
Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may be phony - veryluckyxyz
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20150802-column.html#page=1
======
gkoberger
So, I can't speak specifically to Qualcomm's case, however there's a weird
paradox in Silicon Valley.

There's both an excess of jobs and excess of employees. This is probably true
in every industry (every Starbucks is hiring, yet everyone complains how hard
it is to find a job), but it's especially true in tech.

The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates. Salaries have
gotten so high that even the most mediocre developers are demanding six
figures. There's been a huge inflation of salaries in tech, and a decrease in
craftsmanship and quality. So, companies are getting less done for more money.
It's a gold rush, and we're getting to the point where "3 months experience
[1]" is the norm.

I've been trying to hire. I'm not worried about high salaries for someone
good. However my inbox is full of people who know half a language and want a
starting salary of $130k. That's crazy.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/technology/code-academy-
as...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/technology/code-academy-as-career-
game-changer.html?smid=tw-nytimes)

~~~
crdoconnor
>The problem is there's a shortage in qualified candidates.

The problem is that there's a shortage of companies willing to invest in
training.

~~~
asuffield
The problem is that there's few companies who can afford to invest in
training. Only big established companies can do it (and they do, extensively).
Small companies and startups don't have the time or funding to do it.

Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all
too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and
going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money
instead of training.

~~~
Eridrus
> Not only is it expensive, but training people in transferable skills can all
> too often result in them quitting right after their training is complete and
> going to work for a company that invests in paying its employees more money
> instead of training.

Yes, once you train a person you need to pay them more. You might feel like
they owe you, but unless there is a real understanding between the two of you
that you are investing in them and expect to pay them less for some period of
time to recoup the cost (eg in the form of a contract you both signed
stipulating a minimum term after training, with claw back provisions), this is
what you should expect.

Depending on how much it costs you (besides their salary) to train them, it
can still be cheaper to hire and train than getting someone experienced, since
everyone needs some time before they're really effective and you're paying
them at a lower rate while you train them.

There is something to be said for small startups just not being able to
support that kind of load, but I feel like once you hit about 20 engineers
it's just people being lazy and not wanting to do things any differently,
rather than any true constraints.

The fetishization of the 10x developer leads us to ignore the fact that lots
of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite repetitive,
intellectually unchallenging and uninspired.

~~~
rewqfdsa
> lots of the work developers are tasked with doing is really quite
> repetitive, intellectually unchallenging and uninspired.

Then why the fuck isn't work automated away? We're developers, for God's sake!
We develop things!

~~~
Eridrus
Because automation isn't magic.

The fact that something is repetitive and intellectually unchallenging doesn't
mean it is mechanical and doesn't require human involvement and/or judgement.

------
asuffield
This article makes the persistent assumption that any graduate is the same as
any other engineer.

Having worked for a whole bunch of companies over the past few years, one
thing is a constant in the tech industry: there is a limitless supply of
candidates for any given job, all of which are bad. It is a huge, challenging
problem to find the small number of people you want to hire. I'm not sold that
"10x developers" really exist, but I know that "0x developers" are plentiful:
these candidates aren't just a "poor fit", they are entirely unable to do the
job they're applying for. I've seen far too many graduates who are entirely
unable to solve the most basic screening questions, and just don't seem able
to write code.

In a similar vein, it is entirely reasonable for a company to be
simultaneously cutting jobs and hiring, if they are cutting persistent
underperformers and trying to hire more promising replacements. (Some legal
fiction is necessary to do this in the current regulatory environment)

~~~
tmuir
Something I've thought a lot about at my current job is the relative nature of
the 10x engineer. Half of the developers on my team consistently require over
a week to accomplish tasks that would take me half of a day. That's a 10x
difference. Some of these people have several more years of experience than I
do. Everyone has over five years of experience.

The very fact that the disparity is accepted and allowed to persist is pretty
demotivating. When deadlines slip, its not the stragglers who are asked what
happened, its the high performers. It's not the stragglers who are asked to
work more hours, because management knows that those hours would be
ineffective. What that really translates to is "Gee, being 10x more productive
is great, but we're behind, and you're the developer most prepared to fix this
problem we have, so we're gonna need 15x."

