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This really doesn't match my experience. As a tech lead / team lead over the last five years in a small East Coast market I've experienced real difficulty findi

This really doesn't match my experience. As a tech lead / team lead over the last five years in a small East Coast market I've experienced real difficulty finding competent Software Engineers at any level. I changed jobs a year ago and got lots of interest from a wide variety of employers from a big enterprisey place to a small local startup, two smallish local fintech firms, and a SV software company's regional dev center where I landed. I'm in my mid forties. I can't really explain the difference in your experience vs mine other that perhaps the location.

jacobyoder 8y ago
> As a tech lead / team lead over the last five years in a small East Coast market I've experienced real difficulty finding competent Software Engineers at any level Amen. I've been in a few US markets (non CA/NY) over the past 20+ years. Finding a decent number of available/skilled software engineers is always a challenge. If they're skilled (beyond competent), they're employed or doing their own thing. I've recently taken a 6 month contract, and have been amazed at the quality of the team, but... they're really having trouble finding people - people that wouldn't be a net negative on the team (there's both cultural fit as well as skill fit). And yes, they're hiring junior folks from area bootcamps and training them up. Doing real training - reviews, handholding, explaining, testing - is a real investment, and takes a lot of time. This has been one of the few teams I've worked in where I've been pleasantly surprised at the level of quality of everyone in the company (10 in the group I'm in, around 65 in the company altogether I think). I'm watching how they interview/hire/expand, and... it's tough. They could easily bring on more people quickly who would be a net negative, and cause more problems (I've seen that many times - I was the net negative problem at least once!)
ThePawnBreak 8y ago
> As a tech lead / team lead over the last five years in a small East Coast market I've experienced real difficulty finding competent Software Engineers at any level. Pay more. Google and Facebook use ridiculous interviews because so many people want to work there. They still hire thousands of people every year. Why? Mostly because they pay mid-level engineers over $200k. Can't afford that? Then we're not talking about "not finding people" anymore, just about not affording them.
- southphillyman 8y ago
  Doesn't this assume that the interviews even get to the offer stage? How does paying more remedy 80% of your applicants failing fizzbuzz on the phone interview? If you don't have the name recognition of the FAANG you're probably getting subpar applicants regardless.
  - ThePawnBreak 8y ago
    > Doesn't this assume that the interviews get to the salary negotiation stage? If you don't have the name recognition of the FAANG you're probably getting subpar applicants regardless. People talk about salaries, they know who the top hitters are. Here in London there are many hedge funds you never heard of that have 20 engineers fighting for one spot, because they pay 100k GBP, whereas most startups complaining about lack of people pay 40k.
  - a_c_s 8y ago
    Paying more attracts more applicants.
    - souprock 8y ago
      It does not attract more applicants because they won't know about it unless you advertise a specific amount, which then creates other problems. You'd get a flood of useless people if the number is high. Some other people, underestimating themselves, would not apply. You remove the flexibility to hire both junior and senior people because one single pay number can't fit both. Even if you provide a range, you have the problem of pessimists and optimists assuming very different things about where in the range they might fall.
- rplst8 8y ago
  $200k in Silicon Valley != $200k in a small east coast market. Hell, it doesn't even compare to the DC Metro area. From talking to friends and family that live out there, plus a few folks who used to live in the Bay Area, someone earning $120k here would have to earn at least $200k out there to get the same standard of living.
pteredactyl 8y ago
Fair. Are you offering competitive wages that appeal to local workers?
- chasingthewind 8y ago
  My impression was that both organizations were offering reasonable salaries for the market but I wasn't directly involved in the compensation talks.
bpyne 8y ago
The problem has multiple parts: pay, benefits, and definition of "skills". Two years ago I did a search for software engineering jobs within 30 miles of my geographic area, which covered Boston. I had a steady stream of opportunities. After three months of disappointment, I called off the search. I received an offer from an organization I loved: the industry, mission, people I met, everything was perfect. My interviewers halted the interview after 30 minutes, saying that they were going to start the hiring process. The salary became the stickler. The job was mine if I wanted to take a $10-15K decrease in salary. Unfortunately, I had to let it pass by. (In retrospect, I should have taken it. I would have caught up in pay within a few years. Oh well.) Another organization seemed pretty inline with my goals and personality. The tech was interesting and I mostly aligned with it. The stickler became the vacation time. I have 4 weeks of vacation. They needed me to start again at 2 weeks. (2 weeks, seriously?) Doing so would have screwed up family life as my wife has 5 weeks. Honestly, I can trade salary sooner than I can trade vacation time. Employers seem to have strayed into Crazy Land with the requirements for "skills". A skill, to me, isn't the knowledge of the Python ecosystem or Java ecosystem for building applications. Python vs. Java is just a knowledge of tool sets: Stanley vs. DeWitt. It's easy to learn one if you know the other. Skill is choosing the right trade-offs in design for the particular organization and industrial sector you're working in. It's knowing when transaction throughput is more important than rock-solid error handling. When extensibility is worth the extra abstractions. When readability trumps everything for a particular organization due to the skill level of the other development teams. Yet, employers have gotten to the point of not just requiring particular tools, but particular versions of them. So, I'm not convinced the problem is a lack of available software engineers, at least not completely. Much of the problem in hiring is outrageous demands from employers.
- stirfrykitty 8y ago
  You, sir, said the above beautifully and truthfully. I recently (last year) suffered through the same thing. Ever notice the faults in some of the job postings? 5-7 years experience with a tool that has been out for 3 years? Funny. Or my favorites: DevOps... what a joke. Any good sysadmin, especially *nix, should be able to write shell scripts well, at least using Bash, maybe some Perl and Python. But no. I recently saw a posting for a sysadmin job in Houston where no one would have qualified. They wanted the candidate to have 10+ years of C# systems programming experience! For a sysadmin job. Not many sysadmins with those skills are still sysadmins. In addition, they wanted nginx, Apache, IIS, MySQL, MS SQL, Docker, Kubernetes, and many others. Very few people know all of that in one go. From the job description, one can surmise they wanted a developer for the price of a sysadmin. No thanks.

