I think it is important to avoid using the term STEM and specifically dissect it in the discussions about shortage. Computer Science is a very peculiar part of STEM and not all of the STEM fields face the same challenges. As Hadi Partovi of Code.org put out eloquently in his testimony before Congress[1], there is a difference between enrollments in Computer Science and STEM in general. For instance, in US high schools, it seems like there is no shortage of students in biology or math, but CS is underenrolled.
I think it is important to avoid using the term STEM and specifically dissect it in the discussions about shortage. Computer Science is a very peculiar part of STEM and not all of the STEM fields face the same challenges.
I think there's a bit of a rhetorical issue with this, though. The dominant narrative is that we have too many people doing soft, fuzzy, weird, useless liberal-arts degrees. Studying things like literature, history, philosophy, political science. What we need is more people doing hard, rigorous, mathematical, technical STEM degrees. Studying things like physics, biology, mathematics, computer science, chemistry.
If you admit that there is no shortage of mathematicians, though, you undermine the whole strategy of "we need more STEM, less liberal arts", because mathematicians are the rhetorical core of STEM: rigorous, technical, mathematical, non-fuzzy. If it turns out mathematicians are about as useful as historians (useful in principle, not directly in a major applied shortage), the whole narrative fails.
To a certain extent I think the whole STEM construction is based fundamentally on trying to hand-wave across this gap: math and physics are prestigious and perceived as hard/rigorous, while computer programming is in demand. The union (not intersection) of these two fields is STEM, which perceives itself as rigorous + hard + in-demand.
To add to this I was very surprised recently trying to hire Statisticians/Mathematicians for a computing data-sciency bioinofrmatics role to find that a couple of PhD students had no computing skills at all. No DB, no linux, no scripting.. just stat applications on Windows. Curiously a few of the best candidates I saw were from "soft" subjects like ecology, geography, social science - where they have real cutting edge statistical chops but were also used to dealing with databases, mapping tools, and modern computing infrastructure.
> To a certain extent I think the whole STEM construction is based fundamentally on trying to hand-wave across this gap: math and physics are prestigious and perceived as hard/rigorous, while computer programming is in demand. The union (not intersection) of these two fields is STEM, which perceives itself as rigorous + hard + in-demand.
[0] was linked in the article, detailing the unemployment rates and earnings among most college majors, mentioning 7.8% unemployment among recent college CS graduates and 5.6% for experienced ones. This is used to support the claims of the article.
If CS was broken down into specialised fields, like the rest of the STEM, you would get a more accurate picture.
Well, even maths and not-applied physics tend to produce technological advances down the road in a way that history tends not to. But it's true that very different ROI timescales are being blurred together under the STEM brandname.
CS in high school doesn't exist in most schhool you can't compare it with bio or math. Students may change their major more then once. What matters is the college graduation rates, companies looking for college grads in stem no a high school diploma.
I am quite ignorant about how US high school system works and that's one anecdote I had heard, so I apologize about not being able to carry on a meaningful discussion on that topic, but that's just an example, and my core points stands regardless: there are huge differences between various fields that fall under STEM, and they should not be thought about as a single bucket. That's certainly true beyond high school as well.
That's quite true. With CS you can get hired right out of college but with other fields like bio and physics more schooling is required. I don't think a lot of students in the US want research positions (or qualify for them). So yes I believe that you're right it's an apples to oranges comparison.
It's also possible for there to be a shortage of qualified workers and a surplus of qualified workers...this is a point that people often miss.
Qualified US workers have this annoying tendency to be unwilling to uproot their life and move to where the jobs are. Foreign workers coming from other countries don't have this issue...they're moving anyways, so they move where the jobs are. And hi-tech jobs cluster in certain areas, usually around one or more universities to supply talent. So you end up with areas that have lots of jobs and not enough qualified applicants and areas with qualified applicants and no jobs.
That's what makes this issue so obnoxious...both sides are right. And that makes it difficult to find a middle ground.
(not the OP) I wouldn't say it is definitively true, but evidence to look for is data showing that STEM jobs in some states are paid relatively less than in other states after controlling for cost of living/average local wages: for instance, this graph[0] of wage variance for STEM occupations by state, along with this table[1] showing the wage difference for STEM vs other jobs in each state. (They don't show the exact relationship I'm after because neither of them has cost of living: STEM jobs in DC may only pay slightly higher than average but I assume that's because everyone is making a fair amount).
Cost of living isn't the only factor. Lifestyle quality is another, and not fully captured in the model you give because unlike money, people are non-homogenous. This may be more evident when the demand for a given field in a region is particularly small.