Are there actually 10x developers who don't resent their 10% counterparts?

~~~
fluidcruft
You're not a 10% programmer, you're a 90% underworked programmer. ;-)

------
dkarapetyan
First, I don't know how this even started. Why did tech companies all of a
sudden decide there was a shortage of knowledgeable and competent workers? I'm
asking because throughout my career as a programmer I've worked with people
from all sorts of backgrounds that have not had a traditional CS degree. They
have come from fields like math, IT, physics, mechanical engineering, etc.
Engineering disciplines but not really computer science.

The kind of work I've seen all those people do has also varied from things
like control software for fields of heliostats to frameworks for server
orchestrations to search and data mining. So how is it that I've managed to
work with so many competent engineers and yet these giant corporations can't
figure out how to hire semi-competent engineers to do some of the drudge work
that I'm sure they need done? Maybe the problem is not with the workforce and
the availability of knowledgeable and competent workers? Maybe the problem is
their shitty hiring practices?

~~~
Gibbon1
The tech industry's managers have been whining about this at least since I
entered the workforce in the early 80's. I tend to think it's because the rise
of the MBA and the consequent unwillingness to invest in people. MBA's want to
hire engineers like they buy office furniture. And then manage them like a
group of accounts payable clerks. Doesn't work.

Then add in the managements favorite predilection 'downsizing for success' In
order to boost profits over the next couple of quarters, can a a few well
oiled engineering teams. Then wonder why you don't good house engineering
resources for the next big thing.

Frankly what they want, it's not possible.

------
SomeCallMeTim
This is a difficult problem to discuss, in large part because not all
developers are created equal.

There _is_ a reasonable supply of entry-level and low-skill developers. I
refer to them as commodity developers: Developers who have a very basic skill
set, who can do only a few specific things, none of them with extreme skill,
but some of them reasonably competently. They typically do web front-end work,
but sometimes work in Java on server back-ends. Typical pay ranges from
$80-$120k, the same as it has been for 10 years or more.

There also _is_ a shortage of high-skill developers. Compensation north of
$250k-$500k is becoming _standard_ in some areas for such developers. [1] That
pretty much could only happen if there were a shortage, since real wages have
remained flat in general since the mid 1970's. [2]

The problem is when companies ask for more H-1B employees, citing the fact
that they can't hire developers for their highest skill positions (or claiming
that they can't hire mid-skill developers at "market rates", because even the
mid-skill tier is asking for more money now), but then import commodity
developers.

By importing such workers, it unfairly keeps those developers' wages down by
creating an artificial surplus of employees at that level. The idea of an H-1B
worker is that they are _not_ supposed to be paid less than the "prevailing
standard" for a worker of equivalent skill in the local market [3]. But if by
hiring H-1B workers you're holding down the "prevailing standard" in pay, that
hardly seems like companies are following the spirit, or even the letter, of
the law.

[1] My own compensation was in that range when I took a job working from
remote full time, and I know several other developers at top companies whose
compensation is well within that range.

[2] [http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480568/1/us-standard-of-
liv...](http://www.thestreet.com/story/11480568/1/us-standard-of-living-has-
fallen-more-than-50-opinion.html) and many other such charts and reports.

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Employer_attestation...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-1B_visa#Employer_attestations)

~~~
ForHackernews
> Compensation north of $250k-$500k is becoming _standard_ in some areas for
> such developers.

Do you have any more data on this? What skills in which areas are routinely
worth north of $250k?

~~~
rewqfdsa
> What skills in which areas are routinely worth north of $250k?

Anecdotally, it's not a specific skill, but a talent for solving problems
using any tools and skills necessary. The 10x developer is real, and he's not
afraid to read a damn textbook or go to the library and study CS papers if
that's what it takes to do the job.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"go to the library and study CS papers if that's what it takes to do the job"

EXACTLY! I've been knocking them off for years. Most modern problems are
variations on older ones. First step is to see if someone solved it already,
how, and if I can use it. So, stopping code injection for example, I find that
all kinds of hardware from 1960-1980 tagged memory & used CPU in ways that
prevented it. Stack overflowing S.P.? Use a reverse stack like MULTICS.
Pauseless GC? Put one in memory controller on your FPGA/ASIC like a Scheme
machine did. I could go on all day on this stuff.

