10 ms·

Tech companies should create ‘farm teams’ to close the talent deficit

62 points by jchin 9y ago

startupdiscuss 9y ago
Or maybe set up an office with a fat pipe in Detroit where you can buy a house for $5k, rather than forcing them in to San Fran. Every large city could have a small office.
- GordonS 9y ago
  Or even embrace remote working. I know it's not for everyone, but it does work for many.
  - socialist_coder 9y ago
    My startup is 100% remote and we've been doing it for the past 4 years. We are very collaborative, and for that to work remotely, you need good & reliable internet. And that is turning out to be a problem sometimes. You can't just work from any random beach or forest. Right now I live in a big city but I want to move out to the country. Well, lots of places in the country don't even have cable or dsl. You can only get "wireless" internet which is shit. So yeah, until it's easy to get broadband even out in the country, I don't think remote work is going to catch on. Because if you live in a city, you're probably just going to get a non-remote job. Half the advantages for working remotely is that it allows you to live out in the country, but without good internet, a big chunk of remote work is just not doable.
    - MichaelBurge 9y ago
      I wonder how much it costs to lay the cable. If you offered $10k/20k to your ISP, they might be able to come up with a solution for you even in a rural area.
      - socialist_coder 9y ago
        Yeah, I wonder that too. Eventually I will investigate stuff like this in more detail.
    - lj3 9y ago
      Damn, how remote are we talking here? I live in the middle of nowhere in New York State (1 hour drive to the nearest town, 2 to the nearest C-list city, 4 to Toronto, 10 to NYC). We've had high speed cable internet since 1999. > You can only get "wireless" internet which is shit. Depends on where you are. WISPs with a microwave connection are usually faster than cable, if run properly. More and more of them are popping up in rural areas because you don't have the high cost of running cable or fiber.
      - socialist_coder 9y ago
        I've been looking at 20+ acre land parcels in Oregon/Washington. The only internet service is wireless stuff like this: http://www.peakinternet.com/internet/fixed-wireless/ http://www.peakinternet.com/internet/fixed-wireless/
    - GordonS 9y ago
      While some will want to be digital nomads, the majority of remote workers will simply work from home, where they have access to a good internet connection. Are you in the US? I ask because I'm suprised that not everywhere gets cable of ADSL (I'm in Scotland, and many places have fibre. It's really rare not to have access to at least ADSL nowadays, even for somewhere fairly remote). As I see it, one of the advantages of working remotely is that I'm not constrained to jobs and salaries on offer in my city.
MS_Buys_Upvotes 9y ago
I love tech: Take something old (apprenticeships), re-package it as something new (a farm team) and bam: Instant, free, PR for zero innovation.
- DamnYuppie 9y ago
  And they get to keep the wages low!
wheelerwj 9y ago
lol. They do, "college league" and "acquisitions league."
4258HzG 9y ago
How is this different from having 'entry level positions' (ones that don't require 5 yrs of experience)?
- econner 9y ago
  Yea, I don't really understand why tech companies don't just do this with the hundreds of qualified candidates who have 4 year degrees and actual work experience that they say no to. My guess is that it's another way to hire people who don't know what they're worth and underpay them for a few years until the employees figure it out. Kind of like what the industry already does with new grads.
- dalfonso 9y ago
  I briefly glanced at LinkedIn's apprenticeship program (linked in the article). It's 6 months. There's probably some sort of legal/HR benefit where if the apprentice doesn't work out, LinkedIn can cut ties.
  - jchin 9y ago
    Is that a negative? Seems like if you're the candidate and you don't work out after 6 months, you wouldn't have to claim you were fired. You can just say you completed the apprenticeship and decided to move on.
- TP4Cornholio 9y ago
  I might be wrong, but it sounds like the difference is they can pay them intern salaries and call it "training."
20years 9y ago
"what is a company to do today if it finds itself part of the 71 percent of employers that claim they can't find suitable technology candidates?" Increase the salary of what you are paying in order to attract more qualified devs. "they're reinvesting the money saved from hiring less-expensive engineers to create "farm teams" within their organizations" Aha! It is not about being able to "find suitable technology candidates" it is about being able to acquire "less-expensive engineers" Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of companies investing in apprenticeship programs but let's call it what it is. Not a talent shortage but a willing to pay top dollar shortage.
- graycat 9y ago
  One question: For the people hiring, do they pay enough for an employee to buy a house within a 20 minute commute to the office, support a family, and save for retirement?
  - 20years 9y ago
    Bingo!! In my particular location, companies try and hire devs for $25/hr but the average starter home is $500k. Then they wonder why all of the talent leaves.
    - graycat 9y ago
      Yup, those houses selling for $500K are really expensive, so expensive "no one can afford them"!
  - briffle 9y ago
    I'm upper 30's, married, with kids.. There is no way in hell I'm applying for a job in SV no matter the pay (well, maybe if it looked like a phone number, but that is not realistic)..
  - downrightmike 9y ago
    Whoa there, for most companies outside of the bay bubble: pick only one.
DTrejo 9y ago
