5 ms·

This is true, high skilled employers have lots of trouble finding high skilled workers, and one of the main economic incentives driving gender and ethnic equali

This is true, high skilled employers have lots of trouble finding high skilled workers, and one of the main economic incentives driving gender and ethnic equality in high tech work places is the disadvantage of not being able to have the maximum amount of resources to pool skilled workforces from. They can't get enough qualified people.

jazzyk 9y ago
>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)
- usmeteora 9y ago
  hmm, Well, I was specifically referencing the top 5 biggest tech companies, and the pay may seem low to the people who have been working there fresh out of college but its still relatively high pay compared to most other industries with people of the same academic and skill level but in a different industry. They interview alot of people and the people don't turn down the jobs because the pay isn't enough, they don't get the jobs because theres not enough qualified people. So I don't know how your statement is relevant but I don't think they don't get hired and rejected from their interviews because they applied and changed their mind that the pay wasnt high enough.... That being said, given that the skill level sought out is hard to find, and the people with those skill levels are in such high demand with many many options at their fingerprints, including but not limited to never having to work in an office if they don't want to, that there is an argument the pay should be higher for the people that do have this skill level, and work long hours, despite the rest of the world protesting at the inequality of tech valley and not seeming to understand how much of a meritocracy it is RELATIVE to other high earning places like wallstreet and politics, where the old boys club is much more relevant than tech valley (all relative here) (and i dont disagree, people with niche skill who earned it and are needed should be evaluated appropriately) but this is not the situation I was talking about. I'm talking about the situation where people get turned down from any of these jobs where they even have the luxury to complain a software engineer salary at a top 5 company is too low, because they don't have the expertise to get the job in the first place.
  - ptr_void 9y ago
    I think jazzyk was hinting that - with enough pay, people will do what they can to make themselves qualified. There's also the option of choosing the best people they get and start training them internally to make them qualified.
    - beagle3 9y ago
      The problem is, "make themselves qualified" to be good electrical engineers or even software engineers takes on the order of 10-15 years. If tomorrow every electrical engineer salary went 10 times higher, supply would still take 10 years to improve.
      - usmeteora 9y ago
        Electrical Engineer true. Software Dev though? I just googledo nline 30 seconds ago and theres free courses titled "Free online course to learn Tensorflow" "same for Elastic Search" "intro to VR" "Intro to Python" "App dev" etc...these are all free and accessible to the same people who work at coffee shops and browse twitter and facebook..... So would it take 10 years for these people to learn the skills? I think the market signals are being interpreted as intentionally divisive to people who don't have the skills, instead of a need for the population of people who have the skill to increase, and thus they protest the market signals as a response instead of utilizing free and open resources on top of their already paid for internet utilties provided by these relatively highly paid workers, to make it free and easier and more accessible for other people to learn. Sure learning these skills outside of a part time barista job could take 2-3 years, but even an entry level software position at a just a-okay tech firm who starts them out at say $50k/yr with no benefits, is still higher than working minimum wage, by a large degree. I'm not sure everyone who is experiencing a disadvantage from the pay difference wants to increase their skill level, or learn new skills. There are plenty of people who do and work long hours and cant, but there are also plenty of young people who do not, and choose not to and make other lifestyle decisions, which is fine with me, as long as they don't throw rocks at me because I chose to do my math homework in highschool when they chose to go out and drink every school night. Sometimes peoples life choices do have an impact, and its not always the responisibiltiy of the most successful companinies in the world to calibrate everyone elses life to the minimum starting salary of the most skilled workers on the planet. I don't know what IS a good solution, but I feel this is an unrealistic expectation. Regardless, these companies are making an effort to do this anyways as they are in need of this skills and creating venues to take people from 0 to 1 with never having known anything about software or math.
