
The Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist - prostoalex
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-11-24/the-tech-worker-shortage-doesnt-really-exist#r=read
======
pm90
I'm increasingly agitated by these commentators on the topic, who have
absolutely no idea what the ground reality is. Frequently, as in this case,
they also seem to conflate two different problems: shortage of IT workers and
shortage of software developers.

A software developer cannot be asked to manage a linux database; I mean she
can, but that is not what she is good at. Conversely, an IT person cannot be
asked to architect the backed of a payment gateway system. Of course there is
some overlap (devops is what comes to mind). I'm guessing that most of FB/MS
employees are probably developers, so when they mention IT workers in the same
breath as shortage at FB/MS, they are exposing their ignorance.

Furthermore, the paper itself seems to be published as a "report" on the page
of a dubious organizations. Come on journalists, please do some actual
journalism! Ask more people than those who confirm what your story wants to
show. Find and determine the truth of the story; that is what you are paid
for!

edit: as I suspected, most of the funding for this "institute" comes from
labor unions.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Policy_Institute#Fundi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Policy_Institute#Funding)

~~~
slantedview
That H1B is a mechanism for importing cheap labor is a fact, regardless of the
messenger. Studies have been demonstrating this going back nearly a decade:

[http://www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2005/back130...](http://www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2005/back1305.html)

~~~
gamesbrainiac
Yes, but the labor imported is skilled and does not stay "cheap" for long.

~~~
agrover
h1b makes switching jobs difficult.

~~~
Bluestrike2
In what way?

~~~
ambrood
In a sense that your employer needs to file a Labor certification application,
determine the prevailing wage and ultimately USCIS granting your petition. It
takes a while to get it all done.

~~~
potatolicious
... like 2-3 weeks? That's how long mine took, just a short while ago.

H1B presents some friction in switching jobs, but to call it "difficult",
especially in current market conditions, is vastly overselling it.

~~~
geebee
What if you wanted to work in a completely different field, go to law school,
or quit your job and start a new business?

------
mgirdley
Running a coding school (Codeup), I get this email all the time from
recruiters:

"Dear xyz,

I've been hired to fill this not-so-great job THIS WEEK and we want this crazy
exclusive unicorn skillset that about a dozen people in the world have and,
you know, we aren't going to pay much anywhere near going rate and we're going
to hire as a contractor so we can fire you any time and we're not really
interested in training a person who'd actually want this gig at the rate we're
wanting to pay. So, do you know anyone?"

~~~
jrochkind1
If there was really a tech shortage -- and had been for years -- wouldn't the
labor supply rise to meet demand? Wouldn't there be people willing to work
less than the going rate (which is far above a living wage), wouldn't the
going rate be dropping?

I don't know the answer, I think what is going on may actually be kind of
complicated.

But that's the kind of question raised, you can't explain away the question of
whether there's a shortage or not by saying "It's just that people aren't
willing to pay the going rate."

~~~
mindvirus
There are a few things going on here.

I don't think the world has fully realized this yet, but there's huge
divergence in skill of developers. I know a few developers who are worth
$500k/year, if not more. And I know plenty of others who are not worth that,
but are easily worth $100k/year. With all of them under the same label of
"developer", it can be hard to distinguish what you're getting.

Car example! Imagine wanting to buy a car, but not knowing anything about
cars. So you call Kia, and ask how much a car costs, and they say, $15,000.
Then you call Honda, they say $20,000. A few others, similar prices. Then you
call Rolls Royce, and they say $500,000 and you think they're trying to pull a
fast one on you. And to compound this, if you were to list everything that you
want in a car, you'd probably come up with something closer to a Rolls Royce
than a Kia. So you're shopping for a Rolls, and you've budgeted for a Kia.
Also remember, you don't know anything about cars, so you don't know how to
distinguish important features (ie. wheels, a functioning engine), from luxury
ones (ie. a fancy sound system, heated seats).

In terms of people not being willing to pay the going rate - plenty are! All
of the big west coast tech companies pay handsomely for developers. Outside of
big cities though, things are slow to catch up. So I think that a lot of the
sentiment comes from people not wanting to move to SF or NYC or Seattle, but
also wanting to get a competitive rate. Eventually these companies will have
to adapt, but it can take time, especially if there are enough people who
don't want to leave the city they're in. There's also the quality divergence
taking place - as much as we'd all like to think we're good, Google and co.
are very selective.

In terms of working for less than the going rate (which as you said is
generous) - for sure that's happening. But there's adverse selection happening
there, in that people who are taking jobs below market are either desperate
and will quit when they find something better, or are of low quality.
Developers aren't paid well out of the goodness of the company's heart,
they're paid because they make money for the company. And bad developers can
have extremely negative productivity even ignoring their salary.

Finally, labor takes time to catch up, especially skilled labor. From no
programming knowledge to junior developer at a top company takes typically
five years - ie. an undergraduate degree in computer science and some
tinkering on your own (yes there are exceptions). And we are seeing supply
increase - enrollment in computer science programs is up across the country.
Imagine we had a severe shortage of doctors - you can't just suddenly triple
the supply of doctors over a couple of years. Now if you have a huge shortage
of brain surgeons, which might take a decade or more to train you're in for a
lot of trouble.

