
Entrepreneurs: Struggling to Recruit Software Engineers - pavel
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/oct2010/sb20101020_051219.htm?chan=smallbiz_special+report+--+focus+on+entrepreneurs+october+2010_special+report+--+focus+on+entrepreneurs+october+2010
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jbail
I work as a software engineer. A few months ago, I was looking to for a job
switch and got TONS of calls from companies both big and small in CA and NYC
(mostly CA though). No offense to either place, but for me, neither is
somewhere I'd want to live. Visit? Sure. Live, no thanks. Just me personally,
but I settled on Denver for the work/life/outdoors balance without crazy
amounts of traffic/crime/people. Fits me best. Maybe not you, and that's cool.
We're all different.

All of those offers from CA and NYC were conditional upon me moving. I wonder
if that's what's hurting the hiring in some of the bigger markets. Maybe
telecommuting is the answer for these companies? Opening satellite offices in
other locations?

If you recognize (as does this article) that good engineers can more or less
write their own ticket and work and live wherever they please, it seems
counterintuitive to try to herd them all to the west or east coast.

~~~
rwhitman
So true. Maybe part of the 'problem' is the pool of talent living in places
that aren't the Bay Area are discovering that telecommuting can pay the bills
and are comfortable staying put (or conversely, traveling the globe as a
nomad). I know thats been the case for me, and a good chunk of the guys I work
with.

~~~
lusis
This has been my problem with all of these articles of late. Companies need to
face the fact that, regardless of relocation package, people don't want to
relocate. The only option is to either deal with job hoppers in your inbred
local talent pool, hire from overseas or start looking at ways to make
telecommuting work.

On the overseas part, I know some seriously talented ruby developers who would
love to come work in the states. My h1b experience is fairly ancient (2001)
but I can think of one guy right now who has serious chops and has the code to
back it up.

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bad_user

          As a young company, "you're going after the top echelon of talent,"
          he says, "with the least amount of resources."
    

Right, because your company is going to cure cancer and be the next Google, so
all hires will eventually get rich and save the world; just not right now.

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randfish
This is the biggest problem we've encountered scaling our startup. We're
profitable, growing, have a great customer base and solid marketing, but our
product simply can't keep up with customer demands and opportunities to solve
problems because we're unable to recruit engineers (despite paying 25%+ above
market rates and offering generous benefits, a great team and interesting
problems).

When you have money in the bank, customers who want a product and 9 engineers
when you need 15, it's a tough problem. Compromising on quality of engineers
or cultural fit has been very bad for us in the past, so we're definitely
picky now, but even still, the dearth of qualified individuals is a serious
impediment to growth.

~~~
patio11
I don't know how much domain expertise you would prefer your engineers to have
about SEO, Rand, but have you considered that someone with the fairly rare
combination of chops sufficient to build your tools and SEO expertise now has
fantastically attractive options? You may be misidentifying the market you
need to buy them from, and hence the market clearing price.

The capitalist in me thinks it is virtually axiomatic that if you cannot fill
demand at a 25% premium to the market clearing price you are in fact mistaken
as to what you believe that price to be.

Incindentally, a client of mine coming from the other side (they practically
wrote the book on attracting engineering talent, but internal SEO knowledge is
limited) has the same problem finding that combo.

~~~
kls
Right, if you are using a salary site, it has been my observation that they
are not correct whether it is a vast corporate conspiracy or just an anomaly
ever time I check them they seem to under represent the reality of the market
from 15-20%. Which is weird because you would think that the reporting person
would inflate their earning to try to inflate the market. Maybe they are
telling the truth and the sites have logic to try to account for an inflation
that is not being falsely represented. Anyway, point is check you data source
and ensure that it is reliable you may not be as far above the market as you
assume you are.

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wccrawford
It isn't hard to find good software engineers. It's hard to find good software
engineers that will take the pitiful wages being offered.

