
We Don't Have a Talent Shortage. We Have a Sucker Shortage - sixtypoundhound
https://resumeskills.us/talent/shortage
======
burtonator
I had a recruiter call me a year ago with what sounded like a really amazing
offer. Working for a well funded startup on a problem in which I happen to be
a domain expert.

They're aren't many expects in my field with my background and skill set and
they said the right things to get me to interview (compensation won't be a
concern).

Anyway... Went in for 4-5 interviews. Took me about 10 hours in total to
interview with them.

Kept hearing that they have a difficult time filling the position. Reports
directly to the CTO, etc, etc.

They came in at 1/2 my current salary. It was about 30-40% of what you would
pay a decent engineer with experience.

I told them my salary level BEFORE the interview...

Gave them a hard now. They came back and said they can offer more stock and
remote work.

Why in the heck would I turn down a bird in the hand for 1x in the bush?

Part of the problem is that if you're interviewing you need to know what
you're buying!

You can't go to a ferrari dealership and offer to buy one or $20k.. that's
just not how it works.

~~~
areyouseriousxx
I find it strange, as software developers, that we discuss the effects on
automation all the time, but no one seems to understand that automation has
made searching for new employees incredibly inexpensive and efficient compared
to the past.

So in technical roles there are a lot of companies that are always hiring.
Recruiters work for free until they find you someone and placing job listings
online is so inexpensive it barely registers as a cost.

On top of that, most states are "at will" employment, so even if a company
does not have any openings, if they find someone better, and cheaper, than
another employee that is currently working at the company, they can hire them
and then eventually let that other employee go.

For example, I'm not in the market for a new laptop, but if a brand new, top
of the line laptop came up for sale at half price, I'd probably buy it.

Its so cheap to look for new talent due to automation, so most companies will
shop around in case they get lucky and land a fantastic bargain. Many are not
seriously looking to fill an immediate need.

With that said, there are still plenty of companies out there with an
immediate need, so please do not get discouraged by that group of companies
that are "always hiring".

~~~
Game_Ender
Interviews take 2-3 man days from a company per candidate you end up doing a
full onsight interview. That is on the order of $1000’s per interview, and you
generally have to do several per role. Then for high demand roles even the
best will take several months to ramp up which costs a large fraction, say
25-50% of their total compensation. So replacing a dev can cost you in total
$100k+ at least.

That is not really cheap, I am sure technology has helped reduce the amount of
man administrative man hours, and helped fill a pipeline, but you still need
to train new hires and actually interview them, which is no cheap.

~~~
shobith
I wonder at what point would it make sense to start exposing a part of your
"software development pipeline" to the external world and then hiring people
after they've proven themselves on your pipeline (with compensation). Think
lambda school but for your own company.

~~~
baddox
Open source projects started by or significantly invested in by tech companies
must be a huge recruiting tool. I can think of several people in the React
community that ended up working at Facebook.

------
rubicon33
I feel like a broken record, but I'm going to say it anyways.

There is NOT a shortage of software developers. That myth was developed by big
tech, and pushed all the way up the ladder, to the top of government. The
goal? Reduce labor costs.

Big tech has always been 1 step ahead of the employee, just like coal, and
metal working was. They saw the huge need for developers and realized their
costs would increase unless they actively pursued ways to prevent that from
happening.

And that's how you get organizations like code.org. That's how you get
President Obama on the big screen, telling everyone to learn to code. That's
how you get a GREAT job, and make it BLUE COLLAR.

~~~
throwaway9980
I’m so tired of feeling constantly at war with the industry to justify my own
existence. The business people desperately need you but they hate you for what
they have to pay. They’re always thinking what if?

What if we could outsource this to some magic 3rd world slave mine? What if we
could hire some recent graduates or interns instead? What if we could get
someone on an H1B and chain them to the desk?

It’s the natural result of being labor. Don’t like it? Be an owner.

The only alternative I can think of is for software to become a true
profession with licensing and standards. This makes a lot of sense in a world
fraught with security risks and ethics concerns about the usage of data.

In the meantime, I’m getting ready to hang up the keyboard. All the dynamism
and potential has been ground out of this career path. What’s left is crushing
demands and compensation that just doesn’t cut it anymore.

~~~
liquid153
Wow I thought I was the only one. I dont know how many years experience you
have, but with 5 years experience my sentiments are the same. When I interview
now it feels like "Dance monkey Dance", or dealing with a gatekeeper. Had
plenty of interviews that were a waste of time, or I personally felt I was
just invited to interview just for the Hiring Manager to deny and say they
couldn't find the right "Talent"

~~~
Trisell
I agree every interview I’ve had has just been a variation of a coder wars
puzzle with no help and asking for help renders you an inferior programmer not
worth their time.

------
jobthrowaway420
Made my first ever HN throwaway account to respond to this.

I have been running a successful business, but it's not "tech". I want to get
back into the software industry. I didn't have a software business idea, so I
explored some tech company jobs.

I am well-qualified at the VP/Director level for startups and even larger
companies.

I did go so far as to do an on-site interview for one company. I have
verifiable proof that I can generate huge returns in their exact industry.

They didn't want to give away any equity, even though hiring someone at this
high of a level would generate huge returns for their business.

They had a completely undefined budget not only for this role, but for the 4-6
people who would be underneath this role starting out.

They weren't even sure they wanted to hire someone full-time, but they knew
this position was a clear gap in skillsets of their current executive team.

And the kicker to all of this was that they were already doing 8 figures a
year in revenue. This wasn't a broke startup.

I rapidly came to the same conclusion as the post's author. There are so many
companies that want to hire a "VP of X", but they really don't understand what
that means or how to pay someone who doesn't just want a 6-figure a year
salary for the rest of their lives.

I'm now starting a software company.

~~~
no1youknowz
If no equity was available, but profit sharing was? i.e if you brought in X
million you get a % of that. Would you have taken the position?

I'm starting a company, but want to retain 100% ownership. I don't want to
give equity as I don't want to lose control. Been there, done that. I'd much
rather go down the road of profit sharing based on the results.

~~~
pault
Revenue, maybe. Profit? I don't have any control over how you define profit,
and you have an enormous amount of control over how you manage your revenue.
Additionally, even a unicorn is going to stay in the red for years. Unless you
have some financing structure that is radically different from typical
startups and don't plan to reinvest in the business, profit sharing makes no
sense.

~~~
ianai
Not to mention revenue sharing should count as an additional cost in the
profit calculation. So they should be doing that regardless.

------
pascalxus
But HR isn't the only problem. In my experience having worked for a company
that hired heavily for several years, it was the engineers who lacked the
talent necessary to conduct proper interviews. Great candidates were being
rejected by the truck load. Us engineers, we're great at engineering but many
of the junior and mid-level ones don't have much experience interviewing
people and usually no training whatsoever. So interviewers tend to ask
different questions with every candidate (whatever they feel like it that
day), then make some decision based on a random feeling they get. There's not
much objectivity. There's not much thought that goes into the questions. Most
engineers think intervewing is a game of "how to stump the candidate".

As an inteviewer, you're job is not to stump the candidate. Your job is to
figure out how well they can do the job. The questions you come up with should
reflect the actual job, and the actual tasks that will be assigned (that's
where you should draw your questions/inspiration from), rather than some
random data structures question you remember from college or some random
questions you found on a google search.

~~~
mooreds
We switched from a random set of questions to a take home coding assignment
(that we compensate for) and a discussion of said coding assignment.

It's pretty clear what kind of work someone will do when you can look at work
they've done.

~~~
ScottFree
What would you do if a candidate turned down your home coding assignment, but
gave you one of the coding assignments he completed for a different job
interview?

~~~
maehwasu
(I'm not OP) My concern would be that the candidate might have memorized the
explanation for his code, and would be able to discuss it despite not having
written it.

I agree with the DRY intuition though: making coders repeat code
challenges/assignments is stupid. Some sort of verification or credentialing
after completion of assignment, signed by a 3rd party, would be really cool.

------
iliketosleep
I've always assumed that the so-called "talent shortage" was an excuse to get
cheap labor from abroad. They make job ads such that it's improbable that a
local will meet the highly specific requirements, after which they complain of
a skills shortage, and then they have their excuse to import cheap labor.

~~~
alexandercrohde
I actually recently spoke to somebody who said his job was to exactly this. He
said they'd find a remote candidate, with random skills X, Y, Z, and his
company would then craft a very specific job opening that could only ever
match this particular employee.

After enough people couldn't be found locally they'd have a legal
justification for a work visa.

~~~
ianai
That’s clearly not illegal but should be.

------
externalreality
This is very relevant in software these days

> Super Narrow Selection Criteria

e.g. "We need nodejs, mongo, grpc, golang, etc - decades of experience in
software is not what we need. We need exactly those things - and we are going
to give you an online code challenge to solve an irrelevant puzzle while a 27
year old sits there watching you." And then when you get the job its nothing
more than spending hours upon hours updating a web front end, tweaking a
database, and watching logs.

> Outright Age & Lifestyle Discrimination

I'm only 36 and I feel old sometimes. I apply for jobs where I have to talk to
a panel. It looks like everyone on the panel is less than 30. You can feel the
lack of experience exuding from their pores. Everything this panel says sounds
like some misconceptions I had sever years ago when I was their age and only
had experience working on small projects. Where are the older more experienced
workers? I mean are people over 30 not applying for jobs?

> What Are Your Salary Requirements?

Someone tried to hire me for 85K after decades of experience for a very early
stage startup. They were offering equity but equity doesn't mean anything if
the company folds in 2 years. I need more than that.

> Stop wasting people's time and make experienced candidates a real offer.

When I was a new developer many moons ago, I worked with many old guys and
gals who would always let me know how green I was (no matter how much I
studied and tried to impress them). Now, if I was to look for a job, I would
be working with very young guys and gals who think experience == 2 weeks of
reading a book on Facebook's React framework. Hey times have changed.

~~~
jarsin
I'll never understand why these companies are letting inexperienced employees
take any part in interviewing people with significantly more experience.

If I owned a company I would never let some inexperienced fresh grad interview
a senior engineer. They are letting some kid take part in one of the most
important parts of their business.

