>You say you have skills. Everybody says that. Prove it. I feel like this is a game of chicken that FAANG can win, but NJ Unemployment Office (or whatever) can

>You say you have skills. Everybody says that. Prove it. I feel like this is a game of chicken that FAANG can win, but NJ Unemployment Office (or whatever) cannot. The shortage isn't really cash. You could hire some bright high school students for cheap, and, given enough time, and half-supervision by an experienced dev (who doesn't even know COBOL), they could fix whatever bugs are ailing the system. You could hire a couple (again, COBOL-ignorant!) web devs at or above market rate, and they could also deliver a working system. It would take time, but they could do it. The actual shortage is management. They don't have anyone who'd be confident fixing things if said high school students screwed up. They don't have backups, or don't know how they work. It's unlikely they know what actually needs to be done. So what they actually need is a tech lead. But they think they just need "programmers," so they advertise for programmers (with inflated requirements, because they need them to actually be a lead) and the pay is commensurate for "programmers," rather than what they actually need.