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That’s what we (and others) do. There is just not enough skilled people available.

by doh 7y ago

ForHackernews 7y ago
...at the rate you're willing/able to pay. There are plenty of skilled people out there -- they're just getting top dollar for their skills.
- doh 7y ago
  Really. So why do need FAANG bring any immigrants if there is so much talent and it’s just a question of money, which they have plenty of.
- DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
  If doh offers more and poaches an engineer from a FAANG company, that company will now be down one engineer. The shortage of skilled engineers will still exist. The fact that salaries are so high for skilled engineers is an indication of the labor shortage.
  - Amezarak 7y ago
    Salaries are so high only in Silicon Valley and a couple of other major tech hubs. In the rest of the country, junior engineers make somewhere between 35-65k and a senior engineer can expect to cap out at the end of their career between 100-120k. This suggests there is no nationwide labor shortage, just a shortage of people willing to move to major tech hubs. By allowing tech companies to evade the underlying problem by hiring immigrant labor, we are making the knock on effects (eg SF housing prices, salaries outside of SV) even worse.
    - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
      Are these junior engineers who are making 35K as skilled as the FAANG junior engineers entering at >100K? How many of these low-paid junior engineers are there? Enough to replace the >50% of SV engineers who are foreign-born?
      - Amezarak 7y ago
        > Are these junior engineers who are making 35K as skilled as the FAANG junior engineers entering at >100K? Yes. FAANG engineers are good but not extraordinary. > How many of these low-paid junior engineers are there? Enough to replace the >50% of SV engineers who are foreign-born? Probably, if we somehow reorganized the way hiring is done, such that we were able to pick up talent anywhere in the country. There are well more than a million software developers in the US according to the BLS.
        DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
        What you're effectively arguing is that the US does not require nearly as large a number of software engineers as it currently has. It could exclude more than half the software engineers in its largest tech hub, and still fill all the open positions. I find that a bit implausible, especially given how intensely software companies already compete with one another to attract workers. They're not only doing that out of the goodness of their hearts.
        dragonwriter 7y ago
        > There are well more than a million software developers in the US according to the BLS. That's not available idle capacity, that's a count of people currently employed in the field including all the foreign-born developers your nativist fantasy involves replacing. And the expected 10-year grown is 24% in that number, much faster than average for all employment areas.

That’s what we (and others) do. There is just not enough skilled people available.

by doh 7y ago

That’s what we (and others) do. There is just not enough skilled people available.

...at the rate you're willing/able to pay. There are plenty of skilled people out there -- they're just getting top dollar for their skills.

doh 7y ago
Really. So why do need FAANG bring any immigrants if there is so much talent and it’s just a question of money, which they have plenty of.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
If doh offers more and poaches an engineer from a FAANG company, that company will now be down one engineer. The shortage of skilled engineers will still exist. The fact that salaries are so high for skilled engineers is an indication of the labor shortage.
- Amezarak 7y ago
  Salaries are so high only in Silicon Valley and a couple of other major tech hubs. In the rest of the country, junior engineers make somewhere between 35-65k and a senior engineer can expect to cap out at the end of their career between 100-120k. This suggests there is no nationwide labor shortage, just a shortage of people willing to move to major tech hubs. By allowing tech companies to evade the underlying problem by hiring immigrant labor, we are making the knock on effects (eg SF housing prices, salaries outside of SV) even worse.
  - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
    Are these junior engineers who are making 35K as skilled as the FAANG junior engineers entering at >100K? How many of these low-paid junior engineers are there? Enough to replace the >50% of SV engineers who are foreign-born?
    - Amezarak 7y ago
      > Are these junior engineers who are making 35K as skilled as the FAANG junior engineers entering at >100K? Yes. FAANG engineers are good but not extraordinary. > How many of these low-paid junior engineers are there? Enough to replace the >50% of SV engineers who are foreign-born? Probably, if we somehow reorganized the way hiring is done, such that we were able to pick up talent anywhere in the country. There are well more than a million software developers in the US according to the BLS.
      - DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
        What you're effectively arguing is that the US does not require nearly as large a number of software engineers as it currently has. It could exclude more than half the software engineers in its largest tech hub, and still fill all the open positions. I find that a bit implausible, especially given how intensely software companies already compete with one another to attract workers. They're not only doing that out of the goodness of their hearts.
      - dragonwriter 7y ago
        > There are well more than a million software developers in the US according to the BLS. That's not available idle capacity, that's a count of people currently employed in the field including all the foreign-born developers your nativist fantasy involves replacing. And the expected 10-year grown is 24% in that number, much faster than average for all employment areas.