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We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

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Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#441

Post by m463 »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #303
hpcjoe wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite was something that happened 2+ years ago. I had closed down my business, and was speaking with folks, including a well funded startup in Milpitas area. I was in the area for a different interview, and spent the evening before that interview with this startup. I knew the CEO from a previous effort. After much discussion, I thought they had something interesting, though I was hard pressed to find real diffe…

I like mentally replacing “stock” with “lottery tickets”.

"silicon valley toilet paper"

or see this dilbert cartoon:

https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-03-15

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#442

Post by sixtypoundhound »

jobthrowaway420 wrote: post #9

Made my first ever HN throwaway account to respond to this. I have been running a successful business, but it's not "tech". I want to get back into the software industry. I didn't have a software business idea, so I explored some tech company jobs. I am well-qualified at the VP/Director level for startups and even larger companies. I did go so far as to do an on-site interview for one company. I have verifiable proof…

I'm starting to suspect that the best way to interject utter panic into a mid-level corporate interview is to mention an independent business venture.

While this may earn respect at the very top of the company from another founder or former founder, there more typically a lovely process of watching an insecure middle manager do the math about what you did and freak out....

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#443

Post by njepa »

b212 wrote: post #381
bufferoverflow wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US salaries are on a whole new level when it comes to senior programmers. $200K+ base is normal, if you're good. $150/hr for consulting gigs is also normal if you're good. So your $5K after taxes wouldn't even register on my radar.

This is relative. 5000€ is $5623. You can maintain a "normal" life standard around here for about $800 (renting a studio / two room flat in the city centre + all the expenses, no car but I never needed one - the subway takes me to the furthest parts of town in 25 minutes, walking to work is not unusual). So you're saving more or less 5000$ every month. How much do you have to earn in SV to rent a place for your own n…

> And I still can't wrap my mind around this - if company Y or X is so desperately seeking for employees and pays them bazillions of dollars - why they even consider burning so much time on the process of hiring?

It's a leverage thing. Companies in high cost of living locations can just wait for someone else and they will. That doesn't work in a low cost of living locations, since their isn't much urgency from the perspective of the applicant.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#444

Post by orpheline »

burtonator wrote: post #5

I had a recruiter call me a year ago with what sounded like a really amazing offer. Working for a well funded startup on a problem in which I happen to be a domain expert. They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set and they said the right things to get me to interview (compensation won't be a concern). Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview wit…

My last job search, I was cold-called by a recruiter who was working with a local bank. Salary range was acceptable, and there were a few factors pressing for finding a job quickly.

Interviews went well, liked the people I met; things looked good. As a condition of the offer, the recruiter told me they needed my current salary. I provided that, and they dropped their offer ~$15,000 below the low end of their range because my income (in another state and a different industry) was lower.

I told them, "that's not how this works. You base your offer on what the work is worth here, not on what I was making in another role."

Walked, and got an offer two weeks later - $30,000 above their original range and no bullshit trying to tie it to my current income.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#445

Post by edoceo »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #407
edoceo wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This site disagrees with your opinion http://airindex.eea.europa.eu

Does it? I see a large concentration of red dots over Poland, and some over Belgium-France border, all due to coal plants. Then there's UK. Poland takes second place with an overall score of 5.5/10. The carbon dioxide emissions in poland are 7.63 tonnes per capita per year, which is higher than the winner Turkey. The concentrations of PM2.5 are 22 µg/m3 which is almost half of Turkey’s concentrations. There are 69 de…

Yes.

From your own quote: Poland, second place (over all)

World Atlas has them at #3 https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/cities-with-the-worst-ai...

So...not "dirtiest"

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#446

Post by nickbarnwell »

mooreds wrote: post #103
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

searching is easier in terms of internet ads and reviewing candidates. But hiring dev candidates is extremely hard. Virtually everyone has a job who is experienced already, college students get offers somewhere in the early junior year, so you hire them with at most 2 internships. It's very difficult to pull people out of an existing job, it's kind of begging them to consider you. Then for random applicants to a comp…

Are you in the Bay area or Seattle? That's higher rates than what I have seen for new college hires (I have seen in the 40-60k range).

