
Ask HN: Does the valley really have Engineer shortage? - nojvek
For the past few months I have been interviewing at various big tech firms in the bay area. Ones that start with F, G, U, A.<p>Have a CS degree, &gt; 5 years experience. Full stack engineer and have a good paying job. I want to interview to basically test the waters and see if something good comes up.<p>It seems the tech companies will spend calling you, paying for your flights and meals, spending entire days interviewing you but at the end say &quot;sorry we will not go ahead with you, we don&#x27;t give feedback&quot;<p>May be the more time you spend writing code on an editor, the worse you get at writing code on a whiteboard.<p>I can&#x27;t quite figure it out. Anyone else feel the same. May be the valley has shortage of &quot;cheap&quot; engineers.
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xiphias
I was interviewing at Google, I don't know about the other companies. Paying
for good engineers was never a problem. Finding engineers with good
algorithmic skills is hard. So maybe the problem was not with your coding
skills, but your algorithmic skills. That's what an interviewer is looking
for, it's not important if you make some syntax mistakes. Anyways it's better
to prepare without an IDE and using a simple editor (sublime, vim, emacs...).
At Google anyways there are internal languages without IDE support, so you'll
need this skill. If you really want to work at Google, it's best to study some
algorithmic books and write lots of testing code. My favorite site was UVA
online judge: [http://uva.onlinejudge.org/](http://uva.onlinejudge.org/)

Solve half of the problems there (500 from 1000). It will take couple of
months, but you learn a lot from the experience and get to understand what the
interviewers look for.

~~~
Osiris
According to their website, only 4 people have achieved 500 problems solved.
That seems like a pretty high bar to set.

~~~
dsacco
Where did you get that information from? It looks like there are actually
hundreds of people who have solved over 500 problems[1].

Which is not to say it is easy, but putting it at only 4 successes makes it
much more intimidating.

[http://uva.onlinejudge.org/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&...](http://uva.onlinejudge.org/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&Itemid=20)

~~~
Osiris
I clicked "Site Statistics" -> "Overall rankings"

[http://uva.onlinejudge.org/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&...](http://uva.onlinejudge.org/index.php?option=com_onlinejudge&Itemid=14)

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kjksf
I looks like they rejected you after interview so you didn't even go to the
part where you receive an offer and reject it for being too low so the part
about "cheap" engineers is just a cheap shot. Pardon the pun.

The companies you did interview at do have a high standard for hiring but
generally speaking at the very least you should have an idea how well you did
during the interview without them spelling it out for you.

If you couldn't answer the questions or write the code they asked you to write
then that's why they didn't hire you.

If you think that you did brilliantly then maybe you're not coming across as
someone the interviewer would like to work with.

~~~
mirashii
> I looks like they rejected you after interview so you didn't even go to the
> part where you receive an offer and reject it for being too low so the part
> about "cheap" engineers is just a cheap shot.

Even more so, if they were worried about cheap engineers, I assure you that
they wouldn't be spending money to fly you around the country, buying you
flights and meals (and often drinks and hotels and taxi/uber rides and sending
you away with swag). The companies you listed pay the best amongst those in
SV. I don't think price was the issue

~~~
facepalm
Not sure if that logic holds. Seems like a viable strategy to show your best
side while trying to lure a candidate. Once they are hired, they probably
won't be showered with swag and limo rides anymore. In fact I would consider
it a warning sign if too much fancy stuff is going on before the interview
(even though I know Joel from FogCreek does it, whom I generally like).

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Chinjut
Re: your last line, almost any situation described as a labor shortage is
actually just a complaint about the price of said labor. Offer a $10
million/year salary, and see how easy it is to get the engineers you're keen
on. "That would be a ridiculously high salary", you say? Great, you've
established my point; now we're just haggling...

~~~
mseebach
It's true that there's rarely a shortage of anything if you're willing to pay
arbitrarily high prices for it, but that's not really what the word means.
That like saying there isn't a water shortage in California as long as anyone,
anywhere in the world is selling bottled water at any price - that's obviously
absurd, and no, it's not just haggling.

If you can only hire qualified software engineers at $250k, then there is
reasonably some sort of shortage. That's not the same as suggesting that very
rich firms shouldn't pay up (and they are), but let's not rob perfectly good
words of their meaning just to make a point.

~~~
UK-AL
There are many high paid careers that earn that much, but they never get the
amount of publicity and discussion about shortage than engineers do.

It's artificially generated.

