
STEM Shortage Claims and Facebook's $19 Billion Acquisition of WhatsApp - acangiano
http://math-blog.com/2014/03/10/stem-shortage-claims-and-facebooks-19-billion-acquisition-of-whatsapp/
======
cletus
This post is largely about discrimination and uses Brian Acton as a timely
centerpiece. The truth is however more complex (IMHO):

\- Culture matters a lot in hiring. By this I mean a Stanford grad is much
more likely to hire another Stanford grad in a field of qualified candidates.
This isn't simply a form of nepotism as such. Two grads from the same college
will share a larger common cultural base;

\- The culture the founders bring shapes the organization. Many startups are
started by Stanford and MIT grads. It shouldn't surprise you that this biases
the makeup of their workforces and what they look for;

\- Speaking as someone who has interviewed in the field of programming there
are many frauds. I don't even necessarily mean deliberate frauds but there are
clearly people who are employed as programmers/engineers who have no business
being such. It's astounding how you can stump someone with 5-10 years of
experience by asking them to code a simple loop (seriously);

\- If people are worried about foreign labour putting downward pressure on
wages, the indentured servitude that is the US work visa and immigration
system should be the target of your anger. It allows bodyshops to hire people
from, say, China and India and pay them a pittance because they know those
people can't leave for 8+ years if they ever want a green card.

Make a green card automatic after, say, 6 years on an H1B, even if you change
jobs, and a lot of those problems would go away.

As for other fields, I can't speak to those, other than anecdotally a lot of
fields seem to have the earning potential of being a waiter in Manhattan.

~~~
moron4hire
"Cultural fit" is just another name for racism, sexism, and ageism. Yeah, all
of those things can be culture. Why should it be any less wrong to
discriminate based on college attendance than on race?

What else is cultural fit? "Sorry, you don't fit our culture of being
heterosexual here."

We're supposed to be adults. We're supposed to know how to get along and play
nicely with others, regardless of how different we are from each other. This
"cultural fit" line is bullshit apologia for real discrimination.

~~~
mkaziz
I think that's invalid. If you find someone who's a great programmer, but
obviously won't get alone with your teammates, then you definitely should not
hire him. Team dynamics are as important than individual skill levels.

~~~
moron4hire
That might hold water if every company I've ever worked for hired much more
than just self-diagnosed-with-Aspergers', white-guy assholes. I've never seen
a group of programmers get along. "So-and-so should be fired/shouldn't be
hired because we just don't get along" is not an acceptable excuse. Any other
industry and your boss will tell you that you better learn to get along.

This is Kindergarten level issues here. You're supposed to know how to tie
your own shoes and play nicely with others by the time you're 6 years old. Why
do we continue to let the tech industry endorse childish behavior in the work
environment?

EDIT: The one job I hated _the most_ was the one where I was hired because I
was a "good cultural fit". Turns out, they thought I was of the "culture" that
enjoyed working free overtime. Nerf guns and free soda weren't enough to keep
me in the office after _6pm_ , so I started to get squeezed out, _culturally_.

~~~
ForHackernews
> Why do we continue to let the tech industry endorse childish behavior in the
> work environment?

Sometimes assholes are super-productive geniuses (note that there are more
assholes who _think_ they're a genius) so even if they don't get along with
the rest of your team (or any humans, really) it's a tough tradeoff whether
it's worth having them around.

You have to balance whether they're doing more harm than good to the overall
endeavor. In our case, we have one very senior guy who's highly antisocial but
absolutely a crack dev. We've given him an extremely flexible work-from-home
arrangement. It works out well because we hardly see him, and he's happy
communicating over email and just churning out code in his batcave or
whatever.

~~~
moron4hire
Hey, so excellent example. There is no way that guy fits into _anyone 's_
culture, yet the company still made it work. The premise still stands, "not a
cultural fit" is always code for discrimination.

------
doktrin
I wonder if we as an industry will continue to practice almost blatant age
discrimination as the current generation of engineers grows older.

If we continue to obsess over youth, the job market will be _remarkably_
unpleasant 15 years from now.

~~~
Tohhou
Claims of age discrimination is like claims that there is untapped cheap labor
in hiring women in first world countries. If the claims were true anyone could
hire up all of the cheap labor and stomp their discriminating competitors.
That doesn't happen. Either it's really a grand conspiracy like some claim or
the situation is not so simple. I think it's more likely older people expect
to get paid more for their experience, are less likely to learn new things on
their own like younger people are, are less likely to start up their own
companies like younger people are because doing so is risky.