Consider [0] says that petroleum engineers are one of the highest paid STEM jobs, and [1] concurs. But a petroleum engineer in, say, North Dakota where there's an oil boom is likely going to have a higher salary than one in Hawaii even after adjusting for local wages. There are so few petroleum engineering jobs in Hawaii because it has no oil resources. If 0.1% of oil engineers are are willing to take a pay cut to move to Hawaii, then that small subpopulation may be enough to supply the Hawaii jobs market. (1 out of every 1000 jobs in ND is a petroleum engineer. We know that wasn't supplied by the indigenous population. While BLS doesn't have an entry for petroleum engineers in Hawaii, indicating that it's small.)
In a related vein, [1] points out the nuclear engineering is the highest paying job in Tennessee. This is probably influenced by Ridge National Labs and the three reactors in the state. The University of Tennessee offers a MS in nuclear engineering, so there's definitely a local production of people with those skills.
While Montana (no reactors, no nuclear research) doesn't have a BLS listing for nuclear engineers, which indicate that the demand for such is quite low. Low enough that secondary influences, like the desire to be near good fly fishing, or to move back to family in Montana, may be a bigger factor than cost-of-living.
Thus, regional salary variations, even when adjusted for CoL, may not give the estimate you're looking for.
As I read it, that proposes it's undesirable because there are few economic benefits for moving.
That would suggest that people are willing to move if there were stronger economic reasons, but the economic disparity across the US isn't high enough.
While the OP suggests that people aren't willing to move despite there being an economic disparity.
Thus, doesn't your link support the thesis the STEM shortage is a myth?
The Silicon Valley cartel conspirators helped to depress wages and increase unemployment. Universities have relied on cheap student and postdoc labor. Their game-theoretic strategy is cheap talking their serfs into the belief that they too may become masters.
ADDENDUM: downvoters can take a warm piss on a power line.
I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.
Related quote by Yo-Yo Ma: It takes three generations to make a musician; the first to leave poverty, the second to go to school, and the third to master the instrument.
Rather than an all or nothing proposition, I saw this quote as an elegant framing of what the liberal arts are: nice-to-haves in the wake of ought-to-haves in the wake of die-or-haves. In the popular discourse, we aren't always afforded that sense of perspective.
What world is this article living in? I got a job making $100k as a software engineer, right out of college (top-tier I guess). And then I realized that I was worth more than that, and 8 months later I'm now switching over to a job making $150k in total compensation. And TBH, I was middle of the road compared to my classmates.
Software engineering is an exception in the science and engineering camp.
FTA: "Because labor markets in science and engineering differ greatly across fields, industries, and time periods, it is easy to cherry-pick specific specialties that really are in short supply, at least in specific years and locations. But generalizing from these cases to the whole of U.S. science and engineering is perilous."
But, surprise surprise, still higher unemployment than the guild-protected professions.
FTA: "unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses"
Doesn't the article specifically point out that software engineering isn't encountering a shortage?...
"It is true that high-skilled professional occupations almost always experience unemployment rates far lower than those for the rest of the U.S. workforce, but unemployment among scientists and engineers is higher than in other professions such as physicians, dentists, lawyers, and registered nurses, and surprisingly high unemployment rates prevail for recent graduates even in fields with alleged serious “shortages” such as engineering (7.0 percent), computer science (7.8 percent) and information systems (11.7 percent)."
It actually makes sense, I think. The bottleneck (bar, qualifying exam) keeps the supply artificially low, so those who pass and qualify are always in high demand (low unemployment). Those who don't pass either try again, or after a while go into other fields and no longer consider themselves prospective doctors, lawyers, etc. It's sort of like the effect where, during a prolonged recession, unemployment numbers 'drop' because some people give up actively looking for a job, and are no longer counted.
Sure, I should have specified that I'm also counting people who have the skills and training, but aren't allowed to practice (such as people who failed the medical or bar exam). It makes sense to me to consider those "prospectives" as unemployed in their profession (especially since those professions take years, in some cases as much as a decade, of specialized education, all before the exam itself).
Curious, what do you think the employment rate among physicians is? I'd be surprised if it wasn't 100%. The issue is regulation - employment only takes a hit outside the protected professions.
There are 13,605 taxi medallions in new york city. What do you think the employment rate among taxi drivers in NYC is?
I'm also considering the people who would be in those careers, if not for the heavy regulations. For example, how many people in NYC would be taxi drivers if they could, but aren't allowed to be?
Why do you think all these silicon valley CEOs are throwing their weight behind schemes to get kids and adults learning how to code? It isn't because they really believe there's some social or personal value in being able to program, it's because they want to flood the job market with developers and so crash wages. What's sad is that many programmers are actually buying it, and volunteering their time to help support and evangelize these schemes.
You speak the truth but I don't know how to prevent what is going on. I've also come to the conclusion most developers are too shortsighted to see their own career demise in 20 years.
And every time you try to explain this to those who will be affected (software engineers) they argue that the movement is alturistic, or that they can't be replaced even though they're just maintaining a simple CRUD app...