I can imagine they're also investigating this because they're bad at hiring hidden/under-valued people for normal positions. Maybe they're also discovering they get the best signal from actually working together on real projects.
dasmoth 9y ago
I kind-of wonder if a key point here is: Grooming newly trained engineers to be comfortable with a proprietary tech stack, a particular delivery cadence and a company’s cultural values results in a shorter and more seamless onboarding process and quicker contributions to the team. I.e. "We want interchangeable developers to slot into our process, rather than people who arrive with established ideas and -- probably -- a desire for some degree of autonomy.
- mindcrime 9y ago
  rather than people who arrive with established ideas If those established ideas conflict with the prevailing mindset at $COMPANY and - more importantly - aren't objectively better by a sufficient margin, then it might make sense to not want that person around. Especially if they're going to spend a lot of energy and time creating conflict, arguing with other people, creating controversy, etc. and -- probably -- a desire for some degree of autonomy. I've been there, and in hindsight, I was an asshole about it. I've come to realize that if you're part of a team (and a company is a team of sorts) there are limits on how much autonomy you can really have. On the flipside, I believe the core responsibility of higher leadership is to create a vision and direction, and get people to buy into moving towards that vision, as opposed to simply leading by fiat. But if a given player is constantly rowing in the opposite direction, or even perpendicular, to the direction of everybody else, they're causing problems and you might actually be better off without them.
pleasecalllater 9y ago
That just made me a day. My searching for a job is generally like this: I send a CV, then there is a short call (or email) with this one question at the end: "How much do you want?". Then I usually don't want to reply, but I got convinced with "I cannot go with you further without this information". So I give them some number, usually something like I'm getting at that moment. Then I get no reply or "we cannot pay you that much". The last time I got that from a huge international company, where I really wanted to work. That company has been publishing the same job offers for the last year. I wrote something that I expected maybe some proposal from there side, etc. The answer was really funny "we are not negotiating salaries at this moment of the process". And all that was even before any technical interview. And that company is still publishing the same job offers :) So I'm really confused. I have over 15 years of experience in many different areas, and still the recruitment process is so broken that only sometimes I can get to the technical interview.
- objclxt 9y ago
  > The answer was really funny "we are not negotiating salaries at this moment of the process" [...] And all that was even before any technical interview. I wouldn't expect any company to start a salary negotiation prior to interviews - because how you perform in the interviews is going to drastically impact how willing they are to negotiate with you.
  - randomdata 9y ago
    A company that is struggling to fill all the jobs they need filled doesn't have much of a bargaining position to begin with. May as well get it out of the way and save everyone some time if it is found to not agreeable. Imagine going through several interviews and then still told "we can't afford you". In fact, companies that are struggling to find people should be advertising how much they can pay right from the job ad. If it is sufficient, it will help attract the talent they seek. Plenty of developers don't bother looking for new work because they believe, rightly or wrongly, it means taking a pay cut. If not sufficient, at least everyone can be saved the effort of trying. You're not McDonalds who has a new applicant to hire every five minutes. You can't play by their rules.
bjornlouser 9y ago
Every person in that photo is frowning. It looks as if they just found out the micromanagement doesn't end after bootcamp.
Ductapemaster 9y ago
While this article is mostly fluff, I question the comparison to a "farm team". Few players from farm teams ever make it to the big leagues. Assuming the comparison is similar in this case, what happens to the tech workers who have just invested a year of their lives learning some proprietary stack and incorporating themselves into a company's culture and get let go because they didn't make the cut? That won't look great on a resume. Also, what metrics will they use? Will people move into permanent positions based on performance reviews? Hopefully they don't apply the same old-hat ideas to these groups and try to rethink how they grow their teams from the ground up. Also, I'm not really sure how this differs from hiring interns to test them out before going full time? It just feels like the same thing with a snazzy name.
- TP4Cornholio 9y ago
  It sounds like an internship, (low paid trial worker), except for a longer term.
wai1234 9y ago
Hmmm. So, they're saying they should hire people with basic training in the necessary skills but who did not hatch out of the egg already knowing everything they will ever need to know. They then imagine they might need to invest time and energy into something I will refer to as 'training' that will help those people reach full productivity over time. And, they will risk that some of them might not work out perfectly. This is truly shocking and innovative. Maybe they could come up with something so we can move heavy loads without using rollers and a way to prepare food so we don't have to eat it raw. /snark If you needed evidence that SV occupies a hermetically sealed mental bubble, there's your sign.
