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I don't know what they are whining about: I've never had any issue finding talent in this industry. Part of that is making sure the compensation is among the hi

I don't know what they are whining about: I've never had any issue finding talent in this industry. Part of that is making sure the compensation is among the highest for the position, not simply in the "local market" or whatever recruiting jargon defines it these days, but worldwide (because in this century talent is global and so are your competitors). Then all you have to do is screen a little, to make sure you don't hire one of the 199 out of 200 applicants that can't program. [0] For new grads, it's possible to significantly reduce the noise by going to a CS program you trust and getting graduates from there to interview. [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

jfim 6y ago
What talent are you looking for, though? FAANG companies and many companies are okay with generalists (eg. can code on a whiteboard), but if you're looking for specialist expertise (eg. computer vision, control engineering, operations research) it's a lot trickier and not always only a matter of compensation.
- OldHand2018 6y ago
  > but if you're looking for specialist expertise (eg. computer vision, control engineering, operations research) it's a lot trickier and not always only a matter of compensation. It's not tricky at all. Those are chicken/egg jobs - can't get the job without experience; can't get the experience without the job. Hire some people and train them. They won't all work out, but the ones that do will be worth it.
  - jfim 6y ago
    That's definitely doable at big corporations, which is why they can afford to hire generalists and assign them somewhere, train them, and reassign them somewhere else in the company if they don't pan out. For smaller companies, any given hire has an outsized impact, there's a more limited budget for hiring, there might not be the resources available to train a new hire from scratch for hard to train skills, and there might not be enough "bench space" for people that don't pan out. Many companies don't really need this kind of specialist expertise though. I wouldn't be surprised if hiring is much harder in the robotics industry than in, say, consumer mobile app development.
    - spaced-out 6y ago
      This is a a lot of words to say running a tech company is hard. Big-Ns are willing to pay people with specialized skills north of 500K, if you want those skills pay up, otherwise find someone who you can pay less that will grow into the role. Get more money from your investors. If you can't do any of those, then I guess you can't afford to run your business. In my experience in startups, the executive suite is full of people who imagine themselves a future Gates/Jobs/Musk/etc... Well, being that successful is hard.
    - webmaven 6y ago
      > For smaller companies, any given hire has an outsized impact, there's a more limited budget for hiring, there might not be the resources available to train a new hire from scratch for hard to train skills, and there might not be enough "bench space" for people that don't pan out. So prioritize finding intrinsically motivated learners instead of specific skills, and make sure you have a budget for any learning resources (books, courses, etc.) they would need to make rapid progress. Also, make sure that writing/improving documentation to help the next hire is one of their main responsibilities (this demonstrates what they are learning, gives senior folks the opportunity to correct mistakes & misunderstandings, selects for good communication skills, improves your onboarding, etc.)
hinkley 6y ago
Have you done any experiments to see if you have to weed out more people when you post a low range versus a high? Or do people think to themselves, "Well, I'm not qualified to do a job that's paying 40% above market. They want someone serious."
- giantg2 6y ago
  I always think I'm unqualified for everything. I mean, just look at the "entry level" positions that want 5 years experience in 5 different technologies with a laundry list of required talents.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > Have you done any experiments to see if you have to weed out more people when you post a low range versus a high? It's the opposite. The quality of the resumes simply went up. Sure there are more of them to filter out but the great ones stand out.
patrakov 6y ago
> Part of that is making sure the compensation is among the highest for the position I had the opposite experience back in 2015. We tried to find (locally) a C programmer with good understanding of Linux and network protocols, and offered approximately what we thought to be a fair market salary. The initial attempt has attracted various people like fresh graduates, and also (strangely) a disproportionate amount of bank employees - not sure why, our application has nothing to do with finances. We could not find a candidate that was good enough, but there were several who "almost" did it. So the financial director approved republishing the vacancy with slightly modified requirements and 2x the salary. Result: all we got was some former developers, now managers. And the flow of talented students has completely stopped. We were able to fill that vacancy by re-offering it to a person who clearly had the relevant skills but applied to a different position. When asked why he didn't apply as a C programmer, high salary and consequently an expectation of very high demands were explicitly named as a demotivating factor.
- flukus 6y ago
  As someone who is probably much closer to the bank employees (assuming you mean developers from banks) but has considered transitioning to something like c at various times, the problem is there are no intermediate roles, everyone either want a c expert with years of commercial experience. To make the transition the only option seems to be to go for junior roles, which disregards the decades of experience that is relevant regardless of the language, and those junior roles are pretty few and far between too. The industry expects a constant supply of senior experienced devs but completely avoids any sort of training and development. It can somewhat work if you're in a mainstream field but it won't for anything specialized, which C is in my area.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  This could be the local market in which you operate or the timing when you advertised the position. College hiring is cyclical and the earlier you get to campus, the better. If you re-advertise the same position, especially after you interviewed a few fresh grads from the same university (who will talk to one another) and flunked them all, it's not surprising nobody bothered to apply. Also, keep in mind that it's not uncommon for college students to be offered full time position during their last internship (so 1+ year before they graduate). So by the time you try to hire new grads, some of the best are effectively already out of your local market.

jfim 6y ago

What talent are you looking for, though? FAANG companies and many companies are okay with generalists (eg. can code on a whiteboard), but if you're looking for specialist expertise (eg. computer vision, control engineering, operations research) it's a lot trickier and not always only a matter of compensation.