So much wisdom in relatively, few books and a bunch of papers. I wish someone
would figure out a way to collect, organize, and spread them. That way people
might stop asking me things like whether OS's can be written in "managed
code." Stock reply: "type Niklaus Wirth or Oberon System into Google."

~~~
ScottBurson
As glad as I am to see someone mention all this great old technology, I feel
compelled to point out that the GC on the MIT Scheme chip was not pauseless.
It was a fairly simple mark-sweep collector.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I'm talking about this one (see Storage Management on p17):

[http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab-
pubs/AIM-...](http://repository.readscheme.org/ftp/papers/ai-lab-
pubs/AIM-514.pdf)

They had to leave it out of the first prototype due to space constraints but
describe the approach. They build a second, state machine into storage
interface that continuously looks for stuff it can reclaim. The idea was
clearly to make it concurrent and use dedicated circuits. An enterprising
reader of old wisdom would combine this with any number of parallel/concurrent
algorithms in literature to achieve GC w/ predictable, performance impact.

That work was later referenced in a 1976 treatment of the subject that worked
out foundational issues for concurrent collection:

[http://repository.tudelft.nl/assets/uuid:8b7d64a2-e9a7-4b04-...](http://repository.tudelft.nl/assets/uuid:8b7d64a2-e9a7-4b04-93fe-1845088e5d58/P_1866_1258.pdf)

Most work in GC from them on focused on software implementations. Did find a
hardware implementation in embedded space with some interesting choices:

[http://www.ece.iastate.edu/~morris/papers/IEEE_TMC_03.pdf](http://www.ece.iastate.edu/~morris/papers/IEEE_TMC_03.pdf)

So, the original LISP machines and many later used mark-and-sweep often around
or during a heap exhaustion. There were concurrent ones, with most using
software. The Steele chip describes a concurrent design w/ straightforward
implementation in hardware. That combined with literature gave people more
than enough to acceptably solve this problem.

------
currentoor
There is a major flaw in this article. Software developers are not cogs. Just
because someone has an engineering degree does not make them just as good as
any other developer. Being able to write great software usually comes from
passion and practice, not a piece of paper that says "Computer Science BS".
Some of the best developers I know didn't even get an engineering degree. Is
there a shortage of people with pieces of paper? Maybe not. Is there a
shortage of people that love writing software enough to spend most nights and
weekends doing it? Yes.

This is based on my experience interviewing candidates for two small tech
companies.

~~~
codeonfire
>Some of the best developers I know didn't even get an engineering degree.

How do you know this is just not confirmation bias on your part. You like to
think that degree-less people are somehow vaguely 'better.' You know some
developers that don't have a degree. Consequently they must be the best
developers you know. I think most would agree that you would need actual
double blind research including some way to order developers by ability that
made sense. You would also have to have a sufficiently large sample size
randomly chosen instead of your biased sample of a few people you know. It
stands to reason, though, with no research done that you are just more likely
to know more developers without degrees since only 18% of the population have
a Bachelors and 7% have a masters.

~~~
clessg
> You like to think that degree-less people are somehow vaguely 'better.'

I don't think that he or she said that.

------
fivedogit
All arguments aside, there's one fundamental way to answer whether companies'
talent shortage complaints are "phony" or not: pay. If there really were a
shortage, pay would be rising dramatically. Average engineers would make 200k,
300k... Just like doctors do. But it isn't happening. These BigCos just want
more supply so they can pay even less than they do now. Plain and simple.

Edit: Doctors and lawyers make so much because of artificial governors on the
supply. They're not absurdly more talented or educated than other people (e.g.
engineers), there are simply fewer of them. In the case of doctors, med school
is the limiting factor. The time and $ investment is nuts. For lawyers, it's
the Bar exam. When there are too many lawyers, the Bar association makes the
test harder. When there aren't enough, they make it easier.

This makes me want a standardized programming test so a) talent level could be
gagued more accurately than a cursory glance at someone's github account and
b) the supply of engineers would be choked off.