- EnFinlay 9y ago
  I don't think this is restricted to SV, anecdotally from various stories I've heard this extends to most STEM disciplines.
spcelzrd 9y ago
Or... recruit and hire minorities. Measure the the results.
- ohstopitu 9y ago
  I don't get this train of thought...Why minorities? should it not be - hire the best for the job? (and if you don't get the best, then you are not paying well enough?) Not trying to be sarcastic, just wanted to know a more in-depth view point.
  - spcelzrd 9y ago
    If that's the case, then say it. We don't believe in diverse work environments. We don't care if every employee is a white male. They asked for diversity, this is how you get it. Not trying to be sarcastic, but your argument assumes a meritocracy. Companies hire the best college graduates. Colleges take the best high schoolers. The best high schools are in rich, mostly white areas. Who's to blame? Most CEO's, founders, and senators are white men. Either it's not a meritocracy or white supremacy is real. I believe it's not a meritocracy. More opportunity for minorities is one step in fixing this.
    - TP4Cornholio 9y ago
      It sounds like you're saying meritocracies won't hire minority candidates because they won't measure up. This is blatantly false. A few of the brightest guys I know are minorities and they were hired because they were smart as hell.
    - flukus 9y ago
      > The best high schools are in rich, mostly white areas. Who's to blame? The system of government where school funding is tied to local taxes. Always blame the root cause, don't try to gaffer tape society into something you want.
geebee 9y ago
"There are more than half a million open computing jobs in America today" What does this even mean? Doesn't basic economics tell us about supply and demand. At a low salary, demand for developers will be high, and supply will be low. At a high salary, demand will be lower, and supply will be higher. What does this "half a million openings" say other than that the supply and demand curves are out of whack because employers aren't paying enough? There's another little problem here - being a software developer, even one of those "CRUD" developers, is actually very difficult. Just try getting a basic web app with a database back end and a new fangled javascript framework running. Now get specs from a client. Host it on a server. Keep the server up and running. Fix bugs. Make estimates. Deal with business requirements that don't fit easily into the technical framework. Negotiate, explain, do demos. Upgrade as your javascript framework goes out of date every 6 months. Realize that the upgrade requires massive refactoring. Add developers and bring them up to speed, use git properly. Do code reviews, explain difficult sections to a group at the whiteboard. Articulate complex logic and how it relates to business requirements. Track down and fix obscure server log errors. Migrate data. Migrate it back when the new data structure doesn't work... This takes substantial reading comprehension, presentation skills, business acumen, writing, negotiating. People who can do this well and are free to choose their procession without fear of deportation really do have a lot of options. They don't have to be software developers. Now, ask them to work in a big open office with limited autonomy and middling salaries (really - out here in SF, the median salary for an application developer is a little more than for a dental hygienist, and less than a registered nurse[1]). Don't be surprised if people with choice choose other fields. It really isn't a head scratcher. All in all? Being a dev is an OK job, it can be a rational choice to become a developer, but I don't see anything close to the kind of gap that would have me scratching my head about a "shortage" of developers or worrying about "a half a million unfilled jobs." Honestly, every observation I have suggests that people with the ability to become devs may be rationally choosing to do other things, as you'd expect in a free labor market (note - many of the people who work as devs in the bay area are not free members of the labor market, they are required to work as devs as a condition of living in the US - this may be partly why the market hasn't adjusted). [1] I've learned that I should always add this bit - I have no objection to nurses being paid well, more than devs. And I'm aware the salaries are higher for nurses in the Bay Area, devs often earn more in other regions - however, the Bay Area is ground zero for this supposed "shortage", so I think it's reasonable to consider regional salaries here.
socialist_coder 9y ago
Calling this is a "farm team" is completely bullshit. It's an apprenticeship on an existing team. If it was truly a "farm team", it would be a completely separate group working on a different product. Now, that would actually be something interesting to try. Throw together 2 senior level developers as "coaches" and 20 new grads all on a team working on stuff that the other dev teams don't have time for. They could be fixing bugs in products owned by another team, or working on their own completely separate projects. I'd love to see a big company try something like that!
hinkley 9y ago
Do we really have a skill gap, or a skill glut? What I see is a lot of companies building essentially the same systems. I suspect this is because they can almost find enough people willing to work on it. Or maybe they feel like they can't find tools that do what they need. About half of my jobs have had huge chunks of the work that felt like the same problem space.
- TP4Cornholio 9y ago
  Having multiple companies work on similar things is true of every industry. There isn't a soda glut because both pepsi, coke, and many others make soda which is very similar.