~~~
gohrt
Kia has what most people want in a car. (Fuel efficiency, resilience to
damage, cost-effectiveness, easy maintenance)

Rolls has what people imagine they want in the car. Sort of like those HR
hiring managers imagining what they want in a developer.

~~~
csallen
Seriously, they all think they need Linus Torvalds.

~~~
nandemo
Nah, he just doesn't have the skillset: not enough {Ruby,Node,my pet JS
framework} experience.

------
sroussey
The real shortage is in bankers. Just look at pricing. Engineers are so much
cheaper. We should worry about importing more bankers and traders. Those
salaries are a sure indicator that there is a far larger shortage in that
industry.

~~~
ericd
Yeah, good point. Extreme salaries are oftentimes evidence of a high-leverage
industry, where you want a limited number of the absolute best people, rather
than one in which you just need more people than you can get. CEOs, movie, and
musical stars are other examples.

~~~
dragonwriter
CEOs, movie, and musical stars are not industries. They are job
titles/descriptions of the people at the pinnacle of certain career tracks
(CEOs) or industries (movie/music stars)

Business generalists, actors, and musicians _generally_ \-- the
professions/industries as a whole, rather than just the titles at the top --
get paid a _lot_ less.

~~~
ericd
Sorry, misspoke, but you know what I meant.

Salaries are only absurd near the top of the software industry. It's certainly
better distributed than those other industries, though.

------
dominotw
I've been seeing a version of this every month for past 10 years or so.

H1B in my view is new Ellis Island. Stopping H1B == Stopping all immigration
to US. People often say they support legal immigration but don't support H1B.
What are the other alternatives to H1B to immigrate to America?(I am not
talking about Nobel Laureates or Olympic athletes, I am talking about common
folk who showed up at Ellis Island).

Immigration is one of those things where everyone who got in wants to shut the
door behind them.( "I(or my ancestors) got a shot at a better life, fuck you
the door is now closed.")

~~~
ForHackernews
> What are the other alternatives to H1B to immigrate to America?

You can enter the lottery: [http://www.usagc.org/USA-
immigration.aspx](http://www.usagc.org/USA-immigration.aspx)

~~~
maerF0x0
Even your neighbors cannot enter the lottery. Canadians are pretty dang close
to Americans, lots of us have family on both sides of the border, we speak the
same language, have very similar media, similar education systems etc. etc.

And yet we're not allowed to come to your country for much more than a few
months at a time.

Oddly we _are_ allowed to get a TN visa, in some circumstances, build up some
wealth over a 3 yrs span and then we're promptly booted _out_ of the country
with bags of money instead of being allowed to stay and spend it. strange
strategy.

~~~
titanomachy
Does the TN really expire after 3 years? My (American) boss has been working
here in Canada for at least 5, and he is cheerfully uninterested in becoming a
permanent resident. I guess he had to renew once or twice, but it doesn't seem
like it was much of a hassle for him.

~~~
gabbo
You can get TNs good for 1 year or 3, but you can technically renew your TN
status as many times as you want. The downside is that TN status is strictly
for people with "non-immigrant intent" and if a border agent believes you have
immigrant intent when requesting a TN or entering America with one, they can
revoke it/deny you entry at their discretion. So a 3-year TN is fine, maybe
even a second one, but if you've been in the US on a TN after 8 or 9 years
you're probably going to get some trouble.

------
vinceguidry
Information technology is much harder than people think. It's so hard that
management techniques evolved over millenia of human economic activity just
plain don't work when you apply them to computing. Us tech workers take _The
Mythical Man-Month_ as obvious, no shit how could software work any other way,
but throwing more resources at a problem has _always_ worked to clear it,
until now. It wasn't pretty, some of the bridges built like that are probably
aren't going to last forever like they were designed to, but it worked.

The reason BigCorps are looking to indentured laborers is not because
technology workers are hard to find, but because technology _management_ at
scale is horrendously inefficient, but being managers, they don't really know
that. More importantly, they'd have no real answer to it even if they did. The
only lever they have in the face of this is cutting costs so that each
individual failure doesn't hurt the bottom line so much.

The personal answer to this dynamic is to get out of these labor markets. The
products produced by these companies will always be terrible. I don't
understand why people still want to work at Google and Microsoft, it's
basically factory work now, the glory days are gone. Let the people motivated
to escape poverty do it.

The talent market has already started to fracture into a higher-tier
professional caste and the lower-tier grunt caste. The professionals will
slowly accrete into a Hollywood-style guild system serving anyone that wants
to be on the leading edge of technology while the grunt-employing BigCorps
will just keep pushing the state of the art of paying nine women to have one
baby in one month.

------
WalterBright
Economically speaking, if the market is allowed to set the price, then
shortages don't exist - the supply and demand curves cross. For example, if
there were only 10 box folders in the world, you could get one if you were
willing to pay more than about anyone else, hence no shortage.

But from a pragmatic point of view, if the price is higher than you can
reasonably afford to pay, then there's a shortage.

~~~
morgante
The problem is that the supply curve is essentially vertical in the short-to-
medium term. So even if companies are willing to pay more (trust me, many are,
even if it's not quite as high as I think it should be), they won't
necessarily get _more_ workers.

