
U.S. Employers Struggle to Match Workers with Open Jobs - happy-go-lucky
http://www.npr.org/2017/08/31/547646709/u-s-employers-struggle-to-match-workers-with-open-jobs
======
altotrees
Recently had a recruiter call me, interview me over the phone once, in-person
once, and via skype once. The job seemed to be a great fit, the pay was there,
everything seemed to be lined up. The recruiter called me again to tell me
that they were going to be taking the next steps with me very shortly. A week
of silence goes by, then another.

I email, inquiring about the position. "Oh, we gave that to someone we had
been interviewing for months, but we'll keep you in mind for the future."
Unprofessional disconnects and other encounters like this have taken place
several times, in my experience. It turns out I knew the person who did get
the job I was all but promised. After talking to them, the company had
contacted them three days after its last interview with me, and the successful
candidate had been asking for $10,000 dollars less and had less experience
than myself. A month later, that candidate emailed me and told me they were
let go for "being unable to meet the requirements of the position."

Anecdotal experience like this really makes me skeptical when I hear employers
bemoaning that they cannot find employees. Can they really not find employees
or good talent, or do they just not want to pay the wages that people are
asking for?

~~~
cynicalkane
I feel like there's two tiers of the software industry: those employable at
AmaFaceGoogFlix or a competitor, and everyone else; but the "everyone else" is
completely unaware that the first tier exists. It's like if minor league
baseball had no idea about major league baseball.

You even see it on HN. Someone will come along and talk about how a senior dev
at Google can expect $250k a year. You'll get two categories of replies: "I
don't believe this at all, Glassdoor proves you are wrong, nobody I know makes
that, blah blah" and "bro that is totally normal". $250k is honestly on the
average-lowish end for a senior eng at a major SV company in 2017. Much of the
industry is not only unaware of reality but refuses to believe in it. This
includes real engineers who do real work at real companies and comment
actively on Hacker News. $250k for a senior engineer is just completely
outside their reality.

On my last job search, my best job offer was about 2x as high as the worst
one. The guy who made the worst one--which was about 30-40% below my minimum
stated range, depending on how you valued the equity, so he had been stringing
me along, but anyway--he started arguing with me about my unrealistic
expectations, and wouldn't stop talking until I told him I was going to hang
up if he kept trying to talk me down.

I know it's considered bad negotiation, but if I can't figure out the salary
range of a job opening, I'll name my requirements up front. Over 50% of the
time the conversation ends there. I know at least twice people assumed I was
over-highballing as part of some misguided negotiating tactic when I actually
was a little conservative.

~~~
jcadam
I still don't believe the $250k figure :)

I make exactly half of that here in Florida (a fairly low cost area) as a
senior dev and my salary has definitely plateaued (and I haven't had a raise
in a few years).

I know I make more than most of my peers and local recruiters scoff when I
tell them my current pay (I had to talk my current employer up about $30k just
to match my salary at my previous employer to get me to switch -- and they
only did so because they were quite obviously desperate).

~~~
dsr_
"here in Florida (a fairly low cost area)"

Let's say you work in downtown Tampa and live 30-40 minutes away. You can get
a 4 bedroom 2500 sq ft house for $350K. That's about 3 years salary for you.

Now let's say you get a job at Facebook and want to find a similar house,
about 30-40 minutes away. I think it will cost you upwards of $2M. You need to
be making $670K or more to make housing the same fraction of your living
expenses.

Your quality of living and long term economic prospects are probably
significantly better where you are.

~~~
vacri
> _to make housing the same fraction of your living expenses_

And when housing is the same fraction, the disposable income after that
fraction is removed is far, far higher. As Bill Gates says, once you can
afford the $30 burger, there's nowhere to get an even more expensive burger.

~~~
etblg
Bill Gates needs to update his quote, I don't think $30 is where burger-
technology has topped out these days

------
jdhn
"They're just asking for the moon, and not expecting to pay very much for it,"
Cappelli says. "And as a result they [can't] find those people. Now that
[doesn't] mean there was nobody to do the job; it just [means] that there was
nobody at the price they were willing to pay."

In my opinion, this is the key paragraph in the article. I see this all the
time when recruiters send me job postings, and they want someone with 5 years
of experience for the salary of someone with 2 years of experience.