You see people obsessing over youth. They are not. They are valuing risk
takers, people who know modern tech, people who don't expect to be paid so
much just because they know more less useful to the current situation skills
and knowledge. The quality of a low age itself is irrelevant. It will be the
same 15 years from now. Current younger people will feel more entitled to
higher pay, will feel less willing to compromise or settle for jobs which
their younger peers would be happy to get. Ultimately if someone brings value
to a job it's the stupidity of the employer to not understand their value. If
a company can make 10x more from hiring someone why wouldn't they? Companies
which don't hire the best value makers don't do as well, which allows those
companies which do hire those people to float to the top. It is the same thing
with women. Any sane businessperson would hire people no matter their gender
if those people can make them more money, and anyone who is leaving value on
the table by being discriminatory despite the lost potential leaves room for
their competitors to destroy them. If you think older people can make you more
money ultimately then you hire them and rule the tech world.

~~~
doktrin
> _Claims of age discrimination is like claims that there is untapped cheap
> labor in hiring women in first world countries. If the claims were true
> anyone could hire up all of the cheap labor and stomp their discriminating
> competitors._

Who is claiming that first world women are an untapped source of cheap labor?
In what field?

> _[older people] are less likely to start up their own companies like younger
> people are because doing so is risky._

Even if true, this is irrelevant. Age discrimination in this context applies
to employee hiring.

> _They are valuing risk takers_

Is "risk taking" a criteria your company applies when looking for talent? None
of the startups I've worked with have ever sorted engineering candidates by
"risk taking".

> _It is the same thing with women. Any sane businessperson would hire people
> no matter their gender if those people can make them more money, and anyone
> who is leaving value on the table by being discriminatory despite the lost
> potential leaves room for their competitors to destroy them._

The crux of your argument is that the market will punish bad behavior. I think
this _sounds_ convincing. However, it is a flawed argument. For one thing, the
market can't reward new approaches if no-one tries them.

50 years ago you could probably have made the argument that outright
discrimination against women and minorities was rewarded by the market. After
all, all companies observed similar hiring practices - including the market
leaders.

Taking a snapshot of current practices, and claiming they are some sort of
epitome "because free market!" is simply a logical fallacy.

~~~
Tohhou
>Who is claiming that first world women are an untapped source of cheap labor?
In what field?

The people who claim that women are discriminated against purely based on
gender. If women really are being discriminated based on gender, and companies
are hiring less qualified men in favor of more qualified women, then someone
should be able to hire up all of the women who are being snubbed by all of the
sexist companies and have a competitive advantage over them, right? Same
situation with older people, right? Unless of course if this isn't about age
or sex. I'm female and not getting any younger by the way. But I still don't
buy the bull others try to sell.

>Age discrimination in this context applies to employee hiring.

Are older people better employees or worse? Are they hiring based on age or
the other things and age is only an easy thing to blame?

>Is "risk taking" a criteria your company applies when looking for talent?

No startup is a sure thing. Younger people are less risk averse. It's not that
a company wants people who will take risks it's that older people want more of
a sure thing. They walk in and expect a salary which matches their years of
experience, while most places hiring have no use for their experience. Their
experience would add no value to their business, and so hiring a younger
person who does not demand such a high salary is a better option.

>For one thing, the market can't reward new approaches if no-one tries them.

There is no law keeping the people clamoring about ageism from do that. No one
can force others to nor should they be able to. Clearly if they believe that
hiring older people is such a good move they should be able to make a lot of
money.

I'm unaware of laws which make it harder or impossible for older people to get
hired?

~~~
doktrin
> _Unless of course if this isn 't about age or sex. I'm female and not
> getting any younger by the way. But I still don't buy the bull others try to
> sell._

You're rebutting a straw man.

> _No startup is a sure thing. Younger people are less risk averse._

Again, a moot point. If an employee is applying to work for a startup, they're
acknowledging the risk. The risk, by the way, is negligible for employees.

> _It 's not that a company wants people who will take risks it's that older
> people want more of a sure thing. They walk in and expect a salary which
> matches their years of experience, while most places hiring have no use for
> their experience._

This is a contrived example. Furthermore, it doesn't make sense. By a "sure
thing" do you mean salary vs. equity? I can assure you most young engineers
also value salary.

> _Their experience would add no value to their business, and so hiring a
> younger person who does not demand such a high salary is a better option._

What are you basing this on? It reads like a caricature.

> _Clearly if they believe that hiring older people is such a good move they
> should be able to make a lot of money._

I already addressed this. If you're intent on repeating your original claim,
we'll just have to agree to disagree.

~~~
Tohhou
>You're rebutting a straw man.

>Ageism: people are not being hired because of their age only and not for any
other reason.

>The risk, by the way, is negligible for employees.

What. Employees don't care that they might not have a job? Employees don't
care that they might not be able to be paid?

>This doesn't make sense.

Companies don't want to pay for what they don't need. People feel entitled to
what they feel they are worth and not necessarily what value they give to a
company based on what the company needs. When they have a lot of experience
but nothing useful to contribute they blame things which do not factor in at
all in hiring.

>What are you basing this on? This reads like a caricature.

I think you are mistaking my snark for me actually asserting things.

>I already addressed this. If you're intent on repeating your original claim,
we'll just have to agree to disagree.

Whose responsibility is it to fix the apparent ageism if the people
complaining about it don't want to do anything to solve their own problems?

~~~
doktrin
> _When they have a lot of experience but nothing useful to contribute they
> blame things which do not factor in at all in hiring._

You're relying on make-believe scenario to argue a point.

> _I think you are mistaking my snark for me actually asserting things._

Sure.

> _Whose responsibility is it to fix the apparent ageism if the people
> complaining about it don 't want to do anything to solve their own
> problems?_

Who, aside from you, say they don't? It's an industry wide issue which _is_
actually being addressed.