It's yet another area of software development hiring where all logic and
reason have gone out the window.

~~~
marcinzm
I find perceptive junior employees extremely useful in judging candidates. The
way people act with someone they perceive as inferior is very telling about
their personality and how they'll work with others. People are in my
experience a lot more likely to drop their guard and show their true selves
when they think no one important is watching. Soft skills matter and someone
senior is both capable of providing great value and doing great harm to a
team.

~~~
externalreality
That belief can be true, but its not enough to make me want to have a guy 2
years in interviewing candidates. I wouldn't want experienced developers
walking away.

~~~
marcinzm
In general, I prefer to lose potential candidates than hire someone bad since
bad hires tend to become expensive. Moreover, if an experienced engineer walks
because they got interviewed by someone junior then I view that as a bullet
dodged. Assuming the junior engineer has been coached in the questions to ask
and so on. It should be an easy win interview that will teach you a lot about
the company since junior engineers tend to be worse at knowing what not to
talk about.

~~~
externalreality
I find it hard to believe that anyone with any real experience would advocate
having a Jr. interview for experience candidates. Are you sure you are not
self-righteous Jr. yourself.

No disrespect, but what you are saying borders on unreasonable. You would
trust a Jr. developer to interview a more senior developer? That is laughable.
Think about that in the context of a law firm, or a federal agency, or the
military, or basically any other context.

------
Aloha
I broadly agree with the basic point this guy is making, we have an issue
where the HR gatekeepers (who don't have the knowledge to make accurate
technical assessments) are effectively searching for a perfect match, rather
than someone who could do the job well.

Don't put box tickers in charge of a critical function unless you want every
thing they touch to be turned into an exercise in box ticking.

~~~
raghava
> HR gatekeepers (who don't have the knowledge to make accurate technical
> assessments) are effectively searching for a perfect match, rather than
> someone who could do the job well.

IMO, that's just a symptom. The real problem is that the hiring
managers/engineers find the job of "recruitment" beneath them.

All of us know the recruiter might not really understand the difference
between "java", "scripting" and "javascript". But then, why should that role
exist? That role exists because the engineers/managers/leads/architects
(generally, the tech folks) just don't want to do the grunt work (search and
source candidates, co-ordinate and schedule interviews etc). The actual folks
in need of teammates/additional people want a piece of the action alright,
nobody wants to miss being an interviewer where one gets to go on a power trip
asking the poor candidate to balance B+ trees or some such thing, while
letting out tch-tch noises like a lizard watching the poor candidate struggle
on the whiteboard.

All that needs to be around is a tool/system that can make the job of
searching/sourcing/co-ordination easier for the actual hiring managers/leads
who are looking to add people to their teams and have got the necessary
budgetary stuff covered already.

~~~
BonesJustice
One of the best interview experiences I had was with a firm where nearly
_everyone_ participates in the hiring process. I don’t know any details beyond
what I experienced as a candidate, but they interview _tons_ of people, and
everyone who makes it all the way through ends up interacting with at least a
handful of would-be peers, managers, and a C-level officer.

I imagine that everyone is expected to dedicate a significant chunk of their
time to the recruiting process. I don’t see how else they could pull it off. I
suspect the arrangement is something like “everyone must dedicate one day
every (other?) week to recruitment efforts.”

Moreover, they had a fixed set of well-thought-out questions and exercises.
For programmers, you write code in an actual IDE with one of their programmers
sitting beside you. You can bounce ideas off them, you can consult the
interwebs (as you might in real life), etc. The questions and programming
challenges were relevant, and reasonable.

It was an extremely well oiled machine, and it showed.

~~~
Frost1x
Where is this utopia? I want to work there.

~~~
wolco
Really that sounds terrible. Let the managers hire I need to finish my sprint.

~~~
hopler
If you want to be a static low level cog, that's fine, but don't expect go-
getter leadership compensation.

------
lgleason
It does not surprise me that this is out of Atlanta. One of the former Atlanta
Business Chronicle writers that covered tech rightfully calls it the Bangalore
of the South.
[https://twitter.com/Urvaksh/status/1092948535627137024](https://twitter.com/Urvaksh/status/1092948535627137024)
[https://twitter.com/Urvaksh/status/893087188451196928](https://twitter.com/Urvaksh/status/893087188451196928)
Tech in ATL is a second class citizen and the salaries reflect that, plus
there is a glut of marketing and business people. The other issue with Atlanta
is that from an IT/corporate headquarters perspective (which is a significant
driver for the job market) Suntrust just merged with BB&T and is moving the
headquarters out of Atlanta along with Turner combining with AT&T. Layoffs
will ensue at some point. Most tech companies located in high cost areas such
as New York, San Fran etc. that open up a location in ATL do it to reduce
costs.

That said, in general, all of these efforts to "learn to code" etc. are all
just trying to increase the supply and lower wages. The challenge is that
there often is a difference between the developers what will accept the lower
offers and the ones who will hold out for more. Many still believe the a
larger number of cheaper people is better than a few top devs... Despite the
fact that this was proven be a bad strategy over 30 years ago in "The Mythical
Man Month".

~~~
Xcelerate
I would have loved to stay near Atlanta since it's near my family, but you're
right. It was difficult to find tech jobs there, despite Georgia Tech having a
world class CS program. So I moved to the Bay Area.

~~~
sixtypoundhound
Great place to run a business though... cost of living is low.

(Granted, you get funding / talent lift from the Bay Area)

------
mr_cyborg
One of the things that always surprised me at a previous company was seeing
the H1B hiring notices posted for easily-trainable positions.

I have nothing against people coming to work in the United States, but I
thought those visas were specifically for roles where the skills weren’t
available.

In this case, by making the skills super specific, like that Home Depot sales
portal in this article, they made them rare.

~~~
povertyworld
The other possibility is that they are going to hire internally, but for some
legal reasons they have to make a public job post. Requiring some super
specific thing like "Home Depot sales portal" sounds like a tipoff that this
is going to be an internal hire. The place I currently work is like that. The
decision makers already know who they want to give the job to before it's even
posted, but they still make three other poor bastards come in and go through
the interview process even though they have no chance. The interviewees will
no doubt end up second guessing every answer, handshake, etc. when really it
was just never going to happen. To be extra obnoxious the job listing is left
up for months after it's filled.

~~~
beager
Yep, I’ve certainly seen the same for big companies, but some of them are kind
enough to list a requirement that is a dead giveaway, like:

“Candidates for Solutions Architect 4 at X Corp preferably have three or more
years of experience as a Corp X Solutions Architect 3”

------
throwaway25475
Making a throwaway to share my anecdote.

What I find interesting is that if you point all of this out to HR/management,
sometimes they don't believe you!

I just left a company for which I was the random unicorn (perfect intersection
of 3 different skillsets and relevant past experience) after one year. I was
referred because someone at the company knew I had the exact skillset they
needed, and ended up joining right as they were planning to expand to several
other states.

Two months in, I brought up the rarity of finding someone with such an
intersection of skills. Looking for an exact match would not be realistic.
Especially when trying to expand to states with a much more competitive job
market that requires a higher salary than what they offered me. Of course, my
concerns were shot down with such confidence that I thought, "maybe they
already have the perfect set of candidates lined up."

One year later, expansion plans have completely 180ed because they simply
cannot find the personnel that they need. They cannot even entice those who
are capable of learning and performing in the role because they aren't willing
to pay market rates. And now I left because they weren't willing to give me a
reasonable raise or additional benefits like more equity.

This experience has made me wonder if cognitive dissonance plays a larger role
in blinding HR/companies.

~~~
ianai
Can you expand on how cognitive dissonance would play a role here?

~~~
throwaway25475
The role it plays is in how people may respond to evidence that runs counter
to their perception of reality. The blinding happens when HR/management
decides that rejecting feedback and evidence is the best route to resolving
the contradiction of reality vs belief. If they ignore it, then no such
conflict exists.

Obviously this isn't the ideal way to handle cognitive dissonance. However, it
is _a_ way of handling and one that you often see. Another bad way of handling
it is when you see people "explaining things away" without ever really
addressing anything of substance.

In my case, I saw it manifest in the sheer confidence they displayed all year
despite our rollout plans failing. It did not matter how many market signals
they received either. There was always another excuse as to why things _will
eventually_ go smoothly.

------
hash872
"Why Are You Reposting Jobs With Over 1000 applications?"

Because over 95% of them are completely random and do not meet even one single
criteria of the job. Or, are fake resumes from H1B consulting shops.

Post a senior software developer job in New York? Get ready for over half of
the applications to be from a Burger King employee in South Carolina, a
security guard in Florida, a mechanic in Idaho, etc. They spam their resume to
every open job in America. The next 25% will be from grad students desperate
to get an H1B sponsorship before their OPT runs out. They will, yes, spam
their resume to every open job in America. The final 24% will be fake C2C
resumes from H1B consulting shops. "Yes, he is my consultant, how can you pay
on the corp to corp for this job?" They, yes, spam their resume to every open
job in America.

Out of those 1000, I bet you over 95% do no match one single qualification
posted

~~~
whttheuuu
That's still over 50 qualified applicants..

~~~
hash872
I said 95% don't meet _any_ qualifications. Those remaining 50 are at best a
partial match

------
teddyh
As is common, Joel said it all back in 2000:

Whaddaya Mean, You Can't Find Programmers?
[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-
you-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-you-cant-
find-programmers/)

(Repost from five years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6454140#6455545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6454140#6455545)
and 7 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17946388#17948113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17946388#17948113))

------
j79
After moving to California in 2011, I decided I missed the office banter and
started looking for a job. I found a listing on a large, tech-based recruiting
firm (cybercoders) and the job was perfect for my skills. I applied but heard
nothing back.

After a week I reached out to the recruiter, and she replied with a curt,
"You're not qualified for this role so we're looking elsewhere." I was a bit
surprised as the reqs they described in the job listing were exactly what I
had been doing for the last 3 years. But it got me thinking whether the
company (HR, Hiring Manager, etc) had made the decision or if the recruiter
had?

In addition, there was no additional offer from the recruiter to work with me?
It was literally that one line. It got me thinking that maybe my experience(s)
wasn't valued by the recruiter as someone worth pursuing, as I may be more
"work" to land a job than she would want to invest?

Anyway, with my pride slightly dinged, I immediately wrote off the recruiter
(and cybercoders as a whole) as someone I wouldn't want to work with in the
future. I got a job at a larger company and a few years later, enjoyed
responding to the SAME recruiter asking if I was interested in some jobs she
had to offer (nothing bridge-burning worthy, but it felt great saying "NO
THANKS")

~~~
sixtypoundhound
I've found the recruiting community to be very self-serving and manipulative.
Recent example - someone who I had spoken with (shared the stage) at a
conference indicated one of her clients needed someone with the my background.
Naturally, a resume was on her desk before the end of the afternoon...