- abakker 9y ago
  could be. Could also be that we are not making enough qualified people. Minting new, skilled labor is not highly responsive to changes in demand for labor. Of course, most companies don't do anything to train or build talent in-house anymore. If you do increase your skills, it is most likely in spite of your employer, and not because of them.
- euyyn 9y ago
  Where are those highly-qualified employees working at, that pays them more?
- abakker 9y ago
  Also, remember that not all "high skill" jobs are coding/SW. We just aren't graduating enough skilled welders, CNC machinists, metrologists, mechanics. These jobs DO count as skilled, and are in short supply.
  - usmeteora 9y ago
    Its true. I worked in the semiconductor industry where they retrain coal plant workers and up the pay to grab techs from navy subamarines to get them working in high tech manufsctoring plants. They dish out money to relocate them, buy out their mortages to help relocate, send them to training/tech school, and the many techs who worked under me on my team made $170k + a year being one of maybe a handful of people in the world skilled at working on a specific machine in the fab. They can't get enough guys (edit: or girls, girls were treated well where I worked and there were definitely women in the fab with wrenches working on tools, did not mean to discriminate but yeh women and men, whoever is willing to learn and do the work, they will hire) to work in these places so they are seeking out workers from retiring generation plants and military. They all had it really good, actually enjoyed their jobs and got to learn high tech skills but not sit an an office all day and work on really high tech machines, got to work shift hours, night hours and get shift and night differentials and spend their weekends off traveling or doing whatever. They had a lot of fun and good guys to work with. As for me I was their fresh out of college Shift Engineer/Manager who was salaried at 1/3rd the pay with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and being salaried I worked 70+ hrs a week and was on call 24/7, but they got to turn their mind off at the end of the shift, and always ragged me about it, but in a fun loving way. It's actually really humbling to be managing people twice your age making three times as much as you. I learned so much about technology and in general life from these people who had tech jobs in odd places all over the world, and it's good to have a different perspective and get exposed to your industry from the ground up by people who genuinely work hard and know their stuff. I'm glad I got exposed to that industry/life/those people. Theres definitely alot of room for working men with a factory/tech/military background to have jobs if they are willing to learn new skills. And ultimately life is a constant set of new experiences so as long as you are willing to learn new skills you can/should in most cases be willing to find something, and right now industries are seeking out and paying people for these skills. What I noticed among these men who worked here doing well making alot more than me and living a good life is while telling me awesome stories from their travels in the navy or what have you, they had had multiple careers before and never shied away from the opportunity to transfer their skills technical and mechanical and apply it to an ew industry. Theres lots of guys out there with the same life experience, skill level who arent willing to adapt or learn new industries, and thats not the problem in my opinion of anyone else but that person who feels they dont need to learn new things because they worked in a factory once. Definitely lots of need in areas more than software dev. Right now for example, Samsung is hiring like crazy for these kind of tech workers in Austin TX, paying them shift and night shift differentials and starting salaries beginning in the 6 figures range. The more experienced ones get fought over to pick and choose and negociate salaries and paid even more to train new workers, live a really good life.
- subterfudge4 9y ago
  > ...for the price they are offering. True. But then question is whether money saved by offering the lower pay is worth the additional productivity brought in by new employee or not. If it is not then it is fair to say there is a shortage of people in Tech industry.
- Balgair 9y ago
  I'd say it's 90% the pay issue. The remaining 10% may be real. You often hear on HN that in interviews, after the candidate has passed the phone and CV screens and is actually in front of you, cannot even code up fizzbuzz in under an hour. I mean, that's pretty bad to not be able to do when you paid for a degree or a dojo or whatever to 'teach' you. I think that there really IS something of an issue there, but I agree with you, it's almost entirely about the money.
- Shivetya 9y ago
  one of the most overlooked reasons are people who cannot or will not move to where their skill set can gain employment. some of the cannot/willnot are married couples and that is understandable. then throw in some who hold their skill set to highly with no basis in reality. just because one XXXX language programmer can get a set figure does not mean they warrant it let alone near where they live. I have seen people turn down jobs because they did not like the drive. Damn, you need the job, you do what it takes to keep your family whole!