Raise your rates and you'll find them.

~~~
nickelplate
"It isn't hard to find good software engineers."

I agree with this, even though I feel for the startups that are having a hard
time finding people (because they're startups). When a company is struggling
to find good developers it is usually because they fail to deliver on a number
of fronts: quality job posting, good interviewing process, money, generous
vacation time, good management, and then the actual work. On quality job
postings... if you insist on looking for a rockstar, a ninja, or a samurai,
you will miss out on talented people who are turned off by random displays of
arrogance. This is especially true if you're not actually curing cancer or
building a photorealistic renderer.

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throwAway_28
Everytime I read a thread with a similar theme.. basically telling economy is
picking up, hiring is picking up.. I always find people scrambling to post
something which almost screams-"I am so smart,talented-I can't believe it-Be
thankful I dont have YOUR job right now" .

This almost reeks of insecurity,and totally pisses me off.

And then the customary startup guy, who for the life of him, hasnt found his
ideal employee yet.

Doesnt all this ever appear shallow to anyone? Anecdotally,I do know of a
number of smart guys who got laid-off, and who did spend a lot of a time on
the job search.

Come on, Hn'ers- show some maturity, and acknowledge a phenomenon called a
"long job search"- you might have known through your colleagues,or friends go
through one.

~~~
nickelplate
>> acknowledge a phenomenon called a "long job search"

Depending on the skill set and the market, job hunting can be a long process
indeed. It is usually easy for a good developer to find _something_ ; it can
be much harder to find something _good_.

~~~
kls
Right the operative word being good here, Almost all developers consider
themselves good. Reality diverges from that point.

I always considered myself to be slightly above average developer. I have
worked with a lot of smart guys some MIT alumni some self taught and among
them I was average. It was not until, I ventured out into larger organizations
that I got smacked with the reality of the passionless developer, that somehow
learned enough to get a job but has no interest in technology other than it
provides a fairly decent paycheck. I was stunned by this reality, up until
this point I had worked in simulation, start-ups and small shops with really
passionate guys who took pride in their code. When I first encountered the
passionless developer I was appalled by their absolute disinterest in quality
of code. Further many of them considered themselves to be senior and on par
with the best of the best because their entire development existence has been
in a sea of mediocrity.

True story, I remember when the shift started taking place for web apps. When
the cool kids where starting to write the front-end in JavaScript and shooting
off XHR request to the back end to get info and update the page dynamically,
when they started dumping the bulky server side frameworks for more nimble and
rapid client side toolkits.

I was at a fairly sizable organization and this stuff was by no means cutting
edge anymore and I said you know, we should start doing some prototypes with
this app architecture and see if it is advantageous. We already know that it
produces a superior product in terms of usability so lets see if we can come
up with a development process that is more efficient than we use now and give
it a try. The response was well it's not Java and we are Java developers from
a good deal of the team, the idea of not using a Java framework, to do web
development, was hericy in their eyes.

I was floored, I had never identified myself as a (X) developer and the
reality that people do smacked me in the face pretty hard. So the point is if
someone is an (X) developer, chances are they are not as good as they think
they are. Development is about applying technology to problems not applying
technology (X) to problems. If a developer has already constructed that box
around themselves it lends evidence to the fact that they might not posses the
though process or creative thinking required to be a great developer.

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golgo13
I left my old company in August for greener pastures at a newer company. It
took exactly 5 weeks for my old company to contact me and see if I would come
back. I politely declined. I didn't think finding a good backfill would be
that difficult. But, I guess the market has switched to an employee market,
for certain skill sets.

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motters
This isn't at all what I'm finding in the job market, although I'm in the UK
not in the US. From here both recruitment agents and employers themselves have
indicated that they're getting many applications for each role advertised.

~~~
lelele
The article is not talking about applications: it is talking about
applications which fulfill requirements.

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lelele
This will always be old news: people flock to the same place until local
resources can't match. Smarter people work around the problem (in this case:
by telecommuting) or seek greener pastures; other people keep complaining.

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shalmanese
The same situation applies to designers, only it's more insane.

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seanlinmt
So where do you go if you're just looking for startup jobs? Are there any good
sites out there? Or where do startups post openings?

