11 ms·

Is The Silicon Valley Talent Shortage Getting Worse?

76 points by kacy 16y ago

kacy 16y ago
Is it time for this soon-to-be computer science grad to move to the Valley? Is this a good or a bad thing for new grads?
- moultano 16y ago
  If you are looking for a big company job, it shouldn't be too hard to get one before moving. The burn rate on living expenses is pretty high out here unless you have a valley-sized salary too, so I recommend that. Apply to Google. :) You can always leave for a startup once your short-term finances are secure.
  - staunch 16y ago
    Or just rent a room in an apartment with roommates for $700/mo and don't get a car. Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers.
    - moultano 16y ago
      $700 per month is still exorbitantly expensive relative to most of the country. In Columbus Ohio that gets you a three story house with beautiful wood floors, or a furnished multi-room apartment in downtown Cincinnati. Only in the valley is that kind of expense living frugally, and it's something someone with a student's level of savings ought to take stock of before making the leap.
      - pyre 16y ago
        Really? ~$700/month gets you a two-bedroom apartment in parts of Portland, Oregon, but that seems to be around a minimum. The cheapest thing that I was able to find at one point was ~$500/month for a house-share w/ 7 other people. That's a far cry from what you're talking about in Ohio, and I'm not even in the Valley, and the prices here aren't too far off from prices in Toronto, Ontario. I'll also note that Ohio isn't known for being a prosperous part of the country either. I'm sure you could find cities around the country where the housing prices are similar to SF (though still maybe less).
        moultano 16y ago
        In the valley, $700/month doesn't even get you a studio. It gets you half of a 1 bedroom.
        pyre 16y ago
        That's true, but trying to illustrate how hyper-expensive prices in The Valley are by comparing them against prices in places that are ultra-low seems disingenuous (to me at least). The post came off like it was implying that in The Valley $700/month is a bare-basement price, while everywhere else in the country it buys you a mansion and several servants.
        moultano 16y ago
        The point is that it's probably a lot more expensive than what the poster is used to, and it's worth working somewhere that can give you some financial security for a while until you know the place.
      - roel_v 16y ago
        "$700 per month is still exorbitantly expensive relative to most of the country" I find that hard to believe. Maybe in backwater Georgia. I happen to have some experience with US residents moving temporarily to Europe and they don't even blink at paying local market rate, with some mentioning that it's 'quite cheap compared to home'. Market rate here for a non-luxurious 2-bedroom apartment or semi-detached is 800-1000 USD. (they're not highly paid managers, either, line personnel).
        Retric 16y ago
        I know a couple with a really nice 3 story house with an attic and full basement that might be worth 50k. Granted most of the housing in the US is in a much better area and is worth more than that, but most of the actual land in the US is poorly located and vary cheap.
      - chopsueyar 16y ago
        What if I don't like 'goetta'?
        moultano 16y ago
        Question your humanity. ;)
      - loewenskind 16y ago
        Uh, what? In the middle of the Midwest with literally one tech company to work for rent was $500/mo. You're calling $700/mo when you have choices where to work for at a 50%+ higher rate exorbitant? I think you need to step outside your normal boundaries a bit.
        moultano 16y ago
        If you're splitting a one-bedroom in the midwest, you can easily do $200 per month, which is what $700 gets you in the valley.
    - patrickaljord 16y ago
      Facebook and twitter are advertising companies too ;)
      - dschobel 16y ago
        But at Facebook and Twitter the chance to become very wealthy within the next few years is substantially greater than at Google.
        patrickaljord 16y ago
        So why do you feel the need to call it an "advertising company"? Or was that a snarky anti-google comment? ;)
        dschobel 16y ago
        That wasn't me.
    - miked 16y ago
      > Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers. I assume you're referring to Google.
- ScottBurson 16y ago
  If you're smart and ambitious, I think yes, you should move here. The reason I make the advice conditional is that it's an expensive place to live; if you don't burn to work for a startup, you might be better off elsewhere. My sense is that the demand is skewed toward the top end of the market, i.e., the best developers are getting much more difficult to find; I don't know if you'll see the same demand/supply imbalance at the entry level. Still, if you intend to get to be one of the best, this is the place to do it.
- cageface 16y ago
  If you're looking for a first job then probably yes. Quality of life for a young, single male in the Valley is pretty low though. After 10 years in the Bay Area I'm moving to NYC where women actually exist.
  - queensnake 16y ago
    'Sunnymale'; 'Man Jose'. (Well /I/ laughed when I heard them :) )
  - jscore 16y ago
    I almost thought I wrote that. When you get to NYC, lemme buy you a beer.
  - aneth 16y ago
    In the Valley maybe. San Francisco proper is filled with women and has a great quality of life on par with, but different from, NYC.
  - rdouble 16y ago
    I did this. If you are a single, straight guy, NYC is indeed better for dating. I didn't find dating in San Francisco to be completely horrible, just kinda weird. For example, in SF the women I would meet were very averse to 1-on-1 dating and everything had to be done as part of a group outing. On the other hand, I've gone on a lot of dates in NYC, but have not been successful in locating a crew of friends to hang out with. I guess one of the beneficial side-effects of "group dating" was that I ended up meeting a bunch of bros. In San Francisco, he numbers were definitely not in favor of the male. I remember going into any bar in SF and it would be groups of say, 6 guys, sitting with 1 woman. Certain bars, like Toronado, did not have any women in them, ever. In NYC I've actually gone into a bar during happy hour and been the only male in there... an experience I've never had before in my life.
