It's the same reason a really good developer needs no college or training other than on the job, and can be productive in a few weeks from nothing. In that sense a developer is probably more similar to an athlete than a surgeon.

Of course the real trick is writing stuff that not only works but is sustainable, scalable, maintainable, etc. Probably similar to an athlete staying consistent and adapting to different strategies thrown at them over a career.

Please don't feed the troll!

I hope you aren't serious. candybar is the ****.

Right, the only thing I could think of that was comparable is enterprise sales - selling to big businesses requires some expertise and if you know how to do this well, it does translate fairly well across different industries, though not as well across countries. But not nearly as well as programming and to the extent we're talking about technical expertise involved (which excludes lots of support roles and lower-level account management), I think it's a much smaller field as well.

I'll add before anyone comes here talking about how Wordpress devs can't substitute for Jeff Dean and so on, this is true even in a narrowly defined technical field - large differences in competence can create tiers but that doesn't detract from market efficiency. You can imagine a virtual engineering ladder on which everyone falls and you will find that people that are close enough on the ladder are imperfect substitutes, which works to smooth supply and demand issues across the whole ladder. Shortage anywhere on the ladder will not create an acute price spike, especially compared to a hypothetical world where substitutes weren't available at all.

He's definitely serious and there are quite a few people here who have this grudge against me so I guess it's all my fault. It's interesting. In this case, I was trying to help him get over some stuff that was clearly holding him back but that seems to have touched a nerve.

I USED to share this same viewpoint. I came to the realization that the larger tech companies have recruiters on the payroll expressly to find upper tier developers since it is pretty obvious that software based products can be highly profitable and top tier developers can be orders of magnitude more productive than your typical developer.

For more than one reason it makes a lot of sense for companies to do this.

Right, this we can all agree on. What I'm trying to say is that there is no standard of what skilled means.

It is open to a lot of interpretation. Some developers are in a constant fight with their computer when they are coding. Others use their computer as a tool that compliments and enhances their coding. Some in the former are employed; some in the latter are struggling to find anything but short term contracts.

I'm struggling because I feel like there should be a more logical and linear relationship here.

If there is a problem, the community should actively be fixing it, not making it worse. That's all I meant to mention.

Also, it's a matter of "cultural fit." I mean, I consider myself a nice person (and most people I know do as well, I suppose). I'm not some creeper and not a drug addict. What exactly is getting measured here? And this is an issue that, if I'm a potential applicant, I definitely will think twice about joining this company.

I've experienced this quite a bit. This comment only mentioned the simple positions. I think that, in many cases, they are looking for someone who wouldn't mind doing said job for 3 years. This is understandable because many people do want to grow. I've been told outright in some interviews that whatever I'm doing in year 1 is what I'm doing in year 10. Not that I'm turning this stuff down, but I definitely have no intention of staying there until I retire.

To be balanced, some companies have a murky idea of what they actually want. They actually do need a new employee to do some "X," but when they reconsider the applicant pool, they realize they need something a little different, but these kinds of jobs tend to be more complex.

Anecdotes:

I was once interviewed for a remote db / admin position. After talking on the phone with the recruiter, I told him that there is no way they'd fill this position as it really was a job that required two very different roles. I ended up taking a phone interview and I was still in the running for 3 months.

In any case, they ended up scaling back the position into the multiple roles (as I said from the start) and reconsidered me for the db position. This job process went on for 5 months. The recruiter called me and told me they were having too many debates among themselves but they were still interested in me. I withdrew that application.

Another job was for an Excel / data person / entry level business / marketing analyst. Three weeks later, they wrote me saying that I didn't get the entry level python programming position. I wrote back asking what that was about? They told me that they ended up changing the parameters of the role and decided I wouldn't be a good fit.

So, you end up with a situation where one ad is up for a long time, the requirements change by the week, and this fact isn't reflected in the job description. This isn't really what I was talking about, but it's a little extra to add to the discussion and at least give a different possibility.

Funny you brought this point up:

http://blog.triplebyte.com/who-y-com...companies-want

They discuss this very thing. An "enterprise" dev is going to have a very difficult time finding work in an SF startup.

It's an interesting article.

One thing people in the software industry are missing when they talk about skills shortage and how companies are willing to pay so much for so little, often while belittling a fresh CS grad or a bootcamp grad for demanding so much while having so little is that in some industries that pay very well, the norm is for you to start without any useful skills. Investment banking has historically paid far better than software engineering and offered substantially better career options going forward. Yet at the entry level, you're not expected to bring any concrete skills besides intelligence and willingness to work hard. The same is true of management consulting. The catch is that interview processes are capricious and it's tough to even get an interview without elite credentials or connections but this is also true if you want to get paid well in the software industry without strong experience.