There is a lot of crying and worrying about wages on here right now. If you are from CS or SE, you don't have the right to cry about a saturated job market driving down your wages. They are plenty high. If you want people with real problems, look at the graphic design industry. $10/hr can get you your pick of the litter among several applicants who have over 20 years experience in one of the biggest cities in the United States. Then imagine what it must be like for recent college graduates in the field.
You're in a hot market in a hot locale. You probably pay an arm and a leg for housing.
I'm in a second tier city with more limited options. I know folks who successfully start CS grads in the $50-60k range, mostly from state schools. Someone with a good track record is anywhere from $80-105. Sounds awful, but a 2000 ft^2 house can be found around $200k in a nice area. McMansions are $400-500k.
I ended up moving back here from NYC, taking a big salary haircut in the process. My overall standard of living got a little better right off the bat, mostly due to reduced housing and commuting expenses.
At many levels the national discussions are distorted by failure to understand regional costs of living and taxes and the matter of finding acceptable schools. People talk about the 1% without realizing that two $150K incomes supporting a few kids are at best "comfortable" by the standards of our grandparents in markets like NYC and SF. My grandfathers with skilled tradesman wages were able to support stay at home wives and send six kids down the street to a totally safe and high quality school, and at the same time take a month off every summer on nice quiet rental beach front property (not some hyper crowded vegas style resort bullshit, we're talking single family home on a large lot on a barrier island).
People just don't seem to understand how little money $150K is relative to what a skilled and competent worker could get out of a remotely comparable sum 50 years ago. OK, you make $150K, can your four or five kids walk down the street to a quite good school? Is it essentially optional whether your wife works or not?
I was reading a biography about a couple who built a boat in LA in the late 60s and set off on a tip around the world in 1969. It took them three years to build the boat and save up some money to fund their trip.
The husband was a carpenter and the wife was a bookkeeper.
They had a boat probably worth $10,000 in 1969 dollars and a further $5,000 in cash saved up. I looked that up in the inflation calculator and found out that $5,000 in 1969 dollars is about $30,000 today.
Can you imagine a carpenter and a bookkeeper building up assets of $90k dollars in LA today through a few years fastidiousness and hard work?
That was my reaction; I'm not sure how someone could have any historical knowledge and think that. My grandparents were, I think, fairly typical middle-class Americans. They raised 2 kids in a ~1200-sq-ft house in the Los Angeles suburbs, which was considered pretty big. Ate out only on special occasions, maybe 8-9 times a year, never just because they didn't feel like cooking. Did not have "help" to mow their lawns, clean their house, or watch their kids. Bought new devices rarely: it was a big deal to get a TV, and a big deal to get a washing machine. Owned one car, bought used. They sure as hell didn't take extended beach vacations.
I would wager the couple making $300k in SF are not living like that. Hell, I used to live a lifestyle much better than my grandparents did back when I lived in the Bay Area, on a lot less than a six-figure salary. I didn't have kids, but I also didn't even make $50k, and yet I still ate out multiple times per week, not per year.
I know nobody making over $80k in the SF Bay Area who I would not be comfortable calling at least upper-middle-class. The people who think otherwise mostly live in an insane bubble in which they only know people in the top 10% of the income distribution, and have absolutely no idea what a middle-class American lives like.
There has been a large divergence in purchasing power between consumer goods, permanent assets, and lifestyle/durable goods. Everything that is a mere consumer good or lifestyle good (computers, meals out, washing machines, some cars) has gotten much cheaper. Everything that is at least partially an asset or lifestyle/status good (some cars, almost all real-estate, vacation time, health insurance, possibly a boat) has gotten much more expensive.
The result is a society in which people find it quite easy to obtain what their parents would have called frivolous luxuries (sushi), but quite difficult to obtain what their parents would have called basics (an affordable house in a good neighborhood).
Well this sort of thing is the crux of the matter. If you give a shit about restaurants and ipads, well yes now is better. If the idea of having a handful of grandkids appeals to you, well now is worse.
No it's not an exaggeration. Find me a market today where four weeks off and a sub one hour drive to a truly nice rental beachfront single family home is a realistic expectation. Also, the home neighborhood is totally safe and good schools are in walking distance. This is the stuff that really drives the cost of living, not square footage and eggs and ipads per dollar.
Find me a market today where four weeks off and a sub one hour drive to a truly nice rental beachfront single family home is a realistic expectation. Also, the home neighborhood is totally safe and good schools are in walking distance.
How about Silicon Valley? Cupertino is safe and has good schools. And it's <1 hr drive to Santa Cruz or Half Moon Bay if you want beaches. Or you could do the other direction, and live in SC and commute to Cupertino (or wherever). Google even runs shuttles if that's your thing. I lived in Santa Cruz for years on a 5-figure salary, and felt quite comfortably well off. Actually I sort of wish it were further from Silicon Valley, because the only bad thing about living in SC was that the rich techies with 6-figure salaries were driving up prices...