OldHand2018 6y ago
> but if you're looking for specialist expertise (eg. computer vision, control engineering, operations research) it's a lot trickier and not always only a matter of compensation. It's not tricky at all. Those are chicken/egg jobs - can't get the job without experience; can't get the experience without the job. Hire some people and train them. They won't all work out, but the ones that do will be worth it.
- jfim 6y ago
  That's definitely doable at big corporations, which is why they can afford to hire generalists and assign them somewhere, train them, and reassign them somewhere else in the company if they don't pan out. For smaller companies, any given hire has an outsized impact, there's a more limited budget for hiring, there might not be the resources available to train a new hire from scratch for hard to train skills, and there might not be enough "bench space" for people that don't pan out. Many companies don't really need this kind of specialist expertise though. I wouldn't be surprised if hiring is much harder in the robotics industry than in, say, consumer mobile app development.
  - spaced-out 6y ago
    This is a a lot of words to say running a tech company is hard. Big-Ns are willing to pay people with specialized skills north of 500K, if you want those skills pay up, otherwise find someone who you can pay less that will grow into the role. Get more money from your investors. If you can't do any of those, then I guess you can't afford to run your business. In my experience in startups, the executive suite is full of people who imagine themselves a future Gates/Jobs/Musk/etc... Well, being that successful is hard.
  - webmaven 6y ago
    > For smaller companies, any given hire has an outsized impact, there's a more limited budget for hiring, there might not be the resources available to train a new hire from scratch for hard to train skills, and there might not be enough "bench space" for people that don't pan out. So prioritize finding intrinsically motivated learners instead of specific skills, and make sure you have a budget for any learning resources (books, courses, etc.) they would need to make rapid progress. Also, make sure that writing/improving documentation to help the next hire is one of their main responsibilities (this demonstrates what they are learning, gives senior folks the opportunity to correct mistakes & misunderstandings, selects for good communication skills, improves your onboarding, etc.)

hinkley 6y ago

Have you done any experiments to see if you have to weed out more people when you post a low range versus a high? Or do people think to themselves, "Well, I'm not qualified to do a job that's paying 40% above market. They want someone serious."

giantg2 6y ago
I always think I'm unqualified for everything. I mean, just look at the "entry level" positions that want 5 years experience in 5 different technologies with a laundry list of required talents.
908B64B197 6y ago
> Have you done any experiments to see if you have to weed out more people when you post a low range versus a high? It's the opposite. The quality of the resumes simply went up. Sure there are more of them to filter out but the great ones stand out.

patrakov 6y ago

> Part of that is making sure the compensation is among the highest for the position I had the opposite experience back in 2015. We tried to find (locally) a C programmer with good understanding of Linux and network protocols, and offered approximately what we thought to be a fair market salary. The initial attempt has attracted various people like fresh graduates, and also (strangely) a disproportionate amount of bank employees - not sure why, our application has nothing to do with finances. We could not find a candidate that was good enough, but there were several who "almost" did it. So the financial director approved republishing the vacancy with slightly modified requirements and 2x the salary. Result: all we got was some former developers, now managers. And the flow of talented students has completely stopped. We were able to fill that vacancy by re-offering it to a person who clearly had the relevant skills but applied to a different position. When asked why he didn't apply as a C programmer, high salary and consequently an expectation of very high demands were explicitly named as a demotivating factor.

flukus 6y ago
As someone who is probably much closer to the bank employees (assuming you mean developers from banks) but has considered transitioning to something like c at various times, the problem is there are no intermediate roles, everyone either want a c expert with years of commercial experience. To make the transition the only option seems to be to go for junior roles, which disregards the decades of experience that is relevant regardless of the language, and those junior roles are pretty few and far between too. The industry expects a constant supply of senior experienced devs but completely avoids any sort of training and development. It can somewhat work if you're in a mainstream field but it won't for anything specialized, which C is in my area.
908B64B197 6y ago
This could be the local market in which you operate or the timing when you advertised the position. College hiring is cyclical and the earlier you get to campus, the better. If you re-advertise the same position, especially after you interviewed a few fresh grads from the same university (who will talk to one another) and flunked them all, it's not surprising nobody bothered to apply. Also, keep in mind that it's not uncommon for college students to be offered full time position during their last internship (so 1+ year before they graduate). So by the time you try to hire new grads, some of the best are effectively already out of your local market.