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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

#601

Post by wolco »

lostgame wrote: post #535
wolco wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who said he didn't? Him not going through that process doesn't make him a liar either. The fear of being blackballed or being a shy person or the experience of knowing what a waste of time it is are all valid reasons not to.

First off, I’m a she. :P Second off - I am the type of individual who believes karma will come back to people. I have a very very comfortable position at the moment somewhere else and I personally just don’t want to stir up any trouble. I’ve been through enough in the past year, from sexual assault to the passing of my mother, to add the trauma of lawyers chasing after me for an HN comment to boot.

It sounds like you've been through a lot.

The lawyer chasing you for a HN comment sounds like a movie. Somehow it would be fitting if it was over spaces vs tabs.

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

#602

Post by kraig911 »

b212 wrote: post #164
revvx wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 apologize because I've worked for people who truly think eastern europe is nothing but goat farmers etc. Literally I think american corps in some aspect are trying to scrape talent from places (they think) are 3rd world countries.

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

#603

Post by geodel »

nitrogen wrote: post #553
droithomme wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Base salary is a ruse. Median total compensation for qualified experts in the bay is currently $450-750k at reputable firms. Everyone knows this. Any company offering less is simply not in the running and is staffed by absolute morons and won't make it. So sad to be them.

What's your bar for "qualified expert" in this context?

Their linkedin profile says so.

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

#604

Post by sytelus »

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…

Do you have anything to back this up? The OP article is a lot of complaining but almost no data except what seems like to be one lousy anecdote. I actually had been a hiring manager desperately needing people to fill open positions I had. I'm not saying I got zero resumes. The problem was that most resumes were sort of "I learned JavaScript and HTML 3 month ago" or "I'm a founder of my own company with 3 funky iOS apps". Nothing wrong with that but the folks I needed for my jobs had to have some experience with distributed computing, solid CS background with high performance algorithms design skills (yes, we actually used those complicated graph algorithms you only find in CS textbooks). These stuff you can't learn by going in to code school for a month. These skills requires years to master and possibly CS education. I would probably come across may be 1 candidate with anywhere close to this kind of background per month total. It would take me 3-6 months to fill one position - if I'm lucky. Often such candidates will have multiple offers and the probability that they would actually come onboard is less than 50%. Think about that for a bit and you should feel the frustration you might have if you actually were hiring manager for such positions.

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

#605

Post by bumby »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #438
dannypgh wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine the federal government has enough transparency and process regarding pay scales to make this moot.

Lemme clarify: your application FOR a Federal position is expected to include your PREVIOUS salaries, regardless of whether they were public or private sector. So if you are a California resident and you submit an application for a Federal position in California, but you don't disclose your previous salaries, I wonder if they consider your application incomplete? If that was used as justification for rejecting your a…

First off, you'll almost never get an indication of why your resume was rejected. Secondly, as someone already commented, federal positions don't have tho play by state rules.

They do sometimes even ask for pay stubs to prove salaries claimed

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

#606

Post by int_19h »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #292
ketzo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an inherently high-paying field with room for both huge advancement and a lot of specificity/niches, not to mention that by its nature software engineering creates more software engineering jobs. God forbid we open that up to people who should be resigned to whatever you think "blue collar" means?

When you increase supply, wages decrease. Wages will decline if you open the field up to everyone. Understandably, not everyone in tech wants wages to decline. If you want your wage to decline in the name of opportunity, that is your choice to make, but it is not your choice to have someone else's wages decline. What you're saying is, "God forbid you care about your quality of life so much you're not willing to keep…

> it is not your choice to have someone else's wages decline

By your own logic, every time I help someone learn something to do with coding - for free - I undermine the wages of everybody else in the market whose job that person is going to be able to "steal" now.

And yet it is my choice to do so.

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

#607

Post by int_19h »

sergiotapia wrote: post #317
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…

150% - devs are slowly waking up to this fact. Behind the efforts to teach everybody to code are more sinister motives: lowering the salaries for engineers.

This is just market at work. If it becomes cheaper to invest into teaching and grooming more engineers than it is to pay exorbitant salaries to the existing limited supply, then companies will do so.

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

#608

Post by jtolmar »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #343
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…

I’m so tired of feeling constantly at war with the industry to justify my own existence. The business people desperately need you but they hate you for what they have to pay. They’re always thinking what if? What if we could outsource this to some magic 3rd world slave mine? What if we could hire some recent graduates or interns instead? What if we could get someone on an H1B and chain them to the desk? It’s the natu…

Unions are the immediate solution. We need an industry wide union so it's hard to hire scabs and easy for us to refer each other after layoffs.

The longer term, better solution is to be owners. Worker owned tech companies only don't exist because they're not our currently accepted default. If people stop defaulting to the venture backed capital model we can turn this industry around.

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

#609

Post by Dylan16807 »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #586
Dylan16807 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I definitely don't want to discriminatorily let low salaries have a bad knock-on effect at subsequent jobs, I also don't want to hire or work with liars. You may not "want" the discrimination, but if you don't allow everyone to say the magic words that get them treated fairly, "I was paid the market rate", you're encouraging the discrimination. I think it's pretty easy to make a moral defense for telling a li…

These laws put no restrictions on what candidates can say, absolutely none whatsoever. They just affect the employer side of the conversation. Employers in California (and NYC and a few other places) cannot ask about salary history, but they can ask what salary the candidate wants, and the candidate can decide on their own initiative to share salary history info. If candidates share such info voluntarily and unsolici…

> Notice how that doesn't depend on salary history info at all.

Does that get you the same salary as showing off your previous good pay stub?

If it does, then we're fine.

If it doesn't, then it doesn't matter that it's voluntary, the system still strongly encourages discrimination based on previous pay.

Imagine a similar system with a protected class. "You don't have to tell us your age, but if you prove you're under 45 we'll treat you better. If you say the wrong age, you're a dirty liar and don't deserve to be hired." That would be blatantly illegal and universally shunned.

I'm not saying this kind of discrimination is anywhere near the same magnitude. I'm just saying that whether it's voluntary or not is a distinction without a difference.

> For California specifically - not currently the other places with this type of law - employers must also share the "pay scale" with "applicants" upon their "reasonable request" (these phrases have been clarified legislatively in sensible ways). So that's even more help in avoiding discrimination while staying honest.

Good, that sounds much more effective.

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

#610

Post by bsanr2 »

sverige wrote: post #284
pm90 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the OP mentioned that the recruiter thought the candidate was lying which is why they low-balled. So that explains the logic at least. They're not stupid, but they don't trust candidates I guess. Which is a whole different thing.

> the recruiter thought the candidate was lying > they don't trust candidates ...which is a great tell for what kind of relationship you would be starting if you did take the offer.

My understanding is that it IS common to lie, or else to redirect the conversation from what was made in the last position to what is desired for the new position. Why should it matter? You're being hired to fill a position that's worth x amount of compensation; the primary reason to ask for prior compensation seems to be to to get a "deal" (i.e., rob an employee of potential earnings).
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