First of all your, viewpoint is restricted to EE/CS. Any of the other pure sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, etc. do not enjoy the same luxuries.
Another important distinction to make is that there are almost no science (i.e. research) jobs any more. Most technology jobs are just run of the mill programming, not actually investing in research.
Good for you. I graduated from a college that was not top tier over a year ago, as a below-average student, and have yet to find any kind of development work that pays as much as I made delivering pizza while working my way through college.
Not everyone has the same experience as you. Furthermore, this article is talking about the entire STEM domain.
I'm living in Portland, OR now, though I'm about to move to Canada. I graduated from a school in Memphis, TN. Right now I'm taking a little break, but for most of the last year I've been reading about different programming languages and frameworks, doing a part-time internship using Ruby on Rails, and basically developing my skill-set to (hopefully) make myself a more desirable candidate for entry-level positions.
If you're reading hacker news, you're already probably doing better on that front than I was during my entire undergrad. I'd highly recommend getting an internship and building a personal project before you graduate too, as I believe my failure to do both of those things (in addition to a sub-3.0 GPA) were the factors that have prevented me from getting a job thus far.
You said you went to a top-tier college. Most of them charge over $40k a year. So that $150k pays for less than your tuition costs. You are worth $150k a year (which means your boss is making $160k, $165k etc. off of you, they hire you to be profitable). So your four years of study were in a sense $600k down the drain in that.
So it will be at least five years before you start to break even. Minus the housing and living costs over that five years.
You spent over $150k and four years ($600k) worth of your time training for this job.
Also remember the market is hot. In 2000/2001 air went out of the bubble. Also in 2008/2009. Right now is the peak of a go-go time like 1998/1999 was. It is not the norm.
I like this article, but it does not delve very deep into why the current perceived shortage exists. On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus. From technology businesses' standpoint, it is in their interests to have a surplus of STEM graduates in order to maintain or reduce wages.
>On the public policy side, there is probably a belief that more STEM professionals will increase the economic competitiveness of the nation, even if there is a surplus.
Except that it doesn't work, and it should be obvious why. There's no reason to bust your ass in college to enter a field the government floods with foreigners. The more people the government imports the less attractive the field looks to domestic students choosing a major.
I can't complain about my treatment as an EE and later a software developer, but knowing what I know now I doubt I would go into anything technical if I were graduating from high school today.
As somebody graduating from high school in a bit, I have to ask: what would you do differently today? It seems to me that, as somebody who can do comp sci reasonably well, that's my best option right now.
If I were going to do it today the first choice would be business degree and MBA from Harvard or Yale. I'd be willing to borrow what it took, because the payoff is there. In the US today this is the ticket to the C-Suite.
If I couldn't get in I'd try to get an ROTC scholarship for as prestigious a place as I could manage and graduate without borrowing money. Either business or liberal arts, though the latter case is a minefield of worthless programs, so it would require some research.
Time to demonstrate once and for all the fraud that the H1B visa has always been. All it does is push older engineers out of the field so they can be replaced very cheaply.
That needs to stop but having the best congress money can buy pretty much assures that it won't.
There is no shortage of bad programmers, there are plenty of medium programmers, it's also not that hard to find decent programmers. It's harder to find good programmers, but much harder to find great ones. The thing is that a great programmer can do 5X more than a good programmer, that can do 2X more than a decent one, that can do 2X more than a medium one. It's not just the number of features they can write in a given time or the fact they have less bugs or test their code better, or simply can do things no one else can. It's not even their ability to design better. It's their ability to do all that and influence the others to follow.
I think there is a shortage in that kind of developers, and there is no school that teaches these soft skills.
1 - virtually no supposed 5x or 10x programmer makes even 2x more. If people are really 5x, why on earth don't I see $300-$500k salaries? Particularly given the fall in communication costs ala Brooks, it would be an enormous win for employers
2 - at least in the bay area, there would be tons and tons of highly qualified candidates if moving to the bay area wasn't a financial nightmare (cost of living is horrific and the pay doesn't come anywhere close to making up for it); and if buying a decent 3 bedroom home and having kids didn't nearly require winning a startup lottery -- or at least enough for a good downpayment to get to a conforming mortgage.
3 - I'm in my 30s, and in my cohort of developers I know a number (all of them very skilled and in high demand in the bay area) who have moved to the midwest or austin because financially they're so much better off
4 - the majority of complaints about unavailability of developers, particularly in the bay area, are after the fact justifications to (1) cover employers not paying salaries commensurate with the cost of living, and (2) the ability to import (cheaper, more easily controlled) h1b labor
4a - with a side of companies ducking their responsibilities to america, the state they are in, and their communities to help create the employees they need. Now obviously I don't think 1-4 person startups have any such responsibilities, but somewhere between that and google/fb/hp companies have responsibilities to their communities and countries that bay area companies in particular almost completely duck. For example, why isn't facebook or google, in lieu of whinging about difficulty hiring (while illegally restraining wages, ain't that beautiful) running hacker schools themselves? It couldn't be because they'd rather let someone else pay for it and cherry pick the winners (saving money two ways)?
