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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

#461

Post by baddox »

shobith wrote: post #436
Game_Ender wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviews take 2-3 man days from a company per candidate you end up doing a full onsight interview. That is on the order of $1000’s per interview, and you generally have to do several per role. Then for high demand roles even the best will take several months to ramp up which costs a large fraction, say 25-50% of their total compensation. So replacing a dev can cost you in total $100k+ at least. That is not really c…

I wonder at what point would it make sense to start exposing a part of your "software development pipeline" to the external world and then hiring people after they've proven themselves on your pipeline (with compensation). Think lambda school but for your own company.

Open source projects started by or significantly invested in by tech companies must be a huge recruiting tool. I can think of several people in the React community that ended up working at Facebook.

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

#462

Post by solipsism »

tomrod wrote: post #21
solipsism wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easy to blame it all on HR. I've witnessed many engineers draft reqs that included all kinds of unnecessary "musts".

HR is the cause of this issue, either the ossified silo, or the general company policy to HR, which results in too big of asks for too low of wage from folks that have to use that policy.

You can keep saying this but it's just not true. In the number of companies in which I've been involved, engineering managers are solely responsible for writing the reqs.

HR is just an easy scapegoat. I'm sure that often HR is primarily responsible, but often HR just works with what they're given.

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

#463

Post by walshemj »

revvx wrote: post #244
fma wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've posted this elsewhere (forgot here or reddit). I'm gainfully employed. A former colleague who is now in a hiring position at a new company reached out to me. Said they have several openings and are having a hard time hiring good people. It would be a much longer commute, working/rewriting some older tech to be cloud ready (I did that at my current and previous employer). We started talking about salary. I told h…

> He told me...he could match that. I think he was just honest. In those cases, I'd answer with "Ok but I need X% more because of the commute and the hassle of changing jobs".

And that X% needs to be post tax

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

#464

Post by chronogram »

sidlls wrote: post #426
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.

These are not normal base salaries even for senior programmers in the bay area. The 60th percentile for senior software engineers is around $180k per year in the Bay Area. Total compensation is commonly $200k or more, easily, but not base. Outside of the Bay Area, even in NY, Chicago, etc., base salaries are lower. In most places they're much lower--below $100k.

Those are not nett salaries are they? So keep in mind in Europe it can be 5k times 2 times 12=120k.

(How to use asterisks here?)

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

#465

Post by ec109685 »

The part about companies being too picky doesn’t ring true. LinkedIn allows people to apply en-masse to jobs without any cost to them, so you end up getting a lot of nonsense applicants. That’s why it’s not surprising to see 1000 people applying to that person‘s job. I wish LinkedIn had more built in (but optional) ways of pre-filtering candidates before they reached the employer.

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

#466

Post by walshemj »

abawany wrote: post #280
d4mi3n wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rule number 1, IMO, never discuss salary. I find listing your salary requirements before starting a process weeds out a lot of silly interviews. If you know your worth and have a goal for your salary, it is the most effective way I know to avoid dumb offers.

To add to the 'sucker' anecdote, when I was young and stupid (at least I am not young anymore), I was contacted by a NYC recruiter looking to hire for Bloomberg. Here was his tack to extract salary information: "being a financial company, it is required for us to know what you currently make." On this aspect, I think I know better now, hopefully.

Yeh right :-)

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

#467

Post by sevilo »

And every shitty little startup thinks they’re Google, and demand so called “unicorn” developers while hoping to pay them 60k a year. And if you don’t know exactly “Home Depot Vendor System” then in their mind you’re marked as not the developer they want, despite having experience in like 5 other super similar technology. That seriously grinds my gears, those companies deserve to not be able to hire anyone.

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

#468

Post by Rafert »

daemontus wrote: post #413
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.

Don't forget it's 200k a year whereas the EU salary is 5k per month - still way below, but as op said: once you factor in the cost of living, it starts to make more sense :)

The salary he mentioned is 5k/month _after_ taxes, so 60k/year. Which according to a Polish income tax calculator I found would be about 85k/year EUR before taxes. With current rates that's about 95k USD.

According to Numbeo living in SF is about 2 (groceries) to 5 (rent) times more expensive compared to Warsaw: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

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

#469

Post by marcinzm »

jarsin wrote: post #459
externalreality wrote: post #336

This is very relevant in software these days > Super Narrow Selection Criteria e.g. "We need nodejs, mongo, grpc, golang, etc - decades of experience in software is not what we need. We need exactly those things - and we are going to give you an online code challenge to solve an irrelevant puzzle while a 27 year old sits there watching you." And then when you get the job its nothing more than spending hours upon hour…

I'll never understand why these companies are letting inexperienced employees take any part in interviewing people with significantly more experience. If I owned a company I would never let some inexperienced fresh grad interview a senior engineer. They are letting some kid take part in one of the most important parts of their business. It's yet another area of software development hiring where all logic and reason h…

I find perceptive junior employees extremely useful in judging candidates. The way people act with someone they perceive as inferior is very telling about their personality and how they'll work with others. People are in my experience a lot more likely to drop their guard and show their true selves when they think no one important is watching. Soft skills matter and someone senior is both capable of providing great value and doing great harm to a team.

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

#470

Post by andrei_says_ »

b212 wrote: post #439
andrei_says_ wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly highly recommend Lab Rats by Dan Lyons. Dissects the forces behind the current state of the workforce in the US. Very well written and exposes the brutality and destruction resulting from focusing on short term profit at any cost.

Thanks, added to my list. The topic looks kinda depressing though...

A lot of what people in power driven by greed do in the absence of long term vision or compassion, is depressing.

However, such actions are also detrimental to sustainable/thriving business. So smart people find more constructive and humane ways to be profitable. The book ends on a high note and carries the potential to help leaders correct course before self destruction.

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