sabat 16y ago
Definitely been seeing a serious uptick in hiring around here -- and I've been on and off the job market for over a year. Things were looking up last Spring (around the time I picked up my current consulting gig) but things are noticeably better now. I should point out that in normal, 'healthy' years, November is a time of declining job openings. Companies generally wait until January for budgets to turn around, etc. Not this year, though.
colinsidoti 16y ago
This article seems to imply that "acqui-hires" are a tool to bring in great engineers, but I feel like Facebook and others are after great entrepreneurs. Perhaps the final sentence should be changed to: "Now might be a good time to leave school and start a company."
carterac 16y ago
The valley?? The real story of talent drought is in New York City. Recently there has been a gigantic explosion of startups with lots of funding, but _very_ few great engineers available. As CEO of a just-funded tech startup, I am budgeting ~70% of my time to personally recruit a Lead Developer and Senior Software Engineer (despite having a technical background myself).
- smiler 16y ago
  Have you considered hiring remote workers? Surely your money will go further hiring a remote developer in the Mid West with the cheaper cost of living than NYC? I'm sure you could even fly them in a few times if you needed to and still save money
  - gaustin 16y ago
    It seems that despite the ever decreasing barriers, people just don't want to hire, or aren't comfortable hiring, remote workers. I live in Montana. I grew up in Kansas City, and went to school in NY. There is no language barrier, I'm a skilled developer and a pretty good communicator. I'm willing to relocate sometime in the next 2 years. It seems I might as well be a non-English speaker in Siberia, when it comes to getting my foot in the door at an SV, NYC, etc. startup.
    - plinkplonk 16y ago
      "It seems that despite the ever decreasing barriers, people just don't want to hire, or aren't comfortable hiring, remote workers." The good news is, this is changing, and fast. Pretty anecdotal, I get pitched for remote work all the time, but over the last year or so, the number of offers has gone up significantly . Of course plenty of "we'll help you relocate" type offers too. I see many more good devs working for companies in the USA than there used to be (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1879225 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1879225) And I live in Bangalore, India where even really good devs are lost in the sea of mediocrity. Kansas is way closer :-) I suspect you just have to wait a little till the demand supply gap gets painful enough to overcome this particular prejudice/preference.
rgrieselhuber 16y ago
I had emails from 7 different recruiters today so people are definitely hiring experienced developers right now.
aberkowitz 16y ago
If startups branched out from Silicon Valley more often, new technological epicenters would form, alleviating the shortage.
- LogicX 16y ago
  Right... like the talent shortage is any better in Boston. We've been trying to hire a Ruby on Rails developer for nearly 6 months: Everyone is happily employed, or doing their own startup.
  - chopsueyar 16y ago
    Have you tried increasing the salary offering, or advertising the position on the website itself?
  - aberkowitz 16y ago
    Would you mind linking to a job listing?
- davidw 16y ago
  The guy who started Funambol talks very highly of having the company HQ in silicon valley, and development elsewhere. In his case, Italy, which really does have a lot of bright people who tend not to have as many exciting options locally. So building a 'bridge' like that can get the SV company good talent at good prices, and give the 'locals' a better job, perhaps at better wages, and with more interesting work to do.
- EdwardMSmith 16y ago
  In all the discussions of "startup culture" we've had here in the Twin Cities, this lack of mentorship by seasoned startup veterans always comes up as the main thing that we're lacking.
iamelgringo 16y ago
Running Hackers and Founders Silicon Valley, I get asked all the time if I know of people who are looking for work, and startups are having to work increasingly hard to hire. A few months ago, I was offered a $5k referral bonus for a Python/Django engineer. ( That's not the business I want to be in, btw. And it's not why I do H&F. ) There's easily been 100 startups getting angel money in the Valley in the last 5 months. And, if all of those are looking for 2-3 RoR/PyDjango/JQuery/iOS devs, that means startups alone are competing for 300 engineers. And, that's not mentioning Yelp, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Google. The Valley could easily accomodate 1000 new engineers in the next 6 months. From what I've seen of the Hackers and Founders NYC scene, the situation is similar, except startups have to compete for engineering talent with finance companies, which pay a lot better than your average startup. What does that mean? Founders, always be hiring. Devs, our value as an engineer is going up. Founders, build on more productive languages/platforms. Dev, consider joining a startup as an angel investment where you're pouring in time and effort instead of cash. So, interview a lot, and join carefully.
- lbrandy 16y ago
