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In relation to programming specifically, I once saw someone on Quora put it perfectly. It effecticly stated that we don't need more programmers. We need more se

In relation to programming specifically, I once saw someone on Quora put it perfectly. It effecticly stated that we don't need more programmers. We need more senior developers with 10+ years of experience.

techterrier 10y ago
Chimes with anecdotal experience hiring in London. Glut of really well educated, keen and passionate juniors but tumbleweed when trying to hire seniors, even at higher salaries.
- darkmarmot 10y ago
  When I've looked at salaries in London they seem relatively low compared to the States. Perhaps higher isn't high enough?
- explainthisth 10y ago
  Have you tried offering internationally competitive salaries?
  - ScalaFan 10y ago
    Then there is also the issue of the ease or difficulty of getting someone from a foreign country to work in the UK. Are work permits required? How much paperwork? etc If I were an American, what would it take to work in London?
    - Swizec 10y ago
      > If I were an American, what would it take to work in London? A good internet connection and some perseverance in getting remote jobs. Also strong work habits. I have many friends back home in Slovenia who stay in Slovenia but work for San Francisco. Sure they don't make 100k, but they don't have to. At 80k they're socking away 40k+ per year. And the SF startup is super stoked because they get good engineers for peanuts.
- grainsout 10y ago
  Consider that senior developers are busy and aren't going to make time to prep for interviews that lead to a job landing them a $15k-$20k bump (before taxes). Together with all the other intangibles (culture, nature of project work, career paths) it makes jumping ship difficult to gauge. Three suggestions - 1) raise the compensation for seniors 2) offer more interesting projects/products 3) use a different interview process for seniors, they hate algorithm quizzes Most software companies just churn out database-backed MVC apps. After 5 years of that any good developer would be bored.
- st3v3r 10y ago
  Well, why would those senior people want to apply and work at your company? This is not snark; this is a real question you need to be able to answer if you want a chance at hiring those senior people. Why would a senior person want to up and leave their position, which likely already pays pretty well, and treats them pretty well?
shams93 10y ago
That's hilarious from the perspective of someone with the 10+ years of experience I got employers telling me I have to work 3 times as hard as people half my age or I'm out. We don't really treat STEM employees with much in the way of respect especially post 2008.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  You should be able to be 3 times as productive without working harder (for some value of 3).
  - fusiongyro 10y ago
    Sounds terrifying until you think about the average fresh-out-of-school kid. I think I could probably manage it just by not being as distracted by shiny shit that breaks constantly.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      I was thinking more of how much effort I don't waste - bugs I know not to write in the first place, so I don't have to find them; bad designs that I don't create and therefore have to redo; speed in finding bugs because I have a better idea of how to chase them, and so on. I'm not working harder than I did when I was fresh out of school - not as hard, in fact. But I'm far more productive.
    - marcosdumay 10y ago
      Except when your boss will insist on choosing your tools, and won't let any time for you to plan. Oh, and if you ever wanna do anything smart that those fresh-out-of-school devs won't understand in a glance, forget it, the dumbest one of them must get everything you do immediately or you are not a team player.
- Kluny 10y ago
  Right, you need to have 10 years of experience, have a degree, and also be 23.
hibikir 10y ago
I think it all comes down to the big difference between having a degree and being productive at a company, along with how free the labor market is. I have worked at a few places that just didn't take people out of school at all, because they saw that the amount of time the typical graduate they got was a net negative to productivity, compared to how long people stayed at the company, didn't add up. They figured out that in their case, given their relative inability to tell the highly productive recent grads from those that would not be productive in a year, that it was better for them to spend resources paying experienced people really well, and letting other companies sort out the good and the bad. Thinking like that leads to some kind of farm system: People that are just body shops, where the good people manage to go to a next tier of company quality. A shortcut for this is a degree from a nice enough university, as there are many companies out there that will interview anyone coming from a prestigious university, but would not give the time of the day to a recent graduate from, say, Missouri Rolla. And let's not forget the madness that is interviewing in big tech companies. All of that 'optimizing to avoid false positives' idea is really saying that people that don't have a specific interviewing shape, but are very good when at a job, don't have a chance. I have a job at one of those tech companies, but some of my favorite developers from earlier in my career just can't pass the interviews, even though I think they are, in practice, better than your averaged hip company employee. So it all comes down to how we are terrible at figuring out good performance, and how training people just isn't a good economic decision when they can just leave to a place with a bigger budget in a year or two.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  To be fair, this is another place where employers are screwing themselves. If we could carry a portfolio like all those marketing people they hire, then the selection process would be a lot easier.