Even at the top end of that range it's less than what a competitive internships annualised compensation would be. Are you really able to hire people at those rates?

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#447

Post by coffeemug »

rubicon33 wrote: post #208

I feel like a broken record, but I'm going to say it anyways. There is NOT a shortage of software developers. That myth was developed by big tech, and pushed all the way up the ladder, to the top of government. The goal? Reduce labor costs. Big tech has always been 1 step ahead of the employee, just like coal, and metal working was. They saw the huge need for developers and realized their costs would increase unless…

>There is NOT a shortage of software developers.

What would have to be true for you to agree that there is a shortage of software developers? Big tech cos have total comp of ~$600k/engineer. Would you think there is a shortage if they had to pay $6m/engineer? $60m? How do you define "shortage"?

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#448

Post by physiker1990 »

b212 wrote: post #164
revvx wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same thing happen to me a couple times. Long and tiring process. Blackboard, make a project, lots of dirty laundry about "long gone incompetent developers" that made the current system a giant mess. Lots of red flags but lots of promises including a large maximum salary, including bonuses and stock options. The final offer, however, was 60% of my current pay. Lower than the average for someone with my exper…

Is this an American thing? I live in Eastern Europe and make decent buck here (close to 5000 EUR/mo after taxes in a country where you can cover all expenses under 1000 EUR/mo). I never had any trouble getting quality work in my country but a few times I got approached by companies from the US and oh boy, weeks of tiring recrutation process and the pay was ALWAYS worse than local. I feel like they do it on purpose ma…

Hi, can you kindly answer the following questions: How much experience do you have? What is your current technology stack? Is the salary which you stated based on an 8 hour workday 5 days a week schedule? How much late sitting do you do, if any? What is your typical work load, I mean do you solve complex problems all day long or do you just stitch libraries together? The salary which you stated looks a bit unbelievable. Thanks.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#449

Post by Trisell »

koala_man wrote: post #395
Trisell wrote: post #126

I've been looking for jobs recently. Have a background building pretty robust Node/React apps. At the 4 places that have given me an interview. I've been told that I don't meet their needs. The reason for this. I'm unable to solve their pet coder wars function challenge. Being a self taught programmer, not having a 'learned' background has proven to be a hindrance. Because I don't have the traditional algorithmic cho…

> In the time I've been working as a programmer I've had the need to use recursion one maybe two times. That may be the case, but I've also worked with a programmer who said he'd never needed hash tables. As you can imagine, this said more about the solutions he arrived at than the usefulness of these data structures.

I agree. But these tests do nothing to validate that I can be a useful programmer on a team. Nothing about those types of questions prove that I’m unable to build a viable web app. I’m not applying to be a embedded programmer just continuing to do what I’ve done for years.

Re: We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage

#450

Post by ScottFree »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #416
Mr_Shiba wrote: post #320

>I'm 45 and have gray hair. I'm reaching 40 next year, 20 years of code experience. What's bizarre about the whole thing is that I would be consider to be reaching my productive peak in the next 10 years in any other field. In tech you are treated like a dinosaur, as if not knowing what the latest hipster JS framework of the week makes you obsolete. >Are you people complete morons? Yes.

Also there is no reason why a 50 year old can’t learn Vue, React, Rust, Blockchain, PWA, Docker or anything else that is hot. It’s all logic, all 1s and 0s. Someone with 20 years experience can probably learn it faster.

The problem is that somebody with 20 years experience knows Vue and React are really just older technologies refried and served to new programmers who weren't around the first time. Hiring too many people who can say "this looks suspiciously like what I was doing 10 years ago" ruins the tech marketing cycle.
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