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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

#731

Post by jkaplowitz »

WalterBright wrote: post #689
jkaplowitz wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why someone who makes no claims about their previous salary is riskier than someone who proactively provides a pay stub. If Bob is inclined to lie in general, either he could be giving a true pay stub to engender confidence and hide some other prior/contemporaneous/subsequent lie, or he could have doctored the pay stub. Other things being equal, neither Bob nor Fred is more likely to be a liar. Should I w…

> I don't see why someone who makes no claims about their previous salary is riskier than someone who proactively provides a pay stub. Because the person not giving salary information likely believes such will negatively affect their offer (as you say), and the one who does likely believes it will positively affect their offer. Sure, a lower salary may have nothing to do with job performance. But it is an indicator,…

There is very little correlation between relative pay and relative performance. I know first-hand many people who have been underpaid and many who have been overpaid.

I mean, sure the correlation is nonzero, but it's low enough as to not be usefully predictive for hiring. The correlation is much higher between relative pay and relative privilege, which is not at all about who would be a good employee.

Also, most of my pay stubs throughout my recent career have actually been electronic-only pay statements, and my pay is usually electronically direct-deposited too.

Therefore, any employer-provided pay statement which I pass along would be in the original PDF form, printed from the original, or redacted in a visible and non-fraudulent way by me to remove any irrelevant sensitive info (e.g. before the accepted offer stage I might redact any full bank account number or SSN).

If I were a fraudster, the modified PDF I would share would look just as credible as the original. Far safer to just obtain permission and ask the former employer.

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

#732

Post by jmcqk6 »

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…

>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.

What is the line of reasoning than goes from 'there is a shortage of developers' to 'therefore, we need to pay less.'?

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

#733

Post by bcrosby95 »

varjag wrote: post #676
bcrosby95 wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends upon what you mean by "great". In my circle of friends, the people I would call great programmers make 500k+ total compensation regardless of where they live.

why not a million

It's not based on how much they make, but about their abilities.

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

#734

Post by retiredcoder »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #727
retiredcoder wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not just American companies but big companies treat different labor markets differently. For example, I used to work for a big company in Denmark that has a sattelite office in Bucharest. It is questionable to see that even the equipment the developers get there was subpar. The fulltimers there were treated as contractors (e.g.: no career incentives), expendable (high turnover). The office just existed because…

Are you from my former employer? :) Joke aside, what you said above also applied in my case to my ex German employer in Eastern Europe. We got cheap machines with half the specs of the German counterparts but the management in The Mother Land expected the same productivity as the German colleagues. Now, having migrated West to Austria(similar culture to Germany) tings don't get better an all accounts, even if you spe…

Hehe, I’d sadly say no, chances are we don’t have the same employer but the general tech in Europe is still old IT / cost center.

I am not in a stage of life for pursuing promotions to give more anedata on that, but I can see that a lot of senior managers here in Denmark are not immigrants. I do see however that there is a wave of immigrant founders here. Let’s see if the economic environment will perdure long enough to see a greater change.

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

#735

Post by antoinevg »

le-mark wrote: post #720
marktangotango wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that background verification work exactly? Your groomed references are providing objective evaluations? Bite you indeed.

Back channels would be one way, but then how to verify the back channel? Sibling "I know and your dumb" response not very illuminating here.

My ongoing experience is that this question is never asked in good faith so please don't misunderstand me.

What I am saying is: I think you know and you have an agenda.

If you truly don't know then this is really something you should know if you are doing the job you are saying you are doing.

To use an analogy: I would not waste my time explaining how type systems work to someone who is arguing rabidly against them in an online forum.

If they care then it's something that is so important they should actually go out and educate themselves before getting into conversations about it.

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

#737

Post by bcrosby95 »

varjag wrote: post #736
bcrosby95 wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not based on how much they make, but about their abilities.

You literally described their abilities in terms of how much they make.

I described their abilities with the word great. And said they all make over a certain amount. They didn't always make this much. One used to make 140k working in gaming just 3 years ago. He was still great, just getting paid a fraction of what he could make. But that's gaming for you.

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

#738

Post by wjossey »

rajangdavis wrote: post #697
wjossey wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently had a mentoring session with a person going for a lead position, but they haven’t been an “on paper lead” before. I had to talk them through it but I think they understood at the end how to position themselves. I do not find most people know how to adequately fill in the dots for people on the other side of the table because businesses aren’t always terribly forethcoming about what they are looking for. If…

Honestly, I think it comes down to personal values. I like doing unit testing even though my current employer doesn't; in that regard, when I was asked about testing experience, because I spent time writing packages in python, php, node, and ruby with full unit tests, it was really an easy question to answer.

Can you elaborate on this for me? I’m not sure what you mean by it coming down to personal values. Would love to understand.

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

#739

Post by jammygit »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #92
areyouseriousxx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current data we have about hiring practices seem to disagree with you. So either, this process is not as expensive as you think it is, or companies believe it is less expensive than it actually is. Either way, the effect on hiring is the same.

searching is easier in terms of internet ads and reviewing candidates. But hiring dev candidates is extremely hard. Virtually everyone has a job who is experienced already, college students get offers somewhere in the early junior year, so you hire them with at most 2 internships. It's very difficult to pull people out of an existing job, it's kind of begging them to consider you. Then for random applicants to a comp…

As someone in Canada looking at an offer for much lower than that, I'm not sure what to do to negotiate upwards. I can't find concrete enough numbers that others are making up here for example.

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

#740

Post by jstarfish »

chrisweekly wrote: post #403
revvx wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the recruiter told me the whole hiring team thought I was bullshitting about my salary. It was a problematic company from the get go. I was cold called and the recruiter was very insistent. Their engineers were very unprofessional during the technical interview and complained A LOT about technical debt left by past co-workers during the interview. Now, when I tell recruiters my minimum salary I refer recruiters…

IIRC it's becoming illegal to ask about current salary. IMHO it should be irrelevant. The question is, what is the market rate for someone w/ your skills and experience?

There are now services like Equifax Workforce Solutions and The Work Number (and another I can't remember) that records this information for inquiry by future employers. If you have third-party payroll your salary info is almost certainly reported to such a bureau.
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