~~~
Tohhou
>You're relying on make-believe scenario to argue a point.

I live in a reality where technology is constantly changing, where people need
to learn new things or get left behind in their usefulness. If they have years
of experience in software or systems which no one uses anymore that doesn't
guarantee them anything.

>It's an industry wide issue which is actually being addressed.

People solving their own problems instead of complaining about them on message
boards? Mission Accomplished! Wait, so companies really were not hiring the
best people who give them the most value and now suddenly are thanks to people
speaking up? When did all of this happen?

~~~
doktrin
> _Then mission accomplished! Wait, so companies really were not hiring the
> best people who give them the most value and now suddenly are thanks to
> people speaking up? When did all of this happen?_

being addressed != addressed

This discussion has obviously run its course.

~~~
Tohhou
Get back to me in 15 years when ageism is no longer something people complain
about.

Won't happen. It will always be like this. People who refuse to adapt blame
others instead of doing something about their own problems. If anything people
will invent new isms to blame their problems on.

------
raverbashing
Well, it's really simple

FB's (and Google's and Yahoo's) definition of talent is whoever passes their
"quiz show" interview

However, yes, you don't need to know the worse case complexity of shell sort
for most tasks, especially at the beginning of a project where load demands
are smaller.

~~~
groby_b
Here's the odd thing - if I meet a candidate who _knows_ about shellsort, I'd
already be impressed. Many people I interview have trouble with much more
basic concepts than that.

And of course, it is worth keeping in mind that when you hire an employee that
hopefully at some point, the load demands are higher. And it's kind of awkward
if your product hits rapid growth, but your engineers are currently busy
learning about algorithmic efficiency.

Nobody sane asks about "worst-case efficiency of shell sort" unless you
yourself suggest shell sort as an algorithm. But it _is_ expected that you get
the general idea of O notation, because it actually does matter for day-to-day
work.

And, as a practical interview tip: It's perfectly OK to say "I don't know
about this specific case" \- just follow it up with "for most sorts, O(n^2) is
an upper bound, so if I'd guess, I'd go with O(n^2).", or something like that.
It tells the interviewer that you know general principles.

That's the big problem in most interviews - candidates treat it like a test,
where there's just the right answer, and nothing else. It's not a test. It's
an attempt to somehow, within an hour usually, find out what you know and how
you think. Throw the interviewer a bone or two, and help them do that. Silence
and short "I don't know" answers really just waste time for everybody.

~~~
raverbashing
" That's the big problem in most interviews - candidates treat it like a test,
where there's just the right answer, and nothing else. "

Humm no. Google interviews are (or at least were) pretty much right or wrong
answers mostly.

The best interviewers could do what you say, but for the most part, no.

~~~
groby_b
I have to ask - is that your personal experience, or what you _read_ about the
interviews?

~~~
waterlesscloud
An important thing to realize is that no matter how much they try, a company
the size and profile of Google has at best only a loose control over their
hiring process.

There are too many internal recruiters of varying ability and agendas, and too
many interviewers of varying ability and agendas.

A company like Google can have stated hiring principles and techniques, but in
practice it's going to be nearly random.

------
not_paul_graham
Very well written article and I can add some context being in the unhired
category of engineers.

I graduated from Georgia Tech sometime in the last couple of years with a 3.64
GPA. I know that GPA doesn't mean much but really at Georgia Tech they make
you work for it like a dog. I have some projects on GitHub and well I thought
companies would come knocking at my door. Boy was I mistaken. So I started
applying late into my graduation semester.

I got interviews with Amazon / Google and another Tech giant. I got turned
down without an interview from Facebook / Palantir and some other older
startups. I did not apply to a lot of companies, and I feel that was the real
difference bw me and friends that got offers from all of those companies that
I've mentioned above. Past summers I had worked at management consulting
companies and ultimately after not getting any offers from Tech companies, I
moved back home to Asia. And although I did feel a little crushed at the time,
I'm working at a big engineering company back home, and I don't make as much
money, I'm learning to like what I do.

Perhaps after a couple of years of nursing my self-esteem, I'll try again.
Till then yea it sucks to not fit in. It sucks to not be a culture fit. It
sucks to be told that you are not adequate after slogging it out at a
supposedly "world class" engineering school. The best reason that I got
rejected was because other candidates felt coding was their calling and I
didn't seem all that committed. wtf! I'm of Asian descent and well was on a F1
Visa (non-resident/citizen) with a horrible accent. Perhaps there were other
factors that resulted in me not being hired because I did make it through the
phone screens for some companies, and also because I have other asian friends
that did get offers. . But yea atleast it feels good to know that there are
PhDs out there that can't get jobs either so it wasn't all me.

~~~
eranation
I can tell you that sadly accent can have more weight than we all wish it
would have. It's a double issue, even if you are interviewing with the most
liberal and ethical person who loves you and think you're a great fit but had
problem understanding due to heavy accent, it's not in your favor. And even if
your accent it's only light, there are sadly still people out there that will
even subconsciously prefer the candidate that bad the "better" English. It's
sad, but I think it's more of a reason than your actual skills. I go to GT and
can vouch anyone who graduated with your GPA is probably very smart and
talented. Don't give up! Knowing how to interview is a skill by itself, there
are many common mistakes people do that are not related to their skill set. My
wife had a heavy Russian accent and spent a year working solely on her
English, and interview skills (went to a career coach). From dozens of
rejections, she now got 2 offers in one month, and she is almost 40 :-)

~~~
Kluny
I agree about accent, but I want to encourage the parent post by saying that
since his written English is excellent, he may be able to avoid that
discrimination by sticking to text communication until he's established a
relationship with someone at the interviewing company. This is what I try to
do - I'm hard of hearing, and someone who doesn't understand the implications
of that can easily jump to the conclusion that I'm an idiot or dishonest if I
hesitate in answering a question. It just takes longer to process speech when
someone changes topics quickly.