"1 - virtually no supposed 5x or 10x programmer makes even 2x more. If people are really 5x, why on earth don't I see $300-$500k salaries? [...], it would be an enormous win for employers"
Some reasons you don't see higher salaries:
1. It's very hard to measure the difference in programming ability directly. Good programmers also tend not to realise just how much better they are, and are generally unwilling/unable to demand higher salaries (not because they're programmers, but because most people by default aren't good at these things.)
2. Good programmers tend to cluster around good companies, one of their advantages being that they're surrounded by people at their level. Think Google, Facebook. Over there, if everyone is as good as you but making the same as you, then you don't feel there is a disparity.
3. Some programmers DO make 300-500k. You just don't hear about it.
4. More importantly, some people make 300-500k in roundabout ways. E.g. some great programmers work as freelancers and make that amount, because that's one way to solve the problem of companies being unwilling to pay so much more.
5. Some programmers with more business-fu start consultancies and startups, making lots of money that way in a non-obvious way.
I don't buy the hard to measure argument. CEOs at large companies make a tonne of money. This is usually justified by saying that they are more skilled than the average CEO but this kind of skill is also hard to quantify. Why does this argument work for CEO pay but not programmer pay?
If there was really a shortage you'd see salaries for programmers going up. Instead there are documented cases of companies colluding to keep pay down. Based on the high salaries you could argue that America has a CEO shortage and needs to increase visas for foreign CEOs.
"CEOs at large companies make a tonne of money. This is usually justified by saying that they are more skilled than the average CEO but this kind of skill is also hard to quantify. Why does this argument work for CEO pay but not programmer pay?"
Because it's much easier to measure performance of CEO's, at least artificially. If Google does well, then you (supposedly) know that Larry Page is doing well. That's how the market treats it, at least. But can you really tell me that you're able to tell me which of the 10's of thousands of engineers that Google has is responsible for that success?
Also, there's the issue of leverage. Just like a programmer can build software that is used by millions, and therefore has a lot more leverage and creates more wealth, so a CEO usually influences even more customers than the programmer. Paul Graham has an article about exactly that - the idea of a startup is to give e.g. programmers a lot more leverage than they usually have.
And arguably, the fact that a few engineers can build WhatsApp and earn billions is an example of that in action - getting more leverage by building a company, proving success, then gaining the money it gives. But the average exceptional programmer, while being 10X better at programming, won't necessarily also be better at business or money generation, etc.
Lastly, the fact that there are cases of companies colluding to keep pay down proves the opposite of your point - that salaries should have been even higher!
|Because it's much easier to measure performance of CEO's, at least artificially. If Google does well, then you (supposedly) know that Larry Page is doing well."
Originally I wrote a much longer reply but after re-reading it it came across as much more anti CEO compensation than I intended. I don't view short term market movements as an accurate reflection of company or CEO performance. If you willing to use easy to calculate but broken metrics I can supply a few for programmers. How about lines of code? This also ignores under performing executives getting big salaries and severance packages. No one is going to pay me millions if I get fired.
"And arguably, the fact that a few engineers can build WhatsApp and earn billions is an example of that in action"
I view employment at a startup like buying a lottery ticket. Someone is going to get a large payday but that doesn't mean they're better than someone that doesn't get one. Even with the possibility of a big payout your expected return is pretty low.
I think I stated the collusion argument badly so let me try again. If you're in charge of a major corporation and experiencing a talent shortage would you tell your HR department to exclude a large portion of the local candidate pool? That's what those companies did.
You raise interesting points. I'm honestly not knowledgeable enough to tell you if it makes sense to judge a CEO by the short-term, or even long-term, performance of their company. I don't think anyone really knows just how much is the correlation there.
What is clear is that, assuming CEO's do affect the value of a company significantly, they'll tend to affect it much more than even the best programmers, especially at a company the size of Google. That's just an issue of leverage. So a (possibly semi-broken) method of judging whether you made billions for the company will still spit out compensations of millions.
As for startups, I was talking specifically about the founders, not employees. And yes, I agree that startup's succeeding, at least on the Whatsapp scale, is very similar to a lottery. But smaller startups/consultancies can make much more money for the programmers who start them, who have skills that the market cares about more than just programming well.
>virtually no supposed 5x or 10x programmer makes even 2x more. If people are really 5x, why on earth don't I see $300-$500k salaries?