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  The ability to fill an opening by increasing salary does not disprove a skilled labor shortage. Imagine a model economy of 10 companies with openings, and one person with the skills to fill them. All 10 companies can fill their openings by sequentially raising their salary offer to that person. If you don't account for the openings that are created along the way (as the one person sequentially jumps for the higher salary), you'll have a mistaken impression there is no skilled labor shortage. After all, each company hired someone.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- losteric 9y ago
  Yep, that's what a labor shortage looks like :) Labor can ask for a price that's higher than the ROI of their labor for many businesses. In comparison, there's an excess supply of unskilled labor so businesses can purchase unskilled labor for minimum wage. Those people survive but do not profit from their time investment, and cannot invest in acquiring skills (aka poverty trap). The issue is that automation drives efficiency, but large corporations are buying most of the limited supply... which crushes smaller businesses and drives down wages of unskilled labor. My answer is that we need to invest in adult education and infrastructure. The labor market is struggling to adapt to demand because the cost of acquiring technical skills is prohibitively high for adults, and struggling consumers have undermined domestic manufacturing chains by both being unable to afford the output and unable to fund competitive infrastructure due to low wages. We need to seek the healthy equilibrium is where most labor has enough demand to personally profit, and enough supply that most businesses can afford to compete.
  - abakker 9y ago
    Excellent answer. Very much agree with the part about automation.
  - marcosdumay 9y ago
    That's not what a shortage looks like. Labor can always ask for a price that's higher than the ROI they would have on many business. That's also true for every cohort of labor. If there's any definition available for "labor shortage", it is what happens when a middle class increases and wealth disparity decreases. But anyway, your point about education stands by itself.
    - losteric 9y ago
      Maybe my terminology is off, correct me if so, but when businesses fold because bigger competitors are buying all the resources needed to stay competitive, that sounds like a shortage to me. On the labor side, getting a $120k+ job out of a 4 year/$14k investment also sounds like a labor shortage.
      - 9y ago

jazzyk 9y ago

>They can't get enough qualified people... ...for the price they are offering. There, fixed it for ya :-)

usmeteora 9y ago
hmm, Well, I was specifically referencing the top 5 biggest tech companies, and the pay may seem low to the people who have been working there fresh out of college but its still relatively high pay compared to most other industries with people of the same academic and skill level but in a different industry. They interview alot of people and the people don't turn down the jobs because the pay isn't enough, they don't get the jobs because theres not enough qualified people. So I don't know how your statement is relevant but I don't think they don't get hired and rejected from their interviews because they applied and changed their mind that the pay wasnt high enough.... That being said, given that the skill level sought out is hard to find, and the people with those skill levels are in such high demand with many many options at their fingerprints, including but not limited to never having to work in an office if they don't want to, that there is an argument the pay should be higher for the people that do have this skill level, and work long hours, despite the rest of the world protesting at the inequality of tech valley and not seeming to understand how much of a meritocracy it is RELATIVE to other high earning places like wallstreet and politics, where the old boys club is much more relevant than tech valley (all relative here) (and i dont disagree, people with niche skill who earned it and are needed should be evaluated appropriately) but this is not the situation I was talking about. I'm talking about the situation where people get turned down from any of these jobs where they even have the luxury to complain a software engineer salary at a top 5 company is too low, because they don't have the expertise to get the job in the first place.
- ptr_void 9y ago
  I think jazzyk was hinting that - with enough pay, people will do what they can to make themselves qualified. There's also the option of choosing the best people they get and start training them internally to make them qualified.
  - beagle3 9y ago
    The problem is, "make themselves qualified" to be good electrical engineers or even software engineers takes on the order of 10-15 years. If tomorrow every electrical engineer salary went 10 times higher, supply would still take 10 years to improve.