------
roberjo
No one seems to want to discuss the idea that Yahoo! and Facebook were simply
adhering to their illegal agreement to not poach talent from each other.

[http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/01/15/silicon_valle...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/01/15/silicon_valley_hiring_cartel_apple_google_and_other_accused_of_driving_down.html)

~~~
roberjo
Ahem... [http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-eric-schmidt-sergey-
br...](http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-eric-schmidt-sergey-brin-hiring-
apple-2014-3)

~~~
roberjo
Double AHEM..

[http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/google-viewed-
fac...](http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/google-viewed-facebook-
poaching-defcon-2-event-new-emails-reveal)

------
lifeisstillgood
>> $19 billion in cash and stock (slightly less than the inflation adjusted
cost of the Manhattan Project)

Holy Crap !!! That cannot be right - surely not....

Edit: According to Wikipedia : "The Manhattan Project began modestly in 1939,
but grew to employ more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion
(about $26 billion in 2014 dollars)."

So, if you allow 7bn to be slightly less, then yes. It is right.

And there is worse to come - also according to wikipedia and the BBC, the US
spends around 50bn pa, (the UK an embarrassing 4.6bn a year) on science
funding - but really, half of US science spending on a mobile IM app.

How utterly depressing.

~~~
logfromblammo
There may be a disparity based upon how inflation is calculated. Plus or minus
40% after an interval of 75 years is not unreasonable for the purposes of an
"about this big" comparison.

A Paasche index will understate price inflation, while a Laspeyres index will
overstate it, due to demand elasticity. Governments may change the formula
used to report changes in the money supply, using different measures like M1,
M2, M3, and MZM, along with the average velocity of money. This obscures the
amount of value intentional inflation extracts from the productive economy, at
the cost of mathematical accuracy.

You could buy exactly one Manhattan project with 1939-1946 dollars for
$2billion, of which 90% was production, and 10% R&D. You could buy exactly one
Apollo Program with $25.4billion in 1961-1972 dollars. One LHC costs $9billion
2008 dollars. Tevatron was a bargain next to that at only $120million 1980
dollars.

Put into that sort of scale, with $19billion in 2014 cash, you could do any
one of the following:

Build an entire city designed for 50000 inhabitants supplied entirely by
renewable energy sources.

Build an entire archipelago of artificial islands.

Bury an Interstate highway under Boston.

Build 3 international-class airports.

Build two subway lines under an existing major city.

Replace 5 long-span highway bridges.

Buy 6 Human Genome Projects.

Replicate the Channel Tunnel.

Does that bring it into perspective?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Where do you get your marvellous comparison figures from?

Yes, it puts it into a more depressing perspective. Although I would tip my
hat to the founders if they decided to build "WhatsAppTown", a city of the
future.

In fact I want them to - because when we throw around this kind of cash (the
amounts normally only State actors have) we get outliers - sometimes a boring
miser who just wants more, sometimes a visionary who tries to build their
Jeston style future.

I just hope Facebook stock is going to those who watched the Jetsons on
Saturday mornings.

~~~
logfromblammo
I searched the web for "megaprojects" and grabbed figures from any site that
at least sounded legit, so caveat emptor. I pulled anything that felt like it
would cost between 15 and 25 billion US$ if it was completed (or completed
again) this year.

------
wil421
I really dont see the STEM shortage that people are talking about. Last year I
graduated from a local college and we had no shortage of STEM from Biology to
Comp Science to Information Systems. We recently bought an engineering school
full of students so next year our STEM foot print will be even larger.

Lets be honest here sometimes its cheaper to use foreign labor and that is why
these companies are doing it. I dont necessarily agree with it but a lot of
companies out there are doing it including my employer.

~~~
moron4hire
"Lets be honest..."

Yes, let's. I want Mark Zuckerburg to admit out loud that the reason he can't
find _qualified_ engineers is because he's not willing to pay. No more of this
"they don't exist" lie.

This, coupled with the Google/Apple/Intel/Adobe/etc. collusion to prevent
salary negotiation wars, it's very clear: Silicon Valley companies aren't
special anymore. They are now just like every other corporation in America.
They're focused on nothing but the bottom dollar. They have their HR
departments spewing morale boosting propaganda and they do their damnedest to
keep those employees locked in as wage slaves. Free lunches! Games in the
break room! Climbing walls! All that shit is designed to keep you in the
office, to entice you into working overtime, for free.

When I'm looking at job listings, I look for the tell-tale lie on their
websites: If they say something like, "our employees are our greatest asset,"
I know they doth protest too much. They really treat employees like fungible
commodities. Unfortunately, I've let my judgement be blinded too many times
and have had to learn the hard way that it is true in every case.