  I suppose by the mathematical nature of the situation, people and their social graph end up at one of the two "equilibria". 1) either they know a bunch of people who can't find any good people to hire, or 2) they know a bunch of smart people who work at crappy jobs they'd love to leave. I have a group of friends (from University of Florida) who mostly graduated just before the west coast was really recruiting there. One works at HP doing server stuff, but that's about as "far" as they got. Another one is the smartest dude at his job at bigco where he puts out fires of bad devs every day, cleaning up $20,000 contracting messes with one SQL query that no one there thought could be written. To these people, trying to get a "cool" job is borderline impossible because, first, they don't know anyone (their social graph converged the wrong way), and second the combination of being far-away and having to blindly email resumes into the blackhole that is domain.com/apply is just plain discouraging (not to mention ineffective). I don't know of a good solution to this problem, but if anyone is willing to relocate some of these people, I might be able to refer some really smart people ;)
  - 16y ago
nhashem 16y ago
I have a theory that the dot-com bust in 2000 and the outsourcing/offshoring hype in 2004ish basically wiped out two generations of computer science students. I graduated in 2004 and I remember the number of students in my major decreased dramatically between my freshman and sophomore year (some of that is the usual engineering major attrition, but I didn't see nearly the same decline as my friends in electrical/mechanical/etc). A coworker who graduated in 2007 told me his friends kept telling him to change his major "because all the jobs are going to India anyway." Meanwhile, the exact opposite thing happened. Growth on the web continues to explode and the demand for skill workers to support that growth continues to climb. Could this by why the shortage seems especially pronounced?
- hga 16y ago
  Could be. For hard numbers, the dot.com/fiber-telecom bust caused MIT's EECS enrollment to crash from 400 students per class, a number that had been stable for more than 2 decades, to less than 200. It's now gotten a bit better (a bit over 200), but no one expects a return to the glory days. As I recall reading somewhere recently, overall nationally the effect was the same, from 20,000 to 10,000 majors annually granted. I'd also add one big factor: despite the poo-pooing by some of age discrimination, it's very real and when your parents or friends of your parents tell you from harsh experience that your career will be over when you reach 35-40 years of age, you listen if you have any sense. Of course, now the name of the game is to get a good starting job, period. I suspect that has more than a little to do with the slight recent upturn.
jmspring 16y ago
As someone who has been an early engineer (sixth employee at two and ninth at most current) at a couple of startups, watching the current talent situation is interesting. Companies are definitely hiring with smaller or more agile companies being more proactive about the diversity of people the bring in. Some of the larger networking/software firms are continuing to stick to their laundry lists. I enjoy seeing the plethora of dmaller startups and the ideas and enthusiasm they bring. Things definitely have a different feel than dotcom bubble one. I hope that this job recovery is longer and more sustained. For me, it is an interesting crossroad - having a house and marital responsibilities, do I jump on someone else's startup bandwagon again, try and get an idea funded (knowing angels, etc) or go the big company route to give personal time to flesh out ideas. There certainly are options out there.
seldo 16y ago
The national unemployment rate is over 9% while Silicon Valley is fighting tooth-and-claw to hire. What's wrong with this picture? Software engineering is technical, sure, but it's not that hard -- if some of the idiots I've worked with in the past could hold down jobs, then anyone can. Which dying industries should we be looking at to fill the gaps in the software industry?
- jscore 16y ago
  I have never met anyone who was not technical and then became a coder. In pre-2000 dot.com you could've gotten a job with a word 'Internet' on your resume, but nowadays you should at least know decent coding.
  - Seth_Kriticos 16y ago
    Yup. There are people with the logical mindset and problem solving ability to just naturally pick up coding. But most are not, and that's just an ability that's very hard to develop in later phases of life. In most cases it develops during teen age. Guess the last few decades did not really encourage these kind of developments, which is why we are running short now. It's not easy to fix though.
    - kls 16y ago
      Guess the last few decades did not really encourage these kind of developments, which is why we are running short now. It's not easy to fix though It was the .com bust along with a few other things. The market was so over-saturated with hacks in for a quick buck that when it popped it took a while to shake out who was who. This ran a lot of good developers out of the market never to return. The outsourcing craze right afterward did nothing to help the situation and just reinforced that the remaining few jobs where going to be further and further constrained. Which is what happened for a while. The schools and their CS programs pretty much became ghost town overnight. I know, I had went back to finish my degree after 10 years in the industry around that time. I remember what was a full class became me an 2 other guys. I remember saying to one of them. Times are going to get good again in about 5 years.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
Orca 16y ago
I've noticed a surge in contacts from recruiters, almost daily now from linkedin asking if I'm looking. Last year was a very different story.
aneth 16y ago
The developers I know are mostly trying to be founder level at a startup. I actually feel sorry every time I run into a company trying to hire a Rails developer because I feel their pain. What's the solution for you companies desperate to hire? In my opinion, your outlook on equity needs to change. It's regular practice to offer a "rock star" developer 0.25% of your pre-diluted shares when you have $2M dollars in the bank. I've had this debate a number of times with arrogant founders and been told how that's just the way it is - investors this, B round that, $1B exit blah. Fine - but your offer is not appealing to me. I can make $100K+/year consulting part time, usually with a small equity stake, plus have a founder share of my own startup. Why would I take $100k plus 0.1% to work 12 hours a day at your startup? Offer several percent, maybe 10% if you don't have a product yet. Get a few good people committed to your company on the inside. This is particularly true if you are very early or have a less "cool" startup. You are going to wallow in crappy developer misery and your product will fail if you don't have awesome techs who are TRULY dedicated to your vision.
