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Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

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Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#61

Post by mdkess »

rayiner wrote: post #34
mdkess wrote: post #22

As a Canadian, one thing that I don't understand is why companies don't move to Canada. I feel like working in the states, I've priced myself out of the Canadian market (since salaries in Canada for engineers seem to be about 60-70% of what they are in the US), but I can't imagine that Vancouver or Toronto would be that hard to build an office out of. Yet for the most part, companies don't. From my understanding, the…

Not just Canada, but really anywhere else. In any city with strong public universities there are strong pools of skilled tech workers. But tech companies are bizarrely centralized. Microsoft, etc, expects everyone to head over to their neck of the woods, and a lot of people just aren't going to do that. Build substantially sized outputs in any of: Atlanta (Duke, GT, UNC), Philadelphia (Penn, Penn State), Boston (MIT/…

I totally agree with you on this, but I think that is a separate issue at least in that it doesn't address immigration, but I do think that it touches at the heart of the problem.

Companies like Microsoft are willing to give kids out of school $100k/year to move to Seattle, San Francisco or New York, but why not Vancouver or Toronto? The Toronto-NY connection especially feels like it should be much stronger, with Porter you can fly between the two cities from downtown for well under $200.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#62

Post by untog »

jquery wrote: post #23

I'm for skilled immigration, but can we please, please rethink the H1B program? At the very least, don't make it so the individual goes out of status the day they leave their job. Give them time to shop around. And get rid of the fee/paperwork every time they switch jobs. Raise the fee to $50k and apply it to the first employer that sponsors them only. More of the risk of holding an H1B needs to go to the first emplo…

I agreed with you until... "Raise the fee to $50k [...] More of the risk of holding an H1B needs to go to the first employer". What?

Up until recently, I've worked for small companies and startups on my H1B. They would never be prepared to spend $50k just to hire me, especially when I can leave a month later if I want to. If the fee was that high, companies would demand security that their employee isn't going to leave- understandably so, but that basically results in the employee being a wage slave for x years.

As someone going through the visa transfer process as we speak, it isn't quite so bad once you're in the country. Not easily being able to bootstrap something on the side of my main job is an annoyance, and the transfer process itself is irritatingly time consuming, but it does at least let me transfer.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#64

Post by canistr »

rayiner wrote: post #44
gms wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would that achieve? Are Microsoft's wages low, in your opinion? How much higher should they go?

It's a market. The wages are too low if they can't get the number of workers they want, and they should go higher until they can get the number of workers they want.

But that's exactly what's already happening. What's missing from the equation is the "skilled" aspect. You can't just hire anybody. A tech firm needs to hire tech people who can do the job.

The current problem in the United States is that the supply of people is high but the supply of skilled tech people is low. So the problem you're facing is high-wages for skilled tech workers (even for immigrant tech workers) but no jobs for the high number of non-skilled people. What the US then wants is for lower (not poverty, but lower) paying jobs that pull from the high supply of unemployed, non-skilled people to allow them to gain momentum and skills through training. Throwing money at the skilled people doesn't solve the problem because it's already here.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#65

Post by codeonfire »

prodigal_erik wrote: post #4

Aren't there still a lot of devs in flyover country who complain about finding few positions? Or is the fact they chose not to relocate being weighed against them?

They don't have the money to move 2000 miles to a coast where they know no one and everything is 100% more expensive. Either that or they are not willing to live in a 500 sq ft apartment with no parking.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#66

Post by panda_person »

luser001 wrote: post #58
drpgq wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait are you saying that there are fewer people working in health care in the US compared to STEM? I don't think that's true at all.

Yep, that's what I'm saying. I'm too lazy to look into this, but intuitively it makes sense to me. Healthcare is basically an "exception handler" (default state of humans is to be health), whereas STEM is the "real code". I would expect more "real code" than "exception handlers". Also sq. ft. of physical space devoted to healthcare (e.g., hospitals) seems to be far less than sq. ft. of space devoted to STEM (e.g., of…

If by healthcare do you mean all employees who work in hospitals (including many low paying positions), or more prestigious, higher paying positions like RNs, MDs, etc? And what about dentists and other allied health fields?

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#67

Post by greenyoda »

cube13 wrote: post #17
incongruity wrote: post #5

If it were a genuine crisis, rather than a 'genuine crisis', wages would be genuinely rising more than they are, for anyone with anything close to the skills sought. Instead, this strikes me as a push to get cheaper workers, rather than actually paying for a scarce resource. But maybe I'm just cynical.

According to this: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.htm Developer-related positions(both research and development), are some of the highest paid STEM-related positions available.

If you want to hire good physicists, you'll need to pay whatever the market rate is for physicists. But if you want to hire good software developers, you'll need to pay whatever the market rate is for software developers, and the fact that they cost four times more than physicists isn't really relevant.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#68

Post by rbanffy »

dschleef wrote: post #39

I will care about companies complaining about too few H1B visas when they start paying equivalent H1B visa holders and citizens the same.

Since H1B workers are handed a pretty bad deal - they can't change jobs without a huge hassle - I suppose there is little incentive in paying them well...

Maybe lowering the O1 visa requirements...

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#69

Post by yajoe »

DenisM wrote: post #38

I am absolutely confident there is no shortage of good software engineers willing to drop everything and move to another part of the country for $500k/year. Absolutely no shortage. If you raise your wages, you will find someone to do the work. If you can't afford to raise the wages, your business plan is not viable. I mean, I could use a houseworker to clean my house for $1 per day, does it mean I should get my wish…

There are many people leaving Microsoft right now. Mostly good people. There are four types of people who stay at Microsoft:

1) Top performers who are on a fast-track (2) People who can't get jobs elsewhere (30%)

3) People who have families and are tied to Redmond area (40%)

4) People who can get jobs elsewhere but have visa restrictions and are afraid to upset their status (30%)

Everyone else leaves or has already left within 2 years. I joked with a colleague yesterday, "Hey, have you talked to anyone from the old team?" "Yeah, I've been forwarding their resumes..."

Microsoft is working to reduce people in #2 and #3 through its performance review system. They then want to increase people in #4 so they have more people who can't leave them as they start cost cutting when Win8 isn't a roaring success.

I personally find it heart-wrenching to watch friends who would leave their abusive situations and work for a start-up but cannot due to silly visa paperwork. I just don't trust that Microsoft would want more people to come without restrictions to work for a specific company. It does't benefit them at all.

I just wish skilled computer science people could work for whomever they want. Our industry would be so much better off. So long as you pay taxes and are a lawful person, I support anyone living in this country.

Re: Microsoft: Shortage of tech workers in the US becoming 'genuine crisis'

#70

Post by aristidb »

sosuke wrote: post #21

There doesn't seem to be a shortage at all. We've gotten plenty of good candidates in our doors that turn us down because our pay is barely competitive and our health insurance is terrible. Pay more money and you can attract more tech workers. Or lower your standards and make a plan to promote in company education, make the specialized work force you need yourself!

Or just finally fix immigration.
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