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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

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 ;)
- rgrieselhuber 16y ago
  The best advice I can give to people looking for a "cool" job in the valley is to simply move there and get to know people. If they aren't willing to take that admittedly risky step (almost a rite of passage) then the valley might not be the best fit for them. From what everything on this thread is saying, this is a great time to do it.
illumin8 16y ago
What that says to me is that there is another tech bubble starting. Right now the hiring standards (hopefully) haven't slipped too much. When the only requirement to get a Python/Django job is that you read a Python for dummies book and can fog a mirror, welcome to 2001 again.
- kls 16y ago
  It may be starting, but with at about 20 years in the industry, I would say that we have reached what has been about the norm. With the greater economy in the state it is in though, it is almost certain to bubble again. Development or Nursing are about the only two decent prospects of drawing a decent salary now without a decade of education investment. It is only a matter of time until people smell blood again and start running this way. Which will mean a return to the worse than bad developers of the .com boom. We are a few years out if it happens though as it takes some time to go from, I know how to power a computer on to slapping together some code.
  - iamelgringo 16y ago
    Development or Nursing are about the only two decent prospects of drawing a decent salary now without a decade of education investment. re: Nursing. Jobs are actually really pretty tight right now. (I moonlight as an ER nurse in SV). New graduates with no experience have having to move to get jobs. But, then, this area supports the highest salaries for nurses in the country. There's also substantial money to be made as a police officer or fireman, but it's extremely hard to get a job in those areas. I'll stick with nursing for a bit longer because it pays really well, and I only work 3 12 hour shifts a week. It's perfect for boot strapping. I'll quit when we can raise an angel round.
    - kls 16y ago
      New graduates with no experience have having to move to get jobs I know what you are saying, and it is true but in the grand scheme of things, right now only having to move to get a job, if you are a recent grad, for people not in either industry, seems like child's play to what they are facing.

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 ;)

rgrieselhuber 16y ago
The best advice I can give to people looking for a "cool" job in the valley is to simply move there and get to know people. If they aren't willing to take that admittedly risky step (almost a rite of passage) then the valley might not be the best fit for them. From what everything on this thread is saying, this is a great time to do it.

illumin8 16y ago

What that says to me is that there is another tech bubble starting. Right now the hiring standards (hopefully) haven't slipped too much. When the only requirement to get a Python/Django job is that you read a Python for dummies book and can fog a mirror, welcome to 2001 again.

kls 16y ago
It may be starting, but with at about 20 years in the industry, I would say that we have reached what has been about the norm. With the greater economy in the state it is in though, it is almost certain to bubble again. Development or Nursing are about the only two decent prospects of drawing a decent salary now without a decade of education investment. It is only a matter of time until people smell blood again and start running this way. Which will mean a return to the worse than bad developers of the .com boom. We are a few years out if it happens though as it takes some time to go from, I know how to power a computer on to slapping together some code.
- iamelgringo 16y ago
  Development or Nursing are about the only two decent prospects of drawing a decent salary now without a decade of education investment. re: Nursing. Jobs are actually really pretty tight right now. (I moonlight as an ER nurse in SV). New graduates with no experience have having to move to get jobs. But, then, this area supports the highest salaries for nurses in the country. There's also substantial money to be made as a police officer or fireman, but it's extremely hard to get a job in those areas. I'll stick with nursing for a bit longer because it pays really well, and I only work 3 12 hour shifts a week. It's perfect for boot strapping. I'll quit when we can raise an angel round.
  - kls 16y ago
    New graduates with no experience have having to move to get jobs I know what you are saying, and it is true but in the grand scheme of things, right now only having to move to get a job, if you are a recent grad, for people not in either industry, seems like child's play to what they are facing.