~~~
wil421
Employees are now commodities. Other industries have realized this and now the
tech sector is realizing it as well. Especially now that people are more
computer literate than they were 20 years ago combined with globalization plus
the internet. The pool is much bigger than yesterday.

~~~
edraferi
Employees are ALWAYS commodities. These issues are not new. This is exactly
the same labor vs. capital struggle that has happened, well, forever.

Companies exist to run business processes that create money. Employees are an
input to that process. Employers only care about employees to the extent that
the employees help that process run efficiently.

Expect these things to become ever more apparent as more and more complex work
becomes commoditized. Remember when you could make real money as a Wordpress
developer? Now a person who wants a website (if they still want a website and
not an Etsy / Amazon / Facebook / whatever presence) should really just sign
up with Square Space. The market needs products & services... employees are a
by product.

~~~
puppetmaster3
"Employees are ALWAYS commodities.".

Yes, this is the MBA training, that engineers are labor, to be reduced in
cost. This leads to shortage, confusion by MBA. Until they solve what you just
said, treating engineers as commodities.

------
xyzzyz
While there certainly are companies whose business model is to get cheap
workforce from India or China on H1B (just take a look at H1B stats), there is
something I don't get. Where and how this pay inequality for local vs.
imported workforce manifests for more desirable companies like Google or
Facebook?

As a student outside United States I had a chance to do internships in the US
several times (on J1 visa), and as I am finishing my degree soon, it was
natural for me to try and get a job there. My observation is that the salary
and benefits I was offered at Google, Microsoft and Facebook wasn't much
different than if I was American - if any, it was even slightly higher than
what they pay American new grads (data based on talking with American peers
and reading Quora posts). My non-American friends who also got a job in the US
also didn't complain about getting lower than their American peers. Thus,
should I expect fewer bonuses/pay raises? Smaller chance to get promotion?
Less desirable project?

~~~
curiousDog
An important point is that H1Bs basically increase the supply of talented
engineers. So even though they're being paid salaries equivalent to their
American peers at MSFT/GOOG, without them, the Americans would be making a lot
more. With a shortage of engineers, who knows, may be the starting salary
would've been $200k instead of $100k. I personally think this is a good thing
and keeps America competitive. But some would argue otherwise.

~~~
bsder
The problem is that H1B's increase the supply of _indentured_ engineers.

The solution is to convert H1Bs to Green Cards much faster. That way all the
engineers are competing on a level playing field.

I actually _like_ having more foreign engineers as long as they have green
cards. Engineers tend to create companies and a need for more engineers. We
all win.

------
aestra
I find that hiring practices can often discriminate against those who grew up
poor/not middle class.

I remember someone writing about how they hired saying things like "I look for
evidence of interest in technology from a young age." Well, I had tons of
interest in technology from a young age, but my resume can't reflect that. I
didn't have a computer until I was about 13 or 14 because we couldn't afford
one earlier, even though my parents really wanted one. I think our school
library might have had one computer for the whole school, which was not
available. I certainly couldn't go to expensive tech camps or the like, we
couldn't afford it. I did get all the science books from the public library
and read them as much as I could. I didn't start programming until college. I
get very very positive reviews from all the jobs I ever worked though, but my
resume might be passed up because I didn't have the opportunities others had.

------
tempodox
Surprise! Double standards, discrimination, illegal practices and plain
incompetence in the hiring business. Those self-absorbed tech rock star
companies are actually not smarter than the rest.

