What does “there's a shortage of talent” mean?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9995371

by adamzerner • 11 years ago

11 26 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I've heard from various reliable sources that there's "a shortage of talent" in the tech industry.

On the other hand, I read things like http://unemployable.pen.io/ about people struggling to find jobs. Additionally, I recently graduated from one of the top coding bootcamps, and while I did find a job, I got non-responses or rejections from pretty much everywhere I applied. And this is the story I hear from everyone I talk to at the bootcamp. We're told that it's a "numbers game".

So what is meant by "there's a shortage of talent"? In the context of that claim, what is threshold you have to surpass to be considered "talent"?

phlyingpenguin• 11 years ago

What is a top coding bootcamp? Is that a degree? If not, then I don't find it surprising that it was difficult. Just as that article implies, many employers have minimum requirements that you may not meet, and they aren't necessarily crazy requirements.

But a bigger question than that is what market are you talking about? Are you talking about the valley? Boston? Have you considered that IT shortage is not a local problem, and a broader search could turn up unexpected opportunity?

paulrpotts3• 11 years ago

You might take a look at this article from the New York Review of Books on "STEM" jobs and all the noise about the talent shortage.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jul/09/frenzy-...

My take, as an older, very experienced software engineer (with 25+ years of professional experience): it's basically bullshit. Big employers just don't want to pay for American citizens, especially ones who want to be compensated appropriately for their degree of skill and experience, because they have a track record of getting stuff done. These employers want H1-B warm bodies to fill seats at half my salary. These employers can go !@#$% themselves.

partisan2• 11 years ago

Part of the problem, too, is that there are too many people making outrageous salaries.

I am currently hiring and as part of the interview process, I ask a very straightforward question. I expect it to take on the order of 5 minutes and 7 lines of code. It is programming 101. Out of the 10 or so people I've interviewed, exactly none of them has gotten past this question. Most of them take 45 minutes to work on it and few of them get it to work even then. These are people who have contracted at big name places, with 10+ years of experience, with CS degrees, H1-B and non-H1-B.

So if I am going to hire someone who is unable to write a simple algorithm, I would rather do it at offshore prices. And sadly, that is something I am seriously considering doing.

paulrpotts3• 11 years ago

You might consider whether this is really a valid test, or just something that you _think_ truly evaluates whether a candidate can do the job. In my experience hiring, it's not that valuable. I do think some kind of screening for basic skills is valuable at the low/inexperienced end, but writing code in front of an expectant audience may not be it.

I have written hundreds of thousands of lines of shipping code, and I've faced this kind of code-for-an-interview process repeatedly. The last time I had to do it, I found that I actually choked on a simple string reverse problem.

It was a really basic algorithm; there was absolutely no difficulty with my understanding of how the algorithm worked, or how to code it. I just choked. I was talking to three people on Skype with a shared whiteboard, and I had to give up. It was very frustrating. This had more to do with the fact that I had been out of work for several months and was facing a huge amount of stress about things like paying the mortgage than it did with my actual abilities on the job.

evilhaskeller• 11 years ago

Could you share the question with us?

Forgive my skepticism, but I have been battle-hardened by some pretty bad horror stories.

I work at a Big 4, we see a lot of fresh graduates coming in every weeks or so.

To give you an idea of how bad it can be: a group of technical recruiters took the decision to "tweak" one of the interview questions we are asking during on-sites. They thought the change was benign when in fact it made the problem NP-hard, which is you know... pretty "tough" to solve under 45 minutes (or without a lab, a research team and 20 years). Of course, all of them were baffled by the fact that none of the candidates were performing well on this "trivial" question.

It took us three engineers, and two interviewees to make them acknowledge, and understand their mistake.

A big waste of time for everyone.

CrankyFool• 11 years ago

Speaking as a hiring manager in a tech company here for a moment, I do find there's a shortage of reasonable people to consider. I found this thread because someone had pointed me at unemployable.pen.io and wanted to comment on it specifically, because having read that particular blog post, I started off thinking "man, that's someone I'd like to talk to," and then realized a few things:

If you're trying to get hired, then maybe when you write a blog post on the fact, you also include a link to your resume. Or at least your name. Because otherwise, I'm sitting here thinking to myself "welp, no idea who this person is"

This person acknowledges that for more than a decade, she/he coasted in an office job. I tend to hire for strong initiative and drive, and I'd worry about this person. And that still wouldn't stop me from talking to them IF THEY MADE IT EASY FOR ME TO FIND THEM.

J_Darnley• 11 years ago

What does it mean? There is no Linus-level genius willing to work for $10 an hour.

taprun• 11 years ago

A "shortage of talent" is actually economic shorthand. The full phrase is "shortage of talent at the rate I'm willing to pay." You can always find a fantastic developer, if you're willing to pay more than the other guys.

