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The vast oversupply of talent has gotten so large employers can’t even be bothered to read resumes anymore: Ai will. This is what happens when ever larger perc

The vast oversupply of talent has gotten so large employers can’t even be bothered to read resumes anymore: Ai will. This is what happens when ever larger percentage of society gets more and more degrees

rapind 7y ago
If there's an oversupply of talent in tech then are H1Bs no longer being awarded? Seems like a constant gripe about talent shortages but then conflicting stories about how to filter an overwhelming supply of talent. I'm honestly curious how both can be true. Who's lying, or is it simply unwillingness to train local talent?
- theevilsharpie 7y ago
  > Seems like a constant gripe about talent shortages but then conflicting stories about how to filter an overwhelming supply of talent. > I'm honestly curious how both can be true. There's an overwhelming number of applicants. That says nothing about their qualifications. I don't know what Big Tech's numbers look like, but when I did hiring, the percentage of applicants that were even remotely qualified was usually in the single digits.
  - rapind 7y ago
    Sounds like an education/ training problem then?
    - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
      There's a certain amount of innate talent involved in any profession, so additional training and education is unlikely to help. No amount of education or training would ever turn me into a professionally successful artist, for example.
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      Perhaps there is just a small group of people who apply for every job and are continually rejected. Whereas most good people aren't really applying for any jobs or very few.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    > There's an overwhelming number of applicants. That says nothing about their qualifications. People explain away Google's high false negative rate, and desire to not do anything about it, by claiming they receive such large numbers of qualified applicants that it isn't worth caring about false negatives. How does that narrative jibe with the "talent shortage" or what you stated here?
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Related: https://elaineou.com/2017/03/10/technical-interviews-from-the-1960s/ https://elaineou.com/2017/03/10/technical-interviews-from-th... > 2. A bill for 5 typewriter ribbons and 24 pencils totalled $9.85. If a typewriter ribbon costs $1.25, what is the price of a dozen pencils? > The IBM Programmer Aptitude Test is from 1960 (? I think. It’s tough to read the date on the mimeograph). Is it just me or have technical interviews gotten much harder? > I interviewed for a programmer job at Facebook several years ago, and one of the questions I got was, “Given a set of obstacle coordinates, write a function that finds the shortest path between two cells for a knight on a 3-D chessboard while avoiding the obstacles.” > I remember this question because it was one of the few that I managed to solve. Probably a half-dozen others ended in fumbles. Not surprisingly, Facebook didn’t give me an offer. https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-tech-workers/ https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing... > Some time ago, we compared technical interviews from the 1960s to those of today: They’ve gotten much, much harder. I suggested that the last few decades of lax immigration have invited overseas talent to raise the bar – it was unfounded speculation at the time, but some number crunching shows it might be true. > According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74% of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born abroad. In 2000, only 29% were. > Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000 jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we created 100,000 engineering positions in the last decade, we’ve also displaced 88,000 domestic engineers. I'm suddenly curious what other fields are staffed by 74% foreign-born immigrants.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    According to Purdue, the first computer science department in the US was established there in 1962, so of course in 1960 IBM wasn't that selective - they couldn't hire CS graduates. Maybe math majors. Also, I don't know when CS degrees became common among programmers, but it didn't happen right after they were invented, I'm sure.
    - thaumasiotes 7y ago
      Did anything in the material I quoted, or in the remainder of either article, refer to CS degrees or CS graduates?
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > "Seems like a constant gripe about talent shortages but then conflicting stories about how to filter an overwhelming supply of talent." There is an overwhelming supply of people who claim to be talented but there is a dreadful shortage of those who actually possess it.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    And the first group is applying for every job out there whilst the second is too discerning.
  - vonmoltke 7y ago
    I think there is also an inability to define "talented" in an objective and consistent way.
- john_moscow 7y ago
  There's an oversupply of people with great credentials, CVs, references and self-promotion skills and there's an undersupply of people actually willing to do the work.
- jimthrow 7y ago
  Talent shortage is a myth. Companies place themselves in the worst locations which are the least accessible places in the US (extremely high rent and commute distance) and then wonder why they only get a modest number of applicants. Also, I’ve noticed many companies are terrible at highering

rapind 7y ago

If there's an oversupply of talent in tech then are H1Bs no longer being awarded? Seems like a constant gripe about talent shortages but then conflicting stories about how to filter an overwhelming supply of talent. I'm honestly curious how both can be true. Who's lying, or is it simply unwillingness to train local talent?