- mindsetlabs 16y ago
  This is a realization that I hope business founders will soon come to realize, because without the engineers there is no company, there is no innovation or product to sell. So i agree, and developers should get equity!
- GFischer 16y ago
  "What's the solution for you companies desperate to hire?" How about looking abroad? I know, it's fraught with perils, but as someone from "abroad" from the U.S. point of view, it needn't be that bad. And your dollars will go a LONG way in hiring top talent (of course, you need someone local or whom you trust to choose the top talent. 90% of the local programmers are crappy too!).
  - illumin8 16y ago
    You can't hire an H1B unless you are willing to document that you were unable to find local talent that had the required skill set. HR departments usually work around this by wording the job requirement in such a way that only their hand-picked H1B applicant has every exact skill. "Oh, you need a Python/Django/Ruby/Java guy with 2 years .NET? I just happen to have a resume with that exact skill set in front of me; so strange that we wrote the job opening like that...<wink wink>" Expect to pay about $10-20K extra just to hire an H1B because of all of this extra paperwork and documentation, as well as hope he wins the H1B lottery.
aneth 16y ago
I'm an RoR/Java/etc developer/entrepreneur. I get recruited heavily 2-3 times a week, and yet half my non-tech friends (which comprises most of my friends) are under-employed or jobless. That dichotomy is disturbing and very difficult personally to deal with. Here I am making 10 times what the employed ones make hourly, while talking about making millions on a startup. I try to encourage them to get some product or internet marketing skills, generally to no avail. Even so, I feel that web development is a commodity and that to stay ahead I need to develop a better design and product background.
- Sukotto 16y ago
  I suggest you try to add some high achievers to your circle of friends. People who are successful in the way you you dream of becoming. If your current group of friends are not interested in actually working hard to make those dreams a reality, there's a very real danger they will inadvertently poison your own chances of success.
  - gte910h 16y ago
    He's not exaggerating the market there for people of other skillsets. Fresh new young people trained in other professions are having a very hard time of it as their more experienced peers in industry are taking the entry level positions rather than nothing at all. Now his friends might be unmotivated tools, have the wrong skillset for the area in which they live, or any number of things, but the economy is hard for some highly trained people even these days.
mindsetlabs 16y ago
Companies need to start taking on the virtual office model and start hiring developers from remote cities and even countries, you miss out on the social interaction of an office but good developers tend to get more done quicker when they can work from home and with flexible hours.
steilpass 16y ago
So how do I benefit back from Europe?
- iamelgringo 16y ago
  The engineer shortage will spread. It's hitting SV and NYC first, but give it a year or two, and you'll see it as well.
awt 16y ago
As a programmer it's always fun to be in a good job market. However, I do get a bit concerned about bubbles when things get overheated like this. I suppose the best one can do is save for the downturn and build up some great experience for when the market inevitably gets tougher and the rounds of layoffs start.
- rrival 16y ago
  Bubble? Overheated? Aren't we recovering from a broader downturn? Or are you suggesting that we're in the 3rd or 4th quadrant of the VC investment-ease curve (~2000, ~2007)?
  - illumin8 16y ago
    The federal reserve is printing almost $1 trillion in "easy money" that will be lent out to businesses at close to 0% interest rates. Don't fool yourself into thinking that this money won't end up creating a bubble somewhere. It might not be a tech bubble, but it very well could be.
arnorhs 16y ago
I was contemplating moving to the US to join a startup, but getting a visa is pretty hard, isn't it? I can get a 3 month traveler's/business visa. Then there are work permits, etc, right? So currently, I'm just working on my own project.
untamedmedley 16y ago
There is no pipeline. I see lots of comments about how entry level developers are useless. No one wants to train the next gen of developers, so companies are fighting over a smaller and smaller pool of people. The only way to get any experience seems to be to start your own company. Which is great for the person who goes off and does it, but not smart for the company trying to hire them. If employers don't want to waste money investing in entry-level positions, why waste it investing in someone who has made it clear they want to work for themselves? Pay less, train more.
flacon 16y ago
Looking for a developer with startup exp? I am a developer with startup experience and skill in Ruby, JS, and frontend technologies. I have 6+ years experience and a BA from UC Berkeley. I created a post related to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786901 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786901
- percept 16y ago
  If you haven't already, check out Authentic Jobs--they appear to have a number of remote jobs listed with your skillset: http://www.authenticjobs.com/ http://www.authenticjobs.com/ Good luck with your search.
  - flacon 16y ago
    Thx. Authentic Jobs looks useful. I am currently employed at wellknownstartup.com and looking for a change. Thanks for the tip.