Also, this is compounded by the shortage being of senior/experienced
developers. As a hiring manager, I get dozens of resumes from new college &
bootcamp grads every day. But we're not hiring fresh grads—we're looking to
hire a few excellent senior developers, and they come along once in a blue
moon.

It'll probably take at least 10 years for domestic supply to catch up to
domestic demand (I estimate it takes at least 10 years of development to
become a senior dev). So even as pricing signals push more students to study
CS, the supply won't catch up for another 10 years or so.

So in the interim the only solution is to import foreign supply.

~~~
Animats
_So in the interim the only solution is to import foreign supply._

So make some experienced developers. How many of your people are in offsite
training right now?

Well?

~~~
morgante
> So make some experienced developers. How many of your people are in offsite
> training right now?

It takes 10 years to build an experienced developer. We don't need to hire
developers 10 years from now, we need to hire them now.

~~~
Animats
You just want them now. If you needed them, you'd pay what it costs to get
them. Meanwhile, plan ahead for your future requirements. If all you need is
webcrap, you don't need 10 years of experience.

~~~
morgante
> You just want them now. If you needed them, you'd pay what it costs to get
> them.

We do. We've literally never had an offer rejected. The problem is just that
there simply isn't a supply of candidates worth making offers to.

As for this nonsense that we should somehow be training developers 10 years
from now, that's just ridiculous. 95% of startups won't last 10 years and if
we build our whole HR strategy on a 10 year pipeline we'd be dead.

~~~
rskar
Your HR strategy is already dead. Over-biased on the desire for the
"senior/experienced developers". Meaning that your organization and the
thousand others like yours perpetually create this apparent "shortage," since
all "senior/experienced" had to start as "new college & bootcamp grads". Since
there are rather few moments where organizations are willing to take the
chances on the "college & bootcamp" types, there will of course be fewer
moments where future "senior/experienced" ones are sown.

~~~
vonmoltke
Hell, screw "college & bootcamp" types: how about engineers like me, who have
10 years of valuable but unconventional/niche experience? I can't get the time
of day from any of these companies bitching and moaning about "shortages"[1]
because I don't have the right buzzwords in my background. I'm right here, I'm
willing to move almost anywhere for an embedded development position, and I'm
being ignored.

[1] I could be wrong on this; the companies I am trying to contact may not be
the ones whining. Reading the conversation here and at /r/cscareerquestions
though gives one the impression that this is a pervasive problem.

~~~
morgante
> I'm willing to move almost anywhere for an embedded development position

There's the problem. There just aren't that many people looking for embedded
software developers. The companies complaining about a shortage are mostly
building web & mobile software—if you were willing to consider that field, I'm
sure more opportunities would open up.

------
rubyn00bie
We add immense value, yet we seen almost none of the profit of that value.
Underpaid to say the least-- especially considering the value of money has
steadily declined (overall) since 1972.

I saw a number someone quotes in a comment of _$120,000_ but it doesn't go as
far as it did in the nineties. Realistically, that wage should be closer to
$180k or more now-a-days-- but it's not.

Plus the real moral of the story is: your business is either capital
intensive, or labor intensive. Software Tech isn't really capital intensive
(per dollar) but is extremely labor intensive.

If tech companies want more talent perhaps they shouldn't build their campuses
on some of the most expensive land in the country. That'd probably save a lot
right there.

I'd be willing to bet Facebook wants more H1-Bs because it helps their bottom
line (decreasing costs), which increases their profit margin, which increases
their stock price... A dollar saved, is a dollar earned-- ask an accountant.

~~~
bluthru
>If tech companies want more talent perhaps they shouldn't build their
campuses on some of the most expensive land in the country. That'd probably
save a lot right there.

It's expensive because it's desirable. Much of today's workforce doesn't want
to live in the suburbs and drive to an office park. Living in a vibrant urban
area is part of compensation for many.

~~~
wyclif
He's not really talking about a vibrant urban area. He's talking about a more
expensive office park, and a place where a six-figure income isn't getting you
ahead because of the cost of living (especially if you have a family).

------
hiou
_> Asked what evidence existed of a labor shortage, a spokesperson for
Facebook e-mailed a one-sentence statement: “We look forward to hearing more
specifics about the President’s plan and how it will impact the skills gap
that threatens the competitiveness of the tech sector.”_

For companies like Google and Facebook, which place such strong emphasis on
data in making decisions, its very telling how little data they have presented
to support their claims.

------
chuckcode
From my standpoint the problem with H-1B and other visas in the US immigration
system isn't that we're issuing too many but rather that they tie the workers
to a particular company in a way that prevents them from changing jobs easily
if they are underpaid. Personally I feel really lucky as a US citizen that
incredibly talented people from all over the world are leaving their families
to come here and contribute to our workforce. Even if you feel differently I
think there is no reason to tie visas to a particular company as it prevents
the market from working efficiently. Tech companies have already admitted to
price fixing for wages [1] and the H-1B visa can certainly act as a way to
prevent other companies from easily hiring your workforce.

[1] [http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-
lawsui...](http://time.com/76655/google-apple-settle-wage-fixing-lawsuit/)

------
andylei
> Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science,
> technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get
> hired into STEM jobs

Maybe those graduates aren't any good.

> “We don’t dispute the fact at all that Facebook (FB) and Microsoft (MSFT)
> would like to have more, cheaper workers," ... “But that doesn’t constitute
> a shortage.”

I'm not really sure how that squares with the fact that only half of STEM
graduates were hired. Why didn't facebook and microsoft just offer those
graduates cheapo salaries?

Because most of the time, these workers aren't interchangeable cogs. A degree
doesn't mean you can do work in the industry effectively. Maybe there are
billions of STEM graduates, but if only 100 can do the job, there's still a
shortage.