Small sample size. These types of developers are very few and far between. I worked with one that I keep in touch with and he is making somewhere between 400 and 500k at his current job. His output of good code was pretty amazing to see. He did manage to produce the work of 5 average Bay area engineers consistently.
I would describe that as simply "being professionals". No magic n-time programmers, just mature pros.
What you're describing as a great programmer is the equivalent of a chef in the kitchen, what you're describing as good programmer is a talented amateur cook, and your medium programmers are ordinary people that can cook an edible meal.
We have a shortage of professional developers, and a huge number of people who wouldn't get hired if they had the same skill level in a profession where there wasn't a shortage.
We've put lots of meat in seats to compensate for the shortage of mature, professional developers. Meat that can get away with incredibly immature, irresponsible and unprofessional behavior because, hey, who else are they going to get?
Fuck me, the ones that manage to build only slightly more shit than they break already get labelled "decent" programmers.
And it's self perpetuating, because if you combine the amateur playgrounds of most software departments with the systematic wage suppression you create a career perspective anybody with any sense would steer clear of.
With all those clowns calling themselves programmers, and the rest of us being tarred with the same brush, who the fuck wants to be a programmer when they grow up?
I don't disagree that there is a shortage of great programmers, but another problem is that people are generally not willing to pay 100x (or anything close to that) for a 100x programmer. Often they don't even realize whether a person is a great programmer or not.
You hit the nail on the head. He talks about the 5x programmer. Well if the 1x programmer is making $100k-$150k a year, the 5x programmers should be making $500k-$750k a year. When was the last time you went on Craigslist and saw a programmer job offering over $500k or more a year? I'm not saying it never happens, but...
Fundamentally, I don't accept that there is, in general, a shortage of "good people" in the USA. I responded earlier [1] to someone who thinks there is.
Instead of continuing to follow up with just that one person, I'd like to propose an interesting "experiment" for hiring managers:
Do an Ask HN, linking to a recent representative
job posting you haven't been able to fill
I'd like to see all the relevant details, such as:
1) the job posting, of course
2) company name, location, salary range
3) are the usual requested perks applicable, e.g. flex time, work from home, etc?
4) what kind of resumes are you seeing? How many? What, in general, has been wrong with those people?
Then I'd like to see HN posters dissect the information. Let's find out if the requirements are realistic. Let's find out if the company's reputation is toxic.
Are wages purely determined by supply and demand though? There is a tale I remember about an economics professor who dumbfounds his class by pointing out that there is a huge surplus of economics students across the country who all want to work for Goldman Sachs. But the wages/bonuses don't fall to reflect the oversupply.
I think the same is true for doctors and dentists. Do very few people want to be company executives or politicians? Is there a scarcity? I don't think so.
Sometimes people are well paid because they are setting their own salaries (many believe bankers have hijacked banks from the shareholders), others are setting the rules within society (politicians), or interpreting those rules (lawyers), or just getting close to those who do (lobbyists, bureaucrats, special interests).
In short the wages of workers are dependent partly on their position of power within society .. of which supply and demand is just one element.
the set of econ students who want to work at Goldman is not the supply: the set of econ students that Goldman thinks will make them money is the supply, and I bet very few of them are unemployed.
similar: set of waiters who want to be actors is huge, set of known actors that a studio can say 'his face on the poster will bring in an extra 50 million cinema tickets' is miniscule. That's why all the waiters are acting for free in film student projects and Tom Cruise is a millionaire.
No. I don't believe a word of that. And your analogy undermines your own argument.
If you had said Michael Jordan or Lionel Messi ... but Tom Cruise? Really? Tom Cruise is a perfectly good Tom Cruise (a good actor) but a million other waiters could have been him.
There maybe Messi like geniuses in politics, banking, business but the idea that bankers are all paid Millions because "they are worth it" is to me ... laughable.
They are paid millions because they can get away with it.
Out of all those graduates, the number of which we are told is 2-3x the number of open positions, are really qualified to fill in those positions? Passionate about their field of study? Intended to get a job in that field in the first place, as opposed to getting a degree in something they can (afford)?
Our own experience is that even internships do not always yield good results. And the level of most applicants, many of whom are recent graduates, makes me sad. They manage to find work at some other company in the end, but only because we are in IT and IT is big at our place...
All I know is from my own experience, and that experience is that I have recruiters calling up at least once a week and a few more via email looking for software engineers. I never got that kind of attention when I was working a cash register in retail, and my friends with liberal arts degrees certainly aren't getting it either.
I do not work in IT. Family and friends think I should be a millionair because I am "so good with computers."
Worked in IT in the 90s for 18 months as IT Manager and well I went bald at 22. Did programing when I was 17 and well I woke up with ideas on how to do to fix my issue. To much stress and to little pay for the jobs.
Don't see the change for a "good" IT job for most people. When students start asking about the industry from people that work it they usually get a negative response and told to do something else.