62 points by jchin 9y ago

Or maybe set up an office with a fat pipe in Detroit where you can buy a house for $5k, rather than forcing them in to San Fran. Every large city could have a small office.

GordonS 9y ago
Or even embrace remote working. I know it's not for everyone, but it does work for many.
- socialist_coder 9y ago
  My startup is 100% remote and we've been doing it for the past 4 years. We are very collaborative, and for that to work remotely, you need good & reliable internet. And that is turning out to be a problem sometimes. You can't just work from any random beach or forest. Right now I live in a big city but I want to move out to the country. Well, lots of places in the country don't even have cable or dsl. You can only get "wireless" internet which is shit. So yeah, until it's easy to get broadband even out in the country, I don't think remote work is going to catch on. Because if you live in a city, you're probably just going to get a non-remote job. Half the advantages for working remotely is that it allows you to live out in the country, but without good internet, a big chunk of remote work is just not doable.
  - MichaelBurge 9y ago
    I wonder how much it costs to lay the cable. If you offered $10k/20k to your ISP, they might be able to come up with a solution for you even in a rural area.
    - socialist_coder 9y ago
      Yeah, I wonder that too. Eventually I will investigate stuff like this in more detail.
  - lj3 9y ago
    Damn, how remote are we talking here? I live in the middle of nowhere in New York State (1 hour drive to the nearest town, 2 to the nearest C-list city, 4 to Toronto, 10 to NYC). We've had high speed cable internet since 1999. > You can only get "wireless" internet which is shit. Depends on where you are. WISPs with a microwave connection are usually faster than cable, if run properly. More and more of them are popping up in rural areas because you don't have the high cost of running cable or fiber.
    - socialist_coder 9y ago
      I've been looking at 20+ acre land parcels in Oregon/Washington. The only internet service is wireless stuff like this: http://www.peakinternet.com/internet/fixed-wireless/ http://www.peakinternet.com/internet/fixed-wireless/
  - GordonS 9y ago
    While some will want to be digital nomads, the majority of remote workers will simply work from home, where they have access to a good internet connection. Are you in the US? I ask because I'm suprised that not everywhere gets cable of ADSL (I'm in Scotland, and many places have fibre. It's really rare not to have access to at least ADSL nowadays, even for somewhere fairly remote). As I see it, one of the advantages of working remotely is that I'm not constrained to jobs and salaries on offer in my city.