~~~
jtbigwoo
> > Further, he and his co-authors found, only half of STEM (science,
> technology, engineering, and mathematics) college graduates each year get
> hired into STEM jobs

> Maybe those graduates aren't any good.

In my experience, it's because companies don't want to pay to train somebody
in all the basics of office work. New grads (especially STEM grads) don't know
how to run a meeting, write a status report, or do a thousand other things
that a modern company requires. Instead they list job openings for two or
three years of experience and hope to profit off of somebody else's
investment.

~~~
serge2k
But the companies complaining about shortages (microsoft, facebook, etc...)
are the same ones who are willing to hire new grads.

------
mattxxx
Well, the reality is that every company is becoming a tech company.

Text Book Publisher -> E-learning Platform Mass Marketing -> Mass Emailing
Hotel Booking -> App for Hotel Booking

While there probably is no shortage of tech workers, finding ones that aren't
going to mass-code unreliable software then leave the company __is fucking
hard __.

------
NhanH
There are 65000 H1B visa issued a year (and 20000 more for Master & higher
degree holders).

H1B visa is 3 years, extendable to 6 years, with a maximum of 10 years. But
I'd think most people don't stay on the H1B more than 6 years.

So there's approximately 65000 * 6 = 400000 H1B visa holders in the US. For
size comparison, there are about ~240millions adults in working age in the US.
And the _possible amnesty_ from the executive order a few days ago would cover
some where from ~4-5 millions people.

I'm not actually sure what's the point I should be making here. I guess it
just feel to me that in the grand scheme of things, the number of H1B visas is
_tiny tiny_. It's just incredibly sad to me to see on HN that someone would be
concerned about H1B taking over US's jobs (or repressing the wage - which is
the same, just lesser extreme than "taking US's jobs").

~~~
sounds
I'm not concerned about H1B's taking over US jobs. I can understand that labor
unions want to push that message in the same breath they decry US immigration
laws.

I am concerned that H1B's are indentured servitude. That term has a meaning,
and no, it's not slavery, but if you will be deported upon losing your job
that's a little more than just "out of a job."

So H1B's are not a fair way to bring in talent from around the world. Not Tech
Companies' fault, though, if they hire talented people this way. It _is_
Washington's fault, since they are the ones creating the artificial scarcity
in the first place (and turning a blind eye to the actual solutions for such a
long time that it can't be ascribed to incompetence).

On the other hand, Tech Companies _are_ guilty of wage fixing. They got
caught. Some did the right thing and raised wages. Some didn't. The economy is
tough, so the incentives are all there for the company to keep payroll down.

That's not a reason to unionize the software industry. That's just all the
more reason to start your own company.

Startups have successfully challenged the incumbents and won, especially in
software. It's still open season. Good luck!

------
dagobert63
I think several people mentioned this separately: Yes I agree there are no
shortage of people with CS degree the question is 1) Can they code their way
out of an interview. Turns out many people can’t, even though they held a
“senior” title in another company. They can’t solve a simple linked list
problem 2) Living cost of where the company is hiring 100K in Atlanta goes
farther than 120K in SF or in Seattle. I can rent a 2 bedroom town house in a
good neighborhood in Atlanta for 1200$ Vs. you MAY be able to find a 1 bedroom
apartment in Seattle for 1700$ – 2000$. 3) Some companies have very
unrealistic expectations, they want a person with all the experience in the
world, which is just not gonna happen. Personally if I am looking at a
candidate I will look at how he approaches a problem, I will throw him some
curve-balls and if he can handle it they he will be fine. We are in a world
where the technology changes rapidly, a tech/language/skill-set that is
popular today might not worth a dime tomorrow. If you learned how to learn and
adapt you will be fine.

------
gonzi25
I get several emails from recruiters each week, almost none of them include a
salary range at all.. I won't even respond.

~~~
jshen
That's short sighted.

~~~
sroussey
Perhaps, but it can also be a good filter. Experience replying to the messages
would tell.

~~~
jshen
I've had some rather amazing opportunities that came without a salary range in
the initial email. Using that as the primary factor is surely suboptimal.

~~~
csallen
Curious to know what these emails looked like. Were they random messages from
recruiters? Or emails from friends or friends of friends?

~~~
jshen
From recruiters. I can spot the good ones.

~~~
csallen
Care to share your knowledge with us? I've just been ignoring them all as
well.

------
dethstar
What's with taxes for offshoring for America? I'm guessing it isn't that bad
since a lot of IT/desk-help and what not have been offshored for a while now.