~~~
pbh101
Pay in the field has indeed risen dramatically in the last decade. Maybe not
uniformly or to the level we would like (or in a way we think will last, such
as being accompanied by increases in status in contrast to doctors, to expand
on your example), but it has notably risen.

~~~
_delirium
A pay-trend graph for some of these "established" companies, like Qualcomm,
Texas Instruments, Seagate, IBM, Dell, HP, etc. would be interesting. My guess
is pay has indeed been rising, but not as rapidly as the Silicon Valley boom
would suggest. Unfortunately I don't think there is a good public data set.

------
rewqfdsa
I've always viewed these persistent and ridiculous claims of a tech-industry
worker shortage through a lens of class. To a Harvard MBA, that we programmers
earn six figures is _prima facie_ evidence of a worker shortage, since there's
no way that ugly nerds should be earning that kind of money for typing into a
computer.

Programmers are workers, so investors and management should be able to siphon
off their productive value the same way they siphon off the productive value
of other works. That they can't right now is an aberration, a disease to be
cured with massive immigration.

That we're not doctors or lawyers and make decent money is something that
simply does not compute for these types.

~~~
1971genocide
When I was in college, I was doing engineering. Many of my friends got bored
and wanted to go MBAs. I almost went that path until I started programming.

Ever since then I went from a commodified drone to feeling like a kid.

It felt like escaping the capitalist matrix. I almost was seen upon as a
hippie. I told my dad that "I have no interest in pursing an MBA, I just want
to spend me time in a cave with a terminal and a few books"

He was almost shocked by it.

I notice it all over in society these days.

If you read about how tuition fees are rising and students are in debt, people
make insane arguments like "well on average a person earns X more over their
lifetime by having a degree"

I never noticed how ridiculous these arguments were.

I have been reading a lot on economics lately and karl marx predicted this
outcome.

We have in many ways reached the end of capitalism, before capitalism as a
system breaks apart. We are trying hard to commodify labour - but the great
paradox is if you commodify labour then the free market stops existing !

I can go on and on, but yes - we need to get rid of capitalism and this free
market darwinist bullshit and return to a more social and morally right form
to organize society.

~~~
Asbostos
Can you explain more how the free market stops existing if you commodify
labour? I don't understand that.

~~~
1971genocide
Sure !

Karl Marx originally explained the idea quite well.

Wages in a real economy is the real driver for demand. The capitalist yearning
to drive down wages and cost as much as they can. That is how the system was
designed !

The end result of thus maximum capital accumulation is a Commodification of
labour. What does that mean ? It means that once wages are pushed down enough
- there is no room for labour to increase demand and thus generate growth (
the thing that drives capitalism ).

Once you commodity labour then the demand side of your market collapses.

\--------------------------------------------------

This was what essentially what happened prior to the great depression and what
happened ever since 2008.

I know people in silicon valley live in a bubble, but if you go outside you
will see that the world is burning.

The reason why tech engineers are being paid 500K is not because of some
inherit huge contribution to society but because huge accumulated capital is
looking for yield.

\------------------------------------------------------

The way historically this inherient end state of capitalism was solved was
through war ( it doesn't have to be )

War de-commodifcation labour by massively increasing its demand. It happened
during WW-2, vietnam war, iraq war ( after the tech bubble burst )

\---------------------------------------------------------

One way to solve the european debt crisis for example would be massively start
spending. Imagine a massive investment to completely reform europe into green
energy. There is however no political will to pursue this.

\---------------------------------------------------------

The Chinese however understand this very well, their leaders are well versed
with karl marx's study on capitalism - unlike in the west where neo-classic
liberalism has corrupted the field of economics to such a degree that we
cannot even openly talk about marx's analysis.

\----------------------------------------------------------

For example the Chinese had 0 miles of high speed trains in 2009. Now they
have 6000 miles worth of it !

They spend more cement in a year then america did in 100 !

They have more green energy then then both US and europe combined - even
though they had no technological expertise until recently.

The Chinese also are spending a lot on their military but its a small part.
They know that it can bankrupt a society.

Their most astounding new initiative is to provide free universal healthcare
to 1.4 billion people !

While we in the west cannot even get out act together to solve the greece's
debt problem. We are driving up growth by inflating huge tech and asset bubble
in hope of driving up demand since the government is completely paralysed to
act in a decisive way.

------
morgante
This article makes the perennial mistake of assuming all "STEM graduates" are
equal. This is flawed in three main ways:

1\. STEM graduates includes many fields where there genuinely is a huge
surplus of labor (we don't really need more physicists).

2\. Talent is critical and sadly a large number of CS graduates do not have
the talent to be good developers. Many fresh graduates just don't have the
skills to cut it as a high-quality professional developer, yet the best ones
have six-way auctions going. Companies are absolutely desperate for good
developers, with the operative word being _good_. (Don't even get me started
on bootcamp graduates.)