A few weeks later, I get a call from a retained recruiter I had worked with
previously, after having had my resume sent to her by the company. She
basically proceeds to "force me" out of the running for the position by
talking it down. She clearly had some firm favorite sitting in the wings...

[in reality, I was out as soon as they asked me to relo my family for a lower
total comp package than I was currently receiving. Yeah right.... not that
hungry yet...]

~~~
hobofan
Best one a recruiter pulled on me was putting me (a freelancer) in an
interview for a full-time position, without me knowing.

They initially contacted me and indicated that they just raised a funding
round and now have to staff the position ASAP, potentially with a freelancer
for some time. So I thought: "Great, I'll freelance for them for a few months
and they can kick me out once the found someone to employ!" This is
unironically one of my favourite scenarios, so I went for it, and let the
recruiter set up a meeting.

I was a bit surprised that HR was also invited for the meeting, as I usually
haven't seen that done when bringing freelancers on in other companies, but
tried to not interpret to much into it. So the meeting rolls around, and
voilà, it is a full blown job interview! I went with it, acing the interview,
but when they asked "Why are you looking to switch away from freelance?", I
had to tell them that I don't, and it turned out that the recruiter told them
something completely different.

WTF WOULD A RECRUITER THINK THAT THIS WOULD EVER WORK??? Do they think that 1
in 10 freelancers just resigns to his new fate during the interview and accept
to work as an employee now? Truly one of my strangest recruiter experiences.

~~~
sixtypoundhound
Interesting... "unironically one of my favourite scenarios"

Why? Pricing Leverage? (which makes sense - you can set a shorter term price
and most of surprises should be upside)

~~~
hobofan
Pricing leverage is a factor, but the major thing for me is that I usually
don't like working with a client for more than 3-4 months. If you go beyond
that time frame (in my experience) you usually see dependencies between the
freelancer and the company cropping up, which I want to avoid as much as
possible, as that often leads to the expectations of either party to be hurt
sooner or later. This also puts me in a position where I can transition to a
more interesting/lucrative client very quickly, with the old client still
being happy.

------
duxup
It's a strange hiring world out there.

I changed careers and was inundated with recruiters contacting me..... a total
n00b. Nice huh?

Not really, every one of them just seemed to be sweeping up resumes and names
and faces and not paying attention.

I'd talk to them on the phone "no I don't have 5 years experience, just like
it shows on my resume"...

One after another, total waste of time.

Then I'd get a bite, or even interview and ... some would just go radio
silence. Man how hard is it even to send a cookie cutter "we went in another
direction" email?

I wish I could have only talked to people who actually looked at my resume
first and wanted to talk to that guy. Maybe it wouldn't be many but it would
save a lot of time, looking for a job is hard enough as it is.

Meanwhile every job does require 5 years experience but I'm pretty sure they
don't. I'd hear the actual job and no man a n00b could do that just fine.

Meanwhile my last job now requires a CS degree where really a high school grad
who is mildly capable with a CCNA could do just fine, but they're still
looking to fill my position a year later... They could have brought on two
people for like 6 months to just try them out and but they'd rather not.

I'm fairly sure there's just a lot of busy work being made by HR and head
hunters who have no clue anyway.

------
vetelphon
I had an interview with a company working in the ML space. There is a semi-
difficult problem that their particular industry needs a solution for so I
spent a couple hours in the hotel the night before writing up a solution for
it.

I was doing an interview with their head of ML and brought this subject up in
general without mentioning that I had already solved it. His immediate
response was: "that's impossible." And it was totally concrete, not some sort
of challenge. He had no interest in discussing the topic at all.

Those kinds of people are out there. Best to detect them early and move on.

~~~
eps
At some point I was working for a shop that did smartcard-based payment
systems. I was patching some smaller bug when I noticed a call that was
suspiciously close to an assert() that was accidentally left in. Merely
commenting it out made the payment handshake complete 50% faster. Being an
eager junior as I was I went to the principal dude who wrote this part (and
pretty much the rest of the core) and he dismissed me with exactly that -
that's impossible. I decided to push it a bit and went to PM with my demo, he
was equally awed and summoned the dude... to which the dude said, and I'm
paraphrasing to soften, "this fucking bonehead just commented out the RSA sig
verification for the handshake."

That is, sometimes the claimed "impossible" is indeed just that and the speed
of response comes from the experience rather than ignorance or arrogance.

~~~
nullc
Thank you for documenting exactly how some of the more absurd bugs we
encounter in the wild might actually happen. :)

E.g. [https://www.talospace.com/2019/04/broadcom-bcm5719-libre-
fir...](https://www.talospace.com/2019/04/broadcom-bcm5719-libre-firmware-
coming.html)

------
SamuelAdams
It sounds to me that this might be a problem with startups. I've been working
in the enterprise space for 5 years, and I've never come across this sort of
hiring.

The last job I applied for was open from February 1 - March 1. After that,
they pulled it down and began interviewing candidates. Six weeks later, I have
an offer letter for a specific role with a well-negotiated compensation
package.

Personally if HR treats you the way OP is saying, my guess is you don't want
to work for that company anyways. Interviewing experienced people is more the
company needing to sell themselves to the candidate, rather than the candidate
sell themselves to the company.

~~~
loopbit
You might have not experienced it and if you didn't, congratulations! I'm
happy for you (honestly!). But these problems exist all across the board.

My last job hunt (signed a new contract just a few weeks ago) has taken me 3
months and I've seen all of the issues OP (and some of the comments) mentions,
not only in startups, but also in fortune 500 companies and everything in
between (including quite a few companies in the "best place to work" ranking).
I've probably sent about 60-70 cv's and most of them have gotten me at least a
phone interview (about 50? I lost count but in the document I was using to
keep track of open processes I have 30 companies).

One of my ex-managers (and one of the best I've ever had, at that) is also job
hunting (after taking a year off after being made redundant in a merge). He's
in his 50's and the stuff he tells is even worse than my own experiences.

~~~
ptmcc
> I've probably sent about 60-70 cv's and most of them have gotten me at least
> a phone interview (about 50? I lost count but in the document I was using to
> keep track of open processes I have 30 companies).

Genuine question: why are you applying to so many companies? Are you just
coming out of school or unemployment?

That seems like a ton of work to juggle and you can't possibly be interested
in them all. In this hot market it seems like you should be able to be a lot
pickier, especially if you've already got a job.

In my most recent round of "should I get a new job" I only applied with 3 good
companies that I knew I was interested in and even that felt like a lot to
juggle on top of a day job.

~~~
ryandrake
I've always used the "10%" rule:

Of the companies you apply to, 10% will get back to you.

Of those 10%, 10% will result in an offer.

My last job search (conducted 2017) bore this out: I applied to about 90 or so
companies, got 8 interviews, and one offer. I have about 20 years of
experience in tech.

------
lostgame
I had a ludicrous experience with an AR startup in Toronto last year where I
was offered $35 an hour - worked a week, and then was told they could only
afford to pay $20/hr.

They made me work 60-80 hour weeks and didn’t pay me overtime.

When I criticized them, they fired me after a month.

I’d love to expose them here, but I’ll be the better person than them.

~~~
tracer4201
How does not reporting them to the labor board make you a better person?
There’s more to this story than you’re telling us or it’s made up. This story
doesn’t add up.

~~~
wolco
Who said he didn't? Him not going through that process doesn't make him a liar
either. The fear of being blackballed or being a shy person or the experience
of knowing what a waste of time it is are all valid reasons not to.

~~~
lostgame
First off, I’m a she. :P

Second off - I am the type of individual who believes karma will come back to
people. I have a very very comfortable position at the moment somewhere else
and I personally just don’t want to stir up any trouble.

I’ve been through enough in the past year, from sexual assault to the passing
of my mother, to add the trauma of lawyers chasing after me for an HN comment
to boot.

~~~
wolco
It sounds like you've been through a lot.

The lawyer chasing you for a HN comment sounds like a movie. Somehow it would
be fitting if it was over spaces vs tabs.

------
rajangdavis
I spent the last year looking for a new job and it was extremely demotivating
at times.

The company that I ended up accepting an offer for started off with a
recruiter who talked to me about my background and then asked a few technical
questions to screen whether or not I knew the technologies that they were
hiring for. Passed the recruiter screen.

Interviewed with a hiring manager and then interviewed with the team with some
technical challenges that were more to see how it would be like to work
together. Talking to the team made me feel excited to work with them and the
technical challenges were straight forward. I was able to look up and use some
code that I had written previously to solve part of the challenge.

I ended up with an offer higher than what I asked for. Part of me feels as
though this is almost too good to be true but I don't know if I am just really
jaded by the entire hiring process.

I faced so much rejection that landing the position that I am starting soon
makes me feel like I am either extremely lucky or maybe I'm just another
sucker; however, this company definitely set the standard for me as far as
interviewing/hiring process.

~~~
sizzle
I've experienced the same, honestly it's a numbers game and it took me many
rejections and turning down toxic roles to find a good team of people I could
enjoy being around 40+ hrs a week.

------
human20190310
> What you're missing is that while you may need someone like me to get this
> done, people like me don't necessarily need you to create that kind of
> value.

> I may not want to assume the risk of startup business right now but if
> you're going to offer the deal on those terms...

The author is asserting that a company needs him or her more than they need
the company, then confesses to being reluctant to take the risk of starting a
business themselves. As such they're actually depending on the company to
shoulder the risk they're not willing to take; they actually do need the
company to create value.

The author should decide which of the two statements quoted above has
precedence. Either they depend on some other company to shoulder the risks, or
they start one themselves.

------
loteck
As an employee, it is valuable to me that my company will not hire someone who
doesn't think our business does something important ("get over yourselves,
you're not curing cancer"), or who thinks the right way to ask business
decision questions is to ask if "you're morons", or who has a problem with the
company asking very basic probing questions, such as confirming you've thought
through the challenge of changing from remote work to a commute.

In short, if this post is representative of the way workers are thinking and
communicating, then we do have a talent shortage, it's just not the talents
you're thinking of.