theevilsharpie 7y ago
> Seems like a constant gripe about talent shortages but then conflicting stories about how to filter an overwhelming supply of talent. > I'm honestly curious how both can be true. There's an overwhelming number of applicants. That says nothing about their qualifications. I don't know what Big Tech's numbers look like, but when I did hiring, the percentage of applicants that were even remotely qualified was usually in the single digits.
- rapind 7y ago
  Sounds like an education/ training problem then?
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    There's a certain amount of innate talent involved in any profession, so additional training and education is unlikely to help. No amount of education or training would ever turn me into a professionally successful artist, for example.
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Perhaps there is just a small group of people who apply for every job and are continually rejected. Whereas most good people aren't really applying for any jobs or very few.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > There's an overwhelming number of applicants. That says nothing about their qualifications. People explain away Google's high false negative rate, and desire to not do anything about it, by claiming they receive such large numbers of qualified applicants that it isn't worth caring about false negatives. How does that narrative jibe with the "talent shortage" or what you stated here?
thaumasiotes 7y ago
Related: https://elaineou.com/2017/03/10/technical-interviews-from-the-1960s/ https://elaineou.com/2017/03/10/technical-interviews-from-th... > 2. A bill for 5 typewriter ribbons and 24 pencils totalled $9.85. If a typewriter ribbon costs $1.25, what is the price of a dozen pencils? > The IBM Programmer Aptitude Test is from 1960 (? I think. It’s tough to read the date on the mimeograph). Is it just me or have technical interviews gotten much harder? > I interviewed for a programmer job at Facebook several years ago, and one of the questions I got was, “Given a set of obstacle coordinates, write a function that finds the shortest path between two cells for a knight on a 3-D chessboard while avoiding the obstacles.” > I remember this question because it was one of the few that I managed to solve. Probably a half-dozen others ended in fumbles. Not surprisingly, Facebook didn’t give me an offer. https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing-tech-workers/ https://elaineou.com/2017/08/26/the-mystery-of-the-vanishing... > Some time ago, we compared technical interviews from the 1960s to those of today: They’ve gotten much, much harder. I suggested that the last few decades of lax immigration have invited overseas talent to raise the bar – it was unfounded speculation at the time, but some number crunching shows it might be true. > According to this Joint Venture Silicon Valley report, 74% of Silicon Valley tech workers are foreign-born immigrants. A decade ago, 36% of Silicon Valley tech workers were born abroad. In 2000, only 29% were. > Tech industry employment has increased from about 300,000 jobs in 2007 to 400,000 in 2016, so even though we created 100,000 engineering positions in the last decade, we’ve also displaced 88,000 domestic engineers. I'm suddenly curious what other fields are staffed by 74% foreign-born immigrants.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  According to Purdue, the first computer science department in the US was established there in 1962, so of course in 1960 IBM wasn't that selective - they couldn't hire CS graduates. Maybe math majors. Also, I don't know when CS degrees became common among programmers, but it didn't happen right after they were invented, I'm sure.
  - thaumasiotes 7y ago
    Did anything in the material I quoted, or in the remainder of either article, refer to CS degrees or CS graduates?
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> "Seems like a constant gripe about talent shortages but then conflicting stories about how to filter an overwhelming supply of talent." There is an overwhelming supply of people who claim to be talented but there is a dreadful shortage of those who actually possess it.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  And the first group is applying for every job out there whilst the second is too discerning.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  I think there is also an inability to define "talented" in an objective and consistent way.
john_moscow 7y ago
There's an oversupply of people with great credentials, CVs, references and self-promotion skills and there's an undersupply of people actually willing to do the work.
jimthrow 7y ago
Talent shortage is a myth. Companies place themselves in the worst locations which are the least accessible places in the US (extremely high rent and commute distance) and then wonder why they only get a modest number of applicants. Also, I’ve noticed many companies are terrible at highering