76 points by kacy 16y ago

kacy 16y ago

Is it time for this soon-to-be computer science grad to move to the Valley? Is this a good or a bad thing for new grads?

moultano 16y ago
If you are looking for a big company job, it shouldn't be too hard to get one before moving. The burn rate on living expenses is pretty high out here unless you have a valley-sized salary too, so I recommend that. Apply to Google. :) You can always leave for a startup once your short-term finances are secure.
- staunch 16y ago
  Or just rent a room in an apartment with roommates for $700/mo and don't get a car. Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers.
  - moultano 16y ago
    $700 per month is still exorbitantly expensive relative to most of the country. In Columbus Ohio that gets you a three story house with beautiful wood floors, or a furnished multi-room apartment in downtown Cincinnati. Only in the valley is that kind of expense living frugally, and it's something someone with a student's level of savings ought to take stock of before making the leap.
    - pyre 16y ago
      Really? ~$700/month gets you a two-bedroom apartment in parts of Portland, Oregon, but that seems to be around a minimum. The cheapest thing that I was able to find at one point was ~$500/month for a house-share w/ 7 other people. That's a far cry from what you're talking about in Ohio, and I'm not even in the Valley, and the prices here aren't too far off from prices in Toronto, Ontario. I'll also note that Ohio isn't known for being a prosperous part of the country either. I'm sure you could find cities around the country where the housing prices are similar to SF (though still maybe less).
      - moultano 16y ago
        In the valley, $700/month doesn't even get you a studio. It gets you half of a 1 bedroom.
        pyre 16y ago
        That's true, but trying to illustrate how hyper-expensive prices in The Valley are by comparing them against prices in places that are ultra-low seems disingenuous (to me at least). The post came off like it was implying that in The Valley $700/month is a bare-basement price, while everywhere else in the country it buys you a mansion and several servants.
        moultano 16y ago
        The point is that it's probably a lot more expensive than what the poster is used to, and it's worth working somewhere that can give you some financial security for a while until you know the place.
    - roel_v 16y ago
      "$700 per month is still exorbitantly expensive relative to most of the country" I find that hard to believe. Maybe in backwater Georgia. I happen to have some experience with US residents moving temporarily to Europe and they don't even blink at paying local market rate, with some mentioning that it's 'quite cheap compared to home'. Market rate here for a non-luxurious 2-bedroom apartment or semi-detached is 800-1000 USD. (they're not highly paid managers, either, line personnel).
      - Retric 16y ago
        I know a couple with a really nice 3 story house with an attic and full basement that might be worth 50k. Granted most of the housing in the US is in a much better area and is worth more than that, but most of the actual land in the US is poorly located and vary cheap.
    - chopsueyar 16y ago
      What if I don't like 'goetta'?
      - moultano 16y ago
        Question your humanity. ;)
    - loewenskind 16y ago
      Uh, what? In the middle of the Midwest with literally one tech company to work for rent was $500/mo. You're calling $700/mo when you have choices where to work for at a 50%+ higher rate exorbitant? I think you need to step outside your normal boundaries a bit.
      - moultano 16y ago
        If you're splitting a one-bedroom in the midwest, you can easily do $200 per month, which is what $700 gets you in the valley.
  - patrickaljord 16y ago
    Facebook and twitter are advertising companies too ;)
    - dschobel 16y ago
      But at Facebook and Twitter the chance to become very wealthy within the next few years is substantially greater than at Google.
      - patrickaljord 16y ago
        So why do you feel the need to call it an "advertising company"? Or was that a snarky anti-google comment? ;)
        dschobel 16y ago
        That wasn't me.
  - miked 16y ago
    > Now you can get a job at an exciting startup instead of a 12 year old advertising company with 15,000 programmers. I assume you're referring to Google.
ScottBurson 16y ago
If you're smart and ambitious, I think yes, you should move here. The reason I make the advice conditional is that it's an expensive place to live; if you don't burn to work for a startup, you might be better off elsewhere. My sense is that the demand is skewed toward the top end of the market, i.e., the best developers are getting much more difficult to find; I don't know if you'll see the same demand/supply imbalance at the entry level. Still, if you intend to get to be one of the best, this is the place to do it.
cageface 16y ago
If you're looking for a first job then probably yes. Quality of life for a young, single male in the Valley is pretty low though. After 10 years in the Bay Area I'm moving to NYC where women actually exist.
- queensnake 16y ago
  'Sunnymale'; 'Man Jose'. (Well /I/ laughed when I heard them :) )
- jscore 16y ago
  I almost thought I wrote that. When you get to NYC, lemme buy you a beer.
- aneth 16y ago
  In the Valley maybe. San Francisco proper is filled with women and has a great quality of life on par with, but different from, NYC.
- rdouble 16y ago
  I did this. If you are a single, straight guy, NYC is indeed better for dating. I didn't find dating in San Francisco to be completely horrible, just kinda weird. For example, in SF the women I would meet were very averse to 1-on-1 dating and everything had to be done as part of a group outing. On the other hand, I've gone on a lot of dates in NYC, but have not been successful in locating a crew of friends to hang out with. I guess one of the beneficial side-effects of "group dating" was that I ended up meeting a bunch of bros. In San Francisco, he numbers were definitely not in favor of the male. I remember going into any bar in SF and it would be groups of say, 6 guys, sitting with 1 woman. Certain bars, like Toronado, did not have any women in them, ever. In NYC I've actually gone into a bar during happy hour and been the only male in there... an experience I've never had before in my life.

