5 ms·

I've looked into some of those jobs and the guys on Reddit are right. A lot of those jobs don't pay shit. Developers will get paid 2-3x the national average in

by yardie 10y ago

I've looked into some of those jobs and the guys on Reddit are right. A lot of those jobs don't pay shit. Developers will get paid 2-3x the national average in major cities and tech hubs. Outside of that expect an honest offer of 38-45k. I've been in that call with a recruiter trying to fill a job in flyover state. I felt sorry for him because he really had an impossible task. He had gone through surrounding towns and states slowly widening that circle until he was now trying to find talent on the coasts. His client needed a developer with SC clearance but was offering low pay, stale benefits, and no relocation. No wonder he was having problems filling the job. If you want skilled developers with modern skills be prepared to pay for it.

austincheney 10y ago
I work in a major metropolitan area (one of the 4 largest in the US). There is a large educated sector of the population and a huge number of software and technology companies here. Still, despite this, technology jobs cannot be filled. Half my coworkers have always been immigrants. Even when pay is high local people are not stepping up to fill the positions. If you are in technology you can only continue to ignore that you work with a large number of immigrants and offshore teams for so long. Eventually, you will have to keep up with current skills, move to a low income market, or be content with being replaced by an immigrant who has more initiative. > If you want skilled developers with modern skills be prepared to pay for it. There is no evidence that increased rates have solved this problem as demand continues to outpace availability.
- yardie 10y ago
  I've worked with smart domestic and immigrant workers. I've also worked with incompetent domestic and immigrant workers. There is a shortage of talent and there is abuse of immigrant worker vidas. These are both indisputable. Even I, an American expat, is an immigrant worker. I'm well compensated for my work. And that's how it should be. But there are employers m that abuse h1b, E, and L visa schemes and they prefer the system just he way it is. Abusing immigrant workers and undermining domestic wages.
  - geebee 10y ago
    I've discussed this with a lot of people. Why do you feel the "shortage" isn't a rational response to wages and working conditions? Do you think none of the US citizens who became nurse anesthetists, physicians, or lawyers were capable of becoming programmers? I suspect many of them could have, but realized that better working conditions and wages were available in other fields. This doesn't really many much to do with immigration - the 1.2 million immigrants the US takes in every year are, like people born here, generally free to pursue their profession or trade in response to their own personal interests and market signals. Interestingly, among 300 million US citizens and 1.2 million new arrivals every year, software employers continue to experience a shortage. I'm glad you feel well compensated, but the real test is whether someone who is free to pursue other fields chooses to pursue this one. I see the restrictions of these visas as inherently anti-market. I actually see them as anti-freedom. If you can't compete for the labor of free people, people who are free to choose their field, then you don't deserve workers. Setting up a coercive visa program that allows immigrants into the country only if they agree to work as software developers seems like a magnificently bad way to solve this problem. I'm also very confident that in the absence of this crutch, employers would absolutely find a way to improve wages and working conditions, to the point where people with choice (a group that includes all immigrants who came here freely) might be more interested in it again. If you create a large scale program that staffs this field with people who have no choice in the job they work, I assure you, eventually the only people who work it will be the ones who have no other choice.
- geebee 10y ago
  What do you mean by "high" wages? Would you post your region, along with the BLS salary for a software developer, a physician, lawyer, nurse practitioner, and dentist? For dallas, here are the numbers: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000 Nurse Practitioner: $101,260 Software Developer: $97,930 Dentist: $177,130 Lawyer: $132,380 Physicians and Surgeons: $202,450 I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example). But this does show you the kind of options available in the US to those motivated, confident, educated people with initiative you described in an earlier post. Personally, I think that if employers are having trouble getting people with choice to work as software developers, that's the market's answer. There are a lot of different perspectives on this - I personally don't have a problem with immigration, but I have a huge problem with coercing immigrants to work as software developers as a condition of living in the US. That's the real appeal of these corporate controlled immigration programs - create a pool of engineers who aren't allowed to go into higher paying fields. Free people are allowed to go to law school, open a sandwich shop, sell real estate, whatever they like. In response to market signals. You know free markets, freedom, personal choice. Corporations hate that stuff. So they've invented this fake story of a "shortage", as if this shortage isn't a rational response among free people to the pay and working conditions that are below what they can earn in other fields. And their solution is to use a coercive visa program to create a pool of workers who don't have this freedom.
  - austincheney 10y ago
    > I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example). In my opinion this is the root of the problem. Schools are not preparing students with many of the practical skills of software development. These students enter the market with skills businesses claim to want, but often don't match with the reality of the position, platform, or technology. Businesses could solve this problem themselves by training their work force, but they don't. Instead it is entirely on the employee to get the skills (on their own time) the current employer demands. As a result many developers burn out and those who achieve this mastery of learning on their own time leave to get higher paying jobs elsewhere. Why wouldn't they since they have invested in themselves more so than the employer has, and such there is no loyalty earned. The end result is a talent gap. A large pool of barely qualified people that have trouble moving between employers and on the other side a couple of talented folks who can do whatever they want.