Whenever I read posts of "they want to pay us less" online I try to
understand, why wouldn't a company simply offshore it? I live in Mexico, and
when I was looking for jobs there were a lot of "nearshoring" (just like
offshore but sometimes a business guy will go across either border.)
companies, so it's clearly not that rare. Why? Because they can afford the
same for less (due to exchange rates and what not) So I wonder why they'd move
a lot of "talent" there instead of paying them less (but still considerably
more than what an average person gets here) to work for them? Why go through
all the trouble of even suggesting reforms and what not? There's got to be
more to it, no?

------
mbesto
> _“It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor,”_

It does, but that's not the issue. There is a shortage of _good_ and
_qualified_ tech workers. Tech companies simply can't afford to pay whoever
$120k/yr if their technology doesn't work.

~~~
ChuckMcM
This comes up a lot. The "qualification" clause.

So whose fault is it there isn't a lot of qualification? Workers or Employers?
What I've found hiring people into my organization is that there are many,
perhaps dozens, of ways in which people develop software, all with a great
analogy name from 'waterfall' to 'agile' to 'pair' to 'artisnal' to 'hacking'
and back again. They come with different ideas about what is expected of the
engineer and what is expected of the manager. Have a standup meeting every
week? Great, what are you achieving by that? Getting everyone on the same
page? ok, but what about the guy off site? How about folks who work best in
quiet offices, or those who work best in a noisy free-for-all, do you
playfully criticize each other over bugs or do you have elaborate silent
shunning rituals.

The reality is that everyone I hire seems to come from a different school of
training about how to be effective at programming, what does that say about
qualification? This last job of mine has been my first extended stint at
managing engineers and I have learned so much about what folks can and cannot
be expected to understand or know before coming to the company. It has given
me a lot of appreciation for the intake process that I didn't really have
before.

~~~
napoleond
I wish I could upvote this twice. Is it possible that the real shortage is in
competent technical _managers_?

~~~
nikcub
The shortage of competent technical managers is _massive_. If you have the
bare essentials of communication and project management skills, plus tech and
have a good network to bring developers in - you're getting your email box
torn apart with offers at the moment and wages are insane.

The real tech shortage is in project management, VP Engineering, product
management, experienced multi-stack or vertical developer roles. It is really
far from indicative to compare all of STEM.

------
jandrewrogers
The article is rendered worthless by making the same flawed assumptions most
of these articles make:

\- No one is claiming there is a "STEM shortage". There _is_ a shortage of
qualified software engineers. STEM includes an abundance of marine biologists,
aerospace engineers, astronomers, and myriad other subfields with poor job
prospects that are in no way qualified to fill the shortage that actually
exists in other STEM subfields.

\- The category of "IT worker" sweeps up a lot of low-skill jobs that have
nothing to do with software engineering. Maybe the low-skill jobs are not
making great money but software engineers qualified enough to get a job easily
make six-figures where I live, and I do not live in Silicon Valley. The
oppression and slavery are palpable.

\- Training to become a qualified software engineer is not like training to
operate a backhoe. It is not just about "being good with computers". Tool
chains you can learn over weeks or months, but developing domain competence
useful to an organization can take years. By analogy, both chemists and
chemical engineers deal with designing chemical reactions, but neither can do
the job of the other without a couple years of additional training even though
they are both just making chemicals. Most companies will not pay to train a
chemist to become a chemical engineer when they need a chemical engineer now.

Every article like this that conflates software engineers with "STEM jobs" or
"IT workers" isn't really talking about software engineers.

~~~
nradov
There is no shortage of qualified software engineers. As a hiring manager I
have been able to find as many as I need, at the market price. Anyone can do
the same.

------
philwelch
> “There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in
> the conventional sense,” says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and
> public policy at Rutgers University. “They may not be able to find them at
> the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more
> than my not being able to find a half-priced TV.”

I'm not sure how many developers Hal Salzman has tried to hire, but I find a
lot more of them are weeded out at the "seeing if they can code their way out
of a wet paper bag" stage than at the "salary negotiation" stage.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
Given the ridiculous technical and interview "requirements" that have been
part of tech for the last several years I'm inclined to have as much sympathy
for your statement as I do for companies complaining about tech worker
shortage. Companies want ridiculous breadth of expertise (the ubiquitous
"alphabet soup" listing of technologies), graduate level understanding of
often irrelevant and unrelated algorithms and data structures, and a host of
other absurdities for things like putting together a damn online shopping cart
or, worse, a to-do list.

~~~
philwelch
Do you think hash tables and linked lists are "irrelevant" and "unrelated"?
Have you ever tried to hire developers?

~~~
Iftheshoefits
"Irrelevant and unrelated" _to what_? They can be, in certain circumstances.

I'm not arguing that there are no people trying to get developer jobs who have
no business doing it, or that it's always inappropriate to ask algorithms or
data structures questions. I'm arguing that there is an overemphasis on
trivialities, minutiae, and irrelevant details.

~~~
philwelch
And that's irrelevant to my point, which is that before you can even _get_ to
trivialities and minutiae, the candidate has to be able to code their way out
of a wet paper bag, and a surprising number of them can't.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
That "a surprising number of them can't [code their way out of a paper bag]"
does not imply there is a shortage of tech workers, nor does it reveal
anything particularly interesting about what you consider a "wet paper bag" to
be. What is interesting is that based on your prior comment you believe
certain things are universally useful and pertinent in a programming job,
which is contentious and unsubstantiated at best. And that was rather my
point.

