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I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

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Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#501

Post by rightbyte »

benhurmarcel wrote: post #416
JAlexoid wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not paying your dues. Being a software engineer forced to work as a network technician (not even a network engineer) is akin to having the junior accountant just get everyone coffee. Maybe writing tests is paying your dues, because it often feels like a thankless job. Building UIs in a JS framework... Those could be "paying your dues", or more precise getting real world development experience. But there's a lo…

In mechanical engineering, it's considered good practice to make recently-hired engineers work as blue-collar operator in the shop for a while. When it's proposed it's even usually appreciated by the engineer as a rare opportunity to learn.

Ye you need oil and saw dust on your hands to design machines properly. In a SWE analogue running the milling machine would be ... using computers? Workshop experience is harder to come by than computer dito.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#502

Post by d12345m »

nasalgoat wrote: post #470
ditonal wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's basically both. When I graduated with my CS degree, I was _thrilled_ to be offered 50k. Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC. So hard not to say that the market hasn't adjusted somewhat. At the same time, part of the reason companies even have to pay so much is because they've made interviewing so damn hard. I personally know many people at great companies like Google and Twitter who are _desperate_ to change…

I spent nearly a year interviewing at various companies and never landing a job despite decades of practical, relevant experience. It was extremely demoralizing and worrisome, and I believe the majority of the issue was extremely difficult interview processes. The size of the company didn't matter - in fact, the smaller the company, the more difficult and onerous the process was. One place with six employees asked fo…

No offense meant, but if you are surprised about the existence of Scrum Masters, then that interviewer is not at all wrong for wondering if you have enough Scrum experience.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#503

Post by dragonwriter »

d12345m wrote: post #502
nasalgoat wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent nearly a year interviewing at various companies and never landing a job despite decades of practical, relevant experience. It was extremely demoralizing and worrisome, and I believe the majority of the issue was extremely difficult interview processes. The size of the company didn't matter - in fact, the smaller the company, the more difficult and onerous the process was. One place with six employees asked fo…

No offense meant, but if you are surprised about the existence of Scrum Masters, then that interviewer is not at all wrong for wondering if you have enough Scrum experience.

Unless you are being hired as a Scrum Master, “not enough scrum experience” should not be a hiring consideration. On the other hand, it being a hiring consideration is such a negative signal that mossing out on a job because of it is almost certainly dodging a bullet.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#504

Post by rightbyte »

ivalm wrote: post #298
efnx wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a VP of Engineering tell me once that 17 months is a standard tenure and that we should be happy with that. I think turnover was part of the strategy at that point though...

I don’t quite understand, switching is good for the employee but in what world is it good for the employer? On-boarding/institutional knowledge/etc all suffer.

Ye it is really strange. Maybe it is some kinda of rationalization. Or people believe in that new people bring new ideas or something.

My experience is that even the best engineers wont catch up for a year or something, to an mediocre one with years of experience in the project/field, if the project is somewhat complex and not routine. In 17 months it is really hard to do anything magnificent.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#505

Post by splithalf »

d12345m wrote: post #502
nasalgoat wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent nearly a year interviewing at various companies and never landing a job despite decades of practical, relevant experience. It was extremely demoralizing and worrisome, and I believe the majority of the issue was extremely difficult interview processes. The size of the company didn't matter - in fact, the smaller the company, the more difficult and onerous the process was. One place with six employees asked fo…

No offense meant, but if you are surprised about the existence of Scrum Masters, then that interviewer is not at all wrong for wondering if you have enough Scrum experience.

It’s true too that 4 out of 5 scrum masters will lament the bothersome dearth of experienced scrumee programmers. Never a shortage of scrum masters, or ceos or vc or debt. But labor you can arbitrage for 10x profits are always hard to find domestically.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#506

Post by josephg »

yoyonamite wrote: post #486
josephg wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but I won’t / can’t answer that.