sabat 16y ago

Definitely been seeing a serious uptick in hiring around here -- and I've been on and off the job market for over a year. Things were looking up last Spring (around the time I picked up my current consulting gig) but things are noticeably better now. I should point out that in normal, 'healthy' years, November is a time of declining job openings. Companies generally wait until January for budgets to turn around, etc. Not this year, though.

colinsidoti 16y ago

This article seems to imply that "acqui-hires" are a tool to bring in great engineers, but I feel like Facebook and others are after great entrepreneurs. Perhaps the final sentence should be changed to: "Now might be a good time to leave school and start a company."

carterac 16y ago

The valley?? The real story of talent drought is in New York City. Recently there has been a gigantic explosion of startups with lots of funding, but _very_ few great engineers available. As CEO of a just-funded tech startup, I am budgeting ~70% of my time to personally recruit a Lead Developer and Senior Software Engineer (despite having a technical background myself).

smiler 16y ago
Have you considered hiring remote workers? Surely your money will go further hiring a remote developer in the Mid West with the cheaper cost of living than NYC? I'm sure you could even fly them in a few times if you needed to and still save money
- gaustin 16y ago
  It seems that despite the ever decreasing barriers, people just don't want to hire, or aren't comfortable hiring, remote workers. I live in Montana. I grew up in Kansas City, and went to school in NY. There is no language barrier, I'm a skilled developer and a pretty good communicator. I'm willing to relocate sometime in the next 2 years. It seems I might as well be a non-English speaker in Siberia, when it comes to getting my foot in the door at an SV, NYC, etc. startup.
  - plinkplonk 16y ago
    "It seems that despite the ever decreasing barriers, people just don't want to hire, or aren't comfortable hiring, remote workers." The good news is, this is changing, and fast. Pretty anecdotal, I get pitched for remote work all the time, but over the last year or so, the number of offers has gone up significantly . Of course plenty of "we'll help you relocate" type offers too. I see many more good devs working for companies in the USA than there used to be (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1879225 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1879225) And I live in Bangalore, India where even really good devs are lost in the sea of mediocrity. Kansas is way closer :-) I suspect you just have to wait a little till the demand supply gap gets painful enough to overcome this particular prejudice/preference.

rgrieselhuber 16y ago

I had emails from 7 different recruiters today so people are definitely hiring experienced developers right now.

aberkowitz 16y ago

If startups branched out from Silicon Valley more often, new technological epicenters would form, alleviating the shortage.

LogicX 16y ago
Right... like the talent shortage is any better in Boston. We've been trying to hire a Ruby on Rails developer for nearly 6 months: Everyone is happily employed, or doing their own startup.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Have you tried increasing the salary offering, or advertising the position on the website itself?
- aberkowitz 16y ago
  Would you mind linking to a job listing?
davidw 16y ago
The guy who started Funambol talks very highly of having the company HQ in silicon valley, and development elsewhere. In his case, Italy, which really does have a lot of bright people who tend not to have as many exciting options locally. So building a 'bridge' like that can get the SV company good talent at good prices, and give the 'locals' a better job, perhaps at better wages, and with more interesting work to do.
EdwardMSmith 16y ago
In all the discussions of "startup culture" we've had here in the Twin Cities, this lack of mentorship by seasoned startup veterans always comes up as the main thing that we're lacking.

iamelgringo 16y ago

Running Hackers and Founders Silicon Valley, I get asked all the time if I know of people who are looking for work, and startups are having to work increasingly hard to hire. A few months ago, I was offered a $5k referral bonus for a Python/Django engineer. ( That's not the business I want to be in, btw. And it's not why I do H&F. ) There's easily been 100 startups getting angel money in the Valley in the last 5 months. And, if all of those are looking for 2-3 RoR/PyDjango/JQuery/iOS devs, that means startups alone are competing for 300 engineers. And, that's not mentioning Yelp, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Google. The Valley could easily accomodate 1000 new engineers in the next 6 months. From what I've seen of the Hackers and Founders NYC scene, the situation is similar, except startups have to compete for engineering talent with finance companies, which pay a lot better than your average startup. What does that mean? Founders, always be hiring. Devs, our value as an engineer is going up. Founders, build on more productive languages/platforms. Dev, consider joining a startup as an angel investment where you're pouring in time and effort instead of cash. So, interview a lot, and join carefully.