jacobyoder 8y ago

> As a tech lead / team lead over the last five years in a small East Coast market I've experienced real difficulty finding competent Software Engineers at any level Amen. I've been in a few US markets (non CA/NY) over the past 20+ years. Finding a decent number of available/skilled software engineers is always a challenge. If they're skilled (beyond competent), they're employed or doing their own thing. I've recently taken a 6 month contract, and have been amazed at the quality of the team, but... they're really having trouble finding people - people that wouldn't be a net negative on the team (there's both cultural fit as well as skill fit). And yes, they're hiring junior folks from area bootcamps and training them up. Doing real training - reviews, handholding, explaining, testing - is a real investment, and takes a lot of time. This has been one of the few teams I've worked in where I've been pleasantly surprised at the level of quality of everyone in the company (10 in the group I'm in, around 65 in the company altogether I think). I'm watching how they interview/hire/expand, and... it's tough. They could easily bring on more people quickly who would be a net negative, and cause more problems (I've seen that many times - I was the net negative problem at least once!)

ThePawnBreak 8y ago

> As a tech lead / team lead over the last five years in a small East Coast market I've experienced real difficulty finding competent Software Engineers at any level. Pay more. Google and Facebook use ridiculous interviews because so many people want to work there. They still hire thousands of people every year. Why? Mostly because they pay mid-level engineers over $200k. Can't afford that? Then we're not talking about "not finding people" anymore, just about not affording them.