3\. The shortage of developers is most acute for senior developers. It takes
about 10 years to become a truly senior developer and 10-15 years ago not many
people were interested in starting a career in CS (the dot-com bust was still
raw). This shortage can only be solved with time or immigration and until then
senior developers can command considerable salaries ($250k+ all in).

~~~
superuser2
The market doesn't "need" _any_ physicists. Hiring in sciences basically
scales with available federal grants for research, which basically scales with
the success of liberal politics.

------
Animats
The IEEE points out regularly that there's no shortage of engineers.
Otherwise, salaries would be going up across the board. Whenever some employer
complains they can't find engineers, ask how many people they have in off-site
training right now.

Companies need to be paying for training that's just conversion from one skill
set to whatever skill set the company needs right now. Most programmers who
are competent in at least two languages can easily learn a third. A
combination of explicit training and someone to answer hard questions is
usually sufficient. (There's startup potential there - offer conversion
training courses, where people who already know A are taught B. A "hard
question" answering service, sort of like StackOverflow but paid, with a
service level agreement, and without the clueless closing of questions, could
work as a business.)

This industry has forgotten what management is for. Part of the job of
management is to organize the division of labor. Not everyone can do
everything. It's the job of management to divide up the job so that no one
part is too hard. Instead, we see a demand for "full stack developers". That's
a confession of incompetent management.

------
timbuckley
> What Tornquist didn't mention was that Qualcomm may then have had more
> engineers than it needed: Only a few weeks after her June 2 talk, the San
> Diego company announced that it would cut its workforce, of whom two-thirds
> are engineers, by 15%, or nearly 5,000 people.

How do we know that 15% isn't mostly coming out of the non-engineering 33%?
And they may well still be hiring engineers massively.

------
droopyEyelids
Until the law is passed that releases all restrictions on visa-workers and
simply grants them citizenship or an extremely permissive stay-while-looking-
for-a-job situation, increasing the h1-b quota is simply a means to create a
reduced-rights cheaper workforce.

It really fills me with disgust to see influential people present this issue
as a skills shortage, while hiring workers at reduced wages and burdening them
with the threat of deportation.

~~~
crdoconnor
That's the reason behind this too:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-
gates...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2013/02/26/bill-gates-
celebrities-support-education-for-computer-programming/)

Jack Dorsey, Bill Gates, Drew Houston, Tony Hsieh and Gabe Newell and Mark
Zuckerberg aren't throwing their name and money at learn to code charities out
of the goodness of their heart. They're very directly trying to lower the
primary cost that their investments face - wages.

~~~
chetanahuja
_" throwing money at learn to code charities out of the goodness of their
heart. They're very directly trying to lower the primary cost that their
investments face"_

Wow that's a unique level of cynicism even for this generally cynical forum.
I'm speechless. So you see all these efforts to raise interest in computer
science in younger generation of Americans and all you can think of is how all
these new, enthusiastic programmers are going to compete with you?

~~~
rewqfdsa
Well, they are, aren't they? Cynicism isn't somehow automatically wrong.

~~~
chetanahuja
Well it's not "wrong" in the sense of being factually incorrect but wrong in
the sense of being just pathetic for a professional to be thinking such
thoughts. Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students taking
interest in your field, and instead of encouraging and teaching them, all you
see is a threat to your livelihood... well... the profession will probably
benefit if you found yourself something else, less competitive, to do.

~~~
crdoconnor
>Honestly, if you see a younger generation of students

...then you were looking at something else. That was a group of billionaires
advertising their naked greed and self interest.

When _normal_ school-kids take an interest in computer science it doesn't
appear in Forbes magazine.

>the profession will probably benefit if you found yourself something else to
do.

Now _that 's_ pathetic.

------
gregrata
... "may be phony"

Oh LOL, isn't this well known? Are people really just now figuring out NOW
that this is, and always has been, about lowering expenses for these big
companies? I mean, they aren't really even trying to hide this!

"our immigration system has failed to keep pace." The nation's outdated limits
and "convoluted green-card process," she said, had left firms like hers
"hampered in hiring the talent that they need."" ... "Only a few weeks after
her June 2 talk, the San Diego company announced that it would cut its
workforce, of whom two-thirds are engineers, by 15%, or nearly 5,000 people"

------
rmason
Shortage may be phony?