MS_Buys_Upvotes 9y ago

I love tech: Take something old (apprenticeships), re-package it as something new (a farm team) and bam: Instant, free, PR for zero innovation.

DamnYuppie 9y ago
And they get to keep the wages low!

wheelerwj 9y ago

lol. They do, "college league" and "acquisitions league."

4258HzG 9y ago

How is this different from having 'entry level positions' (ones that don't require 5 yrs of experience)?

econner 9y ago
Yea, I don't really understand why tech companies don't just do this with the hundreds of qualified candidates who have 4 year degrees and actual work experience that they say no to. My guess is that it's another way to hire people who don't know what they're worth and underpay them for a few years until the employees figure it out. Kind of like what the industry already does with new grads.
dalfonso 9y ago
I briefly glanced at LinkedIn's apprenticeship program (linked in the article). It's 6 months. There's probably some sort of legal/HR benefit where if the apprentice doesn't work out, LinkedIn can cut ties.
- jchin 9y ago
  Is that a negative? Seems like if you're the candidate and you don't work out after 6 months, you wouldn't have to claim you were fired. You can just say you completed the apprenticeship and decided to move on.
TP4Cornholio 9y ago
I might be wrong, but it sounds like the difference is they can pay them intern salaries and call it "training."

20years 9y ago

"what is a company to do today if it finds itself part of the 71 percent of employers that claim they can't find suitable technology candidates?" Increase the salary of what you are paying in order to attract more qualified devs. "they're reinvesting the money saved from hiring less-expensive engineers to create "farm teams" within their organizations" Aha! It is not about being able to "find suitable technology candidates" it is about being able to acquire "less-expensive engineers" Don't get me wrong. I like the idea of companies investing in apprenticeship programs but let's call it what it is. Not a talent shortage but a willing to pay top dollar shortage.

graycat 9y ago
One question: For the people hiring, do they pay enough for an employee to buy a house within a 20 minute commute to the office, support a family, and save for retirement?
- 20years 9y ago
  Bingo!! In my particular location, companies try and hire devs for $25/hr but the average starter home is $500k. Then they wonder why all of the talent leaves.
  - graycat 9y ago
    Yup, those houses selling for $500K are really expensive, so expensive "no one can afford them"!
- briffle 9y ago
  I'm upper 30's, married, with kids.. There is no way in hell I'm applying for a job in SV no matter the pay (well, maybe if it looked like a phone number, but that is not realistic)..
- downrightmike 9y ago
  Whoa there, for most companies outside of the bay bubble: pick only one.

DTrejo 9y ago

I can imagine they're also investigating this because they're bad at hiring hidden/under-valued people for normal positions. Maybe they're also discovering they get the best signal from actually working together on real projects.

dasmoth 9y ago

I kind-of wonder if a key point here is: Grooming newly trained engineers to be comfortable with a proprietary tech stack, a particular delivery cadence and a company’s cultural values results in a shorter and more seamless onboarding process and quicker contributions to the team. I.e. "We want interchangeable developers to slot into our process, rather than people who arrive with established ideas and -- probably -- a desire for some degree of autonomy.

mindcrime 9y ago
rather than people who arrive with established ideas If those established ideas conflict with the prevailing mindset at $COMPANY and - more importantly - aren't objectively better by a sufficient margin, then it might make sense to not want that person around. Especially if they're going to spend a lot of energy and time creating conflict, arguing with other people, creating controversy, etc. and -- probably -- a desire for some degree of autonomy. I've been there, and in hindsight, I was an asshole about it. I've come to realize that if you're part of a team (and a company is a team of sorts) there are limits on how much autonomy you can really have. On the flipside, I believe the core responsibility of higher leadership is to create a vision and direction, and get people to buy into moving towards that vision, as opposed to simply leading by fiat. But if a given player is constantly rowing in the opposite direction, or even perpendicular, to the direction of everybody else, they're causing problems and you might actually be better off without them.