TripleBytes' placement rate was 40% in 2018 [ https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/28/triplebyte-has-raised-more... ] I'm not sure how to reconcile a recruiting company well-known for doing rigorous technical screening having a 40% placement rate, most candidates being a clear yes or a clear no, the hiring process being completely fine, and the hiring process not producing many false negatives.

A 40% placement rate implies triplebyte has the hiring bar lower than companies want it to be. Ie, even with rigorous screening, they have a high false positive rate. (Well, that assumes candidates are totally ordered by desirability, which is not at all the case).

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#507

Post by rightbyte »

amluto wrote: post #132
esrauch wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be pretty safe, but it requires restraint and selecting a good subset of the language. There's still plenty of footguns that an inexperienced person might hit.

And footguns that an experienced person might hit. One family of such footguns is: const auto &foo = something(args); … other_thing(foo); Depending on exactly what you’re doing and what type something(args) returns, this can be entirely correct and idiomatic. In other circumstances it accesses a reference after its lifetime. One can debate whether the const belongs there and how many &’s to use, but, unless something…

The temporary's reference is valid until the temporary is destroyed by falling out of scope, swapped etc. Or have I missed something?

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#508

Post by mavelikara »

spankyspangler wrote: post #88
_2d30 wrote: post #14

I literally can’t relate to this on any level. I’m an HM at a company that pays on the order of a FANG and at best matches one of these credentialist barriers and yet we can’t come close to hiring targets on devs. I don’t get how people can see the plethora of individuals under 10yrs experience in SWE and other tech roles in SV/NYC/SEA with incomes of $250-600k/yr and think this happens without a “shortage” of talent…

Paying that much for a tech worker doesn't mean there is a shortage of them, it means FANG companies are gambling on "rockstars" to try get an edge. Flood the market with very good but not exceptional workers, and the top salaries won't change much. Flood the market with exceptional workers and it probably won't change much either, FANG will just be even more selective with their top salaries. Top devs have a lot of…

> If you aren't playing this kind of roulette, I don't understand why you would try to compete in the same job markets.

Ever since Blockbuster failed dramatically, large brick and mortar company execs are worried that SV will take their market. And, for good reasons too, I'd say. Software is eating the world etc.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#509

Post by dimmke »

anonymoushn wrote: post #279
anchpop wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now new grads feel lowballed at 200k TC As a new grad, was I supposed to feel lowballed at getting an offer quite a bit less than that? I know senior devs who make less than that. Is this just for stanford/mit grads?

I think you should feel fine about 150k and miffed about 100k if it's a gig at a bay area company other than an early-stage startup. 200k is very high for new grads.

Google pays new grads like 180 and they’re pretty much the top of the industry in terms of pay scale. Throwing hyperbole in just undercuts the point they were trying to make.

Re: I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages

#510

Post by mattkrause »

_2d30 wrote: post #14

I literally can’t relate to this on any level. I’m an HM at a company that pays on the order of a FANG and at best matches one of these credentialist barriers and yet we can’t come close to hiring targets on devs. I don’t get how people can see the plethora of individuals under 10yrs experience in SWE and other tech roles in SV/NYC/SEA with incomes of $250-600k/yr and think this happens without a “shortage” of talent…

Is there a university nearby?

Grad students and postdocs seem like a fairly untapped source for tech recruiting, especially outside of the CS department. Physics, neuroscience, econ, biology, and many other fields now involve lots of programming and data analysis, sometimes under demanding conditions (real-time or huge, noisy data sets). Many of the people are smart and highly-motivated, but making a tenth of the numbers you quoted (and with rubbish job security to boot). It should be like shooting fish in a barrel.

And yet.... they don't seem to be on many company's radars. I'm the only one in my group who is ever contacted by recruiters, and it's an undergrad CS degree.

Yes, you'll have to screen to figure who tweaks "the script that gives the numbers" and who's more like a developer. Recruiters might need to put in a little legwork to figure out how different kinds of researchers map onto open reqs. You might want to somehow prep non-traditional candidates for a developer interview, or figure out an on-boarding track. But you can afford a whole heck of a lot of that if a $250k/year job is sitting open.

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