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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

#481

Post by rajangdavis »

eps wrote: post #143
vetelphon wrote: post #22

I had an interview with a company working in the ML space. There is a semi-difficult problem that their particular industry needs a solution for so I spent a couple hours in the hotel the night before writing up a solution for it. I was doing an interview with their head of ML and brought this subject up in general without mentioning that I had already solved it. His immediate response was: "that's impossible." And i…

At some point I was working for a shop that did smartcard-based payment systems. I was patching some smaller bug when I noticed a call that was suspiciously close to an assert() that was accidentally left in. Merely commenting it out made the payment handshake complete 50% faster. Being an eager junior as I was I went to the principal dude who wrote this part (and pretty much the rest of the core) and he dismissed me…

Is it possible that this could have been prevented with some unit testing?

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

#482

Post by ecshafer »

m463 wrote: post #441
andrei_says_ wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

"silicon valley toilet paper" or see this dilbert cartoon: https://dilbert.com/strip/2001-03-15

The Simpsons had a joke on this back in the day where their dotcom startup had shares of stock on a literal toilet paper dispenser.

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

#483

Post by propogandist »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #321
b212 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valle...

>...wages were artificially lowered — an estimated $9 billion effectively stolen by the high-flying companies from their workers to pad company earnings — in the second half of the 2000s...

All these firms settled for a measly $334 million to make this problem go away, despite damning evidence.

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

#484

Post by sidlls »

chronogram wrote: post #464
sidlls wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

A 50th percentile base salary for a senior engineer in the Bay Area is around $150k-$160k per year. Most companies offer a cash bonus (10%-15% of base); including this puts a typical cash compensation total for a 50th percentile senior engineer is between $165k and $184k per year. Most companies offer stock, but the grant and value of these varies wildly. Public companies' stock is actually worth something but you have your places like Google where RSU grants are a huge portion of salary and other places where it's closer to the cash bonus portion of salary.

This is all gross, pre-deduction salary; not salary net of taxes, deductions, etc.

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

#485

Post by rajangdavis »

wjossey wrote: post #8

I’m interested in trying to solve this problem by helping people express how they have relatable skills, rather than direct experience. In particular, I believe that the opportunity is to highlight during person to person conversations during an interview a person’s relevant, but perhaps not directly related, skills. Interviewers often just ask, “have you written in X” as an example, and candidates don’t know how to…

I did this with an interview recently and I think it was the only reason why I got an offer.

I think the challenge is that you need to have related experience in order for this to work; if you don't, you will be scrambling for an answer. I didn't even realize I was doing this when I started directing the hiring manager to my related experience until after the interview.

It worked out that I didn't have direct experience with what they were looking for but have a lot of related experience in the same language but different domain as well as with other languages, all of which was visible on my github profile.

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

#486

Post by nwatson »

marcosdumay wrote: post #232
pathseeker wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They promise that amount up front, and then renege? "we can give X" is not a promise to give X.

How is it not a promise? I fail to imagine it being said in a way that isn't one.

The hiring company just counters they "can give X" for an imminently qualified candidate but after the interview process they feel the candidate has too little experience or aptitude and is being offered a job in spite of their shortcomings and should be so happy with the offer.

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

#487

Post by rajangdavis »

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…

Don't lose faith in yourself...

It sounds as though you have some basis of where you need to improve, I would continue to look for jobs but also try to improve in those areas (recursion and algorithms).

I spent the last year looking for jobs and it's definitely a weird market right now. I got offered a position that another company told me I lacked the relevant experience for.

You would be surprised by how a company may value your talents. It seems like the companies you've interviewed for don't require the talents that you have which is a good indicator that you probably would not want to work for those companies.

Keep looking for the company that values your talents and shares your values, but make sure to learn more in the areas that you have identified as needing improvement.

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

#488

Post by neilv »

iliketosleep wrote: post #25

I've always assumed that the so-called "talent shortage" was an excuse to get cheap labor from abroad. They make job ads such that it's improbable that a local will meet the highly specific requirements, after which they complain of a skills shortage, and then they have their excuse to import cheap labor.

This isn't specific to justifying a visa. This same method is sometimes used when the obvious choice non-cheap-labor hire has already been picked by the hiring manager, but they're required (for any of a variety of reasons outside the manager's control) to post the job.

When it's not used for visa indentured servant games, it's arguably a relatively decent way to to do things (don't put applicants through a charade of being considered, and you're already certain who you want to hire), but better would be to not post the job at all in that situation.

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

#489

Post by austhrow743 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #329
dangero wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to give a slightly different perspective on this as a cofounder of a startup. First of all it sounds like there was some really dishonest communication and there is no excuse for that. As far as salary goes, I absolutely cannot afford to compete and hire at market rate prices so I rely on: -People who are motivated by other factors than money (everyone at our company took a pay cut to join). We have schedule f…

How do you reconcile this statement: First of all it sounds like there was some really dishonest communication and there is no excuse for that. With this one: People who are unaware of their market value

There's nothing dishonest about making someone an offer lower than what you think they could get elsewhere and then accepting it.

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

#490

Post by harigov »

iliketosleep wrote: post #25

I've always assumed that the so-called "talent shortage" was an excuse to get cheap labor from abroad. They make job ads such that it's improbable that a local will meet the highly specific requirements, after which they complain of a skills shortage, and then they have their excuse to import cheap labor.

Did you ever imagine if both ends of the spectrum are true? Maybe there is a talent shortage and maybe there are companies trying to get cheap labor from abroad. We are a reasonable sized company trying to recruit people with advanced skills. Finding talent that includes large number of H1B's is hard on its own. Forget finding talent that excludes 95% of the world (aka H1B's). Most of the candidates I get to interview are usually immigrants. Why? I don't know. We have zero motivation to hire immigrants specifically. We pay way higher than an average company and are more interested in talented candidates than saving money. It's just that immigrants are the ones with the skills that we need.

Also, the notion that H1b's are cheap is not always true. With the added costs of filing H1b visa and green card, the true costs are much higher, especially in a cutting edge industry.

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