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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

#41

Post by ForHackernews »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #27

This is a difficult problem to discuss, in large part because not all developers are created equal. There is a reasonable supply of entry-level and low-skill developers. I refer to them as commodity developers: Developers who have a very basic skill set, who can do only a few specific things, none of them with extreme skill, but some of them reasonably competently. They typically do web front-end work, but sometimes…

> Compensation north of $250k-$500k is becoming standard in some areas for such developers.

Do you have any more data on this? What skills in which areas are routinely worth north of $250k?

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

#42

Post by rewqfdsa »

I've always viewed these persistent and ridiculous claims of a tech-industry worker shortage through a lens of class. To a Harvard MBA, that we programmers earn six figures is prima facie evidence of a worker shortage, since there's no way that ugly nerds should be earning that kind of money for typing into a computer.

Programmers are workers, so investors and management should be able to siphon off their productive value the same way they siphon off the productive value of other works. That they can't right now is an aberration, a disease to be cured with massive immigration.

That we're not doctors or lawyers and make decent money is something that simply does not compute for these types.

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

#43

Post by crdoconnor »

asuffield wrote: post #31
crdoconnor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 pay…

>The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in training. Only big established companies can do it

Yes, and since the financial crisis their share of profits as GDP has never been higher yet they still refuse to invest in training themselves. Instead they demand that the immigration floodgates be opened.

They don't want to do it because they just don't see employees as people any more. They're resources, to be tapped until they run dry, at which point, they are discarded.

This is a marked cultural corporate change from the 50s-70s when the 'job for life' was still a thing, people got defined benefit pensions and CEOs would choose to make long term investments rather than engage in share repurchase shell games that boost next quarter's share price.

>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.

This used to be much less of a problem when companies actually demonstrated loyalty to their employees. A natural side effect of lobbying hard to make it trivial to fire people and doing layoffs as a matter of course is that your employees won't be loyal. Tough shit.

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

#44

Post by _delirium »

SomeCallMeTim wrote: post #27

This is a difficult problem to discuss, in large part because not all developers are created equal. There is a reasonable supply of entry-level and low-skill developers. I refer to them as commodity developers: Developers who have a very basic skill set, who can do only a few specific things, none of them with extreme skill, but some of them reasonably competently. They typically do web front-end work, but sometimes…

This definitely gets at the problem, imo. There would be much less opposition to the H1B program if it were bringing in exclusively employees with, say, $150k+ compensation. It would be hard to argue those employees are undercutting salaries, except perhaps a few of the higher salaries. But there are a lot of $60k salaries on H1Bs, which seems a lot more suspicious. How scarce can a skill be if you're only paying $60k for it?

As far as I can tell, a lot of the misuse comes from the enterprise/consulting space. Companies like Google seem to be mostly using the program as intended, bringing in high-end and highly paid talent. But there's a weird corporate dance going on with "solutions" companies like IBM and Accenture, who subcontract through overseas outsourcing firms (sometimes derogatorily called "body shops"), who in turn use the H1B program to bring over some of their staff to the U.S. office to staff the contract. This use of the program looks more like undercutting wages than bringing in unusual, hard-to-find talent.

My pet solution to the problem is to prioritize quota slots by pay tiers, as a rough proxy for how rare the skills being sought really are. So e.g. any company willing to pay $200k+ salaries to a candidate gets in line first for this year's H1B slots, then $150k+ applications are processed, etc. I suspect companies would oppose this for fear that it would create a bidding war for H1B talent, though, which is the last thing they want.

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

#45

Post by andrewljohnson »

gkoberger wrote: post #21
andrewljohnson wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In trying to hire, where are you posting job ads? Or are you using recruiters? Both?

My comment was more glib than a real complaint about how hiring is going for us. No good developer spends time on Angellist; it has to be proactive. That being said, we do get dozens of inbound applications every week from dev bootcampers who find us through Hacker News job postings/Angellist/etc. (For any developers looking to work at a cool startup, shameless plug: http://readme.io/careers/ )

No good developer applies for jobs

Ads can catch good people in transition, or looking for a change.

Anecdotally, I've hired truly great people, and interviewed ex-Googlers and other good pedigrees, from Stackoverflow Careers and HN posts.

1) I once hired a pre-Googler on StackOverflow even - a guy who was on his way to Google in the fall, but liked my project, and wanted a summer gig. He intended to spend a few months vacationing, but got bored.

2) Another guy I hired via HN originally just left for Facebook, this month :(

3) And our current, long term, best developer, I found on Careers StackOverflow. I credit him with much of the success of our company. He's a special combination of outdoorsy and amazing coder, but no college or professional pedigree. He was hurling dynamite at avalanche banks when I found him, coding amazing apps with little revenue potential.

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

#46

Post by rewqfdsa »

volaski wrote: post #39
ForHackernews wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

$200k doesn't stop incompetents from applying. It does, however, tempt competent people to add themselves to the running.

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

#47

Post by gkoberger »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #45
gkoberger wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment was more glib than a real complaint about how hiring is going for us. No good developer spends time on Angellist; it has to be proactive. That being said, we do get dozens of inbound applications every week from dev bootcampers who find us through Hacker News job postings/Angellist/etc. (For any developers looking to work at a cool startup, shameless plug: http://readme.io/careers/ )

No good developer applies for jobs Ads can catch good people in transition, or looking for a change. Anecdotally, I've hired truly great people, and interviewed ex-Googlers and other good pedigrees, from Stackoverflow Careers and HN posts. 1) I once hired a pre-Googler on StackOverflow even - a guy who was on his way to Google in the fall, but liked my project, and wanted a summer gig. He intended to spend a few mont…

Joel is more eloquent at expressing the problems with hiring than I:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FindingGreatDeveloper...

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

#48

Post by hayksaakian »

gkoberger wrote: post #38
crdoconnor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Even in that case, you're working in a local maximum.

Train a team of people and they'll be more productive than you on your own.

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

#49

Post by shahryc »

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…

This paradox is explainable because there's a gap in the signal. It usually takes a considerable amount of time/experience to specialize in high skill labor markets (ex. Doctor, lawyer, etc.) ---- therre 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.). So, there is always going to be some mismatch between positions employers want to fill vs. the existing pool of labor.

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

#50

Post by chetanahuja »

crdoconnor wrote: post #32
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.

"throwing 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"

Wow that's a unique level of cynicism even for this generally cynical forum. I'm speechless. So you see all these efforts to raise interest in computer science in younger generation of Americans and all you can think of is how all these new, enthusiastic programmers are going to compete with you?

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