~~~
philwelch
I think the ability to write code is universally useful and pertinent in a
programming job. A shocking number of people fail FizzBuzz. That's what I mean
by "wet paper bag".

------
chralieboy
It is a quality, not a quantity problem.

At a previous company I interviewed hundreds for engineering positions (Ruby &
Rails or JS/Backbone.) Our average was 1 offer extended for every 300 phone
screens. The problem wasn't that we extended 50 offers and got rejected; money
was not a part of the equation. We simply couldn't find the quality we were
looking for.

Specifically, coding schools have capitalized on the gluttony of open
positions, but don't actually go towards solving the problem. There isn't a
shortage of bodies, there is a shortage of experienced developers.

~~~
hiou
Serious question: Why did it never occur that you might need to take in a less
experienced developer and train them? Wouldn't it make sense that there are no
experienced developers available because they are currently fully employed?

~~~
nathanvanfleet
I work with less experienced developers. They really put a drag on the
project. They need to be watched and you have to give a lot of pointers and
refactoring suggestions. And then their tasks just don't end up coming in fast
enough either. Personally I think I'd learn a lot more if I was working with
more advanced devs where I could learn from them than seeing the mistakes I
would have made years ago.

~~~
wyclif
Everybody wants to hire a flying purple unicorn that is a master of "full
stack." It seems nobody has time for "jack of all trades, master of some." But
knowing only one or two domains is a step on the ladder of programmer
competence, and there's no shame in it at all. As other commenters say, you
have to start somewhere. And it's incredibly hard as a developer to go from
intermediate to truly advanced mastery—there's very little training and
mentoring coming from the employer direction (because, as Sweet Brown says,
ain't nobody got time for that: anybody who is a real "ninja" is swamped), and
therefore the only sane strategy is to take complete responsibility for your
own career development, continuing education, and improval of skillset. But
that's just _another_ reason why developers should be paid more.

------
wyclif
"There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of
smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David
"Pardo" Keppel

------
cheepin
Definitely true, but if America can't figure out basic rights like privacy
there will soon come a time where it doesn't matter how many H1B visas are
issued.

However, in light of recent corporation missteps like the Google and friends
wage suppression scheme, I don't think gifting them a bunch of cheap labor is
the right choice.

edit: Clarification. I am referring to privacy breaches causing a lack of
trust in American tech companies by consumers, not whether they will be able
to hire foreign workers.

~~~
frozenport
I suspect the many immigrants from Asia, and China in particular don't give a
damn.

------
freshflowers
The same combination of separate issues keeps polluting the debate.

1\. There is no STEM shortage, there's a shortage of a particular subset of
STEM-related skills, most notably software development (which btw is a skill
barely even taught even in CS, and certainly not filtered for, leading to
people with CS degrees that can't code their way out of a paper bag). Even
within just IT, software development stands out by a mile in all stats when it
comes to the imbalance between jobs and candidates.

2\. Wages are being artificially kept down despite the shortage. Migrant
visa's are one of the things being abused to depress wages. The fact that this
is happening during a shortage is remarkable and confusing, but can be
explained by fear (wages will explode sooner or later, and this terrifies many
employers) and by the low social standing of software developers (even within
IT software developers have for the longest time been known as the code
monkeys at the bottom of the hierarchy, just above the support people) which
leads to even developers themselves not questioning their salaries. Salaries
that tend to be pretty decent, but well below what should be the market value.

------
ulfw
There isn't a Tech Worker shortage if you're willing to be outside the Bay
Area or even outside the country. You're getting great developers in places
around the world for reasonable prices.

Those places just aren't San Francisco. Getting a developer in a mega-priced
city and then hoping to pay less, that is not going to work well. And frankly
that is not what H1Bs should be for.

------
smtddr
I'm still of the mindset that the problem is transportation in the Bay Area.
If I had a magic wand and I could wave it and we all woke up tomorrow to a
nonstop-bullet-BART train that goes 100mph from San Francisco to Mountain
View, Palo Alto, San Ramon, Danville, Cupertino, Daly City, Foster City,
Redwood city, San Jose and the Persidio and we had some kind of crazy zipline
thing that gets you within 1/2 mile of any location within SF, this perceived
shortage wouldn't exist. The problem is salary compared to cost-of-living in
desired locations. And those locations are mostly desired, IMHO, because
nobody wants to deal with a commute. My LinkedIn clearly states that I won't
accept any job outside of walking distance of a BART station regardless of
salary.

What I'd like to see is a poll of HN users that look like this:

You want to live in $DESIRED_LOCATION because:

A. I love $DESIRED_LOCATION and want to be surrounded by its vibe 24/7.

B. $DESIRED_LOCATION is a reasonable commute to/from my job.

C. $DESIRED_LOCATION is a reasonable distance between job & loved ones.

------
nathanvanfleet
I was pretty surprised at the level of skill that the hired programmers at my
company had. And I imagined it was because it's just hard to find anyone. But
I'm not sure if it's just a Montreal Canada problem where the talent left for
elsewhere or if the quality is just never good.