~~~
kartickv
But maybe the job isn't economically worth it at the higher salary? You seem
to be assuming it's worth doing at any price, as does the article, and that's
untrue.

Besides, I don't know about others, but I've recently put out multiple job ads
for one vacancy. Our app, Noctacam, uses computational photography to take
great photos at night. I was looking for someone with computational
photography knowledge and/or iOS. And/or Android, since we plan to make an
Android app in the future. I found it convenient to post three job ads, so
that I can clearly organise the dozens of applicants based on their skills.
Two of them went unfulfilled. Which is exactly as was intended. Someone who
doesn't understand the background may say, "Oh, no, tons of positions aren't
being filled." In other ways, it may a counting problem, not a real problem.

~~~
notyourday
If they need to fill this job and it is not worth the higher salary and it
cannot be filled at this salary or lower then this job should not exist as a
job: the owner of the company, the manager of the company, the HR person of
the company can either do that job themselves or that job should be
eliminated.

~~~
icebraining
But why? Does having the position open harm anyone?

~~~
thatcat
It needlessly wastes peoples time.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If employers were required to pay for someone's time for an interview, you
would see this fixed right quick. But because an employer can leave an
unreasonable job req out there and interview as many candidates as they want,
with the only cost being their own time, this continues.

~~~
lloyd-christmas
Here's something I wrote on a different discussion about hiring:

 _Imagine I cost my company $50 an hour in salary, and earn them $150 an hour
(revenue of 3-5x salary is ballpark for most companies, we 'll go for the low
end for some perspective). As a senior dev, I have to sit in all the
interviews of people potentially joining my team. Imagine we have 10 people
that make it through the HR round. I have to participate in 10 interviews, and
then likely 3 more for the final round.

My cost for round 2 is: 10 people x 2 hours x (150 lost revenue + 50 salary
paid) = $4k

My cost for round 3 is: 3 x 8 x (150 + 50) = $4.8k

My company has already dropped $8.8k on my involvement solely in the interview
room for your typical entry level position. This doesn't even include my
involvement in onboarding, training, pre-interview prep, post-interview
review, etc. This is also JUST ME, and a very lowball figure at that. Now
factor in the cost of the HR round, recruiters, background checks, the other
devs in the interviews with me, etc. It adds up very, very quickly._

The "costs of doing business" can easily be reduced by not interviewing for
shits and giggles.

~~~
Danihan
I don't get why companies can't just hire a bunch of more "questionable"
applicants at a lower rate, say $45k - $60k or so for junior devs in most
cities.

No need to spend much effort on the interview process, just make sure they can
solve a couple standardized problems, and then "hire" them as contractors for
a 90-day trial.

Put them onto teams and throw them in the deep end, then get rid of all the
ones who can't swim, which will probably be like 75%. But you'll also find
quite a few unexpected gems that way.

I mean, that's exactly what we did in Call Center management and it worked
great. Hired people at $10 / hour for the first 90 days, then a $2 raise up to
$12. We did have super high attrition for brand new employees (since we didn't
technically do a contracting period,) but who really cares.

We just kept on filtering and eventually had dozens of shockingly intelligent
and competent call center employees for like, $13 / hour. (This was in the
Midwest.)

~~~
HeroOfAges
Quite a few companies are doing exactly what you describe to fill dev
positions. The real cost comes when the systems designed and built by those
junior devs are so brittle it becomes very time consuming and expensive to add
new features. Most of the time, however, those systems built by the junior
devs are so buggy there's no time to build new features in any case because
everyone is too busy dealing with issues in prod.

~~~
notyourday
That's because these companies management loves to develop by committee that
comes with agilie, points, IPMs and standups. When a voice of expert is
assigned the same weight as the voice of a Joe Random Developer and there are
more Joe Random Developers than experts, you end up with garbage fire of
systems.

------
dkhenry
The tech sector is the worst at this. The skills we test for are the ones that
can be figured out in about a month, and the ones we don't test for are the
ones that need to be learned over a lifetime

~~~
avoutthere
Well said. I've been telling people for years that tech sector interviews
select for the wrong skill sets.

~~~
pgwhalen
What skill sets should they select for?