Ask all the unemployed engineers over fifty if it's phony.

Ask all the women leaving the field after less than five years if it's phony.

Ask developers who want to work remotely if it's phony.

If you don't see companies making simple, easy changes then you can be pretty
assure the shortage is phony.

------
ZoeZoeBee
The very real issue is the use of H1-B visas to drive down the cost of labor
across the board. Its not a coincidence that real wages in the US have
declined since 1970 while the percentage of population immigrants represent
have tripled from 4.7 to over 14%

~~~
allworknoplay
You're using a real wages figure for the entire workforce, not engineers.
Engineering salaries are extremely healthy, while the real minimum wage has
also fallen. Unless you have data on inflation adjusted engineering wages,
this is a totally misleading/inaccurate argument.

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
Not at all, as the entire work force has felt the effect of immigrants
tripling as a percentage of the population, so to will Engineers with the
increase of immigrants via H1-B visas

~~~
allworknoplay
Did you read/understand my comment? I didn't say you're abjectly wrong, I just
asked for actual data about engineering wages. We know average real wages have
slipped, but we also know the real minimum wage has fallen a lot, and also
that our GINI coefficient is up.

In the absence of better data, the logical supposition here is that real
incomes amongst lower-income employees have fallen more than amongst higher
income employees.

Again: Unless you have data on inflation adjusted engineering wages, this is a
totally misleading/inaccurate argument.

------
ceoj
There is power law distribution of programming skills as in every other field.
I am a web developer, I have worked with both established companies and
startups from every continent in the world. I was hired recently by a client
from USA, whose previous programmer created mess of code base, they were about
to go out of business, had they not hired me to fix that up. I was able to fix
all critical issues within a week, and was able to start developing new
features withing two weeks. Were they not hired me from outside of their
geographic area, they would not have survived today.

So, what should you do to be able to hire good developers- 1\. Broaden your
horizons, don't limit yourself to a geographic area. World is not limited to
Silicon Valley.

2\. Be willing to hire remotely. I myself working remotely from start of my
carrier, it is really exciting.

3\. Give freedom to developers, let them think out of the box. 4\. Before
hiring developers full time, give them some real work(may be a small
contract), this is better than asking them to solve puzzles :)

Feel free to ping me if you have any questions, sfix [at] outlook.com

------
supercanuck
This H1-B problem is not a "silicon valley" problem. Those companies are
unfortunately the companies that are probably doing H1-B the way it was
designed.

The real issue is the tech industry outside of Silicon Valley providing
services to everyday companies. That is truly where the injustice is and where
the meat of this article is pointing at.

------
shahryc
I think the idea that “Tech industry's persistent claim of worker shortage may
be phony” seriously misses the point. First, since it usually takes a
considerable amount of time to specialize in high skill labor markets (ex.
Doctor, lawyer, engineer, etc.) ---- there is a gap in the signal (present vs.
future). So, today there may not be enough workers that are familiar with
designing chips for wearables (subset of hardware engineers). Then, because of
limited supply --- prices go up. Other people see this, and are incentivized
to train for the role (takes time, investment, etc.). Then, what usually down
the road that causes such layoffs --- the industry changes and there’s more
labor in that market because of the previous signal. This gap in the signal is
a basic feature of such makrets, which makes the tech industry’s claim of
worker shortage more likely true than not.

------
Apreche
Another factor is that even though there may be plenty of graduates with STEM
degrees, they may not have the exact skills a company wants.

Just about every job posting is looking for someone with very specific
knowledge of languages, frameworks, tools, platforms. etc. How many people
with a CS degree already know the technologies that your company is using?

By expanding the employee search to the entire world, companies are more able
to find someone who has the specific skills they need.

Yes, they are very likely trying to hire H1-B to pay less salary. But they are
also hiring H1-B to save money by not having to pay for training. Even
companies that work with very obscure proprietary technologies that almost
nobody knows seem to insist on hiring people who have experience with that
technology rather than hiring an otherwise skilled candidate and letting them
learn on the job.

------
nevdka
Not all tech companies are the same. Google needs engineers with skills that
most tech workers don't have. You might have a CS degree from a great school
and 15 years experience with J2EE, but you're not experienced with say...
reactJS. If Google (or Facebook, or startup that just raised $25M) is looking
to hire a team of reactJS devs, then they can very quickly exhaust the supply
of locals who have used it. From Google's perspective, there is a shortage.

