We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by anxman » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:18 AM UTC

propogandist wrote: post #483

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.

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.

This was a shameful crime that occurred at the highest levels in Silicon Valley. This illegal cartel should have been prosecuted under RICO laws with CEOs taken away in hand cuffs. Instead, the worker bees got peanuts. I received a $1300 settlement instead or the hundreds of thousands in lost wages that I was robbed of.

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

#542

Post by around_here » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

Joakal wrote: post #530

sixtypoundhound wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wonder what would happen if we: - Set high minimum wage for H1B ($150,000+ annual salary, set to increase in response to inflation in technology salaries) - Incorporated an automatic green card "path to citizen" into the process, which will be portable between employers (with a decent provision for unemployment or family leaves). Seems like: - Dramatic improvement in living conditions for higher end H1B roles (less b…

It wouldn't be implemented. There's also demand for cheap labour. Talent shortage, also known as cheap labour shortage. Did you know that in Australia, overseas people are hired to deliver mail? https://www.smh.com.au/national/post-turning-blind-eye-to-45...

Capitalist: I firmly believe in demand and supply economics. That is why I raise my prices all the time!

Also capitalists: I refuse to raise my wages in response to a low supply labour market for my labour demands. I will instead lobby the government to let me hire wage slaves that I can abuse from overseas labour markets where living costs are much lower.

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

#543

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:20 AM UTC

[deleted]

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

#544

Post by duxup » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #248

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…

Trying to teach “everyone” to code is like teaching everyone to draw in high school art classes. It gives a lot of people exposure to what it means to code/draw, the fundamental steps of coding/drawing but doesn’t increase the supply of coders/artists in the world to the point where the skilled artists/programmers become commonplace.

I did a coding boot camp and oh man half the class was IMO unemployable as far as a job coding goes.

It's one thing to code what you see in front of you, another to think about problems and solve them thoughtfully, research, debug, and etc. Troubleshooting(debugging) in particular is a hard thing to learn.

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

#545

Post by wool_gather » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #325

revvx wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a verbal promise, not a contract. They just broke it. They were unprofessional.

A verbal promise can very easily be interpreted as a contract by a court. (IANAL, and clearly YANAL)

The legal side is almost irrelevant. The situation is that they're trying to initiate what should be a mutually-beneficial, longish-term working relationship. Leading into it with this kind of letdown isn't a good start.

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

#546

Post by around_here » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:21 AM UTC

mooreds wrote: post #150

pascalxus wrote: post #60

But HR isn't the only problem. In my experience having worked for a company that hired heavily for several years, it was the engineers who lacked the talent necessary to conduct proper interviews. Great candidates were being rejected by the truck load. Us engineers, we're great at engineering but many of the junior and mid-level ones don't have much experience interviewing people and usually no training whatsoever. S…

We switched from a random set of questions to a take home coding assignment (that we compensate for) and a discussion of said coding assignment. It's pretty clear what kind of work someone will do when you can look at work they've done.

The question is when do you give the assignment? I'm starting to hear of a lot of candidates that get it before they even hit a phone screen.

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

#547

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:24 AM UTC

revvx wrote: post #98

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…

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…

> they assumed I was lying about my current salary and I was just bluffing

That's commonplace, I've heard many engineers say they overstated their current salary. When I'd apply for jobs, I'd include a copy of a paystub, because I knew the companies knew about the practice and would discount the offer accordingly.

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

#548

Post by haidut » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

Talent shortage and sucker shortage are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there is good evidence that the former can drive the latter. Basically, most of the talentless people also tend to lie about their experience, educational background, knowledge level, previous salaries, career preferences, etc to compensate for their lack of talent. It does NOT work of course, most of the time, but what do they stand to lose? So, when this goes on for some time the HR departments start to assume everybody is a talentless, lying, P.O.S. as it is simply cheaper and less taxing on corporate resources to go with that assumption if the majority of interviewers truly are like that. Yes, they may miss a star here and there, but they will also save themselves an HR-wide (and beyound) burnout and a ton of wasted money. I will be the "negative Nancy" in this thread and say that unfortunately there has been a drastic drop in IQ scores around the world over the last 30 years. https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/iq-scores-have-be...

That is bound to manifest itself in the generally quality of prospective employees. The term "idiocracy" takes that idea to the extreme...but unfortunately is not far from the truth. In my experience, a general rule of thumb in Fortune 500 HR (and even large federal agencies) is that a star will almost never apply directly through the front door. There will be either recommended by a trusted insider or will find an ingenious way to demonstrate their talent. For all the rest, the assumption (mostly correct) is that they are junk or at the very least significantly overrating their self-professed abilities/talents/worth/salary/etc. So, what looks like a sucker shortage is simply the trend for lower value default offers most HR departments will put out there based on the (reasonable) assumption of the (low) quality of the person up against them.

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

#549

Post by dboreham » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:28 AM UTC

sundaeofshock wrote: post #319

mgleason_3 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This - we really need a law requiring companies post what the jobs pays. It would solve so many problems - including ones like this, gender discrimination, etc.

In California, employers are required to disclose salary ranges for jobs if asked by prospective employees.

The range can be pretty wide though.

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

#550

Post by nitrogen » Sun, Apr 21, 2019, 1:30 AM UTC

galfarragem wrote: post #414

b212 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bargaining doesn't seem to work at scale (countries with bargaining habits don't do good economically) and it rapidly becomes a big waste of time for everybody.

As someone who always disliked visiting markets where bargaining is expected, this intrigues me. Can you recommend a book or documentary about this, or maybe explain a bit of the theorized causal connection?