~~~
existencebox
Having done a good handful of interviews, I tend to look for "generic problem
solving" (not in the sense of trick questions, but in the sense of running
through ambiguous engineering and mixed social/engineering scenarios to see
how they'd move forward) communication skills (the ability to communicate the
above effectively, talk about past work, problems, successes) and frankly
track record. (this is obviously harder for new hires so you look for things
like coursework, projects, even successes in other lines of work can
demonstrate someone's professionalism and capability)

You may note that these are all primarily "soft skills" and I would hope this
is the takeaway from my ramble. My experience has been that it's often easier
for a hire to pick up the technical rather than the nontechnical side of
things. Depending on the level of the job, of course you have to filter for a
certain level of competency as well, but I can usually get a good sense of
that within the questions I ask above. When I get someone to really start
talking about "what have I succeeded/failed at; why; what would I do
different" I tend to find I can get a decent read on if they're bullshitting
me or not.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Are you hiring programmers/developers or people like sys admins? It sounds
like the latter, I can't imagine anyone hiring the former claiming dev skills
are easy to pick up.

~~~
WalterSear
I think they are talking about picking up unfamiliar tools and languages that
are reasonably close to their existing skillset rather than 'learning to
code'.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Maybe, evaluating a dev is tricky, judging them on soft skills alone would
lead to many false positives and negatives.

~~~
WalterSear
Sure. I think the parent is implying that this evaluation is what is flawed,
and overly driven by a focus on the superficial layers of technology.

So, for instance, a Reactjs developer fresh out of bootcamp gets considered
over a veteran Angular developer, 'because they know React.'

------
qudat
In my mind this is screaming for apprenticeship programs like in
Germany.[1][2] Companies need a more streamlined process to get employers
early in their career so employees have the necessary training and then get
promoted within. All the while employees get paid to learn and work.

This one-size-fits-all 4-year college track that every U.S. citizen is being
pushed through is failing miserably.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-
ger...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/why-germany-is-
so-much-better-at-training-its-workers/381550/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apprenticeship#Germany)

~~~
surfmike
Even for people who go to college, more work experience is a huge plus.
Waterloo's coop system (4 months of school, 4 months of internship, repeated)
provides a great mix of practical experience and academics. It would be great
if all majors could have an experience like that.

~~~
stevenwoo
I graduated from college 30 years ago and every engineering major at every
state university I ever heard of had a coop program.

~~~
maxerickson
Waterloo places much more emphasis on it. The program is built around every
student doing coops.

~~~
stevenwoo
That part I did not know, most of our professors in our first year engineering
classes strongly recommended it, though. I co-oped at a company only about 100
miles from my university, though other students were from out of state
schools.

The other thing I just thought of was I co-oped at IBM for three semesters
which was the max for a location but they had openings in a different country,
I probably should have done that instead of staying in the USA for my last co-
op, are most of the Waterloo students going to Canadian companies?

~~~
boyaka
A _lot_ go to SF bay area. I met a large group of them in 2007 when I was
doing my coop. My school, University of the Pacific, also had a mandatory coop
program, although they started to make it optional sometime after 2009.

------
5trokerac3
_Insert comment about requiring 5 years of experience in a 3 year old
language_

HR gating really is the worst thing going in American hiring practices today.

"Do you have multiple years of experience with 99.9% of the skills listed as
requirements, which only a handful of people in the country have? Yes, but I
see that on our web form that you had to use to submit your resume you didn't
check the box next to 'Degree in X', so you're automatically disqualified."