~~~
Aloha
I so dislike the ball-gargling exercise of "why do you want to work here?"

It's often a "well, I need a job, you're hiring, and what you guys are doing
looks at least marginally interesting to me" \- I ought not need to find
whatever product/service/market they're doing/in inspiring - I should just
want to do it for the pay offered.

~~~
jodrellblank
It's "why should I hire you, over anyone else?"

Given two candidates for a Phd, which do you accept:

\- the one who needs a Phd because that earns more money (duh!) \- the one who
has been obsessed with X for years, did research into X, has burning questions
and wants to dedicate some years to answering them, and found your place to
have the researchers who publish the most relevant, interesting and insightful
papers over the last few years.

 _I ought not need to find whatever product /service/market they're doing/in
inspiring - I should just want to do it for the pay offered._

You don't need to find it interesting. But if another candidate will do it for
the pay offered, /and also/ likes the product and has a clear plan for their
life, expect them to get the job instead of you.

And, expect you'd do better if you /did/ find a job offering where you were
also interested and motivated.

~~~
ScottFree
All of that is true, but all of that is easily deduced from other parts of the
interview. Why ask a question when you _know_ 2/3rds or more of your
candidates are going to lie? So much of the modern interview process is
essentially filtering for highly skilled liars.

------
wjossey
I’m interested in trying to solve this problem by helping people express how
they have relatable skills, rather than direct experience. In particular, I
believe that the opportunity is to highlight during person to person
conversations during an interview a person’s relevant, but perhaps not
directly related, skills. Interviewers often just ask, “have you written in X”
as an example, and candidates don’t know how to properly answer that question
as “Not directly, but I’ve written in Y which is similar. Happy to discuss my
experience there with you.”

If anyone is interested in trying out this process at their company, my email
is in my profile.

~~~
rajangdavis
I did this with an interview recently and I think it was the only reason why I
got an offer.

I think the challenge is that you need to have related experience in order for
this to work; if you don't, you will be scrambling for an answer. I didn't
even realize I was doing this when I started directing the hiring manager to
my related experience until after the interview.

It worked out that I didn't have direct experience with what they were looking
for but have a lot of related experience in the same language but different
domain as well as with other languages, all of which was visible on my github
profile.

~~~
wjossey
I recently had a mentoring session with a person going for a lead position,
but they haven’t been an “on paper lead” before. I had to talk them through it
but I think they understood at the end how to position themselves.

I do not find most people know how to adequately fill in the dots for people
on the other side of the table because businesses aren’t always terribly
forethcoming about what they are looking for. If you’re not an excellent
communicator (which many people in IC roles are not) it can be easy to not
pull sufficiently the information needed to position oneself sufficiently.

~~~
rajangdavis
Honestly, I think it comes down to personal values.

I like doing unit testing even though my current employer doesn't; in that
regard, when I was asked about testing experience, because I spent time
writing packages in python, php, node, and ruby with full unit tests, it was
really an easy question to answer.

~~~
wjossey
Can you elaborate on this for me? I’m not sure what you mean by it coming down
to personal values. Would love to understand.

~~~
rajangdavis
The hiring manager asked about my testing experience at my current job.
Explained that I have 0 testing experience at my current job, but have created
packages in various languages on my own time, all with test coverage and
static code analysis because I feel as though these are important for
maintaining quality software.

I think a better term may be "culture fit" as the company I will be working at
is more engineering focused than my current gig. It was simple to refer to
related work because I believe automated testing is important which is very
much in line with the needs of the role.

------
nell
Let's assume pay is the only parameter in a job offer. Also assume Big tech
(FANG) set the ceiling for software engineer salary.

These companies hire every engineer that meet their criteria.

Most engineer given an offer from one of them would accept it since that is
the highest possible offer they can get.

If there is no talent shortage, these companies should have no open recs or
fill them as soon as they're opened because they are the best possible jobs
for any engineer.

Since they have open recs (sometimes open for months), there is a talent
shortage at the skill level they require.

Please let me know what is missing in this logic?

~~~
bob33212
Think about an ugly, unemployed dude with a bad attitude and bad personality
saying that there is a shortage of girls in the dating pool who meet his
attractiveness standards.

He is technically correct, the number of attractive ladies who want to date
him is much lower than the number of dates he is available to go on.

But no one is going to be sympathetic to that shortage, why should anyone be
sympathetic to this one.

------
TheLuddite
I never understood why the hiring process in IT is so tedious compared to
let's say...construction work or driving?

Can you imagine that if on hiring a new truck driver the company was passing
him trough 50 different routes on snow, ice and wet road. Or forcing a
construction worker to build a house or something.

Yet if one of these two professions fucks it up - people might die, if a coder
fucks up - he'll be fired and someone will remove 10 lines of code boo hooo.

~~~
badpun
It's incomparably harder to judge the output of a coder vs a truck driver
(where you pretty much have 100% visibility into work performance). Hence,
companies are wary of hiring slackers or people of low talent, because they
know that if they hire one, his low performance may never be detected
afterwards. This leads to interviews checking for raw ability (whiteboard
tests) and "passion" (show me your github etc.), as both are resonable
insurance against hiring a dumbo or a slacker.

~~~
ranci
how in the hell would you "never detect a poor performer"? It's one of the
most obvious things about the workplace if it is going on.

~~~
badpun
Colleagues can usually tell, tech lead less so, and manager is often clueless.
Basically the only way to judge someone’s output is to work alongside him for
a couple months, and only a few colleagues in the team do that. Maybe
methodically reviewing someone’s commits every 6 months or so would also work,
but that ignores one’s input into decision making, help and mentoring of
colleagues etc.

~~~
TheLuddite
And what will happen if they do a bad work at this? Someone is going to die?
No. Someones useless iPhone app will collapse on them? No.

~~~
badpun
Are you arguing that all non-critical work is meaningless?

------
NeroTheWolf
Years ago, I worked at an unnamed MA-based "start-up" with $100MM in revenue
and 400+ employees worldwide with a footprint in AWS. I was brought on as a
"junior" Operations person and within two years I was basically indispensable
to the team and had acquired a reputation as "the guy that finds the most
interesting bugs".

What I didn't know at the time, was that in those two years I'd obtained
experience and knowledge that at any other company would have warranted a 25%
pay increase from what I was getting at this start-up.

The excuse? You have "options". That you can "exercise". And maybe eventually
be worth something. Maybe.

Except this company had gone well past Series B. And had no exit strategy.

Given what I know now, I've resorted to telling recruiters and HR people that
I'm not interested in "stock" or "bonuses" or anything else of the sort. The
company pays me for my expertise and my hours, I give them what they pay me
for. No promises, no gimmicks, no dice-rolling.

TBH, people in high-school and college looking to enter the workforce need a
series of workshops on compensation, benefits, and HR before they start their
first "real" job.

Had I known that the "options" I was being given access to would: A) "vest"
over time, B) not be worth anything even 5+ years later, C) be IMPOSSIBLE to
sell on the secondary market, and D) would result in a deflation of my take-
home wages... I'd have told them "skip the options, bump my pay by 10%, and
maybe I'll take you more seriously".

People need to realize that equity != pay. Equity is so dependent on so many
other factors that you have ZERO control over that the risk-reward ratio is
heavily slanted toward the former.

------
m0zg
I feel like it's high time for companies to consider posting salary ranges up
front. It is understandable that salary will vary depending on experience, but
when the offer can vary between companies by as much as 2-3x, it's a total
waste of time for me (and for the prospective employer) to interview at
companies which pay one third of what I'm making now. You could say there's
Glassdoor and Blind, but both are pretty unreliable, albeit in different
directions (Glassdoor usually shows too little, and on Blind people brag too
much), and leave room for the kind of negotiation that assumes the hire is a
sucker.

I sometimes get pings from Japanese and European recruiters, and it's not
uncommon to see the ranges in those. They're usually pretty hilarious by US
standards, though, so I politely decline without wasting anybody's time
interviewing (even though I wouldn't mind spending a few years in Europe or
Japan). At the very least, this is respectful of my time and effort.

------
alexandercrohde
So to try to distill what this is -- I guess it's just a post to vent about
some frustrating anecdotes?

I don't see any larger conclusion here. Let's assume HR talent falls on a
normal distribution: just like you'll meet some absurd engineering candidates
you'll also meet some absurd HR people.

I imagine companies that make really bad hiring decisions are put under
selection pressure and are less likely to continue to exist. It's a problem
that I think can be fixed by the marketplace, but I don't know if a post makes
any tangible impact.

------
Trisell
I've been looking for jobs recently. Have a background building pretty robust
Node/React apps. At the 4 places that have given me an interview. I've been
told that I don't meet their needs. The reason for this. I'm unable to solve
their pet coder wars function challenge. Being a self taught programmer, not
having a 'learned' background has proven to be a hindrance. Because I don't
have the traditional algorithmic chops. In the time I've been working as a
programmer I've had the need to use recursion one maybe two times. 3 of the 4
interviews have required me to over use recursion because iteration is to
'easy'.

Apparently my ability to answer some random function that in no way shows my
ability to do day to day engineering work disqualifies me from employment. Yet
these same companies are posting month in and month out looking for engineers
and complaining that they are unable to find viable employees.

~~~
imroot
I'm in a similar boat -- my educational background is hardware engineering,
but, I've been a Linux nerd/SRE for the last 20 years. I found a great
position that would be perfectly in line with what I'm doing now --
specifically managing teams of SRE's for a startup in NYC that would allow me
to work remotely, but, during their "technical" interview, I was asked to
"humanize" a number using any language that I chose.