------
lowglow
Hm. I don't know if it's a new shortage or not. But I'm currently hiring and
finding good developers/engineers that are also a culture fit is pretty
difficult. I guess it has always been this way since I moved to SF (~5 years
ago).

[edit]

To clarify on 'culture fit' in my statement:

Interesting, inspiring, nice, humble, pleasant to work with, eager to share
knowledge, discover new things, understands our audience, who we are, and
genuinely wants to further the vision of the entire startup.

These are people that are going to help elevate the group together. I don't
look at engineers as simply a commodity that can be replaced at a whim, but
rather part of a symbiotic system that must transcends itself, grow, and
evolve together in time.

~~~
zyxley
> I guess it has always been this way since I moved to SF (~5 years ago).

Are you accounting for the skyrocketing cost of living of SF? I'm guessing
that (as the article suggests as a general case) there are plenty of good
developers but they just plain want more money than you're offering.

~~~
lowglow
This is the difficult part. How do you accurately price for this market. I've
tried salary searches across whatever job boards I have access to, but how can
one be certain?

~~~
zyxley
If you're not getting enough people saying "yes", you're not offering enough
money.

~~~
irishcoffee
Or, there is a bubble about to pop.

------
fredophile
The article makes a really common mistake by confusing STEM and coding. A
surplus of people graduating with STEM degrees doesn't say anything about
whether or not there is a shortage of coders. I only have anecdotal data but
I'll bet if you break it down you'd find that there are some STEM majors that
have way more people than there are jobs for. This is especially true in
majors where you need a grad degree to find real work in your field. I'd also
guess that there are more coding jobs than CS degrees due to people coming out
of coding schools and other degrees that tend to have a lot of crossover like
math.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I would bet 80-90% of STEM grads could be trained to code. If there's a true
shortage, train some of those unemployed STEM people up. Invest some money in
them.

~~~
fredophile
If they want to learn to code there are plenty of options. Do you expect
companies like Facebook or Google to hire a bunch of biologists so they can
send them to a coding bootcamp?

~~~
waterlesscloud
If the employers are truly desperate, they should be considering the option.

Or I suppose they can just do without if they want to be stubborn.

~~~
fredophile
Let's assume that they do this and check how the numbers work out. Say the
program takes six months and they pay candidates $50000 a year while they're
taking it. Google is notorious for preferring false negatives in their
interview process to making bad hires so maybe 1 in 10 candidates gets offered
a job at the end. The program also costs money to run. They need teaching
staff, computers, space, etc. You're easily at over $300 000 and six months
latency to get one junior programmer. Alternatively, they could offer someone
more senior a $200 000 signing bonus, save a bunch of money and hire someone
experienced. Which do you think is a better way to invest their recruiting
money?

~~~
waterlesscloud
Move the 1 in 10 filtering up front, before they're hired in the first place.
And don't compare jr devs to sr devs since those aren't the same jobs to fill.
Even Google has jr jobs.

~~~
fredophile
Writing code is part of the typical interview/application process. The
hypothetical people in this process can't write code. How can a company pick
which ones will do well before they've been trained?

You're correct that big companies have positions for people at all levels.
However, they usually aren't willing to pay more to fill a junior position
than they'd need to pay to fill a more senior role.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I'm not sure how you come to the idea they pay trainee jrs more than
experienced srs, not without some crazy 10:1 hire:retain ratio.

And I'm confident it's possible to develop aptitude interview processes that
avoid 10:1 false positives.

The bottom line though, is this- If there's a genuine shortage, on the job
training is a solution with centuries of history behind it. If companies
aren't willing to train, they can't be that desperate.

~~~
fredophile
You seem overly hung up on the 10:1 thing. I'll summarize my argument without
any numbers: Currently there are cheaper ways for companies to recruit and
retain programming talent than paying for their training.

Here's another example to illustrate the point with more realistic numbers.
Using the same training program described above and an improved filter a
company can get one qualified graduate for every two people it sends through
the program. On the first day of work he company has invested $50 000 in this
new jr programmer. Alternatively, the company could offer a generous, $30
000-40 000, signing bonus to new qualified jr programmers and pocket the
difference. Hey can also structure the terms of this bonus so that it is
spread over one to two years to incentivize retention.

There are lots of real world training programs with qualified, motivated
students that have high failure/drop out ratios so I'd say 2:1 is reasonable
here.

I'm not saying that paid training is a bad idea. I am saying that it doesn't
make sense for most companies currently and they will continue to use cheaper
alternatives while they exist.

------
slantedview
When it comes to economic decisions, supply/demand is only one factor. Price
always matters - because businesses that choose to locate in high cost of
living areas are hiring human beings who have their own to pay, and regardless
of how many engineers exist in the market, those expenses are fixed. So either
companies pay up to get employees who can afford 3k/month 1 bedroom apartments
near their SF office, or they don't. There are solutions to this problem, but
it's not a supply problem.