~~~
jarsin
Or in the software world...I see you have essentially built my exact company
before and have tons of experience, but what I really need to know before I
hire you is...Can you show me how many queens you can put on a chess board in
code!

~~~
talmand
let numQueens = 64;

------
dreamcompiler
Part of this comes from executives being taught to think of employees as
expenses rather than assets. "Less money to employees = more money to me."
This attitude is part of a larger systemic problem: A great deal of American
business is now more about gaming the system than about building products.
Take the VC money, build nothing, and cash out. Sell customer data to ad
networks and cash out. SEO the hell out of that thing and cash out. Cook the
books and cash out. Sell bundles of subprime loans and cash out. Buy your
competitor, harvest its assets, kill their product, and cash out. Pump and
dump and disappear. "What, you still have seed corn? Eat that shit!"

It's all just bullshit short-term arbitrage. It has nothing to do with adding
value, which is what sustainable business is based on. It works well in an
environment where such behavior is not punished, and where business executives
are rewarded for "maximum profit in minimum time" and penalized for long-term
thinking. It's certainly not sustainable, but alas, that's exactly where we
are in the U.S.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
An underrated comment. It sounds harsh, but It's institutionalized get-rich-
quick. A lot of it is the hyper-focus on efficiency. Which gets interpreted as
efficiency of time, which turns to "get money back out as quickly as
possible". And as people look for faster and faster ways to get money out at
some point the only route/scheme that can keep up is "create an illusion of
value and sell that."

And all of this is a drain for society, not a net plus. Even though you'll
inevitably hear the argument "Creating an illusion of value has societal
value. Obviously it does, otherwise people wouldn't pay for it." A which point
you're reaching peak irony. And then you begin the inevitable arms race of
smarter minds working on better ways to hide the illusions, and smarter minds
on the otherside working on better ways to sniff them out. This is pretty mucb
equivalent to having your best and brightest optimize better ways to predict
horsetrack betting (but at least in that case if an Einstein invents an
accurate weather prediction machine that value is transferable to society at
large). These minds are bust develiping non-useful, non-transferrable non-
useful abilities instead of becoming the next Elon Musk. It's a train wreck in
slow motion, but those on the inside are so deep in it they're unable to see
it.

------
chrisbennet
I love what Joel Spolski said about this "problem" in his article "Whaddaya
Mean, You Can’t Find Programmers?" back in 2000.
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-
you-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-you-cant-
find-programmers/)

 _" Now, let’s review some microeconomics. In a free market, it is almost
axiomatic that the market always clears. That’s a technical term that means
that when somebody tries to sell something, if they are willing to accept the
market price, they will be able to sell it, and when somebody wants to buy
something, if they are willing to pay the market price, they will be able to
buy it. It’s just a matter of both sides accepting the market price."_

~~~
dabockster
But, when the price of other labor sources is cheaper (eg H1-B, interns, your
nephew, etc), economics dictates that you should use those instead of the
local population.

The solution, imo, is to raise the price of the other sources somehow. That
way, the local population is cheaper.

~~~
chrisbennet
If a company _can_ find "other labor sources" then they really don't have a
reason to say "we can't find labor".

Employers are saying "there is a shortage of workers" when what they really
mean is "the market price for workers is more than we want to pay" or "we
don't want to share more of the profits with the employees (who actually make
the product) then we used to". To "fix" this, they want some sort of special
treatment that will decrease the cost of employees - like being allowed to
employ more indentured servants (H1-B) at below market rate.

~~~
stale2002
If bread costs 100$ per loaf, and people are literally starving to death in
the streets because they can't pay for food, is this just the "market clearing
rate" for bread where supply is meeting demand, or is there a shortage of
bread?

~~~
xenadu02
You could have a point if it cost $10 million to hire a senior competent
software engineer. It does not.

You could have a point if bread cost $75 to produce. It does not.

Many of the companies complaining about a shortage of people are posting
record profits. Workers are receiving the smallest share of the pie in many
decades.

In many cases this really is just stingy employers complaining because they
want to keep most of the profit for themselves.

In other cases businesses can't raise prices because their customers don't
have any money (because wages are so low and the 1% captures so much economic
surplus, stashing it away in investment accounts, causing investors to dash
around shoveling _tons_ of cash at anything that looks like yield). In this
case hiring workers at higher wages wouldn't be sustainable without raising
prices. The "solution" in this scenario is not to suppress worker's wages even
further; that only makes the problem worse. The solution is much higher taxes
on the ultra-rich to filter the money out of investments and back into the
economy where 10: it can be spent by workers, raising profits, leading to
expansion, higher pay, more spending, more profits, goto 10.

If we were in a capital-constrained environment then it would make sense to
cut taxes to make more capital available for investment. We aren't. We haven't
been in decades. Taxes on income & capital gains >10m should be much higher.