by yardie 10y ago

austincheney 10y ago

I work in a major metropolitan area (one of the 4 largest in the US). There is a large educated sector of the population and a huge number of software and technology companies here. Still, despite this, technology jobs cannot be filled. Half my coworkers have always been immigrants. Even when pay is high local people are not stepping up to fill the positions. If you are in technology you can only continue to ignore that you work with a large number of immigrants and offshore teams for so long. Eventually, you will have to keep up with current skills, move to a low income market, or be content with being replaced by an immigrant who has more initiative. > If you want skilled developers with modern skills be prepared to pay for it. There is no evidence that increased rates have solved this problem as demand continues to outpace availability.

yardie 10y ago
I've worked with smart domestic and immigrant workers. I've also worked with incompetent domestic and immigrant workers. There is a shortage of talent and there is abuse of immigrant worker vidas. These are both indisputable. Even I, an American expat, is an immigrant worker. I'm well compensated for my work. And that's how it should be. But there are employers m that abuse h1b, E, and L visa schemes and they prefer the system just he way it is. Abusing immigrant workers and undermining domestic wages.
- geebee 10y ago
  I've discussed this with a lot of people. Why do you feel the "shortage" isn't a rational response to wages and working conditions? Do you think none of the US citizens who became nurse anesthetists, physicians, or lawyers were capable of becoming programmers? I suspect many of them could have, but realized that better working conditions and wages were available in other fields. This doesn't really many much to do with immigration - the 1.2 million immigrants the US takes in every year are, like people born here, generally free to pursue their profession or trade in response to their own personal interests and market signals. Interestingly, among 300 million US citizens and 1.2 million new arrivals every year, software employers continue to experience a shortage. I'm glad you feel well compensated, but the real test is whether someone who is free to pursue other fields chooses to pursue this one. I see the restrictions of these visas as inherently anti-market. I actually see them as anti-freedom. If you can't compete for the labor of free people, people who are free to choose their field, then you don't deserve workers. Setting up a coercive visa program that allows immigrants into the country only if they agree to work as software developers seems like a magnificently bad way to solve this problem. I'm also very confident that in the absence of this crutch, employers would absolutely find a way to improve wages and working conditions, to the point where people with choice (a group that includes all immigrants who came here freely) might be more interested in it again. If you create a large scale program that staffs this field with people who have no choice in the job they work, I assure you, eventually the only people who work it will be the ones who have no other choice.
geebee 10y ago
What do you mean by "high" wages? Would you post your region, along with the BLS salary for a software developer, a physician, lawyer, nurse practitioner, and dentist? For dallas, here are the numbers: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#00-0000 Nurse Practitioner: $101,260 Software Developer: $97,930 Dentist: $177,130 Lawyer: $132,380 Physicians and Surgeons: $202,450 I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example). But this does show you the kind of options available in the US to those motivated, confident, educated people with initiative you described in an earlier post. Personally, I think that if employers are having trouble getting people with choice to work as software developers, that's the market's answer. There are a lot of different perspectives on this - I personally don't have a problem with immigration, but I have a huge problem with coercing immigrants to work as software developers as a condition of living in the US. That's the real appeal of these corporate controlled immigration programs - create a pool of engineers who aren't allowed to go into higher paying fields. Free people are allowed to go to law school, open a sandwich shop, sell real estate, whatever they like. In response to market signals. You know free markets, freedom, personal choice. Corporations hate that stuff. So they've invented this fake story of a "shortage", as if this shortage isn't a rational response among free people to the pay and working conditions that are below what they can earn in other fields. And their solution is to use a coercive visa program to create a pool of workers who don't have this freedom.
- austincheney 10y ago
  > I understand there are some big differences here, and you could reasonably argue that software developers don't deserve such high wages (they often have graduate degrees but aren't strictly required to, for example). In my opinion this is the root of the problem. Schools are not preparing students with many of the practical skills of software development. These students enter the market with skills businesses claim to want, but often don't match with the reality of the position, platform, or technology. Businesses could solve this problem themselves by training their work force, but they don't. Instead it is entirely on the employee to get the skills (on their own time) the current employer demands. As a result many developers burn out and those who achieve this mastery of learning on their own time leave to get higher paying jobs elsewhere. Why wouldn't they since they have invested in themselves more so than the employer has, and such there is no loyalty earned. The end result is a talent gap. A large pool of barely qualified people that have trouble moving between employers and on the other side a couple of talented folks who can do whatever they want.