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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

#91

Post by Spooky23 »

solatic wrote: post #16

Question - why even bother having "box tickers"? When you post a job listing, write a short blurb about the company culture and what the job itself involves. Don't bother listing "requirements" or "boosters", because the fact of the matter is, people will send resumes which don't meet your "requirements" and in order to put a boost-worthy resume at the top of the pile, you need somebody to read it in the first place…

Because once you run into somebody who decides that your subjective judgement represents illegal discrimination, you’ll wish that a third party checked the boxes you.

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

#92

Post by NotSammyHagar »

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #80
Game_Ender wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviews take 2-3 man days from a company per candidate you end up doing a full onsight interview. That is on the order of $1000’s per interview, and you generally have to do several per role. Then for high demand roles even the best will take several months to ramp up which costs a large fraction, say 25-50% of their total compensation. So replacing a dev can cost you in total $100k+ at least. That is not really c…

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 company, you can check their resume, but many people end up failing our interview.

So it's not easy to actually hire. I'm not at amazon, but we do offer reasonable rates - example, new college hires get 130k+stock, benefits at our company.

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

#93

Post by [deleted] »

areyouseriousxx wrote: post #74
mattnewport wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to interview with them. The experience of the poster you are responding to doesn't seem to align with the situation you are describing. Sure posting an online job ad is pretty cheap. The rest of the hiring process, not so much.

Believe it or not, those interviews usually aren't that expensive. You probably have a mix of managers, which spend all their time in meetings anyway, and engineers, which are paid salary so they typically end up putting in a couple extra hours when they fall behind due to interviewing. Sure it isn't free, but remember, this person had made it all the way to the end of the process. The determination was made that the…

[deleted]

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

#94

Post by ycombonator »

The OP is so spot on. This still frustrates me. The HR, the contract recruiters including technical recruiters are completely disconnected from what the organization needs. On top of that the applicant systems some of these companies employ is horrendous. You have to retype every elfin piece of work history like an FBI background check and in the end your application becomes a metric of the recruiter who can show they have really worked hard to get as many applications as possible. Remove the middle men.

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

#95

Post by Frost1x »

BonesJustice wrote: post #51
raghava wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HR gatekeepers (who don't have the knowledge to make accurate technical assessments) are effectively searching for a perfect match, rather than someone who could do the job well. IMO, that's just a symptom. The real problem is that the hiring managers/engineers find the job of "recruitment" beneath them. All of us know the recruiter might not really understand the difference between "java", "scripting" and "javascr…

One of the best interview experiences I had was with a firm where nearly everyone participates in the hiring process. I don’t know any details beyond what I experienced as a candidate, but they interview tons of people, and everyone who makes it all the way through ends up interacting with at least a handful of would-be peers, managers, and a C-level officer. I imagine that everyone is expected to dedicate a signific…

Where is this utopia? I want to work there.

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

#96

Post by sonnyblarney »

mattnewport wrote: post #88
sonnyblarney wrote: post #46

Should note: there is quite a schism in 'market value' - it's a hard one to nail down. It's a range and it depends on a lot of factors. There are people who just want a decent job with decent pay and a decent place to work. They will do consistently decent work for stability, neat stuff to work on. They are not heavy negotiators, and maybe don't realize they could make '40% more elsewhere' - or frankly are not willin…

If the positions are being filled and the offers accepted then why would anyone be complaining about a "talent shortage"?

Because companies will always want better talent at a better price - in that context, there will always be a 'shortage'.

Markets for labour are obviously clearing - we're seeing tons of hiring (and laying off) - so people are getting hired.

Many companies are also looking for specialized talent, for specific jobs, which are actually hard to fill. In some areas there is definitely a 'shortage' for opportunity cost.

One could argue 'they could just pay more' - but it's not like industry will boost wages for some job by 30% in the hopes that more people will start to study and train for that subject! It's a short-run/long-run problem.

For broader industry trends, this happens: software is a 'good paying job' in many places, ergo, more devs. But for specialization it's hard. And often it's difficult to clearly justify the ROI. This ambiguity is tantamount to just a lower real value due to the inherent risk.

The offers being made for most jobs are ballpark near 'market wages'. Companies have a lot more data than individuals.

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

#97

Post by ycombonator »

mr_cyborg wrote: post #2

One of the things that always surprised me at a previous company was seeing the H1B hiring notices posted for easily-trainable positions. I have nothing against people coming to work in the United States, but I thought those visas were specifically for roles where the skills weren’t available. In this case, by making the skills super specific, like that Home Depot sales portal in this article, they made them rare.

The super specific skill requirements is usually a sign its being posted either for Green Card application or H1B. Both require "recruiting attempts".

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

#98

Post by revvx »

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 experience and position.

I had good rapport with the HR recruiter and flat out asked why they proceeded, even though she knew I was already getting more, at a better company, with more benefits.

The answer: they assumed I was lying about my current salary and I was just bluffing. Recommended me that I lie in my next interview.

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

#99

Post by saalweachter »

bradleyjg wrote: post #44
BowBun wrote: post #4

One important point I didn't see mentioned was the other side: engineers also think they're worth more than they are. I posit the big VC-backed or FAANG companies 1) can offer huge initial salaries to not have to deal with competition 2) hire juniors at high salaries because they can afford to spend 1-2 years training them. Combine with the sheer volume of hiring they all perform, and it starts to set some false expe…

> think they're worth more than they are. > Maybe smaller companies are failing at capitalism by not competing? Pretty much. It makes sense for employees to land where they can create the most value. If FAANG can get 4x the value out of a junior engineer than your small company can, of course they are going to outcompete you in hiring top junior engineers. Figure out how to extract more value or set your sights lower…

There's a common economic fallacy that prices have anything to do with the cost of production, but the only relationship is that if the price people are willing to pay for a product is less than the cost, that item simply doesn't get made and sold.

When you have companies attempting to produce goods that cannot be profitably produced, below market wages are a common earmark. Whatever widget the company is selling only has a market at $X, but has a cost under current market conditions of $2X, so they are trying to pay people half market salary to bring the two numbers together.

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

#100

Post by interestica »

Game_Ender wrote: post #67
areyouseriousxx wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it strange, as software developers, that we discuss the effects on automation all the time, but no one seems to understand that automation has made searching for new employees incredibly inexpensive and efficient compared to the past. So in technical roles there are a lot of companies that are always hiring. Recruiters work for free until they find you someone and placing job listings online is so inexpensive…

Interviews take 2-3 man days from a company per candidate you end up doing a full onsight interview. That is on the order of $1000’s per interview, and you generally have to do several per role. Then for high demand roles even the best will take several months to ramp up which costs a large fraction, say 25-50% of their total compensation. So replacing a dev can cost you in total $100k+ at least. That is not really c…

There's some derived value in the interviewing. It might be to gain insight from an expert in a field. It might be test out interview/hiring practices. For OP, it seems like they were never really intent on hiring someone at the time but put out a lowball offer on the chance it would get picked up.
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