    - usmeteora 9y ago
      Electrical Engineer true. Software Dev though? I just googledo nline 30 seconds ago and theres free courses titled "Free online course to learn Tensorflow" "same for Elastic Search" "intro to VR" "Intro to Python" "App dev" etc...these are all free and accessible to the same people who work at coffee shops and browse twitter and facebook..... So would it take 10 years for these people to learn the skills? I think the market signals are being interpreted as intentionally divisive to people who don't have the skills, instead of a need for the population of people who have the skill to increase, and thus they protest the market signals as a response instead of utilizing free and open resources on top of their already paid for internet utilties provided by these relatively highly paid workers, to make it free and easier and more accessible for other people to learn. Sure learning these skills outside of a part time barista job could take 2-3 years, but even an entry level software position at a just a-okay tech firm who starts them out at say $50k/yr with no benefits, is still higher than working minimum wage, by a large degree. I'm not sure everyone who is experiencing a disadvantage from the pay difference wants to increase their skill level, or learn new skills. There are plenty of people who do and work long hours and cant, but there are also plenty of young people who do not, and choose not to and make other lifestyle decisions, which is fine with me, as long as they don't throw rocks at me because I chose to do my math homework in highschool when they chose to go out and drink every school night. Sometimes peoples life choices do have an impact, and its not always the responisibiltiy of the most successful companinies in the world to calibrate everyone elses life to the minimum starting salary of the most skilled workers on the planet. I don't know what IS a good solution, but I feel this is an unrealistic expectation. Regardless, these companies are making an effort to do this anyways as they are in need of this skills and creating venues to take people from 0 to 1 with never having known anything about software or math.
abakker 9y ago
could be. Could also be that we are not making enough qualified people. Minting new, skilled labor is not highly responsive to changes in demand for labor. Of course, most companies don't do anything to train or build talent in-house anymore. If you do increase your skills, it is most likely in spite of your employer, and not because of them.
euyyn 9y ago
Where are those highly-qualified employees working at, that pays them more?
abakker 9y ago
Also, remember that not all "high skill" jobs are coding/SW. We just aren't graduating enough skilled welders, CNC machinists, metrologists, mechanics. These jobs DO count as skilled, and are in short supply.
- usmeteora 9y ago
  Its true. I worked in the semiconductor industry where they retrain coal plant workers and up the pay to grab techs from navy subamarines to get them working in high tech manufsctoring plants. They dish out money to relocate them, buy out their mortages to help relocate, send them to training/tech school, and the many techs who worked under me on my team made $170k + a year being one of maybe a handful of people in the world skilled at working on a specific machine in the fab. They can't get enough guys (edit: or girls, girls were treated well where I worked and there were definitely women in the fab with wrenches working on tools, did not mean to discriminate but yeh women and men, whoever is willing to learn and do the work, they will hire) to work in these places so they are seeking out workers from retiring generation plants and military. They all had it really good, actually enjoyed their jobs and got to learn high tech skills but not sit an an office all day and work on really high tech machines, got to work shift hours, night hours and get shift and night differentials and spend their weekends off traveling or doing whatever. They had a lot of fun and good guys to work with. As for me I was their fresh out of college Shift Engineer/Manager who was salaried at 1/3rd the pay with a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering and being salaried I worked 70+ hrs a week and was on call 24/7, but they got to turn their mind off at the end of the shift, and always ragged me about it, but in a fun loving way. It's actually really humbling to be managing people twice your age making three times as much as you. I learned so much about technology and in general life from these people who had tech jobs in odd places all over the world, and it's good to have a different perspective and get exposed to your industry from the ground up by people who genuinely work hard and know their stuff. I'm glad I got exposed to that industry/life/those people. Theres definitely alot of room for working men with a factory/tech/military background to have jobs if they are willing to learn new skills. And ultimately life is a constant set of new experiences so as long as you are willing to learn new skills you can/should in most cases be willing to find something, and right now industries are seeking out and paying people for these skills. What I noticed among these men who worked here doing well making alot more than me and living a good life is while telling me awesome stories from their travels in the navy or what have you, they had had multiple careers before and never shied away from the opportunity to transfer their skills technical and mechanical and apply it to an ew industry. Theres lots of guys out there with the same life experience, skill level who arent willing to adapt or learn new industries, and thats not the problem in my opinion of anyone else but that person who feels they dont need to learn new things because they worked in a factory once. Definitely lots of need in areas more than software dev. Right now for example, Samsung is hiring like crazy for these kind of tech workers in Austin TX, paying them shift and night shift differentials and starting salaries beginning in the 6 figures range. The more experienced ones get fought over to pick and choose and negociate salaries and paid even more to train new workers, live a really good life.