Knowing that ruby has a humanize gem (and python's humanize module doesn't get
as granular as they wanted their example to be), I mentioned this to the
interviewer, saying, "Hey -- why would I want my development team to spend an
hour re-inventing the wheel when it can already be done with a code import?"
\-- while showing him the gem, and providing a sample code.

Suffice to say, he wasn't interested in that, he wanted to see how I'd
implement something like that...

...so, I provided my code...which was as clunky as it could be in 30 minutes
-- and then was almost certain that I lost this specific position because I
didn't interpret my numbers from right to left vs left to right.

Seriously -- if you've booked a hotel room in the US, there's a 50% chance
you've booked it on infrastructure that I've designed and implemented from the
ground up. I've led teams of 20+ SRE's around the world in a 40 billion dollar
company. My references speak for themselves. The reality is that they're going
to still be looking for a SRE manager position in three months, and I won't be
looking anymore because I would have found something that I'm interested in
(and isn't me doing a containerization of a Windows-based ERP system in 96
hours).

~~~
koala_man
On the other hand, imagine if you asked a programmer to write some novel code
and they said "sorry, I can't. There was no Ruby gem or SO answer for this so
I don't know how"

~~~
rabidrat
"...so it's going to take me more than 30 minutes."

------
bayesian_horse
That is a very popular sentiment, but entirely without basis in fact.

It requires there to be a large pool of highly qualified candidates who don't
work in the industry right now (and more likely completely unemployed) who
would want to work in the industry if the conditions were "just right".

But such a pool just doesn't exist. All employers can do, especially
considering wages, is to try and poach candidates from competitors, other
industries, other countries.

There clearly is a perception of depressed wages. I believe this mostly is an
issue of a distorted labor market. There seems to be an issue of collusion
among employers not entering into mutually harmful wage competition. Maybe
regulations don't give employees enough power in the process. Unionization is
also rare, and may not work in any case.

------
HelloNurse
There's an obvious distortion that makes bad recruiters overrepresented: good
positions in good companies tend to be filled immediately, typically through
personal contacts and headhunters without posting ads, while mediocre
positions require a serious recruitment effort (with mediocre recruiters,
mediocre job postings and mediocre candidates) and really unreasonable morons
need to shout very long and very loudly to select suckers.

------
assblaster
I think there's a problem with MBAs in general who want to decrease costs,
expecting the market to cater to their desires.

The problem is a limited supply of labor for them, and they just haven't
figured out that their business plans will not come to fruition until they
change their assumptions.

I see this in healthcare all the time:

Healthcare MBA doesn't want to pay market rate for nurses. Experienced nurses
quit and take jobs elsewhere with sign on bonuses. Hospital hires
inexperienced nurses to fill gap. Inexperience causes burdens on surgeons and
physicians and other nurses. More experienced nurses quit, surgeons and
physicians quit, ad nauseum.

Saving some money short term leads to the inevitable destruction of the
institution. Who gets paid bonuses for this clever trick? Healthcare MBAs who
move onto the next victim.

------
scottlegrand2
When a company wants to hire a specific person and they have already found
that specific person, to comply with employment law, they have to write up a
job description so other people can apply for that job. By making that job
description so specific that only one person in the known universe satisfies
it, they comply with employment law and get to hire the person they want.

I know this because I have gone through this process several times.

~~~
projektfu
Tell me, where is this the law? I know that government positions (VA,
universities, etc.) often have to do this, but where is a private company
required to allow competitive application to these positions? As I understand
it, it's simply corporate policy. But I'd be interested to know where it's
actually illegal to hire someone based solely on referral/networking.

------
srndh
I once interviewed at a company and I was shocked at the job description as it
was network & server support + IT support + full stack developer in python,
java & .net but the ad was for "an experienced python developer". My career
history is, I started in IT support then became a developer in .net & later
moved to Python. Maybe that is why they called me. But none the less, I told
it was not possible for 1 person to do it all. But they said thats how they
have it in the company with 3 member IT team. Interestingly, no member of the
IT department or IT manager was at the interview. They refused to give any
more details without me joining the company & signing a non-disclosure + non-
competence + 2 yr bond.

Then once I was done with the interview, I went to the near by restaurant and
casually asked if they knew anything about the company and luckily, a person
from the accounts dept was there. So, he told me how the company initially had
12 members in the IT department when 6-8 would be enough. Then on a cost
cutting sphere, they axed 6 on 1 day and then it thinned out to 3. Of which,
the IT manager has resigned leaving just 2 members, both related to the owner.
While the owner's son, a 1st yr cs grad student is the IT manager.

This is an extreme tale and I couldn't verify the story. But now this trend of
making 1 person do the job of 2-3 for the salary of 1 seems common nowadays.

------
wrestlerman
Based on my experience this is very true. It's very annoying when you want to
find a job, but you don't want to be a sucker, so you end up looking for a job
for a long time. I don't get it. You want to hire someone talented or smart,
obviously, you are gonna have to pay them good money. What's the problem with
that? I'm sure they will bring much more value than a usual sucker.

Personal story ahead. I've been looking for a job for around two months
already. I'm Ruby/JS dev, so there are a few offers I can choose from. The
problem is, half of that offers pay very little. Based on my experience,
related to working with other people and to my previous salaries, I'd be a
sucker to apply to those cheap offers. What I'm even more afraid is the people
I'd work with. I'm pretty young and ambitious and I learn fast and I want to
learn a lot, but if you don't have a good mentor you are not gonna learn that
much.

Unfortunately, the offers, that interest me, require much more experience than
I have. I doubt that I'd have a real problem with adapting and doing the job
unwell. But I don't even get invited to any interview from that offers,
because my CV has one year or two years of experience less than they expect :(
How can I show that I could be a good fit then?

I know it's not that much related to the topic, but I've been a bit
frustrated.

~~~
sokoloff
The advice is fairly obvious (or at least is the default course you're likely
to take anyway): just keep at it. If someone really cares about the difference
between 24 and 36 months of experience, you probably don't want to work there
anyway...

~~~
wrestlerman
Yea, I know you are right. Still, it sucks that there is mindset like that...

------
soneca
I am at the other side of the spectre, I have less than 2 years of experience,
but I have the same feeling that there's no shortage, just unnecessary
friction.

I am moving to LA from Brazil next month. I am a self-taught frontend
developer. I am 39 years old, but still a junior as I changed careers less
than two years ago.

I participated in two process with the standard remote technical interview
solving a problem live coding in communication with a senior developer.

I realized I won't pass this kind of interview unless I focus on studying
solely for it. I am planning to buy "Cracking the code interview" because I
cannot afford to not have a job in LA, but it feels such a waste of time. I am
almost 40 and tired of pretending that some trivia and practice on a simulated
environment is transferable to real jobs.

I am the kind of developer that agrees with the idea that software developers'
job is to solve business problems, not coding. That knowing what to code is
more important than coding fast. That communication with people in and out of
the team, developers and not developers is an essential skill.

But that's not what the hiring game values.

I have no ambitions of being a _" real software engineer"_ that will work on
cutting edge technology. I am happy building complex websites that will make a
company money.

I hope that once in LA I will meet some entrepreneurial types with promising
business models that value what I can do well. But the reality is that I will
have to learn to play the hiring game.

~~~
ativzzz
Every interaction with other humans that can have an outcome that you are
trying to pursue (like getting a job) is best viewed as a game.

You can choose not to play the game, which significantly reduces your chances
and opportunities Or choose a different game, like

> I will meet some entrepreneurial types with promising business models that
> value what I can do well

which is still a game, but a game you are willing to play.

~~~
soneca
Indeed, I do not disagree with anything you said

------
solatic
Question - why even bother having "box tickers"? When you post a job listing,
write a short blurb about the company culture and what the job itself
involves. Don't bother listing "requirements" or "boosters", because the fact
of the matter is, people will send resumes which don't meet your
"requirements" and in order to put a boost-worthy resume at the top of the
pile, you need somebody to read it in the first place to decide whether it
deserves to be boosted to the top of the pile, in which case... it was already
read in the first place. And that's assuming you even have a stack of resumes
in the first place, which in engineering is a reason to put your hands
together in silent thanks that you've become successful.

The hiring manager should already have an idea what level of experience is
needed, what kind of budget exists, and how quickly the hire needs to be made
by. Winnowing down from a stack of resumes to an offer is the art of
compromising on those three axes. If your job opening can actually
legitimately be kept open for that long (i.e. for a year plus, with no
consequences), you should probably reassess whether you need to hire for the
position in the first place.