------
mnglkhn2
Brian Acton's rejection by Facebook is used as a pro argument for the idea
that tech companies are just pretending to not find qualified candidates, when
there are plenty. I am not sure which way it is but the argument used is
flawed. Brian Acton never stated that he went to Facebook to be a programmer.
Not even a senior one. At that moment he already had managerial experience,
having lead large dev teams at Yahoo. It way more likely that his Facebook
interview was centered around a managerial role and the fit, for one reason or
another was not there. Not taking any sides, I want to say that Brian Acton's
example is just a nice/easy/convenient media story. Not at all indicative of
anything related to availability or lack of STEM people.

~~~
100k
Thank you for pointing this out. I've seen no indication that he interviewed
as a programmer at Facebook or Twitter. Considering he was managing a large
team at Yahoo, it's unlikely that he would be. He might even have been
interviewing for a director or VP-level position.

------
flurie
> However, in this era of e-mail, Skype, and many people working successfully
> in the technology business from a large distance (e.g. India or China), why
> exactly couldn’t the desperate “starving” technology companies offer him a
> job he could do from Texas?

I feel like there's a blindness by some STEM professionals to the fact that
not all jobs can be done nearly anywhere, least of all those available to
semiconductor engineers. I blame the acronym for bundling us all together
unnecessarily.

------
mcguire
I recently had to have one aspect of this issue pointed out to me, since it
was never a major concern of mine and I'd been completely blind to it:
seniority.

I _do not_ currently work for a start-up, or even what you would typically
consider a technology company. However, the group I work with, the program in
the businessy sense, is not very old. The original kernel of the group began
less than ten years ago, and has grown in fits and spurts. Many, if not most,
of the "founders" are still here, as well.

When the program started, many of the founders were young and relatively
inexperienced. Today, they're still young but are more experienced---in this
specific project. And at least some of the people who have been hired since
are older or more experienced---at least in terms of having worked in a wider
variety of environments---or both.

As a result, in some situations, someone with more experience and skills is
being supervised, managed, or lead by someone with significantly less
experience. The situation isn't improved by weird incentives that place
emphasis on some jobs more than others, similar to the cliche about sales
versus engineering.

So, how's this for a weird situation: people who would be senior are doing
junior work, because "job market"; people who would likely be junior are in
charge, because of good timing (For those of you who plan to be future
Zuckerbergs, what _are_ you going to do when you really do need to hire a
rocket scientist?); people who are ready to move up can't, because nobody is
leaving or dying off; and people who might be better off leaving won't,
because they would be taking a pay and prestige cut.

[Note: I am _absolutely_ not talking about myself. I knew what I was doing
when I got here. I have no real urge to "move up" in the world. I'm a
technical guy. I'm mechanism, not policy.]

------
geebee
Zuckerberg quoted as saying: "Our policy is literally to hire as many talented
engineers as we can find. The whole limit in the system is just that there
aren’t enough people who are trained and have these skills today."

Two huge unanswered questions. What do you mean by "trained and have these
skills?" And at what price?

At $50,000 a year, I would also like to hire as _all_ the engineers. I will
place them into jobs that pay 100K a year, and I will keep 50k. How many times
would I like to do this? Answer: all of the times.

Now, suppose I have to pay them 125K a year, and I can hire them out at 100k a
year. How many times would I like to do this? Answer: none of the times.

So there's a massive shortage of 50k/yr engineers, but a huge glut of $125k a
year engineers. It sounds like there's a severe shortage of programmers
willing to work for far less than they're worth. How is this different from
any other field?

------
craigyk
For perspective, the budget of the NIH, which funds a huge percentage of all
the biomedical research in the US is about 31B. This is research that
subsidizes and lays a foundation for many of the medical advances we have
today. For additional perspective, this 31B in public money is about
equivalent to all the private R&D spending done on medical research.

So the thought that someone would spend 19B on a messaging platform, which is
an already solved problem, is sad. 19B probably isn't "cure cancer" kind of
money, but you'd be able to solve some pretty real problems with it.

------
Balgair
When they say they can't find the right person, they mean that Frank's cell
phone ran out of juice.

So, my brother used to work in a small clock shop. These were really precise
clocks (nanosecond) and they did distributed timing. You have an oil field,
maybe, and want to know the size of it? Send out a blast pulse and record the
echos. But the recorders need to really know where and when they hear the echo
over a few hundred square miles. Its not easy stuff to deal with.

But the company had Frank. Frank had been there since the beginning. He had
written all the code for the clocks, he built and wired the entire place, he
knew the whims of the servers and the phone system, the slight burning smells
that meant an imminent failure. Frank was the company, and the rest of them
where there to make sure Frank was working and happy. Yeah, he owned a bit of
the equity, not a major share, but a bit. No-one else knew all the passwords
or the files like Frank. Frank barely had time for his kids, let alone to
train anyone else. To keep things going, Frank was the ONLY person.

So, this worried the owners a lot. If Frank got cancer or in an accident, they
were screwed. Hell, everyone was screwed. But to train anyone up was near
impossible. Because Frank didn't have the time between putting out the little
fires in the code and sleeping and making money for the owners. Frank didn't
have them in a bind as much as Frank himself was in a bind. He wanted time to
see soccer games, but he wanted his kids to go to college more, and that meant
the money came first.

So, what was everyone supposed to do? They needed a new Frank. But anyone they
brought on was just confused by the spaghetti of wires and the nonsense code
that Frank had made 20 years ago to solve some problem half drunk at 2am on a
Saturday. There was no record because there was no time to make one. You had
to just clone Frank's brain, because nothing else would do in time.

My brother left that company because trying to untangle the Gordian Knot that
Frank and the comapny were committed to was a noose.

But there are a few thousand Franks out there. There are a ton of companies
that are in this bind. They have 2 or 3 guys that can actually do the job. And
trying to replace that team is impossible. When the Zuck merps out that they
can't find anyone, he is not lying, but mis-speaking. He means that Frank's
phone is out of juice.

------
chollida1
Interesting article.

Whenever an article like this pops up the usual chorus is, there is no skill
shortage, just a shortage at the price the employer is willing to pay.

Sadly I've seen myself as someone on the hiring side of the table fall into a
few of these traps listed in the article.

A newly minted Phd, is one type of person that I've found myself having
trouble hiring. Same with an newly minted Masters.

The reason is that often their area of specialization doesn't really help in
the role I'm hiring and therefore I wouldn't give them any bump in pay for
their extra schooling. On the other side of the table, especially for a Phd,
they often expect a bump in pay for their additional schooling so its tough
for me to hire someone like that.

 _EDIT_ to clarify, I don't reject these people out of hand, infact it helps
them get an interview over others, but when it comes to offer time ie salary,
I don't give any real value to a masters or Phd. Or put another way, if the
salary I'm willing to offer is $125,000 its the same regardless of education.

To be clear, In a fund with 12 people, we have 5 Phd's and one more with a
masters, so we do hire well educated people:)

Post grad education might get you interviewed first, but will have almost no
bearing at all on if I extend a job offer or not.

The same can be said for what school you went to. MIT education, great I'll
put you at the top of the interview pile, but when it comes time to extend an
job offer, where you went to school doesn't factor into what we offer at all.

Too far along in their career can also be tough. Often this is due just to
salary demands not fitting a junior role.

A new grad has no job they are quitting so they don't need a "bump" in pay to
leave. Someone who is well into their career might be a good fit but is making
a good salary where they are so they require a sizable pay increase to leave.
Given this, it often makes sense to go with the younger candidate whose salary
fits the role.

 _EDIT_ To flesh out the senior developer comment a bit more. There are really
3 areas I've had trouble with in the past.

1) The 10 year developer who has 1 year of experience 10 times over. This is
just a junior developer who wants the salary of a senior developer.

2) Its harder to find senior developers, regardless of what you pay. As Joel
once said the good developers always have jobs, hence his internship program.

3) the hire bar is, umm..., higher for senior developers as they are expected
to do more, mentor, design architecture, etc. This means I'm more picky as to
who I hire.

Having said that, there are times where experience rules, and in this case you
get what you pay for.

 _NOTE_ This post has generated more upvote and downvotes than almost any
other post I've written. So half the people agree with me and half disagree?