bdcravens 10y ago
If you spent the past year learning 10 Javascript frameworks that's just as good, right? /s
- cableshaft 10y ago
  Just put all the current buzzwords on your resume. They won't know the difference. You'll screw up the technical interview somehow just like everyone else does, and they'll scratch their heads and go "no one is as smart as me! shortage!" and they might hire you anyway because you said you liked the same movie as they did, or something equally trivial.
whyileft 10y ago
The older I get the more I wonder how much it has to do with very few people making it 10 years without moving into an different industry that doesn't treat their talent like assembly line workers that they don't have to pay overtime.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
TuringNYC 10y ago
Many developers with 10+ years of experience are married. Once you get to 15+ or 20+ most are married with children. An entry or mid-level salary does not cut it. There are mortgages to pay, braces to buy, schooling fees, nannies, the works. I know hundreds of people in these categories. They go work on Wall Street or other industries where those with 10+yrs experience get paid commensurate to their experience. I guarantee if tech jobs paid market wages for higher experience there would be no shortage.
- vostok 10y ago
  My experience is that many tech jobs on Wall Street no longer pay more than tech jobs at tech companies. I probably know more developers who have capped out at high 100s or 200s at banks than I do at Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc.
  - TuringNYC 10y ago
    Your experience is correct that "...many tech jobs on Wall Street..." but many non-tech trading/quant/exec jobs on Wall Street certainly pay far more. Those are reasonable places experienced tech talent go because many quant/analyst positions use the same skillsets as the tech world. Also, the market salary in SF/SV will generally need to be higher. The cost of living is outrageous even compared to NYC.
    - vostok 10y ago
      > many non-tech trading/quant/exec jobs on Wall Street certainly pay far more And many do not. I actually came from the trading side and there are a lot of VPs [1] who cap out at lower total comp levels than you would think [2]. There are absolutely tech roles that pay mid 6 figures or more, in NY, SF/SV, and elsewhere. It's not harder to get those roles than it is to become a VP. Yes, there are traders who made 8 or 9 figure bonuses, but these are outliers akin to successful VC-backed startup founders. > The cost of living is outrageous even compared to NYC. I think this is debatable, but it's irrelevant so I won't indulge. [1] VP is the first role where there's no "up or out". You can stay as a VP and not be promoted without being implicitly or explicitly told to leave. [2] I know a quant trading VP who is extremely unlikely to ever make more than $300k and they have never made more than that over a career that spans more than a decade. This is fairly typical.
pjungwir 10y ago
I have 10+ years of experience---17 actually, or more depending on how you count. I am sitting out the hiring market: instead I'm doing consulting, freelancing, and my own projects. The problem isn't a shortage of 10+ year developers. The problem is too little variance in developer salaries. I look at the salary ranges on StackOverflow and don't see any that are interesting to me. Compared to what I can make on my own, they don't come close. There is tremendous variance in developer productivity, and salaries don't keep up with it. I don't see the same problem with doctors, lawyers, accountants, or many other professions and trades, where your compensation can keep growing all your life. I think 10 years is about when many developers jump ship to management or a second career. I feel very lucky that I can continue doing the programming that I love. But if you want me to come back to full-time employment, it's going to have to be a salary that reflects 17 years of lessons learned, and the productivity, maturity, business sense, and technical judgment my clients are paying for. So I think you're right that it's not about new grads, but about proven senior people. That's exactly when the salaries plateau. So the people here saying "It's not a shortage if you're paying too little" are right too. There are new grads getting hired for $130k total comp, or even $200k. Offer me $300k plus remote and I'll probably take it. Offer me $400k and maybe I'll even move. Of course that sounds outrageous, but my point is it shouldn't. Not if you consider the difference in value senior people can provide.