~~~
Spooky23
Because once you run into somebody who decides that your subjective judgement
represents illegal discrimination, you’ll wish that a third party checked the
boxes you.

~~~
solatic
And it's not evidence of illegal discrimination if you eventually decide to
hire somebody who didn't have the "required" level of skills or experience but
submitted their resume anyway and you happened to give them an interview
anyway but found them much more impressive in person?

If anything, it would seem to me that the more you put down on paper, the more
legally exposed you are if you don't follow it to the letter. Of course, this
doesn't absolve companies whose hiring managers do stupid things in interviews
that are almost guaranteed to get their company sued; but that's a concern to
be trained against regardless of how discerning your textual job posting is.

------
jmartrican
I agree with this article. But maybe not so much HR but the hiring managers
that is the root cause. HR takes its marching orders of who to recruit/hire
from the hiring managers.

What's going on here? What we have here is a min-max problem. In one case, the
hiring manager would like to reduce risk of a bad hire and reduce amount of
time needed to train an engineer. On the other side of the scale, the hiring
manager needs to hire someone and get a butt in seat to get the work done. So
what to do?

A couple of things come to mind. First, there is an algorithm for this, the
optimal stoppage problem. That is you review a certain amount of candidates,
lets say X, then pick the best one after X. The problem comes down to solving
for X. I forget the solution, but there is one out there that is based on how
long you want to wait.

Second thing that comes to mind is relying on core attributes, like hard work,
motivation, overall intelligence, team-player, etc... versus overly specific
skills.

Yes in both cases a lot is still left up to subjectivity and can still lead to
long lead times in filling a position.

------
hinkley
I skimmed but there’s a kind of sucker I think he missed:

“Yes, ten other companies are doing the exact same thing our company does, and
there is open source that almost does what we want but we’ve hired fifty
developers to reinvent that wheel because reasons.”

There are too many people out there who could cut and paste most of my job
descriptions onto their resume. That’s only partly a failure on my part. Most
of my bosses don’t value my specialized skills (or only 3 months out of the
year), and there are too many people repeating my work or vice versa.

There are a lot of custom CMS systems out there. If we refused to build them
or insisted on making them thinner layers over standard modules, we would have
plenty of people to go do other things. And I bet HN could name at least three
other tropes that repeat all over the industry like that.

------
WheelsAtLarge
This happens in other industries too. A few years ago 60 Minutes did a story
about a manufacturing company desperately looking for people to fill their
positions. They interviewed the CEO and he said that the shortage was so
extreme that they had to partner with a local college to create a training
program to get the needed workforce. They went on an on about how hard it was
to fill their positions and could not understand it since at the time the
unemployment rate was relatively high. Finally, the interviewer asked what the
salary for the position was. They, in an extremely serious tone, responded
with $13.00/hour. And this was at a time when you could get a fast food job
for $10-$11 without a bit of experience.

------
gumby
I'm typically cynical about claims like this but the situations he describes
are absurd and support his claim.

Super Narrow Selection Criteria in particular however is not absurd; it means
they have a specific candidate in mind. I don't mean to defend the practice
(it either means the company has a screwed up hiring process or more likely
they are trying to hire a specific domain expert from overseas and want to
minimize the number of interviews of less qualified people) however I do
believe this one case doesn't support the thesis.

------
ycombonator
The OP is so spot on. This still frustrates me. The HR, the contract
recruiters including technical recruiters are completely disconnected from
what the organization needs. On top of that the applicant systems some of
these companies employ is horrendous. You have to retype every elfin piece of
work history like an FBI background check and in the end your application
becomes a metric of the recruiter who can show they have really worked hard to
get as many applications as possible. Remove the middle men.

------
musicale
Companies are so desperate to find qualified employees that they will do
anything short of raising wages.

------
tomek_zemla
I had an interview with a recruiter for an apparently (from what I hear) good
AI company in Montreal, Canada. Their business is happening so they need to
find a lot of people of various specialities. So they hired some ultra junior
and not very bright full time recruiters. They are the ones that make lots of
initial rejections stopping good candidates from actually getting to the
proper subject matter interviews. The recruiter was confused because I applied
for a UX/UI design position - my focus last 10 or so years - but I actually
studied computer science so I have lots of coding experience not only design
skills. This is an actual quote from the conversation: 'So, I see you _also_
have programming experience, but you applied for UX/UI design position, so I
am not sure it is _good_...'.

I did manage to navigate through completely retarded 45 minute HR conversation
and got invited for the interview with the director of UX. From the moment I
walked in the guy was ultra uncomfortable and shy because he was obviously
15~20 years younger than myself. Also clearly never interviewed people before.
I never heard back from them, but I see that the position is still open...

------
sevilo
And every shitty little startup thinks they’re Google, and demand so called
“unicorn” developers while hoping to pay them 60k a year. And if you don’t
know exactly “Home Depot Vendor System” then in their mind you’re marked as
not the developer they want, despite having experience in like 5 other super
similar technology. That seriously grinds my gears, those companies deserve to
not be able to hire anyone.

------
debatem1
Just came off the job market recently and totally agree. The number of only-a-
genuinely-dumb-person-would-take-this offers is staggering.

------
aidenn0
I agree with most things in this, but one point about the "super narrow
criteria" part. It's annoying but in reality the list of "must haves" is
actually a list of "want to haves" If you check some of the requirements, go
ahead and reply. Maybe 10% of the companies actually mean it, the rest will
consider hiring you.

~~~
nikofeyn
in my experience it is some seemingly arbitrary criteria that was never
mentioned.

------
canterburry
I'm sorry people, but one job posting != one job opening. That position was
taken before it was even posted. Posting the job is purely a legal formality.

There is either an internal candidate already identified or there is a h1b
candidate who needs their work authorization. Either way, that job was never
going to be yours regardless of your qualifications.

------
Mr_Shiba
>I'm 45 and have gray hair.

I'm reaching 40 next year, 20 years of code experience. What's bizarre about
the whole thing is that I would be consider to be reaching my productive peak
in the next 10 years in any other field.

In tech you are treated like a dinosaur, as if not knowing what the latest
hipster JS framework of the week makes you obsolete.

>Are you people complete morons?

Yes.

~~~
quickthrower2
Also there is no reason why a 50 year old can’t learn Vue, React, Rust,
Blockchain, PWA, Docker or anything else that is hot. It’s all logic, all 1s
and 0s. Someone with 20 years experience can probably learn it faster.

~~~
Mr_Shiba
Exactly my point, I don't mean to brag but just picked react and redux 4
months ago. I'm already one of the most productive react-redux sr. engs at my
current job

Is not about me being a "ninja" is about me doing this computer science thing
for over 20 years

------
chiefalchemist
Two thoughts:

1) The majority of companies don't understand what they want and/or need in
terms of personnel. Why that is can be a discussion some other time.

Of course there are exceptions. Typically they are the successful companies,
the industry leaders, etc. Those who fail to make this cut believe these
companies are auccessful because of open floor plans, ping pong tables, etc.

Collins said "Get the right people on the bus."

That's kinda true but also incomplete. It's actually: "Get good people on the
right bus and get rolling in the right general direction. No ping pong tables
required."

2) What most job posters don't seem to realize is that better / great people
typically have a well serviced bullshit detector. Post your nonsense all you
want. The ones you wish you could get can smell your turd-scented confusion
and won't bother. It's not them. It's you. Suck it up and deal with it
already.

------
haidut
Talent shortage and sucker shortage are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there
is good evidence that the former can drive the latter. Basically, most of the
talentless people also tend to lie about their experience, educational
background, knowledge level, previous salaries, career preferences, etc to
compensate for their lack of talent. It does NOT work of course, most of the
time, but what do they stand to lose? So, when this goes on for some time the
HR departments start to assume everybody is a talentless, lying, P.O.S. as it
is simply cheaper and less taxing on corporate resources to go with that
assumption if the majority of interviewers truly are like that. Yes, they may
miss a star here and there, but they will also save themselves an HR-wide (and
beyound) burnout and a ton of wasted money. I will be the "negative Nancy" in
this thread and say that unfortunately there has been a drastic drop in IQ
scores around the world over the last 30 years.
[https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/iq-scores-have-
be...](https://raypeatforum.com/community/threads/iq-scores-have-been-
dropping-for-decades-and-the-reason-is-not-genetic.24367/)

That is bound to manifest itself in the generally quality of prospective
employees. The term "idiocracy" takes that idea to the extreme...but
unfortunately is not far from the truth. In my experience, a general rule of
thumb in Fortune 500 HR (and even large federal agencies) is that a star will
almost never apply directly through the front door. There will be either
recommended by a trusted insider or will find an ingenious way to demonstrate
their talent. For all the rest, the assumption (mostly correct) is that they
are junk or at the very least significantly overrating their self-professed
abilities/talents/worth/salary/etc. So, what looks like a sucker shortage is
simply the trend for lower value default offers most HR departments will put
out there based on the (reasonable) assumption of the (low) quality of the
person up against them.

------
black-alert
I think we do have a talent shortage, seriously, I see it all the time in the
companies I work for. And if you run in an interview like the author
describes, it is very likely that the interviewer just lacks talent and
happens to be in that position, otherwise he or she would recognise the
opportunity and go for a good deal.

But there are also good reasons why companies are often extremely careful
hiring new staff. Many companies are desperately seeking the right dev's
because they know that the wrong pick can cost them tons of money. The mess a
wrong dev can create can do so much damage to the product while it often has
to be released within a certain timeframe. I've seen a startup failing because
of that.

~~~
watwut
> Many companies are desperately seeking the right dev's because they know
> that the wrong pick can cost them tons of money. The mess a wrong dev can
> create can do so much damage to the product while it often has to be
> released within a certain timeframe

That suggests problems in management and organization. Likely also with
existing seniors and their communication with management. If not having
developer causes less issues then hiring average one, then the company really
needs to rethink their processes and onboarding.

------
honkycat
I've been seeing this a LOT lately. There is plenty of work out there, but
some of the offers I have been seeing are PATHETIC.

Check out this job posting: metaltoad dot bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=103

> 90k max salary

> 9 years of industry experience

Totally clueless. Good luck with that.

Recently talked to a certain Beaverton, Oregon based shoe company. APPARENTLY,
they hire a lot of their new hires as "contractors" and dangle the "full time"
carrot in front of their face for a year. Swear up and down you are not a
second class citizen... except you can't use the gym. Or go to the holiday
party or use a lot of their facilities. And your badge is a different color.

Yeah, go sell that to someone else. Good luck finding a competent engineer.

------
krob
Rule #1, know going in that they know what your salary requirement is. Ask
them many times throughout the process, if they flinch at any point drop them.
Then continue on with your interviews. If you're asked to go in for an
interview more than a few times, it's a major red flag. There is zero reason
for this. They can do background checks on you. They can ask for references to
people you worked with etc. Don't be led on. At this point, you're time is
worth more than theirs because this process drains you mentally & physically,
and likely drains your vacation time / pay, so it's literally costing you $$$$
when you interview at new companies.

------
BrandonMarc
Reminds me of what I hear over and over and over about the "crisis" shortage
of truck drivers in America, and because of this "crisis" they just have to
spend billions developing automated trucks that will put millions of current
drivers out of work.

It's simple economics - if there truly is a shortage of drivers, offer a
higher salary. Yes, it really is that simple.

There's no shortage of drivers - or of people who would become drivers.
There's a shortage of people who will accept a low-ball wage, whereas with an
autonomous truck you don't have to deal with inconvenient things like salary,
health insurance, union dues, etc.

------
rdiddly
Sorry to bring this up, but then again if he's gonna get all old-school and
freely call people "suckers," "crazy," and "morons," I guess I don't feel too
bad asking: What kind of crazy sucker moron makes a site that is perfectly
simple and lightning-fast, almost to the point of looking like
motherfuckingwebsite.com, and then allows AMP into the picture? The one very
small & economical image on this particular page doesn't load unless I enable
scripts from ampproject.org and the AMP CDN. I mean AMP is for speeding up
_bloated_ pages and sucking Google's proverbial... bandwidth... isn't it?

------
huffmsa
The amount of inflationary BS on "senior engineer" resumes I've read when
hiring is astounding. 5 years of this, 4 years of that, 5 frameworks, 3
languages, the whole AWS alphabet soup in the toolbox.

But then, 95% of them can't fizzbuzz.

