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The people in the final year of high school that are deciding what career to pursue? They will see that there's money to be made in the field and you'll get mor

The people in the final year of high school that are deciding what career to pursue? They will see that there's money to be made in the field and you'll get more people into the CS pipeline, which leads to more engineers 3 years later. If people aren't choosing the field, no matter how much you are offering new grads, it's an outreach problem and you solve it by making sure people have that information when they are making the decision. Or any other information, really, do you offer relocation assistance? Are your potential hires aware of that? Etc. It seems to work relatively well for oil companies (else they wouldn't be doing it, right?). >You can't plug holes with this strategy. It's too late to be looking for crew when your ship is sinking. >The holes move around while salaries are increasing. Yes, of course. But eventually the 'musical chairs' make people move to a higher paying position, and the hole isn't even in your region/country anymore. At least not in your company. The issue with the strategy doesn't seem to be that it doesn't work, just that it takes too long to. >I've worked for a company that payed at the top 10% of salaries and we still couldn't find enough engineers. As the other poster mentioned, 10% of what? If the best people from France and Germany are already in Switzerland, you need to compete with Swiss companies, not the local ones that just take what's left.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago
"there's money to be made in the field " With salaries in Berlin of $80k and >$100k or $150k in the valley, they currently don't think there is money made in that field? Wow. I do consider $100k a lot of money but YMMV. "offer relocation assistance?" Yes everyone I know does this. "Are your potential hires aware of that?" Yes. "It seems to work relatively well for oil companies" I have no data on oil companies or any experience with oil companies and if they have problems with finding enought good engineers or not. If you have any data, would be interesting, especially on the elasticity of that job market. I can only speak about software development and hiring people for 20+ years, no clue about other fields. "you need to compete with Swiss companies" So I increase the salary to compete with Swiss companies, they increase salaries, holes move around. Aside from that I assume Swiss companies already have their own holes - at least considering all the executive search calls I get. You only can plug the holes with more engineers, not higher salaries (above a certain point). And it's questionable you can pull in more people into CS when salaries are already very high compared to most other occupations (but I have no numbers on the elasticity of the engineering job market). Also: If most ads do not show salary information, how can I get more good engineers interviewing with higher salaries? The problem was not getting good engineers when they showed up for an interview, the problem was getting enough resumes - a problem everyone has outside Google,FB,... We did some A/B testing on job ads, including salary information did not help. I'm a proponent for https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator But yes, I would double the salary and let go of half of the people if joining a company as CTO, I'm not against increasing salaries, but they don't close holes from my experience.
- parasight 9y ago
  Your concept of "holes" is just the state of the current job market for engineers. There are more open positions than engineers available. Hence, companies have to compete more for the available engineers. Salary is not the only but certainly a major factor to make people switch jobs. At the same time the profession gets more attractive for "outsiders". We had this the other way around a couple of years ago in Germany: lots of electrical engineers and to few jobs.

_Codemonkeyism 9y ago

"there's money to be made in the field " With salaries in Berlin of $80k and >$100k or $150k in the valley, they currently don't think there is money made in that field? Wow. I do consider $100k a lot of money but YMMV. "offer relocation assistance?" Yes everyone I know does this. "Are your potential hires aware of that?" Yes. "It seems to work relatively well for oil companies" I have no data on oil companies or any experience with oil companies and if they have problems with finding enought good engineers or not. If you have any data, would be interesting, especially on the elasticity of that job market. I can only speak about software development and hiring people for 20+ years, no clue about other fields. "you need to compete with Swiss companies" So I increase the salary to compete with Swiss companies, they increase salaries, holes move around. Aside from that I assume Swiss companies already have their own holes - at least considering all the executive search calls I get. You only can plug the holes with more engineers, not higher salaries (above a certain point). And it's questionable you can pull in more people into CS when salaries are already very high compared to most other occupations (but I have no numbers on the elasticity of the engineering job market). Also: If most ads do not show salary information, how can I get more good engineers interviewing with higher salaries? The problem was not getting good engineers when they showed up for an interview, the problem was getting enough resumes - a problem everyone has outside Google,FB,... We did some A/B testing on job ads, including salary information did not help. I'm a proponent for https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator https://stackoverflow.com/company/salary/calculator But yes, I would double the salary and let go of half of the people if joining a company as CTO, I'm not against increasing salaries, but they don't close holes from my experience.

parasight 9y ago
Your concept of "holes" is just the state of the current job market for engineers. There are more open positions than engineers available. Hence, companies have to compete more for the available engineers. Salary is not the only but certainly a major factor to make people switch jobs. At the same time the profession gets more attractive for "outsiders". We had this the other way around a couple of years ago in Germany: lots of electrical engineers and to few jobs.