That said, the hiring process is completely broken. I know barely literate programmers making bank, while exceptional programmers are just scraping by.

autotune2• 11 years ago

The problem is the hiring process tests for your ability to make it through the hiring process, not for your ability to actually do the job.

cypher_glyph• 11 years ago

"Shortage of talent" is code for "we abandoned our in-house training program and want other companies to foot the bill"

kasey_junk• 11 years ago

The software industry has a fundamental problem in that we don't have a broad objective measure for what is "good" software. It is also a very young industry that is still in the crazy iteration/development phase. This leads to changing "best practices" and wheel reinvention to the extreme.

This causes software projects to be both extremely expensive, hard to estimate and with terrible success rates.

Because all of that, finding software developers that can regularly deliver business value is extremely difficult and it is usually priced too high for most businesses.

Personally, I don't view this as a hiring problem, I view this as an oddity of the times we live in. Give it another 25 or 30 years and maybe we will actually know something about how software projects should work.

davismwfl4• 11 years ago

It can mean a number of things.

1. Truly there are not enough trained people for the jobs available, but I don't necessarily think that is our core problem in the US based market right now.

2. There is a shortage of new graduates to fill the entry level jobs available to do the grunt work on projects, and paying a senior engineer 6 figures to write programs or utilities slightly harder than Hello World is a bad investment (obviously a bit of an exaggeration but you get the idea).

3. Employers are not willing to pay the wage necessary to hire the people that are available in the market with the capability to do what the employer needs. e.g. they want to pay 70k/year for a 10 year senior engineer instead of a 6 figure salary. Supply and demand issue basically.

4. Employers are not willing to invest in an employee with 75-80% of the skill set to get them to the 100% they need. This can be because companies are so focused on quarterly numbers that they don't want a carrying and training cost or that they are fearful the employee will just leave once they are trained. I have heard both fairly recently.

Personally, I think all of these are true at different times and in different places, and I think there is some type of "shortage" now depending on the market you are in.

flurben• 11 years ago

I would not call an employer's unwillingness to pay market rates a "Supply and Demand issue."

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

Sure it is. At the price set by supply and demand, that employer is priced out of the market.

davismwfl4• 11 years ago

When supply of talent availability outweighs demand for the talent, wages go down or remain flat. McDonalds, Dairy Queen etc all have an abundance of high school aged kids to work the counter every year as an example of ample supply and relatively flat wages.

When demand for talent out paces the supply then wages should generally continue to rise until some equilibrium is established. Tech is on the rise side of this. A side affect is it has made it harder for small businesses to afford senior engineers. Many companies are also playing games primarily using foreign workers that essentially is manipulating supply which allows them to control wages.

There are of course other reasons an employer could be priced out of the market or unwilling to pay market wages of course. Maybe they just can't afford a senior engineer because their business isn't mature enough, it happens so they need to get creative. e.g. Use an outside firm or hire an individual who has less experience and hence has a lower cost.

NY_hudson• 11 years ago

sounds to me like employers want to "churn and burn" through young talent

6d0debc071• 11 years ago

5. For whatever reason, whether it be that they're bad at selling themselves or whether it be that the value they add is hard to advertise, programmers perform poorly in the hiring process/sales meeting that are typical used.

davismwfl4• 11 years ago

Very accurate. When you interview you are selling yourself. The difference in pay can be significant for those who do this and those who don't. When I was working for companies as an employee I never realized how much of a difference that made for me. I had friends making 10-20k less than I did who had more experience but couldn't articulate it or sell themselves. That was a huge eye opener for me.

I also had friends that would interview 10-15 times before getting an offer, and yet I typically would interview just a few times and have an offer. Not being cocky, I really think the only difference was that I was selling myself whereas they were just answering questions.

chrisbennet• 11 years ago

If they could hire someone if they paid 1 million dollars, it means that the market rate is somewhere between what they are offering and 1 million dollars. Remember "market rate" means what you could actually purchase something in the market for.

If we set aside the possibility of greed on the part of employers, it may mean that they cannot afford to pay market rates i.e. their business model isn't compatible with paying the market rate for the labor they need.

mcnamaratw• 11 years ago

As far as I can tell, 'shortage of talent in tech' just means companies are hiring.

JSeymourATL• 11 years ago

I got non-responses or rejections from pretty much everywhere I applied.

Turns out that Corporate America is really bad at recruiting, thanks to poor technology investment decisions.

Here's an excellent assessment on the hiring situation by headhunter Nick Corcodilos > http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-sense/ask-headhunter-recr...

sheepmullet• 11 years ago

It means companies refuse to:

1) train people, and 2) pay for talent

Businesses have pretty much tapped out the supply of devs who will spend thousands of hours of their own time on l&d for the love of the craft. So now if they want the expertise they have to pay.

If I am learning on my own time in order to increase my income I expect to get returns of at least 1cent/hour (and that's the extreme low end). So if I invest 10,000 hours I expect at least a $100/hr return.

How many companies complaining about a dev shortage are offering salaries of $300k+/year (intermediate dev salary + $100/hr compensation for all the l&d)?

What does “there's a shortage of talent” mean?

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