techterrier 10y ago

Chimes with anecdotal experience hiring in London. Glut of really well educated, keen and passionate juniors but tumbleweed when trying to hire seniors, even at higher salaries.

darkmarmot 10y ago
When I've looked at salaries in London they seem relatively low compared to the States. Perhaps higher isn't high enough?
explainthisth 10y ago
Have you tried offering internationally competitive salaries?
- ScalaFan 10y ago
  Then there is also the issue of the ease or difficulty of getting someone from a foreign country to work in the UK. Are work permits required? How much paperwork? etc If I were an American, what would it take to work in London?
  - Swizec 10y ago
    > If I were an American, what would it take to work in London? A good internet connection and some perseverance in getting remote jobs. Also strong work habits. I have many friends back home in Slovenia who stay in Slovenia but work for San Francisco. Sure they don't make 100k, but they don't have to. At 80k they're socking away 40k+ per year. And the SF startup is super stoked because they get good engineers for peanuts.
grainsout 10y ago
Consider that senior developers are busy and aren't going to make time to prep for interviews that lead to a job landing them a $15k-$20k bump (before taxes). Together with all the other intangibles (culture, nature of project work, career paths) it makes jumping ship difficult to gauge. Three suggestions - 1) raise the compensation for seniors 2) offer more interesting projects/products 3) use a different interview process for seniors, they hate algorithm quizzes Most software companies just churn out database-backed MVC apps. After 5 years of that any good developer would be bored.
st3v3r 10y ago
Well, why would those senior people want to apply and work at your company? This is not snark; this is a real question you need to be able to answer if you want a chance at hiring those senior people. Why would a senior person want to up and leave their position, which likely already pays pretty well, and treats them pretty well?

shams93 10y ago

That's hilarious from the perspective of someone with the 10+ years of experience I got employers telling me I have to work 3 times as hard as people half my age or I'm out. We don't really treat STEM employees with much in the way of respect especially post 2008.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
You should be able to be 3 times as productive without working harder (for some value of 3).
- fusiongyro 10y ago
  Sounds terrifying until you think about the average fresh-out-of-school kid. I think I could probably manage it just by not being as distracted by shiny shit that breaks constantly.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    I was thinking more of how much effort I don't waste - bugs I know not to write in the first place, so I don't have to find them; bad designs that I don't create and therefore have to redo; speed in finding bugs because I have a better idea of how to chase them, and so on. I'm not working harder than I did when I was fresh out of school - not as hard, in fact. But I'm far more productive.
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    Except when your boss will insist on choosing your tools, and won't let any time for you to plan. Oh, and if you ever wanna do anything smart that those fresh-out-of-school devs won't understand in a glance, forget it, the dumbest one of them must get everything you do immediately or you are not a team player.
Kluny 10y ago
Right, you need to have 10 years of experience, have a degree, and also be 23.

hibikir 10y ago

I think it all comes down to the big difference between having a degree and being productive at a company, along with how free the labor market is. I have worked at a few places that just didn't take people out of school at all, because they saw that the amount of time the typical graduate they got was a net negative to productivity, compared to how long people stayed at the company, didn't add up. They figured out that in their case, given their relative inability to tell the highly productive recent grads from those that would not be productive in a year, that it was better for them to spend resources paying experienced people really well, and letting other companies sort out the good and the bad. Thinking like that leads to some kind of farm system: People that are just body shops, where the good people manage to go to a next tier of company quality. A shortcut for this is a degree from a nice enough university, as there are many companies out there that will interview anyone coming from a prestigious university, but would not give the time of the day to a recent graduate from, say, Missouri Rolla. And let's not forget the madness that is interviewing in big tech companies. All of that 'optimizing to avoid false positives' idea is really saying that people that don't have a specific interviewing shape, but are very good when at a job, don't have a chance. I have a job at one of those tech companies, but some of my favorite developers from earlier in my career just can't pass the interviews, even though I think they are, in practice, better than your averaged hip company employee. So it all comes down to how we are terrible at figuring out good performance, and how training people just isn't a good economic decision when they can just leave to a place with a bigger budget in a year or two.