~~~
lj3
> The solution is much higher taxes on the ultra-rich

I was with you up until this part. This has been tried for decades and it
clearly doesn't work. What we need now are tax breaks specifically for small
businesses. We want people to be able to work for themselves or work for
somebody more willing to share more of the profits with their workers. More
businesses willing to pay market rate means more employment, more competition
and more pressure on the companies who like to underpay.

Neither idea (tax breaks for SMB, more taxes for rich) are going to happen
anytime soon. Nobody with deep enough pockets to lobby for it would want
either idea to become law.

~~~
Mc_Big_G
When was this tried? I'm really interested in data that shows taxing the
ultra-rich at the same rate as the middle class (~30%) and "clearly doesn't
work"

------
notyourday
Pay. More. Money.

There, I solved it for every single one of the "struggling" employers. Money
is a proxy for _everything_.

~~~
tim333
Though with unemployment around 4.3% you may be paying up for mediocre
employees you are then stuck with for a long time.

~~~
quantumhobbit
If you want better than mediocre employees then guess what the solution is?
More money!

Although mediocre employees can often become great employees with some
training and coaching.

~~~
owebmaster
> Although mediocre employees can often become great employees with some
> training and coaching.

Although mediocre employees can often become great employees with some _MORE
MONEY_!

~~~
samfriedman
True, but it's often the case that the money is spent inefficiently or on the
completely wrong things. More money + proper spending = worker growth.

------
maxxxxx
Maybe they should allow people a little time to learn the exact skills needed?
These days you need to have done already what you will be doing on the new
job. No time for learning anything even if it would take only a few days or
weeks to get up to speed. How are people actually learning new stuff?

If Uber had looked for a CEO that way they would have rejected any candidate
that hadn't run a fast growing ride sharing company with HR problems and an
extremely high valuation and no clear path to profit. They would also complain
about not being to find suitable candidates.

~~~
crispyambulance

        > How are people actually learning new stuff?
    

You just do it. On the job. Without asking for permission.

This doesn't work for all skills, unfortunately, and some people have jobs
where they are project-managed to a degree that every minute needs to be
accounted for. But mostly, there's some slack to pick up new skills.

~~~
dabockster
> You just do it. On the job. Without asking for permission.

And hope your boss is forgiving.

~~~
crispyambulance
Perhaps, but I have NEVER heard of somebody getting fired for "up-skilling"
while still getting work done.

~~~
maxxxxx
I have seen people squeezing in a whole new stack just because. Like instead
of adding two new web APIs to the existing server suddenly you have that weird
beast that's half Node and half .NET.

~~~
jaggederest
I think that's one of the gaping flaws to that method of skill acquisition.
It's a great way to introduce politics and negative-sum-games to the
workplace.

Suddenly people are picking projects and stacks based on personal
aggrandizement rather than professionalism.

Maybe companies should start hiring a chief behavioral (economic?) officer to
go with the chief culture officer.

~~~
maxxxxx
I don't blame this on the people doing it. There are some idiots but in
general it's mainly because a lot of people don't feel challenged and
therefore look for something interesting.

Managers should encourage innovation but control it. I see so many projects
where management rejects every kind of change without discussion. Either only
losers will stay in that environment or you get this kind of underground
projects. If management looked at something more than only deadlines and
budgets the whole climate would improve.

------
molestrangler
Go and read "Weapons of Math Destruction" by Cathy O’Neil.

This has an excellent chapter of the use of ATS software the majority of
recruiters use these days.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applicant_tracking_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applicant_tracking_system)

~~~
expertentipp
Resume optimization to get the foot in the door, take home assignments,
automatic platforms verifying programming skills, algorithm and data structure
teasing. This is getting inpenetrable. I wonder how many of those smartasses
inventing another question or an assignment would be able to get a job again.

~~~
dabockster
> automatic platforms verifying programming skills

Somewhat related, I withdrew from an entry level physics course in college
after only two weeks since the professor insisted on using an automated
homework platform that cut your grade in half if you couldn't figure out the
problem on the first try.

This problem isn't exclusive to tech.

------
ChuckMcM
I've been watching this tension grow for a while (otherwise qualified workers
unwilling to work for the pay offered). I keep expecting the system to crack
and boost pay, and then we'll see some more severe inflation in the US economy
as a cycle of product costs go up rather than down. And yet it is stubbornly
hanging in as employers try ever more intricate ways to avoid having that cost
bump.

It is very much a prisoner's dilemma sort of situation. If one company boosts
their pay (and their product prices to cover that pay) then they lose market
share. If both boost pay they both make a bit more money as their prices go up
simultaneous (no change in market share). If neither boost pay they continue
to operate at a restricted level which doesn't allow them to do additional
development or increase sales.