I thought the whole shortage for demand argument was to do with the lack of talent that was being produced, rather than simply the number of people who had a bachelors degree.
I don't know how many jobs I've seen out there where they have an incredibly high bar to hire someone, and then it is 99% CRUD work.
Some of the AI jobs at Google, yes, they need good people. Amazon needs some good engineers at the top guiding the creation of EC2 architecture. But most jobs ask for a much higher caliber of people than they actually need.
I don't get why CRUD work is so under appreciated here on HN.
I do CRUD work (at least I think I do - I create and maintain the database and front end for a DNA sequencing centre). I have in in depth understanding of SQL - my database returns some moderately complex results. I have solid database design and optimization skills. I know Django in depth. I know Python well. I have a solid understanding of Linux, and know enough to get Django running on the server. I have read up a fair bit on NoSQL, but have yet to find a suitable use case for it. I can do some Javascript / HTML / CSS.
Bioinformatics on the other hand seems to be considered a lot more brain power, when most of it is just scripts to count stuff an plot it on a graph. Its' (often) an order of magnitude simpler than what I do. The majority of bioinformaticains I know have never used a debugger - so the code can't be too complex - or they are WAY smarter than me.
Or when people talk of CRUD, do they mean the sort of thing you should use MS Access for?
There is a misunderstanding on how jobs are made. Consider what these look like for history of English majors? STEM is in demand if you look at the areas with predicted job growth.
Well, there is a shortage of competent software engineers willing to sacrifice as much as corporate executives think they should, for what corporate executives think such people should be paid.
In the same vein, there's a shortage of supermodels who want to fuck obese, unemployed men with halitosis and general poor hygiene.
How do you know, objectively? Have you tried paying twice (or more) the current market rate, for instance, and binary search for a point where you have enough happy hires and failed? Perhaps the market rate is artificially lowered.
The problem isn't that good engineers turn done our offers, it's that very few good engineers come in the door. The ones that have were very happy with their offers.
Edit: Didn't realize you weren't the person I originally replied to. Let's reverse your question. What is the objective basis for the claim that engineers are asked to sacrifice to much for too little pay?
> it's that very few good engineers come in the door
I have one possible answer for this issue: Well, no one in the Valley (to best of my knowledge) really advertises that they are going to pay a meaningful multiple of what's considered the market rate to potential employees. So from the potential employee side, it is reasonable to assume that they are going to get paid around the "market rate".
The Valley seems to be at a point where "starting/not starting a startup" is becoming an IQ test (compared to "market rate") financially if you think you are reasonably good at doing stuff, so it is natural that good engineers wouldn't go and apply for a job, because the expectation for compensation is unlikely to be satisfactory anyway (or at least that's what they believe and prevents them from trying).
>And you dodged my questions.
Oh, I am not the OP and I'm not pretending to have the answers. I was genuinely interested in knowing how you measured that you are paying very well, except for the fact that they were competitive with what's considered the "market rate" which is the questionable piece of data here.
I think we pay very well because when we do find a good person, we offer them enough to get them unless there is some non monetary reason they went with another company. We do not have a problem with people turning down offers, we have a problem with finding enough good people.
Another interesting wrinkle to this is the fact that hiring someone at a high salary is a big gamble. How confident can you really be after interviewing someone?
> we have a problem with finding enough good people
I'd love to see one of your job postings. I'd bet at least one of the following is happening:
1) unreasonable academic requirements
2) unreasonably broad list of required previous experience
3) unqualified HR people pre-screening and discarding resumes
You need to be willing to "kiss a lot of frogs", i.e. do phone screens and onsite interviews, of people who might generally be suitable. Then be willing to hire not-quite-perfect candidates who are willing to learn and are willing to work hard.
> How confident can you really be after interviewing someone?
I've seen an increase in contract employment postings. That might be a way to go. Start someone on a six-month contract. You might find some takers. Not everyone is ready to "get married" after a single days worth of job interviews.
So you're asking people to apply for a job without telling them how much you will pay, and you think that this lack of information shouldn't affect whether they apply? Salary sensitive potential hires might be ruling themselves out at the application stage: for instance my assumption (as a software engineer) would be that if I have no idea what your salary offer will be, then it will be shit - if it's going to be decent then you'd advertise that publicly. Therefore people that actually apply to your company is the subset that either find out your salary beforehand (eg by knowing someone else there) or don't care what salary you offer or I guess there might exist people who think it makes sense to keep good wages secret.
I've found that most practices that make for visionary, distinctive companies are both highly effective and cause large problems. For example, Google has a massive shared codebase, does promotion & performance reviews via peer feedback, and shares information very widely inside the company at the expense of being a black box externally. Fog Creek makes all salary data public within the company. Palantir, I've heard, pays all engineers the same (relatively low) salary but doubles down on perks and work environment. Apple under Steve Jobs let the CEO berate any employee over the slightest product detail. Facebook releases new software via IRC chatroom.