~~~
legohead
The more senior I've gotten, the more I've removed from my resume. I used to
stuff it with everything I had learned over the years. But my real profession
is just "software engineer." You give me a language and a problem, and let me
figure out the rest.

------
tqi
> So apparently you won't be considered for a senior position unless you've
> worked in almost exactly that role in a company that was almost exactly the
> same at almost exactly the same career level.

A lot of this may be due to the H-1B -> Green Card application process. I
think the company has to prove their existing H-1B employee is the only
possible person who can fill the role by posting the job publicly, so the
lawyers will craft the req as narrowly as possible. As a result, many of these
listings were never intended to be filled with external hires.

------
NicoJuicy
I moved from where there was not IT, to a bigger city. I was pretty well
compensated and have the same thing now.

They promised me to be partner, I felt bad leaving there for my colleagues.
But I would never return, as their promise was just for keeping me interested.

Just 1/5th of the stress of before now. Thank god, sometimes being a sucker is
doing too much.

Eg. Night calls because one of my applications ( e-commerce) was for fast-
food, who did their orders at 01:00 am. Guess who had to fix other's people's
sync services at night.

Even when I went swimming, I had to check phone calls. Urgh

------
guardincress
I've been applying to jobs for about 5 months now and I haven't even managed
to get a single technical interview, let alone a job offer. Can somebody
please take a look at my linkedin and tell me if I'm stupid
(www.linkedin.com/in/niyeturner)? Honestly if I'm completely out of my league
and just need to quit making software I just want to hear it from somebody,
rather than just all of a sudden being ignored. I guess there's also the
possibility my web traffic is being attacked by my house mates

~~~
jaggederest
Your linkedin shows zero experience (<1 year, but two jobs?) and a 4 year gap
between college and any technical work, plus you don't actually expand on any
of the technologies you've worked on.

Show continuity of experience over a long time (even if it's just a project,
list it in your experience section) and put "Javascript" or "Python" in your
headline. Talk about some of the things you've done, and skip the video game
references imo. Don't let it get you down, 5 months is not really that long,
and definitely don't give up.

~~~
guardincress
thank you

------
smsm42
> I'm 45 and have gray hair. /.../ It apparently indicates I am completely
> ignorant about technology and social media.

One has to be on serious drugs (or profoundly ignorant on the not-very-bright-
kindergartener level) to think somebody 45 years old working in tech is
ignorant about tech or social media. This is the generation who had computers
since they were 10. And back then computers required real investment of time
and knowledge to use.

Is it a real thing that happens? Are there recruiters like that?

~~~
JanisL
Thankfully there's not many people like this but I have met a few over the
years.

------
HillaryBriss
> _Get over yourselves and just freakin hire someone. You 're running a
> website, not curing cancer._

this pretty much describes the landscape, even for positions at companies like
Google

------
mcnichol
Although I agree that HR is totally jacked and merely reading the yearly
buzzwords to detect for "good candidates"...

I couldn't get beyond this sounding like: Old Guy Yells at Cloud
[https://i.kym-
cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/019/304/old...](https://i.kym-
cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/019/304/old.jpg)

Coming from an older guy myself.

------
caprese
> "We only hire the best"

of the people looking for jobs........ ?

~~~
sokoloff
And who weren't hired by the other 100 companies who also "only hire the top
5% [of people they get resumes from]"...

------
ghufran_syed
I feel like the way to deal with this situation is to ask them to pay a
$1000-2000 deposit to take a day to interview, refundable in the event that
the company makes an offer meeting certain conditions (e.g cash salary >=
$amount)

Most companies will say 'no', the tiny minority that say 'yes' are the ones
that are serious.

Clearly only works if you have enough 'dealflow' to end up with nonzero takers

------
ec109685
The part about companies being too picky doesn’t ring true. LinkedIn allows
people to apply en-masse to jobs without any cost to them, so you end up
getting a lot of nonsense applicants. That’s why it’s not surprising to see
1000 people applying to that person‘s job. I wish LinkedIn had more built in
(but optional) ways of pre-filtering candidates before they reached the
employer.

------
laurentoget
So this is a person who built a website about writing efficient resumes, yet
is having a hard time finding a job in the current market?

~~~
rightbyte
Ye. He also seems to have a quite big ego.

------
gist
> "Experience with Home Depot’s Vendor Portal required" Posted by a national
> recruiting firm, no less. So let me get this straight. You're going to toss
> a resume in the trash because they haven't been keypunching data into a
> particular retailer's portal? For a Sales Director Job? Are you people
> complete morons?

Maybe simply a barrier to someone who is not knowledgeable enough to know the
true intent of that question. Let's take an extreme. Say there was a job
listing and part of the listing said 'must be able to cook hotdogs at
barbecues'. Nobody would take that seriously and a vegan would still apply.
Right? Or perhaps a vegan would not apply because they are not able to figure
out what the intent of the 'trick' question was.

A 'sales director' is someone who understands sales and is above all not
afraid to get past some sales barrier 'sorry we aren't interested right now'
but will keep pressing on even after 'no' is the repeated answer (if of course
they deem the opportunity appropriate).

I buy high end good. You don't know how many times I get back a reply which
says 'sorry it's not for sale at any price'. That always means the same thing
'show me the money'. Of course there are things that are 'not for sale at any
price' but typically not what I have found to be the case. What they are
saying is 'I don't think someone will offer a price I would ever consider
accepting' or 'I don't know the current market enough to even know what I have
is valued at' and so on.

------
mathattack
He rants about overly narrow descriptions. One reason companies do this is to
favor or eliminate specific internal candidates.

------
danieltillett
This is not unique to the employment area. I got a buyout offer from one of my
larger customers for my company. After a lot of back and forth the offer ended
up being 2x EBITA (i.e. 2 years profit) but with a 3 year workout. Even they
were sheepish after that offer. According to them this sort of offer was often
accepted.

------
wheelerwj
this is a big trend in business, startups, and HR right now (and growing for
the last 10 years+). Don't rush to hire a good candidate, put time into the
perfect candidate.

Good or bad, i think its debatable. but most of the experience and "meta"
these days is to wait for a great candidate.

~~~
ranci
Then you don't need the work associated with that job to be done very badly.
Yet it will still be marketed as "an opportunity to change the world".

~~~
wheelerwj
i don’t think those two things are mutually exclusive.

you can need the job done, and need it done very well, in order for it the
opportunity to change to succeed.

------
toasterlovin
If we don’t have a shortage of talent, then why are people with one set of
talents (software developers) making so much more money than people who lack
those talents? A talent supply that reflected the needs of the economy would
result in a flat distribution of incomes.

------
golergka
The author treats requirements as necessary - but they never are. I think that
at most positions I applied to and got offer for, I haven't checked at least
half of those "ticks". In the end, nobody treats them as if they're really
required.

~~~
pault
It's doubly self sabotaging because some of the most talented juniors and mid-
level engineers I've worked with are the types that will say "oh, I can only
do half of those things, I probably can't get that job anyway".

------
oblib
"Why Are You Reposting Jobs With Over 1000 applications?"

This would seem to indicate that there is a huge oversupply of coders. The
fact that knowing how to code wasn't even considered important in the "Startup
School" curriculum does as well.

------
slowhadoken
This article is true for jr devs too. I program and study everyday. I've been
trying to get into tech lately and it seems pointless. HR only wants senior
devs and recruiters want to make a buck filling those positions. Seems like a
racket.

------
fopen64
[https://medium.com/@carlosreutemann/tech-job-interviews-
the-...](https://medium.com/@carlosreutemann/tech-job-interviews-the-tinder-
of-labor-marketplace-d5ea644e0501)

------
jk27277
The job market has collapsed. The phenomenon is called "market for lemons"

------
galfarragem
I'm not in position of hiring people but, _a priori_ , the maxim - trial most,
hire the best - seems correct. I consider CV and interviews to be a waste of
time. Any thoughts about this?

~~~
avip
The sheer volume of resumes makes this approach impractical. You can easily
get 1000 resumes for a sw position.

------
ggm
In tertiary education and the state and federal government system here in
Australia the pay banding is well understood. Asking how a job equates in
responsibilities and renumeration can work.

------
pjdemers
Maybe there is some kind of survivor bias in open jobs. That is, jobs that are
desirable are filled in a few days. Crummy jobs stay open for months. So,
therefore, most open jobs are bad.

~~~
ryandrake
I was curious about this too and got about halfway through a project to parse
historic "Ask HN: Who's Hiring" data and find companies with the same job
posting over and over. Use it to generate a "Who's Not Actually Hiring" list
:) Wasn't curious enough to finish it though...

------
mashireh
Looks like this page is AMP. Disabling the AMP cdn with uMatrix causes the
page to take a whopping 11 seconds to load an 18kb page. I'm not sure where
this is going.

------
jackcosgrove
If you are conscientious and have some passions beyond making money, you will
always be a sucker to the cluster B personalities that run many businesses. I
don't think you can beat this system - the only way to win the game is to give
up who you are. The main advantage of being careful and sticking to your guns
is that you repel a lot of cluster B's, who do the filtering for you. You will
be happier ending up with those who remain.

"Sucker" is a pejorative that implies you can beat the system if you're smart
enough. You can only beat the system by breaking rules and becoming what you
hate.

------
shobith
Serious question to the author: Can we know how many hires you've made that
you're happy about? what is your interviewing process like?

------
klenwell
Like a lot of people here, I've been on both sides of the table. Currently on
the hiring side of the table interviewing web application developers. I agree
with a lot that's said in TFA, especially as someone who's suffered through a
months-long motivated job search where I shared the pain. For example:

> There are easily several thousand people in the town who are capable of
> building that business. Get over yourselves and just freakin hire someone.
> You're running a website, not curing cancer.