~~~
alain94040
That dam has burst years ago. Facebook, then Google, significantly increased
their pay to software engineers and it lifted all the salaries in the bay
area.

What's interesting is that this tide hasn't propagated very far outside
California yet.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Not the tension I'm seeing. I'm seeing it in the rank and file all across the
country as the article points out. Office admins, waitstaff, hospitality
positions, janitorial, etc. These generally blue collar positions have had
negative wage growth between 2009 and today but that has slowed or nearly
stopped according to the labor statistics put out by Bureau of Labor
Statistics[1].

As an example, at some point the customer complaints about room cleanliness
will force hotel chains to increase their wages offered to fill positions that
have gone unfilled for too long. That change will be reflected in higher hotel
rates. Restaurants that can't keep all their tables open during 'peak' times
will have to raise prices to add staff Etc.

It isn't a 'big deal' for Facebook or Google to raise wages because it just
slows the free cash flow into their bank accounts. But it is a big deal for
business models where personnel costs are a material factor in the company's
operating margin.

[1]
[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/realer.pdf)

~~~
sdenton4
And then all of these new janitors and clerical staff will have paychecks,
which they can use to play for hotel rooms on their new paid vacations...

There's a strong argument that the wage stagnation in the middle and lower
classes in the US is slowing down the economy across the board.

In fact, I wonder if the increasing concentration of profits in a handful of
companies is contributing to the inability of companies further down the food
chain to pay workers market rates.

~~~
ChuckMcM
> _In fact, I wonder if the increasing concentration of profits in a handful
> of companies is contributing to the inability of companies further down the
> food chain to pay workers market rates._

You would not be the only one wondering that :-). A friend of mine who used to
be an economist working at Google and I were discussing what the impact of
having over a Trillion dollars locked up in 'cash and cash equivalents'[1] by
the top 50 international companies.

By its nature, cash equivalents can't be lent out by banks for longer term
investment (they are required to be able to exchange the investments for cash
on short notice) so that hoard just sits there.

[1][https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/september-2016/global-
cash-25...](https://www.gfmag.com/magazine/september-2016/global-cash-25-2016)

------
quantumhobbit
I've recently started mentally comparing tech companies that complain about
the "lack of talent" to SUV drivers who complain about the price of gas.

There is so much low hanging fruit in terms of improving engineers
productivity, but the companies refuse to even consider the possibility. If
you offered private offices or remote work and the opportunity to use more
productive tools, candidates would line up to apply. And would need fewer
workers because they would get more work done.

------
expertentipp
There is flood of American outsourcing centers in post-Communist EU countries.
Top salaries for software devs/eng, including seniors, are USD 40k gross
annually. They can treat the employees in the worst "corporate America" ways -
their offices, available hardware, policies, laughable benefits, annual leave,
create a perfect package for miserable professional and private life.

~~~
qaq
? Total misinformation. As applicable to Ukraine salaries are US salary - US
tax -(20-30)% take into account cost of living and special tax treatment
(3-4%). Workday is normal workday and not some unknown number of hours offices
are way nicer then in US minus the usual suspects (Google FB etc.). You get
way more time off plus there are like 3X official holidays in Ukraine. Running
recruiting biz. on the side we had real trouble finding people for senior java
dev. remote product work 60K/year (tax rate 3%) + all the usual benefits good
candidates wanted 70K.

~~~
expertentipp
> As applicable to Ukraine salaries are US salary

> remote product work 60K/year

60k USD gross anually in Ukraine? No. Sorry, but it doesn't exist. An unicorn
salary, dozen of those lucky perhaps have.

~~~
qaq
To reiterate we had trouble hiring at that rate good senior Java engineers.
Not sure what you are basing your opinion on I lived and worked there for over
10 years including running my own company and working for other companies. I
also know good number of founders/owners of the top outsourcing outfits.