All of these practices cause major problems, but they also fix major problems. Moreover, they're distinctive. They draw a certain type of employee, one who's willing to give up convenience in some dimension to gain autonomy, or excellence, or collaboration. It's often better to be differentiated than good.
We have engineers making up to $250k total comp most are in the $150-200 range, we have offices in LA, Palo alto, and NY, we pay relocation of some kind, and we want generalists that are really good.
It sounds like your comp is great - as in truly competitive.
That salary range would probably make you standout from the crowd. If only there were some way (short of interviewing and getting an offer) for a possible candidate to know that..
I see salary ranges advertised all the time in the New England area so its not impossible.
Like some else mentioned; when I don't see a salary range I assume it isn't great or maybe they don't want to piss off the current employees that are working for below market rate.
I can't change HR policy, so I can't publish it, but I bet if I did it would cause a lot of headaches. Very few people are worth the top end salary, and most aren't self aware enough to realize it.
ExxonMobil brought in $469 billion in revenue last year, on which they made $44 billion in profit. It's not a big gamble for them at all if some programmer who gets $100k, $150k or whatever does not work out.
Of course, some bootstrapped company, or some company which had minimal angel funding or the like is taking more of a gamble, but everything is a gamble when you have no product/market fit and only 18 months or less worth of cash in the bank.
Exxon is in the top ten for revenue, that is not a good example on your part. also, $100k is not a large salary in my book. Doubling it is the sort of gamble I'm talking about.
The objective basis that you are offering engineers too little pay is that they are not taking your offers. Unless you don't believe in one of the first things they teach in modern economics - that at a certain value (price), supply will always meet demand.
I agree about making an effort looking for people. I know nothing about the company being discussed here. But for other companies, I know some that contact a (crappy) headhunter or two, or who post an ad on Craigslist, and then expect top tier candidates to roll in. For some CRUD job working in class C office space for relatively not much money etc. They're shocked when they don't have their pick from dozens of top tier candidates.
If your methods don't work - try going to a local programmer meetup. Chat up some of the programmers. Encourage them to apply. I go to programmer meetups as a programmer, and all the time I meet other programmers who are out of work, or who are unhappy at their job and looking to work elsewhere. Most are employed, but there's always a few who are looking.
What is happening is this - in 2008/2009 the economy was tighter, and employers could get by with a CL posting, or talking to a headhunter or two. Now that unemployment rate is less than 10%, you don't have dozens of good programmers checking CL for jobs every day. You have to do a little more work to find people. Just like THEY had to do a little more work when unemployment was double digit.
Here are some ways I think this could be more concrete:
"we pay well"
What is the salary range for this position? If you have already hired into this role, what are you paying them? I'd say a specific number is important here, rather than "market rate" (if you say market rate, It's important to define it with a number).
"we don't expect anyone to work crazy overtime"
How many hours, on average, does someone in this role work a week? If you offer vacation, how much time off do you offer? How many paid days off per year? If you don't do those things (many companies don't do vacation time anymore), what are the average number of days take off per week.
"good engineers", "competent developers"
How do you define this? This is probably hardest of all, but if you already have someone in this role... what degrees do these workers typically hold? How many years of experience is typical? Could you share specific examples of interview questions, and what kind of response is required for an offer to be made? Could you share an example of a problem solved on the job that represents the kind of work someone like this does?
I asked theperson i was replying to if he could be concrete. If you agree with him why dont you tell me why in a concrete way? Or tell me what are you trying to prove and how, and I may give you concrete info.
How quickly does your company reply back to good/bad resumes? As an engineer who was recently looking for a job, I found that companies just aren't very organized when it comes to looking for new hires.
great point, and we could do a lot better on this front. We do a lot of recruiting and typically find good people rather than waiting for them to apply to a posting. We're/I'm very active in the local dev community, meetups, conferences, etc.
"Now, let's review some microeconomics. In a free market, it is almost axiomatic that the market always clears. That's a technical term that means that when somebody tries to sell something, if they are willing to accept the market price, they will be able to sell it, and when somebody wants to buy something, if they are willing to pay the market price, they will be able to buy it. It's just a matter of both sides accepting the market price." http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000050.html
I haven't seen any evidence here in the Boston area that contract rates have risen since I was a contractor 4 years ago. (I still get calls and invariably the rate is always <= what I got before.) One can surmise that there isn't a shortage in economic terms or that companies are unwilling or unable to pay true market rates. It may be true that there is a shortage of engineers a company can afford but that doesn't mean that there is a shortage of engineers. I.e. just because I can't buy gold at $100oz doesn't mean there is a shortage of gold.
[1]: http://www.c-span.org/video/?317093-1/house-subcmte-hearing-...