~~~
Klockan
So you haven't heard about the teacher shortage, the nurse shortage or the
doctor shortage? They usually get way more publicity than the engineering
shortage.

~~~
geebee
Oh wow, I really disagree. The engineer shortage gets a tremendous amount of
press.

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thaumaturgy
My sense is that the Valley (and other little Valleys) has a serious shortage
of the same 100 engineers.

With HN as the only sample, companies don't seem to be very interested right
now in taking good engineers and molding them into great ones, or in building
a business structure that can benefit from good engineers.

Instead, they're all competing for the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% --
and complaining that there aren't enough of those to go around, so the visa
program needs to be restructured to draw that talent from the rest of the
world.

 _shrug_ Honestly, I think the best thing you can do in that kind of
environment is focus on looking outside the Valley, or do some freelancing if
you think that would be a good fit, or start your own business if you think
you can and maybe see about hiring the good talent that nobody else wants
right now.

~~~
mirashii
> With HN as the only sample, companies don't seem to be very interested right
> now in taking good engineers and molding them into great ones, or in
> building a business structure that can benefit from good engineers.

There's a few reasons why this is. The first is that startups are often, if
not always, extremely bandwidth limited. It's hard to spend time doing the
training, allowing a person to experiment, and giving the freedom and
mentorship that is needed to take a good engineer to a great one, or even a
mediocre engineer into a good one, when you have only a limited amount of time
and limited amount of funds to do so with. Molding engineers is a very long
term investment, which suits companies like Google well, but doesn't fit as
well into much of the rest of SV.

The second is that even where you want to do such molding, you need the base
set of great engineers to help with that. Harder still is finding the set of
great engineers you know how to teach and train, and are interested in doing
so. While there are some people who enjoy teaching as well as engineering, a
lot of people in engineering don't like to or want to spend their time
training someone else.

~~~
thaumaturgy
That all makes fine sense, but it isn't without its disadvantages. Those top
engineers come with a price tag, and the harder everyone competes for them,
the more they realize they're worth. For startups working on particularly
intractable problems, the cost is easier to justify, if you have enough money
available.

But -- again, with HN as my only sample these days -- this hiring strategy
seems to be spreading beyond the relatively small number of startups working
on technically challenging problems.

~~~
Bahamut
I personally avoid this hiring strategy and hire people I can mentor and build
up. Companies that don't want to do this do our society a disservice by only
hiring people who already are at the position they want (or less). In
addition, it signals to me that they are not likely to promote from within or
compensate fairly as time goes on.

I have no interest in working for a company not willing to do this.

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1stranger
There's a lot of competition for the big-name companies. Think of it like
applying to an Ivy League school. They can afford to be selective and
completely arbitrary. It's the nature of competition. You can either a) learn
to play the game better than everybody else or b) decide it's not a worthwhile
game and select a different path.

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calcsam
Especially for more experienced positions, strong written communication is
often "table stakes," positioning you as a competent engineer who can work
well with others.

One way to start: using "maybe" instead of "may be", "a shortage" instead of
"shortage" and "Valley" instead of "valley."

~~~
giaour
I would be shocked if a talented engineer didn't get an offer because he
didn't capitalize Valley in his cover letter.

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makeitsuckless
So you've interviewed for the ones that have engineers from all over the world
begging for a job and who's recruitment process suffers from the issues that
come with scale, and from that you draw conclusions about the entire industry?

Also, you really think you're that good an actor interviewers can't figure out
you're just testing the waters and aren't really motivated?

Since you also don't have a clue as to why you've been rejected, I suggest
you're not very good picking up communication signals that aren't very
explicit and verbal. Hell, that might actually be the reason why you get
rejected in some cases.

------
facepalm
I'm not in the valley, but I have the same impression: companies are not
overly desperate for developers. I'm also over 40, perhaps they are only
desperate for developers fresh out of school who are still passionate.

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mirashii
It's not actually a shortage of engineers. I can post a job and have an
endless stream of interviewees in the door. There is a shortage of engineers
with the requisite amount of experience and the right skill set for many jobs.

This holds especially true with startups that don't have the time or money to
spend 6+ months getting you up to speed from zero on whatever they're working
on. Hiring people based mostly on intelligence (what big firms like Google try
to do) works when you have the capital to spend 6 months training them towards
being productive.

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papaver
i've found attitude is sometimes different when "testing the waters" vs
"looking for the next gig". this can lead to your situation in certain
instances.

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bjwbell
Could be due to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9180229](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9180229)
(depressed at my job). Interviewers can catch on if you're unhappy and it can
also effect your interview performance.

Ironic, trying to leave a job because you're blue makes it harder to get
another.

~~~
nojvek
You are right. I am blaming too much on external circumstances. Will work on
it.

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sigsergv
I know a few examples how major companies have rejected a very smart
experienced developers. Also a friend of mine was interviewed in a few major
companies and every single interview was extremely stupid (by his words)
because they didn't ask any question about his real experience but instead
spammed with typical tasks from glassdoor.

------
jtfairbank
Are you interested in startups at all? We're looking for a full stack
engineer.

~~~
nojvek
See if you like my work at [https://nojvek.com](https://nojvek.com) (contact
at bottom)

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anacrolix
What starts with U?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Uber.

Stumped me at first, too...not used to seeing it in this list but I guess I
should get used to it :)