But some other companies, usually 'IT' more than 'Tech' from my experience...
yeah... they can get a bit squirrely. When a company gets newly 'redundant'
workers to train the new migrants, they can't really claim that there are no
suitable qualified locals.

~~~
michaelchisari
If you want the absolute best for the job, in a very specific skill-set that
has only _existed_ for two years, then you'd best be willing to pay
considerably, or you're going to have to be willing to train people with the
proper fundamental skills in that specific toolset.

A lot of companies are unwilling to do either of those. Offering $110k for a
ReactJS developer? Better be willing to hire someone with a good understanding
of software development patterns and a solid history of shipping code with the
understanding that some on-the-job training will be required.

Won't settle for anything but the best? Then set the salary to somewhere it
would pull the level of talent you need. And if you're not willing to do that,
then consider how you can get by with the first candidate.

~~~
Gibbon1
If you want the absolute best for the job you'd better be pretty awesome
yourself or they likely won't work for you.

------
curiousnoob123
The idea here seems to be that there are vacancies for people that are good at
the craft, care about it and are generally skilled. And that a lot of visas
today are being taken up by inexpensive foreign labor that may not be
accurately described as highly skilled. So, HN, what if the government raised
the cap for US educated international students? The average quality of STEM
education and the average skill is certianly higher in the US. The issue is
that the international students that go through US education have to compete
with other foreign workers and often don't end up getting visas even though
they are able to fill those skilled position vacancies. Curious to know the
pros of cons of such an approach.

------
DGAP
In this thread there's a lot of complaining about mediocre developers. I'm
still finishing my undergrad, and looking to go the PM route, but how do I
avoid being the type of developer complained about here?

~~~
angersock
You shouldn't go trying to be a PM, because you've got neither the experience
nor the respect to get there. Sorry to be blunt, but this'll save some time.

Instead, focus on being the best engineer you can be, on building and crafting
software as well as you can. That will earn you the respect of the people
whose respect is worth something, and will give you the insights needed for
leading a team properly.

~~~
DGAP
>You shouldn't go trying to be a PM, because you've got neither the experience
nor the respect to get there. Sorry to be blunt, but this'll save some time.

I get that, the only reason I have my sights set on it is that I'm already
working as one for a company. :) I think that I'll best be able to leverage my
experience and skills in some sort of technical product or program manager
role, but I wanted to be sure I can pass a big 4 technical interview ect in
addition to my pm/ business skills.

~~~
bbcbasic
> I'm already working as one for a company. :)

Wow THAT is a touche!

~~~
angersock
Depends on the company. :)

Either way, the desire to hone the technical skills is in the right place.

------
hysan
From the frequent articles I see on HN and the subsequent reactions, would it
be fair to say that this is the situation?

There is no shortage of programmers. However, there is a shortage of
programmers (of X skill level) willing to work at the salary that a company
desires. And that is where outsourcing and H1B comes in. Having a larger pool
of candidates (at X skill level) will force the local candidate pool to lower
their asking salary. In turn, this will allow companies to keep salaries
deflated and profits up.

------
abritinthebay
My company has been trying to hire good Ruby and Frontend developers for...
well.. a while.

There's no shortage of applicants but the quality...? Eh.

Finding even a Junior level engineer that knows more than "I can use these
libraries" rather than "I know the language" is hard in both (but especially
in JS).

There's a big pool... but sadly most of it is shallow.

------
amsheehan
It is also true that computer science curriculum doesn't really cover anything
but a specific subset of the software development jobs out there. The same may
not apply to other STEM fields, but it is certainly true for software.

------
karmapolice
Yes, this is a constant thing in Spain too.

Tech companies whining about worker shortage hit the news several times every
year, yet working conditions and salaries never get better.

------
1971genocide
The more I read articles like this the more I hate america.

america wants to be global hegemonic power without paying the price for it.

america only has 5% of the world's population and deserves only 5% of the
world's GDP, and should limit itself to absorbing only 5% of world's resource.

American multinationals who also control america's govt want to absorb the
best of the world's labour and force wage suppression on its own people.

Guess what - its working so well that they can even ignore to invest in their
OWN infrastructure, education and people.

~~~
sliverstorm
I'm not clear how a country can deserve a fixed portion of global GDP, no
more, no less. It's not a zero-sum game, and how exactly do you apportion
productivity?

And FWIW, in GDP per capita, the US is only #10.

