Every job that pays more than the median salary is experiencing some amount of skill shortage. The distance between the median US salary and the median salary for the job in question is the amount of shortage. I should add that some shortages are artificial because of unnecessary licensing requirements, but that is not the case in software.

The many insanely intelligent people I've met that are out of work would have a job?

A couple of links from the manpower group:

Manpower On Talent Shortage 2016

Manpower Stats on Skills Shortages

Engineers are number 6 on the list. Software development addresses many problem domains. An enterprise developer has a different skill set than say an embedded developer. So the natural question is what skills are there a shortage of? Pretty sure the aggregate of the median income of software developers in the USA has pretty much just kept up with GDP over the last decade but again that doesn't say that much.

How about we try to stick to things that we can quantify and measure objectively on a scale larger than one person's professional network?

pretty sure the massive success and proliferation of boot camps is strong indication that there is a talent deficit in the programming world.

Since we've had some discussions on hiring here, saw this in the most recent Hacker Newsletter: The One Method I’ve Used to Eliminate Bad Tech Hires

To spoil the clickbaity headline, the method is...
- give candidates a take-home assignment
- pay them $100/hr for how long it should take them to finish it
- bring them in and discuss their solution as a team

I think there are potentially a few logical problems with this statement. There are a number of potentially true statements that could be made about the proliferation of bootcamps, so the proliferation itself can't prove them by itself.

1. programming jobs pay well, there are a lot of people who would like a good paying job (without going to college)

2. college is increasingly seen is too expensive or not worth it

3. people who run bootcamps want to make money. Combined with #1 and #2 this leads to a proliferation of bootcamps, whether there is demand or not

4. people who hire, when they say there is a lack of skills on the market, really often mean that there is a lack of skills at a price they want to pay. Although I am sure that many bootcamp graduates land good paying jobs, in my personal experience people who go into them have lower expectations for salary than other programmers their age (because regardless of their age, they are new employees). This means employers get to hire mature programmers (with less programming experience) at cut rates

I've been doing this for a few years with great success. I haven't paid anyone but I think I'll start doing that. At my last job we set up our office down the street from UT and hired a bunch of interns to do the ****ty scraper work we needed done.

My favorite story from this is a guy who was quite possibly the biggest dork I have ever met in my life. One minute into the interview I was saying in the back of my head there is no way I'm going to hire this guy. I wrapped up the interview at 10:30 and said **** it, I'll give him the homework and see how he does. It was in a language he had never used before, perl, at at 10:45 I got an email from him with just about perfect code, completely commented, and he used map instead of a loop. I hired him and he turned out to be one of the best coders I ever hired.

He was a complete social idiot though. The funniest thing that happened was at the party after we presented at Surge Accelerator in Houston. There was an open bar and he kept going to the bar and ordering 2 random drinks and two fisting the drinks. I saw him with Irish Coffee, Brandi Alexander, Margarita, and a Daiquiri. On the way back to Austin he passed out in the back of the van and didn't eat dinner with us.

Do you know much about how to use Google Maps? Been thinking today about how to go about making some county-level maps to visualize election data. Would suck if I have to grab county shape definitions on my own from somewhere when Google already knows where they all are :/

edit: may not even need to do programming for this, google led me here as an example of how to do this sort of thing just using a website. also here with python

I started reading the python one and my first thought was, he's going to edit an SVG file using XML tools? Why not use a python SVG library? And then I remembered that if he did that his code would probably be 10x as long and not actually work. ****in SVG.

My startup job is starting to unravel. Really didn't help that, despite working on this thing since March, the owner couldn't get organized enough to deliver a working UX or a set of comps out of what was in his head until a few weeks ago. Now the CEO is saying if we don't have something working before Xmas they may have to shut it down.