pleasecalllater 9y ago

That just made me a day. My searching for a job is generally like this: I send a CV, then there is a short call (or email) with this one question at the end: "How much do you want?". Then I usually don't want to reply, but I got convinced with "I cannot go with you further without this information". So I give them some number, usually something like I'm getting at that moment. Then I get no reply or "we cannot pay you that much". The last time I got that from a huge international company, where I really wanted to work. That company has been publishing the same job offers for the last year. I wrote something that I expected maybe some proposal from there side, etc. The answer was really funny "we are not negotiating salaries at this moment of the process". And all that was even before any technical interview. And that company is still publishing the same job offers :) So I'm really confused. I have over 15 years of experience in many different areas, and still the recruitment process is so broken that only sometimes I can get to the technical interview.

objclxt 9y ago
> The answer was really funny "we are not negotiating salaries at this moment of the process" [...] And all that was even before any technical interview. I wouldn't expect any company to start a salary negotiation prior to interviews - because how you perform in the interviews is going to drastically impact how willing they are to negotiate with you.
- randomdata 9y ago
  A company that is struggling to fill all the jobs they need filled doesn't have much of a bargaining position to begin with. May as well get it out of the way and save everyone some time if it is found to not agreeable. Imagine going through several interviews and then still told "we can't afford you". In fact, companies that are struggling to find people should be advertising how much they can pay right from the job ad. If it is sufficient, it will help attract the talent they seek. Plenty of developers don't bother looking for new work because they believe, rightly or wrongly, it means taking a pay cut. If not sufficient, at least everyone can be saved the effort of trying. You're not McDonalds who has a new applicant to hire every five minutes. You can't play by their rules.

bjornlouser 9y ago

Every person in that photo is frowning. It looks as if they just found out the micromanagement doesn't end after bootcamp.

Ductapemaster 9y ago

While this article is mostly fluff, I question the comparison to a "farm team". Few players from farm teams ever make it to the big leagues. Assuming the comparison is similar in this case, what happens to the tech workers who have just invested a year of their lives learning some proprietary stack and incorporating themselves into a company's culture and get let go because they didn't make the cut? That won't look great on a resume. Also, what metrics will they use? Will people move into permanent positions based on performance reviews? Hopefully they don't apply the same old-hat ideas to these groups and try to rethink how they grow their teams from the ground up. Also, I'm not really sure how this differs from hiring interns to test them out before going full time? It just feels like the same thing with a snazzy name.

TP4Cornholio 9y ago
It sounds like an internship, (low paid trial worker), except for a longer term.

wai1234 9y ago

Hmmm. So, they're saying they should hire people with basic training in the necessary skills but who did not hatch out of the egg already knowing everything they will ever need to know. They then imagine they might need to invest time and energy into something I will refer to as 'training' that will help those people reach full productivity over time. And, they will risk that some of them might not work out perfectly. This is truly shocking and innovative. Maybe they could come up with something so we can move heavy loads without using rollers and a way to prepare food so we don't have to eat it raw. /snark If you needed evidence that SV occupies a hermetically sealed mental bubble, there's your sign.