~~~
1971genocide
5% +- 1%

I am a strong believer that all people have equal ability, and if all
countries were on a equal footing then their GDP size would be more of less
reflective of their labour force.

Ofcourse it gets complicated if countries have resources only to their
geography.

GDP per capita is a weak measure since america has high inequality, some
people in america are as poor and hungry as the worst conditions in africa.

America was built mostly out stealing labour from the rest of the world in a
selective way, without taking full advantage of your own labour force.

The unfairness comes when we talk about investment. A lot of counties like
India invested heavily on education. What happened to the talent produced by
that investment ? They all ran away to US.

Its okay if a small number of people do it, but when a huge portion of the
population does it then its not fair to the country involved.

It also allows america to get away with it by not investing in their own
education or labour force.

Some countries figured out this game - south korea, china. who force their
labour to pay back the investment - is it wrong ? yes.

But given america's hypocrisy they had no other option.

Right now america is loosing its ability to attract talent, since the global
financial meltdown in 2008. It used to be a blackhole to world labour and
investment (using wallstreet).

But as countries develop american multinationals and the american govt will
need to downsize and they are not happy to do it, since it means downsizing
its global bullying power.

\-----------------------------------

If you want to learn more about how america has screwed over humanity.

1) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Global-Minotaur-Economic-
Controv...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Global-Minotaur-Economic-
Controversies/dp/1780324502)

2) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Oil-Kings-Changed-
Balance/dp/143...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Oil-Kings-Changed-
Balance/dp/1439155186)

3)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man)

\------------------------------------

I have been reading about it and making sure things are historically accurate,
not only am I becoming more economically literal - I am also enraged about how
horrible america has being, I used to celebrate american culture and now
really feel bitter. I have been reading them only for the past 20 days or so,
so my initial phase of angry is still not complete.

~~~
sliverstorm
_The unfairness comes when we talk about investment. A lot of counties like
India invested heavily on education. What happened to the talent produced by
that investment ? They all ran away to US.

_...*

 _It also allows america to get away with it by not investing in their own
education or labour force._

One of the two us is missing a part of the picture. I have met many immigrants
from India and other countries. Many are sharp. But here's the thing; none of
them have capstone degrees from India.

They may have attended high school in India, and _maybe_ undergraduate. But
universities in India do not have a good reputation in the United States. So
people who want to work in the United States frequently come to get degrees in
the United States.

In fact the "problem" as I heard it recently was exactly the other way around.
Foreigners come to the United States, spend twelve years getting a BS & PhD on
grants, and increasingly elect to return to their home country. In years past,
more of those students would stay in the US, but barriers to citizenship are
apparently as high or higher than ever.

I am not at the forefront of hiring and international labor politics, but this
is what I have seen & heard in the past ~8 years in America.

------
mlamat
One word: training

------
nichochar
Wow... as a VISA immigrant, who had a VERY hard time getting through the visa
process, this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating.

When a company lays off 20,000 people, those are _not_ the same people as the
ones coming in on visas. They are probably very low skill engineers. The
people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more skilled
than their american counterparts. America is _winning_ by exercising this
brain drain.

>These are designed to serve high-skilled immigrants but often >enable the
importing of Indian and Chinese guest workers to >replace an older, more
experienced, but more expensive >domestic workforce

Come on. Really? All the young indian and chinese talent I meet is way above
average.

~~~
learc83
>this kind of silly american opinion is quite irritating.

I'm not sure accusing the other side of holding silly opinions is the best way
to start a debate

>The people coming in on visa's (have you met any?) are usually way more
skilled than their american counterparts.

This may be your experience, but it hasn't been mine. Sure the ones working at
Google are exceptional, but in my experience, companies outside of the top
tier are using H-1Bs to recruit indentured servants who are tied to the
company under penalty of deportation.

>Come on. Really? All the young indian and chinese talent I meet is way above
average.

There are plenty of other anecdotes to refute this. I've worked with (and went
to school with) many very talented and exceptional young indian and chinese
programmers, but they weren't above average as a category.

------
curiousjorge
"we looked everywhere for someone who'd be willing to work 7 days a week with
no overtime at an annual salary that does not keep up with region's cost of
living, we really tried, so it must be that there are no workers available."