~~~
expertentipp
> good senior Java engineers

duh! they left for Germany

~~~
qaq
Some did, but they did not win as far as after tax $, it's mostly for better
infrastructure and security. At the time we were trying to fill the positions
a large UK based company closed down dev. office in Ukraine they had 120 dev's
about 40 were senior scala/java within 1.5 weeks only one was without a new
job he didn't take 60K offer either as he got a better competing offer.

------
habosa
There are a lot of comments in this thread about how recruiters are bad at
their jobs, they want X years of experience in framework Y and they want to
pay for X/2 years of experience.

What can we really expect from recruiters though? They get paid a fraction of
the salary of the jobs they are recruiting for, and they're asked to evaluate
someone's potential competency in a field that's complex and rapidly changing.
So _of course_ they pick proxy metrics. They just ask "do you have 10 years of
C++ experience" because it would be impossible for them to, say, read your
GIthub code and see that you're really good at C++ even without the years of
experience.

The only way you're going to have a good experience with a recruiter for a
technical position is if the recruiter has the technical aptitude to make
judgement calls on your qualification.

So maybe we need to pay recruiters more and then convince people with software
engineering degrees to become recruiters? Of course the companies would have
to be willing to invest in their recruiters, and they won't do that.

------
CoolGuySteve
"A players hire other As, B players hire Cs..."

"The cost of a bad hire is higher than a false negative..."

"... culture fit.."

"We solve hard problems so we need the best.."

It's pretty clear that hiring in technology is a cargo cult that mostly serves
to waste time and haze newcomers.

But I think the hiring ritual in general of 'post requirements -> get resumes
-> interview' is ineffective bullshit. Each filter is progressively more error
prone than the last and you mostly get noise out the other end.

~~~
crispyambulance

        > post requirements -> get resumes -> interview' is ineffective bullshit
    

I agree, but that's not necessarily the way many (most?) jobs even get filled.
There are other channels, professional networks and word-of-mouth, etc.

------
Animats
At the low end, few people will move to take a $8-$17/hr job. Moving costs are
too high, and selling a house in a declining small town doesn't provide enough
cash to buy a house in a town with jobs. This is why there are so many people
stuck in small towns with no jobs.

Moving to a place where there's one big employer, the case in too many small
towns, is signing up for indentured servitude. You can't quit without moving.
Employers like that situation - it's called having a a "compliant workforce".
It's common in the southern US.

From the employer perspective, hiring for low-end jobs means first filtering
out the druggies, the crooks, and the crazies. Druggies alone are about 20% of
applicants. The U.S. Army says that only about 25% of young men meet Army
recruiting standards today. The Army won't take fat people, druggies, crooks,
or anyone requiring frequent medical care, and they require a high school
diploma. It's scary that only 25% pass that basic screen.

------
RealityNow
The reality is that you need your job more than your employer needs you. We're
all replaceable, and this is further exacerbated by technology and
outsourcing. Hiring in the tech industry where senior engineers have to go
through multiple rounds of answering data structures & algorithm riddles is
probably the epitome of this absurdity.

As long as this is the case, employers are always going to demand the moon,
only hire the "best", and offer as little money as possible. If employers
really needed you, they wouldn't be holding out for the diamond in the rough
willing to work for peanuts.

It boggles my mind that we as a society still cling on to this notion that
everybody must rent themselves out to somebody else to survive. Wage slavery
should not be the backbone of our economy. Something like a basic income would
go a long way towards evening the playing field, so that desperate workers can
walk away from this nonsense.

------
fiblye
To sum up the article, businesses are making ridiculous demands and expecting
to pay prospective employees marginally above nothing. Aside from the people
posting these job ads, nobody is really surprised.

~~~
crispyambulance
Job postings are ridiculous, but one would think employers would gradually
learn a lesson when not enough applicants come forward and relax puffed-up
requirements.

But if anything, job "requirements" in postings have been getting even more
absurd and persnickety in the last 10 years or so. Are employers simply not
adapting or is there something else more complex going on? I suspect the
latter.