EnFinlay 9y ago
I don't think this is restricted to SV, anecdotally from various stories I've heard this extends to most STEM disciplines.

spcelzrd 9y ago

Or... recruit and hire minorities. Measure the the results.

ohstopitu 9y ago
I don't get this train of thought...Why minorities? should it not be - hire the best for the job? (and if you don't get the best, then you are not paying well enough?) Not trying to be sarcastic, just wanted to know a more in-depth view point.
- spcelzrd 9y ago
  If that's the case, then say it. We don't believe in diverse work environments. We don't care if every employee is a white male. They asked for diversity, this is how you get it. Not trying to be sarcastic, but your argument assumes a meritocracy. Companies hire the best college graduates. Colleges take the best high schoolers. The best high schools are in rich, mostly white areas. Who's to blame? Most CEO's, founders, and senators are white men. Either it's not a meritocracy or white supremacy is real. I believe it's not a meritocracy. More opportunity for minorities is one step in fixing this.
  - TP4Cornholio 9y ago
    It sounds like you're saying meritocracies won't hire minority candidates because they won't measure up. This is blatantly false. A few of the brightest guys I know are minorities and they were hired because they were smart as hell.
  - flukus 9y ago
    > The best high schools are in rich, mostly white areas. Who's to blame? The system of government where school funding is tied to local taxes. Always blame the root cause, don't try to gaffer tape society into something you want.

geebee 9y ago

"There are more than half a million open computing jobs in America today" What does this even mean? Doesn't basic economics tell us about supply and demand. At a low salary, demand for developers will be high, and supply will be low. At a high salary, demand will be lower, and supply will be higher. What does this "half a million openings" say other than that the supply and demand curves are out of whack because employers aren't paying enough? There's another little problem here - being a software developer, even one of those "CRUD" developers, is actually very difficult. Just try getting a basic web app with a database back end and a new fangled javascript framework running. Now get specs from a client. Host it on a server. Keep the server up and running. Fix bugs. Make estimates. Deal with business requirements that don't fit easily into the technical framework. Negotiate, explain, do demos. Upgrade as your javascript framework goes out of date every 6 months. Realize that the upgrade requires massive refactoring. Add developers and bring them up to speed, use git properly. Do code reviews, explain difficult sections to a group at the whiteboard. Articulate complex logic and how it relates to business requirements. Track down and fix obscure server log errors. Migrate data. Migrate it back when the new data structure doesn't work... This takes substantial reading comprehension, presentation skills, business acumen, writing, negotiating. People who can do this well and are free to choose their procession without fear of deportation really do have a lot of options. They don't have to be software developers. Now, ask them to work in a big open office with limited autonomy and middling salaries (really - out here in SF, the median salary for an application developer is a little more than for a dental hygienist, and less than a registered nurse[1]). Don't be surprised if people with choice choose other fields. It really isn't a head scratcher. All in all? Being a dev is an OK job, it can be a rational choice to become a developer, but I don't see anything close to the kind of gap that would have me scratching my head about a "shortage" of developers or worrying about "a half a million unfilled jobs." Honestly, every observation I have suggests that people with the ability to become devs may be rationally choosing to do other things, as you'd expect in a free labor market (note - many of the people who work as devs in the bay area are not free members of the labor market, they are required to work as devs as a condition of living in the US - this may be partly why the market hasn't adjusted). [1] I've learned that I should always add this bit - I have no objection to nurses being paid well, more than devs. And I'm aware the salaries are higher for nurses in the Bay Area, devs often earn more in other regions - however, the Bay Area is ground zero for this supposed "shortage", so I think it's reasonable to consider regional salaries here.

socialist_coder 9y ago

Calling this is a "farm team" is completely bullshit. It's an apprenticeship on an existing team. If it was truly a "farm team", it would be a completely separate group working on a different product. Now, that would actually be something interesting to try. Throw together 2 senior level developers as "coaches" and 20 new grads all on a team working on stuff that the other dev teams don't have time for. They could be fixing bugs in products owned by another team, or working on their own completely separate projects. I'd love to see a big company try something like that!

hinkley 9y ago

Do we really have a skill gap, or a skill glut? What I see is a lot of companies building essentially the same systems. I suspect this is because they can almost find enough people willing to work on it. Or maybe they feel like they can't find tools that do what they need. About half of my jobs have had huge chunks of the work that felt like the same problem space.

TP4Cornholio 9y ago
Having multiple companies work on similar things is true of every industry. There isn't a soda glut because both pepsi, coke, and many others make soda which is very similar.