> Companies can get ahead of the shortfall with two strategic steps: establishing a dual career path that allows employees to grow, and investing in employee education and training.
This advice is really tired and has worn thin over the years.
The effects of the pandemic are not specific to the computer programming industry. Every industry in every area is experiencing a post-pandemic talent shortage, and the solution is going to be the same in every case: raise wages. Yes, it's really that simple. The last companies to realize this are going to be the last to solve their staffing problems.
But the programming world will be hit with a one-two punch. Devs don't spend money on expensive training courses and certs to gain skills; we just get hired somewhere and then pester our co-workers. This is why junior dev jobs are always on site. No one wants to hire a junior developer remotely. When all the software companies went full remote, they just took a break from hiring juniors (!).
Junior-level hires are charity, senior-level hires are desperation, and mid-level jobs drive the industry. In about 2 years, we'll be dealing not only with more demand for mid-level talent but less supply -- a lot less.
Companies need to raise wages and get back to hiring juniors, pronto.
> When all the software companies went full remote, they just took a break from hiring juniors (!).
This isn’t true at all. Where I work, we hired more junior engineers than ever before during the pandemic. We were hybrid colocated/remote (mostly colocated, plus me!) in the before times. We had certainly hired juniors before, but we hired a lot more and we’re able to source them from all across the country. It’s been fantastic, and onboarding and training junior engineers remote isn’t the impossible task people make it out to be.
And I'd say it was common, at least before the pandemic. Our remote-first company rarely hired very junior engineers, partially after a little trial and error, including finding that hiring someone who already had remote experience would typically have a higher chance of succeeding. Not that it was required, but it was a better guarantee that things would generally go pretty well.
On the flip side: we've also had one experience with an absolutely fantastic junior contributor, who we got as an intern. Unfortunately, this person wanted an on-site experience, and we couldn't give it since we are fully distributed.
Having better techniques and approaches to help get junior developers more engaged, trained, and leveling up is good, but there are a lot of intangibles - including the social aspect - that simply don't work great for many young people fresh out of college or other training.
If you've been watching the stats then you should have a citation on hand to show some of those statistics, otherwise your comment sounds dismissive and condescending to the person you are replying to.
In addition, since you made it sound like your hobby is compiling these statistics but didn't bother sharing them, it makes me think you haven't actually been following anything and are full of it
I'm not dismissing ntietz. I'm only remarking on general trends. It is a hobby of mine to watch programmer job trends and I'm in the process of compiling my new report for 2021 right now.
> The effects of the pandemic are not specific to the computer programming industry. Every industry in every area is experiencing a post-pandemic talent shortage, and the solution is going to be the same in every case: raise wages.
Companies can’t raise wages beyond what they have. Gamedevs will never be able to compete with FANG because most games devs lose money and FANG profits billions per quarter.
Grocery stores can’t hire fast enough. They also earn less than $5000 annual profit per employee. So they can’t raise wages without also raising prices.
Now you could say “then those places deserve to go out of business”. Maybe so! But that doesn’t mean a profitable business that can afford larger wages will magically rise from the ashes.
The current jobs situation is really really weird imho. For both fancy white collar jobs and low wage jobs.
> So they can’t raise wages without also raising prices.
How much would they have to raise prices? A few pennies on a bag of rice or flour, or a carton of eggs?
If prices went up 1% on every single item in the store as a result of bumping up salaries, although it won't go completely unnoticed, I'm guessing the majority of buyers would not change anything significant about what they purchase.
This advice is really tired and has worn thin over the years.
The effects of the pandemic are not specific to the computer programming industry. Every industry in every area is experiencing a post-pandemic talent shortage, and the solution is going to be the same in every case: raise wages. Yes, it's really that simple. The last companies to realize this are going to be the last to solve their staffing problems.
But the programming world will be hit with a one-two punch. Devs don't spend money on expensive training courses and certs to gain skills; we just get hired somewhere and then pester our co-workers. This is why junior dev jobs are always on site. No one wants to hire a junior developer remotely. When all the software companies went full remote, they just took a break from hiring juniors (!).
Junior-level hires are charity, senior-level hires are desperation, and mid-level jobs drive the industry. In about 2 years, we'll be dealing not only with more demand for mid-level talent but less supply -- a lot less.
Companies need to raise wages and get back to hiring juniors, pronto.