Even within the software industry, project management and product management, which are similar to engineering in terms of career prospects and compensation, don't require years of rigorous training at the entry level - they require some aptitude and sub-bootcamp level of specific expertise. I think the egalitarian nature of software engineering exposes the pay discrepancy that has always existed and this is confusing to people who haven't seen the other side. It's been possible for entry-level investment bankers to make $120,000+ since the late 90's or so. Given how much money tech is attracting and how expensive it is to live in some tech hubs, it shouldn't be surprising that people with similar overall credentials, but also armed with coding skills can demand $120,000+ in 2016.

Because of that fungibility I was talking about earlier, software engineering as a field encompasses different worlds that have historically paid very differently and I think this results in a warped perception. If you see programming as a upper-tier skilled trade or a standard office job, many jobs pay extremely well. Yet if you think of the top tech companies as competing with law, medicine, investment banking or other upper-tier white collar professions for best talent, the pay is quite underwhelming, especially given the high bar for aptitude, knowledge and skills for top jobs. But I don't see any evidence that the market isn't working - individual market participants being unhappy with the outcome doesn't imply that the market as a whole is failing to clear.

Ok, first, it feels like you might have misunderstood me. It doesn't require relevant experience to be considered skilled by my definition that you quoted (or by many of the companies claiming there is a skills shortage). An academic degree could absolutely qualify someone as skilled (and in some cases it wouldn't). In some cases a bootcamp graduate or self-taught person would qualify as well (and in other cases they wouldn't).

Next, let's point out things that seem wrong to me in your post:

* I'm not super familiar with the investment banking industry, but every one of the 5-10 people I know that went into or came out of investment banking, came from a well known University and had top marks in a relevant program (generally applied math / pure math / statistics). I would need an actual cite to believe that the number of people with no relevant degree or experience make up a meaningful percentage of hired investment bankers.

* You claim people are starting as investment banking without "any concrete skills besides intelligence and willingness to work hard". And later in the same paragraph you add "it's tough to even get an interview without elite credentials". Elite credentials almost always involve learning a lot of concrete skills.

* Project management isn't equivalent to engineering in terms of compensation.

* I don't know of any project managers that are hired with no relevant academic skills or work experience. Even more so for product managers. I can't think of a single place that would hire someone with just "intelligence and a willingness to work hard" for either of these jobs.

* So in basically none of the careers you mentioned are people being hired with as little qualification as software engineers are currently being hired. People with no formal academic background, education measured in weeks, and experience only in self-directed work. Hmmm....


So, now you're comparing software positions that are often filled by people with a bachelors degree or less, with positions that require 7-10 years of education and/or indentured servitude? I'm also skeptical that software engineers are making significantly less than their equivalents in law and medicine - especially when you factor in full perks and hours worked.

Ok... anyway, on the troll comment from previously, I don't think you're a troll either. I think you just have the quality, that is hard for me to describe, but is something like "caring about arguing with the person instead of caring about the substance of the argument and arriving at a shared understanding". I think it leads you to agree with and make a lot of poor arguments just to try and 'win'.

Relevant to Dave's question about "cultural fit", this is probably the #1 trait that I would disqualify someone for on "cultural fit". It kills productivity and morale.

I think there is a logical and linear relationship here. But its not perfect and its noisy.


I think a portion of the community IS actively working to fix it. And another portion of the community doesn't believe there is a problem to be fixed. And another portion of the community doesn't care or want to fix the 'problem'.

You do realize that is arguably the best RPG ever created, right?

I was thinking about this a bit today, and I'm not sure if you agree with this assessment.

I made a point about crazy people doing interviews as evidence of some sort of argument against skills (deflecting skilled people from entering the company and the industry as a whole) and you say they exist there because the skilled people aren't available.

I realized we are probably talking across each other on a salient point. I also figured you have some management experience, so perhaps you'd agree that one of the worst mistakes you can ever make, as a manager, is allowing an employee to know they are "irreplaceable." Of course, this is pure fiction, and letting this fiction exist is destructive.

I also disagree that, in any company with more than 10 people, the only person skilled enough to conduct an interview is a foul-mouthed junkie.

The chart your link has pretty much refutes this, at least for startups.

Quote:

It depends on the role. But at a super high level I'm talking about basic theoretical understanding of computer science concepts and some level of mastery of relevant languages/tools (Not to say it needs to be the exact languages/tools of a job posting, but the candidate needs to show some mastery of *some* languages/tools).

Basically, to me, its about having a basic foundation of knowledge/skills that an employer can build on.

If this was true why are "academic" programmers the least sought after?

Quote:

Academic Programmer: Candidate has spent most of their career in academia, programming as part of their Masters/PHD research. They have very high raw intellect and can use it to solve hard programming problems, but their code is idiosyncratic.

But at a super high level I'm talking about basic theoretical understanding of computer science concepts

The "academic" developer has this certainly.

some level of mastery of relevant languages/tools (Not to say it needs to be the exact languages/tools of a job posting, but the candidate needs to show some mastery of *some* languages/tools).

Certainly this too.