subterfudge4 9y ago
> ...for the price they are offering. True. But then question is whether money saved by offering the lower pay is worth the additional productivity brought in by new employee or not. If it is not then it is fair to say there is a shortage of people in Tech industry.
Balgair 9y ago
I'd say it's 90% the pay issue. The remaining 10% may be real. You often hear on HN that in interviews, after the candidate has passed the phone and CV screens and is actually in front of you, cannot even code up fizzbuzz in under an hour. I mean, that's pretty bad to not be able to do when you paid for a degree or a dojo or whatever to 'teach' you. I think that there really IS something of an issue there, but I agree with you, it's almost entirely about the money.
Shivetya 9y ago
one of the most overlooked reasons are people who cannot or will not move to where their skill set can gain employment. some of the cannot/willnot are married couples and that is understandable. then throw in some who hold their skill set to highly with no basis in reality. just because one XXXX language programmer can get a set figure does not mean they warrant it let alone near where they live. I have seen people turn down jobs because they did not like the drive. Damn, you need the job, you do what it takes to keep your family whole!
snowwrestler 9y ago
The ability to fill an opening by increasing salary does not disprove a skilled labor shortage. Imagine a model economy of 10 companies with openings, and one person with the skills to fill them. All 10 companies can fill their openings by sequentially raising their salary offer to that person. If you don't account for the openings that are created along the way (as the one person sequentially jumps for the higher salary), you'll have a mistaken impression there is no skilled labor shortage. After all, each company hired someone.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
losteric 9y ago
Yep, that's what a labor shortage looks like :) Labor can ask for a price that's higher than the ROI of their labor for many businesses. In comparison, there's an excess supply of unskilled labor so businesses can purchase unskilled labor for minimum wage. Those people survive but do not profit from their time investment, and cannot invest in acquiring skills (aka poverty trap). The issue is that automation drives efficiency, but large corporations are buying most of the limited supply... which crushes smaller businesses and drives down wages of unskilled labor. My answer is that we need to invest in adult education and infrastructure. The labor market is struggling to adapt to demand because the cost of acquiring technical skills is prohibitively high for adults, and struggling consumers have undermined domestic manufacturing chains by both being unable to afford the output and unable to fund competitive infrastructure due to low wages. We need to seek the healthy equilibrium is where most labor has enough demand to personally profit, and enough supply that most businesses can afford to compete.
- abakker 9y ago
  Excellent answer. Very much agree with the part about automation.
- marcosdumay 9y ago
  That's not what a shortage looks like. Labor can always ask for a price that's higher than the ROI they would have on many business. That's also true for every cohort of labor. If there's any definition available for "labor shortage", it is what happens when a middle class increases and wealth disparity decreases. But anyway, your point about education stands by itself.
  - losteric 9y ago
    Maybe my terminology is off, correct me if so, but when businesses fold because bigger competitors are buying all the resources needed to stay competitive, that sounds like a shortage to me. On the labor side, getting a $120k+ job out of a 4 year/$14k investment also sounds like a labor shortage.
    - 9y ago