~~~
glesica

      > A newly minted Phd, is one type of person that I've found myself having trouble hiring. Same with an newly minted Masters.
    

The PhD issue makes some sense, a person who just spent two to four years
becoming an expert in a narrow area of specialization may want to use that
knowledge, and may not be all that much more valuable if you don't need it
(especially since his or her other skills may not have "kept up").

However, for masters degrees I wonder if you're considering the fact that the
degree (in many fields) can be seen as a "signal" [1]. Many masters programs
are highly applied and, assuming a reasonable degree of rigor, more
challenging than undergraduate programs. So, looked at in this way, wouldn't
it make sense to use a masters degree to help narrow your pool down to people
who can handle challenging work? In this case, you would pay more not for the
additional knowledge, but for the free screening the degree provided.

Disclaimer: I'm getting a masters degree in CS (and already have one in econ,
hehe), although from what I've seen, people don't have much trouble finding
jobs, so...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_\(economics\))

~~~
leobelle
A master's degree, assuming no experience, is more like a warning signal for
someone who's stayed in academics too long and has no practical skill. It's
like you're hiring a really expensive junior developer if they've never built
real world software under business constraints that needed to like be bug
free, and scalable. It's like the code written in graduate college gave a shit
about memory use, file or network i/o performance, a good ui design, or like
actually doing the thing it's supposed to. Sorry, ranting due to bad
experience in the past.

The thing is, more education will enable a good developer to be even better.
It's doesn't seem to help a struggling developer in any shape or form.
Unfortunately sometimes I get the impression that people stay in school to
address a problem that can't be addressed with more classroom time and end up
doubling down on a field that maybe isn't right for them.

At the very least try to intern early on and or successfully help a popular
open source project before graduate school.

~~~
glesica

      > The thing is, more education will enable a good developer to be even better. It's doesn't seem to help a struggling developer in any shape or form.
    

In my (limited) experience, the people who struggled in undergrad run
screaming away from any possibility of doing grad school (my experience here
is consistent across econ and CS). The people who were good at the field
consider grad school because the psychic costs of learning more are low.

If you find a person with an MS who can't pass a simple programming test, then
(and this is very general, I'm sure there are exceptions) take a look at the
school her or she attended and stop interviewing people from that school,
problem solved.

~~~
leobelle
> take a look at the school her or she attended and stop interviewing people
> from that school, problem solved.

This is really bad advice, because much about learning programming is about an
individual effort. It has little if anything to do with the school.

> If you find a person with an MS who can't pass a simple programming test

You actually need more than a simple programming test that solves a single
problem. You need to see enough code to have some architecture, designed by
the candidate. Interviews are too short for this so experience whether at some
other company or open source, or just if skilled people can vouch for you goes
a long way.

~~~
digita88
I also agree in doing a black mark against the school however it helps to have
a look at (in terms of Masters, PhD) the quality of work within that
department / within the graduating year. It's a way to go beyond the marketing
fluff in non top-tier schools.