Hey thanks for stressing me out for your mismanagement and completely underestimating what it takes to build a web app. Sure we can deliver a responsive react-based SPA in 6 weeks no problem - when everyone working on it has another full time job. Everyone is just playing musical chairs right now to not be the one blocking things or holding things up. I know damn good and well if we actually get this thing working that there will be a million things on the back end that don't work right and will take a lot of time to get working. But they're just hoping we crap out first so they don't have to deal with it.

At least they're paying me - but I'm worried the last month might be for free. And I knew going in they'd probably not be that organized. But between the election, bull**** at 2 jobs, and breaking up with my gf - I am feeling a little stressed right now.

What happens to the people who get the ass-end of this skills gap?

The data is out there...

I was just in an interview sort of like this. Never experienced this before.

I went in and they said "you wanna talk about databases?" Okay... We sat in front of his computer and he showed me a lot of code, management software, etc. We just sat there discussing code. I was asking a bunch of questions about why he did X, what about Y, etc. I was glad I was able to figure out some of the more abstract things. I don't know anything about Node, so I needed to get some explanation on exactly how he was using event loops and sync, etc.

It felt like I was interviewing him and reviewing his code. I really tried to find something amiss but this system was pretty rock solid and the compromises made a lot of sense. We didn't really talk much about specifics, just how concepts join together. It is interesting to see how a senior level programmer thinks up close.

I got the take home test the other day and I submitted it this morning. I stated upfront that I didn't like my solution, so it should be fun discuss the alternatives I was thinking about.

The next step would be go up and give a talk about what I did, why I did it, be prepared to defend my approach, and discuss how it can be altered, extended, etc. I should probably learn how to hook up my computer to HDMI before going this time.

I just started integrating google maps into my front end, so I know very little. Seems like you're on the right path though.

On the startup job, a lot of times these deadlines aren't really the "drop dead" type.

The statements like "Companies can't hire people because they don't offer enough money", "Companies can't hire people because their standards are too high" and their variations ("Companies just want to pay people less") are basically missing the point.

They're more or less truisms. Yes, offering more money will always help you fill a position you're having trouble filling. There is almost always a price you can pay to fill a position. Yes, lowering your standards will help you fill an open position. These are just things that are true of employing people regardless of the market we're talking about (aside from extreme situations).

When we talk about a skills shortage, its not like literally there are no people that can do these jobs.

We also don't mean that there aren't lots of people INTERESTED in the jobs. A skills shortage should generally attract a large number of people to apply to the unfilled jobs because salaries are high and perks are good relative to other possible job opportunities. Companies will be more willing to react to a skill shortage by being more wiling to train an unskilled new hire.

So pointing to a bunch of really smart people looking for work that can't get hired isn't a sign there's no skill shortage. It's just that for many of these people* they don't have the skills that companies are looking for and they're competing with many other 'unskilled' people for positions.


So what are the indications of the skills shortage:

* Let's start with an anecdote from this thread: People are willing to pay candidates $100/hour just TO INTERVIEW with them and nobody thinks thats crazy. That doesn't happen in an environment where talent is plentiful and available.

* Salaries and perks for people with little to no formal education and people with a bachelors degree are significantly higher in the tech industry than in the non-tech industry. This is a sign of companies reacting to the skill shortage and increasing wages accordingly.

* Companies have many open positions and job mobility for skilled developers is exceptionally high.

* And, of course, the fact that companies are willing to pay high salaries for foreign workers (Again, check public databases). Ignoring the consulting factories (which are still relevant, but a more complex issue) does anybody believe that Apple, Facebook, Google, etc. are just anti-American worker and would rather pay high salaries to foreigners? There is overhead and extra expenses to them hiring foreigners, if they could get equivalent talent from American workers - they would do it.






* Dave, feel free to send me the resume of any of your smart friends that can't get hired. I'm pretty confident I can tell you why they're not getting a job or I can get them a job.

I have no idea what you're trying to say here.

If you want to be part of the conversation (and I do appreciate hearing your perspective) then be part of the conversation.