~~~
tcbawo
I believe many companies want to portray the image that they are successful,
growing, hiring. Job listings are cheap. What is the real cost of advertising
for many positions and hiring the good people that come along irrespective of
the advertisement?

~~~
dabockster
> What is the real cost of advertising for many positions and hiring the good
> people that come along irrespective of the advertisement?

If by "good people" you mean desperate workers willing to work for peanuts,
then the cost is almost nonexistent. And that's the problem. Since real
workers don't like to be fished.

------
jasonlotito
You can partly blame the tech elites like Apple, Google, Intel, and Adobe for
this. They were found to have a no poaching agreement [1]. This kept wages
down, and because their wages were down, other companies benefited by not
having to pay as much compared to them. They could remain competitive even
with these companies.

You cannot pay "competitive" salaries and "only hire the best."

1\. [http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-
order/](http://fortune.com/2015/09/03/koh-anti-poach-order/)

------
throwaway-sorry
Most of the commentary here is focused on the high end, but there's a bigger
problem on the low end of the labor market.

Our government plows tons of money into job services, training add, and other
programs at the state/local level. There are some really successful agencies,
but there is a hell of a lot of waste where the system just helps enough to
"check the box" that you're trying to find work and eligible for unemployment.

A huge part of the problem is that the workers don't trust the system. And why
would they, when massive data breaches happen due to poor handling of data.
See [http://www.securityweek.com/joblink-breach-affects-job-
seeke...](http://www.securityweek.com/joblink-breach-affects-job-
seekers-10-states)

Unfortunately, this problem is only going to get worse as more data is
accumulated by state agencies unqualified to watch over it. I firmly believe
that if we reformed the data systems and the programs relying on them at the
state level we could make a lot of progress on the lower end of the labor
market to get people re-engaged, more productive, and start growing skills.

As those people increase skills and responsibilities shift to them, the people
who are freed up will be able to become more productive and move up-market as
well.

Which sounds like a pipe dream - but what person in IT hasn't been tied up
with "junior work" they would be happy to unload if there was anybody to do
it? And once that task finally goes away, you go on to do better things.

------
B4CKlash
This is largely a problem of "informational asymmetrics between agents," as
Nassim Taleb would describe it.

Or Gharrar as describe in Sharia law. "It is an extremely sophisticated term
in decision theory that does not exist in English; it means both uncertainty
and deception –my personal take is that it means something beyond
informational asymmetry between agents. It means inequality of uncertainty.
Simply, as the aim is for both parties in a transaction to have the same
uncertainty facing random outcomes, an asymmetry becomes equivalent to theft."

The employer sees the entire talent pool and can therefore leverage this
informational advantage to drive prices (wages) down.

[http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf)

------
kartickv
It's possible for there to be a shortage of people AND millions of unemployed
people if they're unskilled.

That's certainly the case in India, where the majority of "software engineers"
can't tell me the maximum value an 8-bit integer can have, or claim that an
object's instance variables can continue to exist after the object gets
deallocated. One clown even wrote an if statement with two else clauses, the
second one "just in case the first doesn't execute".

[http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/engineering-
emp...](http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/engineering-employment-
problems/1/713827.html)

------
dilemma
Employers _always_ struggle to to fill openings. It's the same thing as
selling a product - you have to work on marketing, promotion, advertising.
This says nothing about the state of the job market.

------
pasbesoin
Employers are unwilling to invest in employees. Then they wonder why the
(good) employees they do have don't stick around.

U.S. labor market: Everyone running around, looking for "something for
nothing." We had a couple decades of outsourcing and off-shoring, coming from
this perspective (and law and regulation effectively neutered on its behalf).

Let's hope the MBA's and short-term-focused executives find out just how
fungible they are. (A suit is, after all, just a suit.)

------
newforice
A better title would be, U.S. Employers are cheap and if they don't cut it
out; unions might be on the rise in America.

------
partycoder
If this happens is not due to lack of candidates bur rather because of
extraneous and extravagant expectations.

------
dogruck
This article has little relevance to the kinda professionals on HN. They're
talking about relatively low paying labor.

I think the problem boils down to vanity. Companies want to post glamorous
jobs, and figure they'll hire if the glass slipper fits. Conversely, job
seekers aren't too hungry.

------
robodale
...for the price they are willing to pay.