lbrandy 16y ago
I suppose by the mathematical nature of the situation, people and their social graph end up at one of the two "equilibria". 1) either they know a bunch of people who can't find any good people to hire, or 2) they know a bunch of smart people who work at crappy jobs they'd love to leave. I have a group of friends (from University of Florida) who mostly graduated just before the west coast was really recruiting there. One works at HP doing server stuff, but that's about as "far" as they got. Another one is the smartest dude at his job at bigco where he puts out fires of bad devs every day, cleaning up $20,000 contracting messes with one SQL query that no one there thought could be written. To these people, trying to get a "cool" job is borderline impossible because, first, they don't know anyone (their social graph converged the wrong way), and second the combination of being far-away and having to blindly email resumes into the blackhole that is domain.com/apply is just plain discouraging (not to mention ineffective). I don't know of a good solution to this problem, but if anyone is willing to relocate some of these people, I might be able to refer some really smart people ;)
- 16y ago

nhashem 16y ago

I have a theory that the dot-com bust in 2000 and the outsourcing/offshoring hype in 2004ish basically wiped out two generations of computer science students. I graduated in 2004 and I remember the number of students in my major decreased dramatically between my freshman and sophomore year (some of that is the usual engineering major attrition, but I didn't see nearly the same decline as my friends in electrical/mechanical/etc). A coworker who graduated in 2007 told me his friends kept telling him to change his major "because all the jobs are going to India anyway." Meanwhile, the exact opposite thing happened. Growth on the web continues to explode and the demand for skill workers to support that growth continues to climb. Could this by why the shortage seems especially pronounced?

hga 16y ago
Could be. For hard numbers, the dot.com/fiber-telecom bust caused MIT's EECS enrollment to crash from 400 students per class, a number that had been stable for more than 2 decades, to less than 200. It's now gotten a bit better (a bit over 200), but no one expects a return to the glory days. As I recall reading somewhere recently, overall nationally the effect was the same, from 20,000 to 10,000 majors annually granted. I'd also add one big factor: despite the poo-pooing by some of age discrimination, it's very real and when your parents or friends of your parents tell you from harsh experience that your career will be over when you reach 35-40 years of age, you listen if you have any sense. Of course, now the name of the game is to get a good starting job, period. I suspect that has more than a little to do with the slight recent upturn.

jmspring 16y ago

As someone who has been an early engineer (sixth employee at two and ninth at most current) at a couple of startups, watching the current talent situation is interesting. Companies are definitely hiring with smaller or more agile companies being more proactive about the diversity of people the bring in. Some of the larger networking/software firms are continuing to stick to their laundry lists. I enjoy seeing the plethora of dmaller startups and the ideas and enthusiasm they bring. Things definitely have a different feel than dotcom bubble one. I hope that this job recovery is longer and more sustained. For me, it is an interesting crossroad - having a house and marital responsibilities, do I jump on someone else's startup bandwagon again, try and get an idea funded (knowing angels, etc) or go the big company route to give personal time to flesh out ideas. There certainly are options out there.

seldo 16y ago

The national unemployment rate is over 9% while Silicon Valley is fighting tooth-and-claw to hire. What's wrong with this picture? Software engineering is technical, sure, but it's not that hard -- if some of the idiots I've worked with in the past could hold down jobs, then anyone can. Which dying industries should we be looking at to fill the gaps in the software industry?

jscore 16y ago
I have never met anyone who was not technical and then became a coder. In pre-2000 dot.com you could've gotten a job with a word 'Internet' on your resume, but nowadays you should at least know decent coding.
- Seth_Kriticos 16y ago
  Yup. There are people with the logical mindset and problem solving ability to just naturally pick up coding. But most are not, and that's just an ability that's very hard to develop in later phases of life. In most cases it develops during teen age. Guess the last few decades did not really encourage these kind of developments, which is why we are running short now. It's not easy to fix though.
  - kls 16y ago
    Guess the last few decades did not really encourage these kind of developments, which is why we are running short now. It's not easy to fix though It was the .com bust along with a few other things. The market was so over-saturated with hacks in for a quick buck that when it popped it took a while to shake out who was who. This ran a lot of good developers out of the market never to return. The outsourcing craze right afterward did nothing to help the situation and just reinforced that the remaining few jobs where going to be further and further constrained. Which is what happened for a while. The schools and their CS programs pretty much became ghost town overnight. I know, I had went back to finish my degree after 10 years in the industry around that time. I remember what was a full class became me an 2 other guys. I remember saying to one of them. Times are going to get good again in about 5 years.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

Orca 16y ago

I've noticed a surge in contacts from recruiters, almost daily now from linkedin asking if I'm looking. Last year was a very different story.

aneth 16y ago

The developers I know are mostly trying to be founder level at a startup. I actually feel sorry every time I run into a company trying to hire a Rails developer because I feel their pain. What's the solution for you companies desperate to hire? In my opinion, your outlook on equity needs to change. It's regular practice to offer a "rock star" developer 0.25% of your pre-diluted shares when you have $2M dollars in the bank. I've had this debate a number of times with arrogant founders and been told how that's just the way it is - investors this, B round that, $1B exit blah. Fine - but your offer is not appealing to me. I can make $100K+/year consulting part time, usually with a small equity stake, plus have a founder share of my own startup. Why would I take $100k plus 0.1% to work 12 hours a day at your startup? Offer several percent, maybe 10% if you don't have a product yet. Get a few good people committed to your company on the inside. This is particularly true if you are very early or have a less "cool" startup. You are going to wallow in crappy developer misery and your product will fail if you don't have awesome techs who are TRULY dedicated to your vision.

