I'm not really sure what to make of that. Could be selection bias - since boys are encouraged to play with computers, most of the ones who will be any good at it started in grade school, while since girls have no such encouragement, even ones that are good at it may never have discovered that until college. Or it could be that all boys who are good at computers let it take over their life, and girls have many competing interests. Or it could that only girls have the discipline to become good at something without it becoming their life.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#42

Post by nostrademons »

amock wrote: post #14
ck2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm jealous of anyone who can just "come home from work" and turn off their brain about coding and do it as a regular job. I'm constantly thinking of better ways to do something and find myself rewriting code from years ago. I have at least one "regular job" experience that taught me such behavior/attitude doesn't work well in a 9-5 business environment.

Do you really want to not care about the work you do? It's nice to be able to come home from work and not worry about work, but I wouldn't want to work on something that I wasn't interested in.

Dunno about the OP, but I'm worried about burnout. The road to being "world class" anything is longer than you can imagine, and it'd suck to get 10 years in and suddenly reach the point where I can't do this any more, no matter how much I used to like it, right when I would otherwise be a big success.

It is apparently possible to care about your work and yet still leave it at work - I know a few people that have managed it. I haven't had a whole lot of success myself.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#43

Post by nostrademons »

tomjen3 wrote: post #27
RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of software development jobs where remote working simply isn't possible. Just as a single, simple example, there are very few neighborhoods that would tolerate an 18 foot high-speed radar antenna on a roof, and even fewer that would then have suitable objects to watch.

I am pretty sure they once said the same thing about people not working in suits. If your company can't make it work, you shouldn't be surprised if you have to look for a new job because your competitors can get people you aren't able to hire.

There is a very big difference between what clothes someone is wearing and what their physical location is.

In half a generation, perhaps, when all the kids have grown up with zero distinction between online and offline life and VC equipment is so good that it's just like you're there, large-scale remote working might work. But right now, there is so much high-bandwidth communication that you're missing out on.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#44

Post by thomas11 »

nostrademons wrote: post #39
ShardPhoenix wrote: post #24

"JumpForward interviews three to five engineers a week as it tries to fill four to six technology jobs, but most candidates don't have current skills or they lack the passion to stay on the cutting edge" In other words, there's no shortage of software engineers, there's a shortage of perfect candidates. If these companies were actually willing to train people, they'd have a lot fewer problems. The trend seems to be t…

You generally can't train attitude. Many of those candidates who don't have the skills or passion lack it because there are other things in their life that they value more, like family.

In almost no other field of work is it expected that you have a passion for your work greater than that for your family. Hackers repeating this passion mantra make life harder for all of us, because it raises employers expectations, instead of making them provide training or simply time to study. Good for you if you have that passion - I do - but why not enjoy it in private?

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#45

Post by maxawaytoolong »

mahmud wrote: post #19

And will continue to be harder and harder as long as utter morons do the screening and hiring. I made a local-startup an offer that no sane company could afford to refuse. I was a core developer for their main behemoth of a competitor and my non-competes have just expired. They could easily save millions of dollars in marketing, research and development by JUST running decisions by me and having me nod in approval if…

Just to play devil's advocate...

I am not a moron, and I used to help hire at various startups. We'd always get one or two offers "we couldn't refuse" from engineers of our competitors. Whenever we gave them a second of interest, they'd waste hours and even days of our time. What they were really interested in was not engineering, but escaping their current workplace hell and wedging themselves into our startup as some sort of non-programming decision maker, for a (relatively) huge salary. But, we already had non-programming decision makers. We were trying to hire an engineer. We eventually just dismissed these guys outright, because in every experience they ended up being mildly crazy. Not the good mad-scientist hacker insanity, either... More of a desperate, annoying, stalker-ish insane. So maybe you came off as crazy.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#46

Post by thesis »

anakanemison wrote: post #4

The many trading companies in Chicago also offer software developers interesting problems to solve and attractive compensation. There's certainly a lot of web work being done in Chicago too, but the trading companies offer developers the chance to focus on enterprise software systems and proprietary high-performance trading applications.

I agree, my cousin is a software engineer for a financial company in Chicago. I doubt this other company could afford him.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#47

Post by loewenskind »

mahmud wrote: post #19

And will continue to be harder and harder as long as utter morons do the screening and hiring. I made a local-startup an offer that no sane company could afford to refuse. I was a core developer for their main behemoth of a competitor and my non-competes have just expired. They could easily save millions of dollars in marketing, research and development by JUST running decisions by me and having me nod in approval if…

>and my non-competes have just expired.

And you even honor parts of your contracts that aren't enforcable. They passed up a great deal. :)

Seriously though, before you cost yourself job opportunities because of something you've signed, run it by a lawyer. You're going to be shocked at first.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#48

Post by [deleted] »

elliottkember wrote: post #34
ShardPhoenix wrote: post #24

"JumpForward interviews three to five engineers a week as it tries to fill four to six technology jobs, but most candidates don't have current skills or they lack the passion to stay on the cutting edge" In other words, there's no shortage of software engineers, there's a shortage of perfect candidates. If these companies were actually willing to train people, they'd have a lot fewer problems. The trend seems to be t…

Unfortunately, it's also very easy for an engineer to jump ship after their training - meaning a very expensive loss of time and effort. Personally, I think the "shortage" has something to do with increases in job-hopping. If there were some guarantee that an engineer were going to stick around for a few years after training, perhaps training new recruits wouldn't seem so unreasonable.

[deleted]

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#49

Post by sgift »

elliottkember wrote: post #34
ShardPhoenix wrote: post #24

"JumpForward interviews three to five engineers a week as it tries to fill four to six technology jobs, but most candidates don't have current skills or they lack the passion to stay on the cutting edge" In other words, there's no shortage of software engineers, there's a shortage of perfect candidates. If these companies were actually willing to train people, they'd have a lot fewer problems. The trend seems to be t…

Unfortunately, it's also very easy for an engineer to jump ship after their training - meaning a very expensive loss of time and effort. Personally, I think the "shortage" has something to do with increases in job-hopping. If there were some guarantee that an engineer were going to stick around for a few years after training, perhaps training new recruits wouldn't seem so unreasonable.

This works both ways - the concept of one job for a whole life (or at maximum two jobs) was really common for the parents (or grand-parents, depending on their age) of many. Then the companies started with hire-and-fire. And now they wonder why their employees have no loyalty in face of a good offer from another company.

Re: Software engineers hard to find

#50

Post by ido »

patio11 wrote: post #31
thr0w4w4y wrote: post #16

A related question: What is the current hourly rate that a jr software engineer can expect? I might be starting to work remotely for a company in the Boston area but have no idea what the current salary situation for freelancers in the US is like

All over the map (sorry, bad pun). It depends on where you live, who you work for, what technologies you work in, and (more than any of the above) your skill in marketing yourself to the right clients. I have personal knowledge of folks who do software development at a range of price points between $25 and $200.

I assume that rate is per hour?

For what's it worth, in Western Europe I'd say 75 euros/hour ±50% is what you can expect for usual "Enterprise" fare.

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