jdmichal 10y ago
To be fair, this is another place where employers are screwing themselves. If we could carry a portfolio like all those marketing people they hire, then the selection process would be a lot easier.

bdcravens 10y ago

If you spent the past year learning 10 Javascript frameworks that's just as good, right? /s

cableshaft 10y ago
Just put all the current buzzwords on your resume. They won't know the difference. You'll screw up the technical interview somehow just like everyone else does, and they'll scratch their heads and go "no one is as smart as me! shortage!" and they might hire you anyway because you said you liked the same movie as they did, or something equally trivial.

whyileft 10y ago

The older I get the more I wonder how much it has to do with very few people making it 10 years without moving into an different industry that doesn't treat their talent like assembly line workers that they don't have to pay overtime.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

TuringNYC 10y ago

Many developers with 10+ years of experience are married. Once you get to 15+ or 20+ most are married with children. An entry or mid-level salary does not cut it. There are mortgages to pay, braces to buy, schooling fees, nannies, the works. I know hundreds of people in these categories. They go work on Wall Street or other industries where those with 10+yrs experience get paid commensurate to their experience. I guarantee if tech jobs paid market wages for higher experience there would be no shortage.

vostok 10y ago
My experience is that many tech jobs on Wall Street no longer pay more than tech jobs at tech companies. I probably know more developers who have capped out at high 100s or 200s at banks than I do at Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc.
- TuringNYC 10y ago
  Your experience is correct that "...many tech jobs on Wall Street..." but many non-tech trading/quant/exec jobs on Wall Street certainly pay far more. Those are reasonable places experienced tech talent go because many quant/analyst positions use the same skillsets as the tech world. Also, the market salary in SF/SV will generally need to be higher. The cost of living is outrageous even compared to NYC.
  - vostok 10y ago
    > many non-tech trading/quant/exec jobs on Wall Street certainly pay far more And many do not. I actually came from the trading side and there are a lot of VPs [1] who cap out at lower total comp levels than you would think [2]. There are absolutely tech roles that pay mid 6 figures or more, in NY, SF/SV, and elsewhere. It's not harder to get those roles than it is to become a VP. Yes, there are traders who made 8 or 9 figure bonuses, but these are outliers akin to successful VC-backed startup founders. > The cost of living is outrageous even compared to NYC. I think this is debatable, but it's irrelevant so I won't indulge. [1] VP is the first role where there's no "up or out". You can stay as a VP and not be promoted without being implicitly or explicitly told to leave. [2] I know a quant trading VP who is extremely unlikely to ever make more than $300k and they have never made more than that over a career that spans more than a decade. This is fairly typical.

pjungwir 10y ago

I have 10+ years of experience---17 actually, or more depending on how you count. I am sitting out the hiring market: instead I'm doing consulting, freelancing, and my own projects. The problem isn't a shortage of 10+ year developers. The problem is too little variance in developer salaries. I look at the salary ranges on StackOverflow and don't see any that are interesting to me. Compared to what I can make on my own, they don't come close. There is tremendous variance in developer productivity, and salaries don't keep up with it. I don't see the same problem with doctors, lawyers, accountants, or many other professions and trades, where your compensation can keep growing all your life. I think 10 years is about when many developers jump ship to management or a second career. I feel very lucky that I can continue doing the programming that I love. But if you want me to come back to full-time employment, it's going to have to be a salary that reflects 17 years of lessons learned, and the productivity, maturity, business sense, and technical judgment my clients are paying for. So I think you're right that it's not about new grads, but about proven senior people. That's exactly when the salaries plateau. So the people here saying "It's not a shortage if you're paying too little" are right too. There are new grads getting hired for $130k total comp, or even $200k. Offer me $300k plus remote and I'll probably take it. Offer me $400k and maybe I'll even move. Of course that sounds outrageous, but my point is it shouldn't. Not if you consider the difference in value senior people can provide.