Basically, to me, its about having a basic foundation of knowledge/skills that an employer can build on.

Obviously the "academic" developer has this but are the least sought after (by a very wide margin) in their survey of startups. Maybe it is a thing with startups only. I doubt it. What makes the chart interesting to me is how ymmv in what a company is looking for and how important relevant experience is. It completely argues against the idea that basic knowledge of computer science theory is what employers find the most essential. They aren't looking to build on hiring people with basic skills, they want people that can came up to speed rapidly in the way they do things.

@daveT: thanks for posting that link, the chart was a real eye opener.

Of course all this doesn't mean there is no skills shortage, thinking we might be focusing on the wrong skills though, not sure.

- I don't think allowing an employee to know they are irreplaceable is anywhere close to the worst mistakes you can make as a manager, but...

- I agree you shouldn't have people that are irreplaceable and you should encourage policies and practices that keep people from being irreplaceable.

- You didn't understand my comment about the interviewers.

Adios, masters/PhDs are significant overkill for getting the high level skills I'm talking about.

The reasons 'academic programmers' sometimes have problems has little to nothing to do with them being considered unskilled.

Also, saying X is required doesn't mean X is the only thing that matters and that the more X you have the better.

you should have stopped right there

Candybar is right. They hire rich kids with finance degrees and train them on the job. A finance degree is basically a "I can solve a linear equation with 6th grade algebra" degree. That wall street also needs a small % of highly qualified quants is irrelevant to his point.

Lol. People with degrees are being hired. That's my point.

And yeah, I mean if you want to pretend that the finance degree means nothing but solving linear equations with 6th grade algebra - cool.

I have an econ degree which had lots of course overlap with finance. They're both worthless micky mouse degrees.

Good for you!

But seriously go back and look at the context of this little detail. If you think you didn't learn relevant basic theory and skills then you didn't go to an elite university and/or you have a really poor ability to evaluate what you actually learned.

If there were a bootcamp for finance, it would be a 2-3 day workshop. Software bootcamp grads bring more to the table than finance undergrads, so your whole argument against candybar is worthless.

I'm not even pro bootcamp btw. Their skills are suspect as well but they're being hired for jr developer positions. When there is a shortage of skills spoken of in the software industry no one is talking about jr developers are they? I doubt it.

My argument has nothing to do with bootcamp vs. undergrad in terms of skill. I mean, try reading what I wrote?

I think you're confusing investment banking with jobs at an investment bank (of which a very small fraction qualifies as investment banking and a slightly larger fraction qualifies as comparable) but you're making my point. Applied Math, Math and Statistics don't have much to do with investment banking. They have as much to do with software engineering as they do with finance - yet investment banks would hire these guys without significant knowledge specific to finance but software companies will not hire these guys as software engineers without significant programming skills and CS knowledge. The world has so much software engineering talent that they don't have to, but the skills that finance companies are seeking is in relative shortage that they are willing to hire raw talent and train. Aside from the more relevant Economics and Finance majors, CS, Physics and Engineering majors are also commonly found among high finance hires. There's a reason why all these majors with unrelated curricula have historically been considered relevant degrees.

The list of acceptable majors, then, really has to do with what they say about your quantitative aptitude and work ethic than what you learned. In good years, if you have good grades from a top selective US school - zero Canadian university qualifies here because they have a more egalitarian system - they don't care as much about majors because the nature of absurdly selective admissions at top schools in the US is such that a history major from Princeton is almost certain to be good enough at math and in fact probably better by the standards they care about than most STEM majors at schools just a couple of tiers below, which are still top schools. It's about aptitude, not concrete knowledge, because almost everything you have to know is about to be learned on the job and the baseline competence they're looking for isn't college math, but strong high school math background.

Btw, I wasn't responding to your argument specifically - it really doesn't matter what your or your company's specific requirements are and how there's some kind of shortage if you strictly apply both your definition of skilled and your definition of shortage. I'm addressing the more broad theme behind various arguments that are made in regards to skills shortage.

Edit: As in I had that completely written out before I even read your post and thought what you wrote would be a good way to introduce that argument.

I'm fairly skeptical that this is happening for any kind of desirable programming jobs. I've done spent a lot of time hiring over the past couple of years and my previous employer, which had no cachet and didn't invest much in recruiting, was still able to get hundreds of resumes with little effort and had the luxury to reject qualified applicants because there's an even more qualified applicant or even just because someone just didn't feel like it. My current employer has significantly better cachet and excellent recruiting operations and we routinely reject not merely qualified applicants but those who are obviously excellent all-around just because they tripped up or weren't fast enough in solving some difficult algorithm problems. Neither my former employer nor my current employer pays top $$$ or anything really comparable to finance in its heydays.

I've seen lots of applications from bootcamp candidates and while they were somewhat underwhelming in terms of demonstrable CS fundamentals or programming experience, they tended to have degrees from top schools and/or had some relevant non-technical work experience.