mindsetlabs 16y ago
This is a realization that I hope business founders will soon come to realize, because without the engineers there is no company, there is no innovation or product to sell. So i agree, and developers should get equity!
GFischer 16y ago
"What's the solution for you companies desperate to hire?" How about looking abroad? I know, it's fraught with perils, but as someone from "abroad" from the U.S. point of view, it needn't be that bad. And your dollars will go a LONG way in hiring top talent (of course, you need someone local or whom you trust to choose the top talent. 90% of the local programmers are crappy too!).
- illumin8 16y ago
  You can't hire an H1B unless you are willing to document that you were unable to find local talent that had the required skill set. HR departments usually work around this by wording the job requirement in such a way that only their hand-picked H1B applicant has every exact skill. "Oh, you need a Python/Django/Ruby/Java guy with 2 years .NET? I just happen to have a resume with that exact skill set in front of me; so strange that we wrote the job opening like that...<wink wink>" Expect to pay about $10-20K extra just to hire an H1B because of all of this extra paperwork and documentation, as well as hope he wins the H1B lottery.

aneth 16y ago

I'm an RoR/Java/etc developer/entrepreneur. I get recruited heavily 2-3 times a week, and yet half my non-tech friends (which comprises most of my friends) are under-employed or jobless. That dichotomy is disturbing and very difficult personally to deal with. Here I am making 10 times what the employed ones make hourly, while talking about making millions on a startup. I try to encourage them to get some product or internet marketing skills, generally to no avail. Even so, I feel that web development is a commodity and that to stay ahead I need to develop a better design and product background.

Sukotto 16y ago
I suggest you try to add some high achievers to your circle of friends. People who are successful in the way you you dream of becoming. If your current group of friends are not interested in actually working hard to make those dreams a reality, there's a very real danger they will inadvertently poison your own chances of success.
- gte910h 16y ago
  He's not exaggerating the market there for people of other skillsets. Fresh new young people trained in other professions are having a very hard time of it as their more experienced peers in industry are taking the entry level positions rather than nothing at all. Now his friends might be unmotivated tools, have the wrong skillset for the area in which they live, or any number of things, but the economy is hard for some highly trained people even these days.

mindsetlabs 16y ago

Companies need to start taking on the virtual office model and start hiring developers from remote cities and even countries, you miss out on the social interaction of an office but good developers tend to get more done quicker when they can work from home and with flexible hours.

steilpass 16y ago

So how do I benefit back from Europe?

iamelgringo 16y ago
The engineer shortage will spread. It's hitting SV and NYC first, but give it a year or two, and you'll see it as well.

awt 16y ago

As a programmer it's always fun to be in a good job market. However, I do get a bit concerned about bubbles when things get overheated like this. I suppose the best one can do is save for the downturn and build up some great experience for when the market inevitably gets tougher and the rounds of layoffs start.

rrival 16y ago
Bubble? Overheated? Aren't we recovering from a broader downturn? Or are you suggesting that we're in the 3rd or 4th quadrant of the VC investment-ease curve (~2000, ~2007)?
- illumin8 16y ago
  The federal reserve is printing almost $1 trillion in "easy money" that will be lent out to businesses at close to 0% interest rates. Don't fool yourself into thinking that this money won't end up creating a bubble somewhere. It might not be a tech bubble, but it very well could be.

arnorhs 16y ago

I was contemplating moving to the US to join a startup, but getting a visa is pretty hard, isn't it? I can get a 3 month traveler's/business visa. Then there are work permits, etc, right? So currently, I'm just working on my own project.

untamedmedley 16y ago

There is no pipeline. I see lots of comments about how entry level developers are useless. No one wants to train the next gen of developers, so companies are fighting over a smaller and smaller pool of people. The only way to get any experience seems to be to start your own company. Which is great for the person who goes off and does it, but not smart for the company trying to hire them. If employers don't want to waste money investing in entry-level positions, why waste it investing in someone who has made it clear they want to work for themselves? Pay less, train more.

flacon 16y ago

Looking for a developer with startup exp? I am a developer with startup experience and skill in Ruby, JS, and frontend technologies. I have 6+ years experience and a BA from UC Berkeley. I created a post related to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786901 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786901

percept 16y ago
If you haven't already, check out Authentic Jobs--they appear to have a number of remote jobs listed with your skillset: http://www.authenticjobs.com/ http://www.authenticjobs.com/ Good luck with your search.
- flacon 16y ago
  Thx. Authentic Jobs looks useful. I am currently employed at wellknownstartup.com and looking for a change. Thanks for the tip.