"If compensation were higher, qualified software engineers would be more abundant." Supply and demand isn't just about what's out there right now, it's about e

"If compensation were higher, qualified software engineers would be more abundant." Supply and demand isn't just about what's out there right now, it's about elasticity of both curves. When prices rise, supply increases, and demand decreases. What you've said indicates that prices are so low that demand is very high, and supply is very low. Yes, it does take a while, in some fields, for supply to ramp up - but bidding wars for the existing supply are part of the mechanism that increases the prices and signals to people with choice that software engineering (as opposed to, say, finance or corporate law) is the way to go. There's a pretty strong case to be made the the H1B is specifically designed to create a population of software engineers who are not allowed to respond to market signals that would cause them to stop being software engineers in order to do something else (or perhaps not become a software engineer in the first place). So back the the original question - compensation. What compensation package were you offering to compete for those rare and highly valuable software engineers you wanted to hire?