------
julesbond007
I said this long time ago on my blog: [http://julesjaypaulynice.com/good-
software-engineers/](http://julesjaypaulynice.com/good-software-engineers/)

~~~
puppetmaster3
agree.

------
Glyptodon
Basically companies have to either pay/accommodate people or train them, but
instead they'd rather whine. Know it all too well, as someone who has tried to
avoid living in California for lifestyle reasons, which limits a lot of
options.

------
jarrett
Speaking from personal experience, it _is_ hard to find engineers who can
truly take a project and run with it.

For any given job posting, there are typically hundreds of applicants. Yet
often, not a single one of the applicants could build a non-trivial
application without intensive mentoring. Many of them couldn't do it even
_with_ mentoring.

I don't know what this says about our economy. Maybe nothing--maybe it just
says something about the nature of engineering. I can offer only my anecdotes.
I'm not in a position to draw from those anecdotes a conclusion about what our
economy needs.

------
bartkappenburg
The author is forgetting one thing: under qualified devs (at the time of a FB
interview) can also be lucky and learn the job while building and scaling a
product which has gotten traction.

Given the numerous applicants they deny, what are the chances that a few of
them get lucky? I'm estimating, with my limited math knowledge, that this will
be closer to 1 than one may think beforehand.

------
skywhopper
Sounds like Facebook et al should be investing some of this money into
university CS/CE/CIS programs along with internal training programs if they
are truly concerned about the lack of qualified personnel. A billion dollars
goes a long way.

------
moron4hire
Can we talk about the other elephant in the room: that Facebook can afford the
inflation-adjusted equivalent of the Manhattan project budget with a product
that it does not charge its users to use?

~~~
sizzle
Google can afford even more than that. Times have changed, and these tech
juggernauts are essentially printing their own money with how invested the
general public is into their products.

------
cottonseed
Idea I had a while back: Monster.com for anonymous interviews. Purge race, age
and gender information from the interview process. Getting a broader range of
candidates to the final interview would already be a huge step.

I'm not even sure in-person or phone interviews are necessary or beneficial.
I'm aware of a top philosophy dept. that does professor hiring completely be
application materials. Why? They found application materials were a better
predictor of success than in-person judgements.

~~~
sizzle
Yeah but you can't have diverse teams if you hire from the same mold

------
smackfu
I don't know that rockstar companies really say that much about the industry
as a whole. I also don't put much stock in that Zuckerberg quote about "hiring
as many talented engineers as we can find", unless they define talented as a
very high bar, in which case the statement is meaningless. Who wouldn't want
to hire as many crazy good programmers as they can?

~~~
logfromblammo
Someone with a finite budget for software development, perhaps?

------
puppetmaster3
One thing not talked about is potentially superior EU education relative to
US. Who would make a better impact for you?

------
Mc_Big_G
Facebook can't hire good engineers because good engineers don't want to work
there.

------
michaelochurch
Acq-hires are proof of dysfunction. Companies like Yahoo _have_ talent, but
can't recognize it at the bottom because the middle-management filter is so
defective. So they buy market-verified talent at a panic price. That's shitty
for the individual (well, great for 0.05% of them and shitty for 99.95%)
because there's so much noise.

The problem is that the VC-funded world is full of soft-skulls who never grew
up (some are old, but not mature; those tend to be investors). They make
workplaces that are culturally defective and mean-spirited but have the
superficial trappings of college because they're _halfway houses_ for frat
boys. "Culture fit" is about wanting to work with the same people you'd go
drinking with or (for most non-tech roles) have sex with. I ask: _Why?_ You
should hire the people who'll do awesome work and lead, and some of those are
65-year-old women. If you don't, your halfway-house/I-could-live-here "utopia"
will underperform and forever be beholden to the VCs.

Reality: if you make one real friend per job, call yourself lucky. My
experience is that it's Poisson(0.75). That "culture fit" camaraderie is
bullshit. Don't take seriously or trust anyone who wouldn't have your back
(and give you a reference, even if you needed him to lie) if you got fired on
bad terms.

Another lesson from the old (30): your life should be diversified outside of
your job, because you can lose the latter at any time for any reason. Losing a
job is bad enough as it is, but if you have nothing outside of it, it's
catastrophic. The "culture fit" workplace is bullshit. Just build something
awesome worth giving a shit about.

~~~
yesiamyourdad
I'll agree with that, but it's dysfunction both in the hiring process and also
in the R&D process. It's the middle management filter in both cases. Corporate
culture is a big part of this. I worked for a major airline in the '90s and
during that time, we had at least 5 initiatives to build online travel sites.
Wasteful? Sure, but the winner of that process is a well-known travel site
that's thriving today. That particular company had a highly entrepreneurial
and competitive structure internally, which had definite downsides, but on the
flip side, caused the company to produce some good innovations from within. I
went to work for a competitor a few years later and things were completely
different there and acqui-hire was the name of the game for that organization.

~~~
michaelochurch
_I 'll agree with that, but it's dysfunction both in the hiring process and
also in the R&D process._

M&A has replaced R&D, but it's an extremely wasteful and inefficient
replacement. The silly social media apps are actually pretty rare; more common
are firms that look like real companies but have junk technology that starts
falling apart the minute it's sold.

------
jhoechtl
Where is the problem? The risk was outsourced, so were the investments. When
it looks like a worthwhile project, the knowledge get's in-sourced. Don't see
the recruitment fail in this particular happening of things.

~~~
doktrin
Is this satire? We're talking about $19 billion here.

In either case, your statement is almost completely incorrect.

The WhatsApp founders were turned down before WhatsApp even existed.
Therefore, it was not some bold tactical decision on the part of FB. Their
technical acumen was up to snuff, so they were rejected based on some other
criteria (not necessarily age).

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
The funny part is that if Facebook had hired them when they had the chance,
they probably wouldn't have built anything resembling WhatsApp or whatever
Facebook was trying to achieve by acquiring WhatsApp.