I hear you here. I've posted my team's hiring principles here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18586590](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18586590)

At the top:

\- Hiring cycles will be structured and as short as possible.

\- When we start a hiring cycle, we will finish it by hiring the most
qualified applicant who accepts our offer.

But on this point, I'm a little confused:

> So let me get this straight. You want me to bootstrap a multi-million dollar
> business, from scratch, operating with minimal marketing and operating
> funding in a highly competitive channel. Or get your consumer product
> slotted at a major retailer. Or launch your new web application. For
> $100,000 a year and no equity.

The general advice I come across here is to treat equity as a lottery ticket
and focus on salary. Is the complaint here that salary is an insult? In the
Bay Area, sure. But Atlanta? This comes off a bit self-entitled to me. At
least without more context.

I think there's also signs of what I'll call premature hindsight bias (feel
free to offer a better term). You assume, perhaps reasonably, that once hired,
you're going to come in, make friends, kick ass and provide value. I want to
believe that you can do it at a salary we both find fair. But until you get
here and have been on the job for a few weeks or months, it's going to be
really hard for me to know if that's what's going to happen. And if you happen
to not be a great fit for unexpected reasons, how do we deal with that? That
can be a lot of stress for everyone if not a full-scale disaster. In short,
you don't want to get suckered, I don't want to get suckered.

There's a lot of risk and uncertainty in hiring and I imagine risk aversion
drives a lot of it. I know it does for me even as I do my best to control it.
Hence the 4-5 interviews mentioned in the top comment. (That seems excessive
to me. I always wonder what a company gets out of the 5th interview that they
didn't get out of the 4th, or the 10th hour of meeting with a candidate that
they didn't get out of the 9th.)

Here's an exercise I call Black Boxes that I came up with recently for one of
our hiring retrospectives. I think we have a pretty good hiring approach but
I'm always looking to improve it. I share it here because I'm interested in
hearing the ideas of others:

BOX OPTIONS (alphabetical order):

\- Car Type (what type of car does applicant drive?)

\- Cover Letter (box may be empty)

\- Gender

\- LinkedIn Profile (box may be empty)

\- Phone Conversation (20-30 minutes)

\- Resume

PART 1

Ten people have applied for our web application position. You know nothing
about them. You have only a black box for each one. Ten black boxes. You get
to look into each black box. Then you have to hire one of these ten
applicants.

You get to choose the contents of the box from the options above. Which type
of box do you choose to make your hiring decision? In a comment below, list
your box. You may include a brief explanation if you wish. Example:

> Resume: This is the first thing I always look at. It should contain the most
> relevant info and is pretty low investment as it's a standard part of
> application.

PART 2

Now rank the rest of the boxes above in order of utility.

PART 3

What other boxes would you like to have as an option? Consider time/money
costs associated with each box.

~~~
strictnein
Maybe laws are different where you're at, but mentioning or considering gender
in a role is the biggest of no-nos. Grounds for firing and large lawsuits.

~~~
klenwell
Yes, that's recognized. It's a gotcha answer. If it's picked, we have a
discussion.

Though I suspect, much like the age bias noted in the article, it's a factor
that, consciously or unconsciously, influences a lot of interviewers.

------
purplezooey
Love the specific examples in this article.

------
plink
The glut of Uber drivers belies the title.

------
torqueTorrent
In my experience, this is a new development in the software industry. In the
past, the software industry was far more constrained when it comes to talent
acquisition. I vividly recall an old-guard software CEO in the mid 1990s
lamenting the beginning of the dot-com era: its overwhelming demand for
engineers and seemingly skyrocketing staffing costs. I've been in the industry
for decades and to me this feels like an effect whereby there is now a
massive, seemingly endless stream of candidates for recruiters or companies to
choose from. I can only imagine there are many problems that can arise from an
environment whereby there are effectively an infinite number of candidates.
Analysis paralysis for instance?

------
sonnyblarney
Should note: there is quite a schism in 'market value' \- it's a hard one to
nail down. It's a range and it depends on a lot of factors.

There are people who just want a decent job with decent pay and a decent place
to work. They will do consistently decent work for stability, neat stuff to
work on. They are not heavy negotiators, and maybe don't realize they could
make '40% more elsewhere' \- or frankly are not willing to move their
wife/husband and 3 kids.

Real 'market value' is what you are being offered, or rather, what people are
accepting. So if people are accepting those supposedly low-ball numbers, well,
that is 'market value'.

~~~
mattnewport
If the positions are being filled and the offers accepted then why would
anyone be complaining about a "talent shortage"?

~~~
sonnyblarney
Because companies will always want better talent at a better price - in that
context, there will always be a 'shortage'.

Markets for labour are obviously clearing - we're seeing tons of hiring (and
laying off) - so people are getting hired.

Many companies are also looking for specialized talent, for specific jobs,
which are actually hard to fill. In some areas there is definitely a
'shortage' for opportunity cost.

One could argue 'they could just pay more' \- but it's not like industry will
boost wages for some job by 30% in the hopes that more people will start to
study and train for that subject! It's a short-run/long-run problem.

For broader industry trends, this happens: software is a 'good paying job' in
many places, ergo, more devs. But for specialization it's hard. And often it's
difficult to clearly justify the ROI. This ambiguity is tantamount to just a
lower real value due to the inherent risk.

The offers being made for most jobs are ballpark near 'market wages'.
Companies have a lot more data than individuals.

~~~
mattnewport
Well yeah, companies will always want better employees that cost them less and
employees will always want better jobs that pay them more. These desires are
somewhat at odds with each other.

"Talent shortage" is the language employers use to imply that rather than this
just being an eternal truth and their current situation being the current
market equilibrium, there is some kind of societal problem that society should
help them solve (at society's expense of course).

------
sureaboutthis
I often see some former co-workers who often tell me I should apply at my old
job should I ever sell my business. That happened four months ago and, during
that time, I couldn't find any contact information to apply. I called the
company's main number and was transferred to a voice mail of someone who never
called me back. I applied online to a different job, explaining the situation,
but never heard back.

The situation was this: I had two former managers and one co-worker all
advocating for me for the one job they knew was available--my old job!

I have not been able to get any response from the company at all.

------
sonnyblarney
"There are easily several thousand people in the town who are capable of
building that business"

I agree with most of the sentiment, but not this one.

Someone with the right experience, skills, maturity, 'get go' and initiative
... there are not 'thousands' of people like that in a mid tier city. More
likely only a handful.

------
meesles
One important point I didn't see mentioned was the other side: engineers also
think they're worth more than they are.

I posit the big VC-backed or FAANG companies 1) can offer huge initial
salaries to not have to deal with competition 2) hire juniors at high salaries
because they can afford to spend 1-2 years training them. Combine with the
sheer volume of hiring they all perform, and it starts to set some false
expectations. Maybe smaller companies are failing at capitalism by not
competing?

Anecdotally, I have seen engineers refuse pretty good gigs because they were
expecting to be treated like royalty without much to back it up. This industry
is skewed, in many ways.

~~~
exelius
There’s a lot of brain drain going on at consulting companies as everyone
flees a dying industry for 30% raises at FAAMG companies as they start to
tackle vertical industry offerings. They’re all aggressively attacking the
enterprise space.

These companies just have profit margins high enough to afford to blow
everyone out of the water with their offers. They’re competing with each other
for the top talent, and it makes it really hard for companies in other
industries to retain their best and brightest.

~~~
rightbyte
I like FAAMG but it's not pronounceble.

I always though Netflix was a odd company next to the giants. MS is a better
one. Maybe IBM should be included as well.

"FAGAMI" ... maybe "FAMAGI" to be less profound.

~~~
exelius
IBM doesn’t belong; their revenue has been flat for 20 years and they have
almost no influence in the tech world anymore. My clients view IBM as a
consulting company with a market position somewhere between Infosys and
Accenture.

On the other hand, Microsoft is still quite relevant to the future; Azure is
getting a lot of traction in the enterprise world as an alternative tech stack
to AWS. VSTS is rapidly displacing the whole Jira ecosystem and VS Code needed
6 months to become one of the most popular development tools.

~~~
rightbyte
Ye, there are not much hype around IBM. But IBM is surely more technically
forerunners than Netflix.

Is VSTS any good? Or is it from the ash into the fire? I would love to get rid
of Jira at work.

~~~
exelius
I agree; and if you want to have a conversation about media you need to
include the top 4 telecoms as well. Netflix doesn’t really belong with the
company it’s often mentioned in.

And yes, VSTS is good. The interface and tools are easy to use, the defaults
are way better than Jira and it integrates with damn near everything (even
tools it replaces, like Jenkins).

The Microsoft of the late 2010s is almost the polar opposite of the late 1990s
Microsoft. It’s all about open tools that link together via proprietary
orchestration platforms. Those platforms provide the bulk of the _business_
value, so I’m ok with them not being as open.

------
unreal37
When I was hiring developers, I wrote the job role hoping for the perfect rock
star candidate.

"Must have experience with the Home Depot vendor system"

I mean, what if someone fulfilled all my "musts"?!? That'd be the perfect
person.

But you hardly ever find rock stars. And so you hire the best person who
doesn't have all the required skills. Don't let job requirements stop you from
applying. And don't think that I'm being unrealistic for asking for what I
probably won't get.

~~~
detaro
Why write "must have" when it's not a "must have"? Why not admit that you'd
consider people not ticking all the boxes?

~~~
koala_man
Why go to a restaurant and ask "can I get a diet Coke, please"? Why not admit
that you'd consider other sugar free, carbonated, cola flavored soft drinks?

Because both parties should already be aware that it's a negotiation between
people and not a blockchain contract to be mechanically evaluated according to
a spec.

~~~
detaro
Indeed, you say "can I get a Coke please", not "it must be a diet Coke" \- or
if you do, you probably want to make it clear that you'd _not_ consider
alternatives. Similarly, enough companies use actual-must in job offerings
(for all or for some requirements), and enough companies are clear about
(some) requirements being a preference that expecting candidates to divine
which employers do and which don't mean it when they say "must" means you'll
loose out on some candidates, for no good reason.

