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False premise. There is no shortage of devs. That has been a complete fabrication, made up entirely by big tech companies, in a propaganda push to promote mor
by rubicon33 8y ago
False premise.
There is no shortage of devs. That has been a complete fabrication, made up entirely by big tech companies, in a propaganda push to promote more and more people getting into CS.
It's entirely so they can pay developers less.
- monocasa 8y agoThis. FAANG hires more devs than they need just to keep the rest of FAANG from getting them.
- daze42 8y agoFacebook Amazon Apple N? Google?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rurounijones 8y agoNetflix https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp
- daze42 8y agoThanks!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- procinct 8y agoNetflix. Common abbreviation for big tech companies in Finance.
- jnbiche 8y agoFinance?? Those companies have little to do with finance--they're tech companies.
- sincerely 8y agoMaybe they meant that's the term used for those 5 tech companies in the finance industry?
- cortesoft 8y agoI think they are saying it is the term they use within the finance industry for those five companies
- procinct 8y agoThanks, that's exactly what I was saying.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- solveit 8y agoSource?
- monocasa 8y agoStories told to me by ex-FAANG recruiters.
- tylerritchie 8y agoThere's no shortage of developers, but big tech companies are attempting to increase the supply of developers to reduce the cost of developers?
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago> There's no shortage of developers, but big tech companies are attempting to increase the supply of developers to reduce the cost of developers? Open markets don't have shortages, those are caused by price controls. In a market the product is always available to the highest bidder, unless there are zero suppliers at any price which is obviously not the case here. But "shortage" sounds like a problem that needs to be solved by some kind of external intervention, whereas "wages are high" is more of the sort of thing people like to see in the economy, and is not actually a problem at all because the high wages on their own are sufficient to attract the necessary talent to the industry.
- daze42 8y agoLaw of supply and demand. If supply increases but demand stays the same then the price will fall.
- ako 8y agoIt's more complex than this, as there many supply and demand interactions relevant when creating a piece of software. The company selling the product knows what price it can ask for the product in a supply and demand market. This price dictates what costs are acceptable when producing the product, and this also has impact on how much they can offer the developers. They may be able to hire more devs if they increase salary, but this would mean that the price of the end product would become too high, and they would go out of business.
- EZ-E 8y agoDepends where, the world is not USA Europe has a real shortage in some countries
- rorykoehler 8y agoThis isn't reflected in the wages which are terrible in Europe compared to the US.
- coder543 8y agoEconomies aren't that simple.
- fooker 8y agoOk then, can you explain why wages for programming jobs are low-ish in Europe even when there is, apparently, a shortage?
- coder543 8y agoThese are just my thoughts, take them with a grain of salt: Success makes more success. If you're a billion dollar company, you can afford to pay more for employees. This lets you hire better developers, which lets you be even more successful. If you're in a poor country and you're trying to start a company... you're still poor. The fact that you need developers doesn't suddenly make you rich enough to afford the same wages a billion dollar company can afford to pay. These lower wages mean that good developers in such regions are often swayed to move elsewhere to get paid better, leaving that original area even worse off than it was to begin with. JetBrains has managed to build a globally successful company in the Czech Republic, where engineering wages are usually about a third of what the US pays. Call it luck, elbow grease, whatever. They did it. From a quick google search, JetBrains pays wages that are competitive with Silicon Valley. They can only afford to do that because they have been so successful. This success is making them even more successful, since they can afford to pay competitive wages, and it probably doesn't hurt (now that they're successful) that the cost of living in Prague is super low compared to much of Europe. But it's not like anyone starting a company in Prague can suddenly afford to pay $120k+ per developer. This cycle of brain drain is very hard to counteract. Banks aren't usually excited about freely giving out large sums of money to try out this whole "paying people more" thing and seeing if that yields better results than the other tech startups they tried to fund, but failed due to a lack of talent, random chance, or mismanagement. If a company becomes successful, but they're only successful locally, then they're tied to the low economic success of their area. They don't have any more money than other employers, so they can't pay wages competitive with other places. I'm no professional economist or anything, so I'm sure I'm missing some of the nuances of the situation, but a shortage in one thing (developers) doesn't somehow imply an abundance in another thing (funding), it just means that there aren't enough developers available within the funding that these companies have available. It takes a certain amount of dish soap to clean dishes, but an absence of dishes doesn't mean your home suddenly has an excess of dish soap... you might not have any dishes or dish soap! If the companies had a bunch of money, they probably wouldn't have too much trouble getting developers to work for them... but without those developers, how can they get the money? Banks don't write blank checks, especially not to people who have no track record of success. If someone has a track record of success starting companies, they probably don't need the banks to give them a loan nearly as much. The whole thing is a catch-22. There are solutions, they're just not obvious or every smaller economy in the world would already be employing those solutions. Stuff like this might help: https://tulsaremote.com/ https://tulsaremote.com/ It's hard to know.
- systemBuilder 8y agoI agree. There is zero shortage of developers. I just left Google search. There, all the Dev's are PhDs and will drop everything to fix a non user facing problem at midnight or 1am. They all answer their pagers about it. There is no shortage of Dev's ... but ... these companies are looking for H1B slaves who work 24/7 and 60h a week times 7y of indentured servitude. There certainly is a shortage of Uncle Tom's willing to work for the Simon Legree FAANGs. The FAANGs are the biggest whiner crybabies on Earth about it.
- fooker 8y agoWow, I would not want to work with this person!
- city41 8y agoThen why do developers get contacted by recruiters constantly? Every developer I know gets contacted. Yet no non-tech colleagues I know experience anything similar in their industry. I'm not saying I disagree with you, I'm genuinely curious.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoJob reqs kept open but not filled, as mentioned up thread. Recruiters chasing an elusive paycheck just like candidates.
- city41 8y agoThat doesn’t add up to me. In my experience a lot of the recruiting comes from engineering managers, the CTO, CEO etc of the company. On top of that, this recruiting has been at a fevered pitch for at least 4 or 5 years. If it was as unfruitful as you claim, I’d expect the recruiters to have learned that by now.
- mixmastamyk 8y agoSpam is known to be a numbers game, don’t know what else to add.
- city41 8y agoThen I come away unconvinced. I just can't imagine recruiters are going to spend all this time making such little money. People naturally gravitate to where the demand is.
- joeberon 8y agoJust because they're being contacted doesn't mean job offers actually come out of it
- rubicon33 8y agoAs someone else in this thread pointed out - being contacted doesn't mean anything comes from it. It's EXTREMELY easy for recruiters to spam out messages. Since they're payed based on hires, it's a numbers game for them. Get as many people into the interview as possible. How many of those interviews actually result in jobs? That's the important question. As this very post shows, there is a clear disconnect: HIRING is much less common than INTERVIEWING.
- jpttsn 8y agoSame thing, different perspective. If I supply something (dev time, clean water) I think there’s no shortage; they just need to pay more. If I demand something (dev time, clean water) I will say there’s a shortage if I can’t get it for a certain price.
- bloomca 8y agoThere is shortage of experienced developers. Big companies can hire more trying to get away from competition, but some people would go to startups anyway (especially recent graduates).
- mixmastamyk 8y agoAgeism is a thing. Not many experienced folks under thirty —> more fabrication.