I think these are good points, and all true to an extent. But I think the sheer numbers are an overriding factor. I mean, northeast ohio has 2 well known bootcamps that is pumping out around 200 total grads a year. There are a few other lesser known bootcamps too that are presumably doing well. The 2 well known camps are running at over 95% placement rate.

While I think the industry is a bit underrated around here, ohio is not exactly known as a hotbed in the tech industry and yet, if you include college grads, there are hundreds of junior level programmers placing jobs every year.

There was an interesting talk I saw at some meetup. The headlining speaker was a lawyer for small businesses and was, due to her specialty, sort of a crying shoulder for a lot of founders (not strictly tech). The quote that really struck me was a dreamy aside: "I've been doing this work for 20 years, and it's so wild to see it. Over the past 1 or 2 years, I've seen a shift in attitude. People are starting up businesses because they want to, which is at odds with the typical person who just started up a multi-million dollar business because their backs were against a wall. This new trend is exciting!"

Wait... what? I even thought back on my own life, many of my friends, and all the employers I've had. Hardly a single entrepreneur** that I ever met actually wanted to become one. Some where more successful than others, and some where doing things that were well beyond the difficulty of the jobs they said they were constantly rejected for. It's pretty difficult to get into these kind of discussions with them, but they tend to be open with me because... they just encourage me to do the same as they did (loss of words here, sorry). The most extreme example was a "life coach" who started her own business because, well no one would hire her. I guess she was good enough to afford her place up in the Hollywood Hills.

I eventually did some research and the data is rather eye-opening. It is hard to believe, but the reality is that many business owners were basically fed up with being told that they didn't have the skills, so they just said **** it, start a business, which adds interesting context to "I'd rather work 15 hour days earning 50K / year than work 40 hours earning 100K / year working for someone else."

http://iveybusinessjournal.com/publi...ow-they-do-it/

The opening statement says it all:

These authors researched the phenomenon and discovered an intriguing reality: Most reluctant entrepreneurs, even if successful, long to return to their previous life as a salaried employee.

If they can build their own while working 15 hours days, what are the skills do they lack, exactly? Many of these 287 people were managers, which is #7 on the manpower list, but I know this happens in tech as well.

** I'll qualify a few exceptions here, but most weren't in fields that had the option for regular employment.

Hey, Victor, I found this in my youtube feed one day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izdei9e-KxY&t=502s

The flats was the number one mentioned thing when I told people were I was from. It's tragic to see an icon go down like that and explains why I haven't heard about it in a while.

Gotta love that northern Ohio accent too.

edit to add: @suzzer; sorry to read about all the bad ****.

DaveT, that's sort of interesting and all, but doesn't seem relevant to the discussion. Your link doesn't seem restricted to tech fields and even if it was, I don't really understand what your point is with respect to a skill shortage in the tech industry.

I think the reason no one thinks this is crazy is that every place that wants to hire me wants me to go through an 8 hour interview and probably also a 1 hour phone screen and also probably a 2-3 hour coding exercise. They are asking ME to pay $600-800 to interview for a job.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the vast majority of equivalent industries expect a non-trivial commitment from candidates and would never consider paying potential employees to go through their interview process.

Edit: I'll also add, I didn't mean "no one thinks this is crazy" from a fairness point of view. It's more that nobody thinks this is a crazy thing for a business to do from a "maximize profit" point of view.

lmao how does the election even get mentioned in this sentence?

you californians really make me laugh

Yeah lol at worrying about a White Nationalist/alt-right figurehead appointed to a key position in the white house. I mean they just want to end democracy and replace it with a white-ruled oligarchy. Why should we stress about that?

I'm really hoping none of my fears will come to pass. But regardless of where you stand, most would agree we just elected a complete wild card to the most powerful position on earth. Nobody really has any idea how this is going to turn out. Even my boomer family - who are very comfortable and should be perfectly happy with the status quo, but couldn't bring themselves to vote Democrat - are pretty nervous right now.