------
ankurpatel
This is very correct. I feel in East Coast and other parts of US besides
California companies are underpaying their engineers and expect to get
talented people for a low annual salary. From experience this is especially
true in New York City where engineers in big banks get underpaid a lot and
could earn double the salary if they worked in California.

------
hw
I'm not exactly sure there's a shortage in tech workers. There is however, a
shortage in quality tech workers. I have been on the interview loop at my
company and we've been having lots of new college grads and junior software
engineers (and a handful of senior ones) who come in for interviews, but only
~10% of them are quality.

As for H1Bs taking up American jobs, I'm also not sure that's really an issue.
Assuming H1Bs were abolished, and existing H1Bs were told to go back to their
countries, would companies be able to fill that void - are there actually that
many skilled tech workers out there that aren't H1B? I'm curious....

~~~
x0x0
If wages rise there are.

There's a giant pool of highly skilled workers -- including friends of mine
who've left the bay area -- living in the south, west, and midwest, because of
the insane cost of living in the bay area. Fix that, and I personally know 4
very good senior (10+ years) engineers who would happily move back. But not
for $120k, and not even for $200k, as long as a 3 bed condo on the peninsula
costs $800k and comes with a 1.5 to 2 hour commute into sf for both parents.

------
pixel
There is no shortage of computer programmers. There is a distinct shortage of
_good_ programmers.

------
jdawg77
For what it's worth, thought I'd drop a bit of my story here since April. I
interviewed at Dropbox, ebay, Netflix and others after losing my job.
American, FWIW, with a California birth certificate and everything if it
matters. Did I get a job offer?

Not a single one.

More than a dozen interviews, zero offers but I can find consulting offers
(with far, far lower hourly wage than in 2006-2009 last time I did
consulting). I have friends who have been unable to find work also, with
skills, experience and blue chip, so to speak, resumes. Somehow saying we need
more skilled workers when folks in Silicon Valley with a decade of experience
who have worked for, and been given awards by, the biggest names in tech only
means that employers want it cheaper.

A friend on an H1B who lost their job? Gainfully employed in less than a month
after losing theirs, then again, they have to be seriously motivated else they
get shipped away. Until the new immigration policy gets passed where we export
jobless Californians to Oregon, my only option was to rebuild a consulting
business.

Funniest thing is, now that I'm an "Agency," again, I've had a list of people
wanting me to hire them. So it certainly feels like there is a lot more
unemployment out there than what I read in the media, at least with my
experience...of course, YMMV.

~~~
pm90
I'm sorry, I don't think your not being offered a job has anything to do with
your nationality. You might not be what they are looking for, plain and
simple. I wondered since you have 10 years of experience and are probably
interviewing for a senior position, maybe these were being filled with H1B
workers? From anecdotal evidence, that does not seem to be the case. Every
company I've worked for has had ~90% senior devs Americans. Management has
been even more so.

I might be wrong here, but I thought H1B labor was overwhelmingly being used
to fill lower paid, entry level or short-project kinda work and not being used
to replace full time employment. Again, from anecdotal evidence, most
companies I've worked with have always tried to hire domestically. And many of
the jobs I've applied to, the recruiter outright told me that they wouldn't
even consider noncitizens/non-gc holders.

~~~
jdawg77
I could be a full blown (insert explitive here) but I won't mention the name
of the company that they got hired at. Ironically, I also interviewed at same
company, though six months prior when I had a full time job.

Immigration is a tricky, tricky issue. When living overseas, the ambassador
from another country dropped a proverbial bombshell about the human
trafficking in the country where I lived. To whit, when living in Costa Rica
myself, I only found out on exit from the country my former employer never got
me a work permit - eg, I was working there illegally. I'd love to say yes, no
fault of my own, but I should have investigated the situation myself. Lesson
learned.

So having worked in labor myself a bit (helping people get jobs) and been on
multiple sides of various business disputes in various countries...well, the
situation in US employment in Silicon Valley is quite puzzling.

------
andyl
> "The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-
> wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American
> staff. 'It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost
> labor'"

That has to be BS. Industry leaders and investors want to expand the labor
pool in the name of diversity, not to suppress wages. It's all about justice,
not profits. Someone better flag/kill this article, I'm offended.

~~~
arcosdev
what candy land do you live in?

~~~
powertower
After doing a double-take on it, I'm sure the post is sarcasm.

~~~
gonzi25
Sarcasm generally doesn't go over too well over here..

~~~
slantedview
Too many crazy posters who are dead serious.

------
ykumar6
This article is ridiculous. As a founder of a small startup in the bay-area, I
can tell you it's absolutely impossible to find mid-level engineers
experienced with Javascript, Node, Go, RoR, etc.

And if you can, you're paying 30-50% more than just a year ago.

~~~
epicureanideal
I assume you mean JavaScript and one of Node, Go, RoR, etc. as a server-side
language. If you mean the subset of engineers who are proficient in all of
those, then that's a pretty small set, but I assume you don't.

What is your standard for a mid-level engineer, and what would their salary
range be?

If I were to introduce you to some mid-level or upper-level talent, would you
pay typical recruiting fees plus provide some employment security to my
associates who pass your hiring process? Some startups have high turnover and
I wouldn't want to damage their career if you change your mind after hiring
them.

