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 geog

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.