Important factor is how many of the "qualified" candidates clear the interviews?
The problem is not the lack of people to interview, it's the lack of people who clear interviews.
A lot of people assume that learning Java makes you qualify for the title of software engineer. Every time one of these articles pop up it gets flooded with comments from upset ITT tech graduates who are pissed that H1-bs are stealing their jobs.
If someone knows Java, and knows it well -- and all that that entails (good engineering practices like code organization, commenting, testing, optimizing if needed, security, corner cases) -- then why wouldn't they qualify for the title of software engineer?
Actually, my problem in this (non-Bay area) region of the country where I now live is that I don't have a ten-year Java history, and most managers here don't seem to believe that my background in C, Python, Lua, and JavaScript would allow me to pick it up in a very short period of time (and indeed, I've since picked it up for Android development, and it turned out that the Android API was harder for me to learn that Java itself).
Can you elaborate on this further? Are you implying that it is the quality of the candidates and not the number?
I can't say I disagree with that statement in and of itself. Yet I believe you are getting few qualified candidates because companies are asking for highly skilled people with a great deal of experience and then only, and my opinion is intentionally, offering well below market wages. This then allows them to scream "there are not enough developers". The whole shtick is just meant to repress wages..
From my experience most of the H1B candidates who might join a company with lower wage at first, can and will negotiate for higher pay when they change company.
I think the days of hiring H1B candidates at lower wages and thinking of _retaining_ them are gone and the companies do realize that.