southphillyman 8y ago
Doesn't this assume that the interviews even get to the offer stage? How does paying more remedy 80% of your applicants failing fizzbuzz on the phone interview? If you don't have the name recognition of the FAANG you're probably getting subpar applicants regardless.
- ThePawnBreak 8y ago
  > Doesn't this assume that the interviews get to the salary negotiation stage? If you don't have the name recognition of the FAANG you're probably getting subpar applicants regardless. People talk about salaries, they know who the top hitters are. Here in London there are many hedge funds you never heard of that have 20 engineers fighting for one spot, because they pay 100k GBP, whereas most startups complaining about lack of people pay 40k.
- a_c_s 8y ago
  Paying more attracts more applicants.
  - souprock 8y ago
    It does not attract more applicants because they won't know about it unless you advertise a specific amount, which then creates other problems. You'd get a flood of useless people if the number is high. Some other people, underestimating themselves, would not apply. You remove the flexibility to hire both junior and senior people because one single pay number can't fit both. Even if you provide a range, you have the problem of pessimists and optimists assuming very different things about where in the range they might fall.
rplst8 8y ago
$200k in Silicon Valley != $200k in a small east coast market. Hell, it doesn't even compare to the DC Metro area. From talking to friends and family that live out there, plus a few folks who used to live in the Bay Area, someone earning $120k here would have to earn at least $200k out there to get the same standard of living.

pteredactyl 8y ago

Fair. Are you offering competitive wages that appeal to local workers?

chasingthewind 8y ago
My impression was that both organizations were offering reasonable salaries for the market but I wasn't directly involved in the compensation talks.

bpyne 8y ago

The problem has multiple parts: pay, benefits, and definition of "skills". Two years ago I did a search for software engineering jobs within 30 miles of my geographic area, which covered Boston. I had a steady stream of opportunities. After three months of disappointment, I called off the search. I received an offer from an organization I loved: the industry, mission, people I met, everything was perfect. My interviewers halted the interview after 30 minutes, saying that they were going to start the hiring process. The salary became the stickler. The job was mine if I wanted to take a $10-15K decrease in salary. Unfortunately, I had to let it pass by. (In retrospect, I should have taken it. I would have caught up in pay within a few years. Oh well.) Another organization seemed pretty inline with my goals and personality. The tech was interesting and I mostly aligned with it. The stickler became the vacation time. I have 4 weeks of vacation. They needed me to start again at 2 weeks. (2 weeks, seriously?) Doing so would have screwed up family life as my wife has 5 weeks. Honestly, I can trade salary sooner than I can trade vacation time. Employers seem to have strayed into Crazy Land with the requirements for "skills". A skill, to me, isn't the knowledge of the Python ecosystem or Java ecosystem for building applications. Python vs. Java is just a knowledge of tool sets: Stanley vs. DeWitt. It's easy to learn one if you know the other. Skill is choosing the right trade-offs in design for the particular organization and industrial sector you're working in. It's knowing when transaction throughput is more important than rock-solid error handling. When extensibility is worth the extra abstractions. When readability trumps everything for a particular organization due to the skill level of the other development teams. Yet, employers have gotten to the point of not just requiring particular tools, but particular versions of them. So, I'm not convinced the problem is a lack of available software engineers, at least not completely. Much of the problem in hiring is outrageous demands from employers.

stirfrykitty 8y ago
You, sir, said the above beautifully and truthfully. I recently (last year) suffered through the same thing. Ever notice the faults in some of the job postings? 5-7 years experience with a tool that has been out for 3 years? Funny. Or my favorites: DevOps... what a joke. Any good sysadmin, especially *nix, should be able to write shell scripts well, at least using Bash, maybe some Perl and Python. But no. I recently saw a posting for a sysadmin job in Houston where no one would have qualified. They wanted the candidate to have 10+ years of C# systems programming experience! For a sysadmin job. Not many sysadmins with those skills are still sysadmins. In addition, they wanted nginx, Apache, IIS, MySQL, MS SQL, Docker, Kubernetes, and many others. Very few people know all of that in one go. From the job description, one can surmise they wanted a developer for the price of a sysadmin. No thanks.