6 ms·

Tech startups face stiff competition for talent

13 points by bchjam 15y ago

mgkimsal 15y ago
He is hopeful, though, that as more VCs consider other parts of the country to seed their ventures, the problem may take care of itself. "The University of Michigan graduates 8,000 engineers a year," he (Steve Blank) said. "Why don't we fund these companies cheaply in Ann Arbor?" Why not indeed. But then some of those VCs might have to travel outside the Bay Area. It's a self-perpetuating cycle - everyone's there because everyone's there, and I don't see that network effect going away any time soon. Everyone was on Windows because everyone else was on Windows. Everyone moves to iPod/iPhone, and the network effect brings everyone over to iPhone (yes, exaggerating a bit, but not much).
- kenjackson 15y ago
  8000 engineers per year? Assuming four years to graduate, doesn't that imply about 32k engineering students? If you add up all three UM campuses there are about 58k students. Engineers make up more than half of all students? I find that hard to believe for a non-engineering school (ala MIT or GT).
  - mrgordon 15y ago
    Exactly. I've read sources that claim there are only 11,000 computer science graduates nationally per year. Here's the source: http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187 http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187
    - misterbee 15y ago
      If you include other sources of software professionals: math, applied math, physics, and engineering, you'll probably get closer to 50,000 per year. Add in non-college and college dropout and you'll get even more. (The "8,000 from one school in one year" estimate is too high, though, yes.)
  - bugsy 15y ago
    Great catch. Here's their statistics on graduation rates by degree. It's a few years old but the latest isn't going to be all that different. http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_degrsbystudyfield_10.pdf http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_degrsbystudyfi... Aerospace engineering - 102 Biomedical engineering - 48 Chemical engineering - 68 Civil Engineering - 50 Earth Systems Engineering - 1 Engineering - 9 Engineering Physics - 10 Financial Engineering - 16 Nuclear Engineering - 16 Now I'm going to guess none of the above degrees are the majors we are talking about for these startups, who are looking for software developers. More relevant: Computer Engineering - 84 Computer Science - 158 Electrical Engineering - 170 --- Total: 412 Maybe we should throw in all the Math, Physics, Linguistics and Music majors as well? Those are fields that are often sorted through for developers. It's a small number of each that goes into programming, but not insignificant. In any case, this is Ann Arbor only. Can the claim of 8000 engineering graduates per year be substantiated for the entire system. Seems unlikely, but we need more data, and we'd definitely have to be including every field that has any possible connection, perhaps someone had a statistic that said there were 7002 STEM degrees granted system wide per year, and that turned into "around 8000" and then "8000"? Ah, here is a year by year summary and one that puts all forms of engineering in one category: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_degrssummary_10.pdf http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_degrssummary_1... year - # eng degrees 2006 - 1034 2007 - 1065 2008 - 1150 2009 - 1198 2010 - 1254 That is undergraduate ONLY. There are also on that list comparable numbers of graduate degrees, so double the number for all degrees altogether: 1254 + 1035 = 2289 engineering degrees conferred in 2010. It's kind of amazing that they have the same number of grad students as undergrad, that means there is a near 1:1 ratio between grad students and undergrad, so each undergrad theoretically could be taught privately by a single grad student tutor if they wanted. So to hit 8000 we need only 3 other U. Michigan campuses the same size as Ann Arbor.
tokenadult 15y ago
From the submitted article: "'The best people are already working,' said Bhoopathy, who said he pays 'above-market' rates for the right people" In light of the quotation from the submitted article in the first reply here, "The University of Michigan graduates 8,000 engineers a year," how does any one graduate from a state university engineering program show that he or she is one of the "right people" who is worth "above-market rates" to bring on board a start-up's team? The one hiring heuristic mentioned here is hiring someone who already has a job. Is there more to look for? What do people with the best talent do to show their talent? What characteristics are tech start-ups looking for to make sure they hire really talented developers? Edit to respond to a reply below. I'm glad to hear from one of the interview subjects for the submitted story. I'm not a dev myself, and I am still learning about this industry as a matter of curiosity, having an immediate family member who IS a dev. Sure enough, he has an active personal project in development that he contributes to on GitHub and is deeply interested in learning and education. I was drawn to HN because of Paul Graham's essays on education, and my own work is in the content-development aspect of gifted education in mathematics. I rely on my other family member (also an HN participant) for technical advice when he can cram it into his busy schedule.
- mrgordon 15y ago
  I read something just yesterday that claimed there were 11,000 computer science graduates in the US every year so (even if the figure I read was somewhat off) it seems like most of those Michigan engineers are not writing software. I'd be interested to see more accurate figures if anyone has them handy. Here is the article mentioning the 11,000 figure: http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187 http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187
- yakshaving 15y ago
  I was interviewed for that article (The quote re: The best people are already working"... was me). We tend to prefer people who are 1- Open source contributors to projects that are related to what our project is about 2- Have active Github profiles. 3- Have a deep interest in learning and education 4- Are willing to put up with some experimentation (aren't afraid to rip out features and add new ones quickly) 5- Have worked for other startups Finally, we start with contract positions before deciding to bring people on full time. Do you have any other suggestions to reach out to devs who fit the bill who are currently still employed? Much harder to find out details about if they're not on github contributing to open source stuff.
bugsy 15y ago
Things that are extremely, trivially easy to do: 1. Throw wads of money at something. 2. Pay off politicians. 3. Shmoozing. 4. I'm the sales and idea guy. Things that are very hard to do: 1. Design a product that people find useful and are willing to use. 2. Design a product that people are willing to spend money on. There's an enormous glut of VC backed companies filled with and powered by the easy trivial stuff. These folks tend not to respect engineering design and inventing skills, which they see as commodities they should be able to buy for a pittance. Then they complain that there is stiff competition for talent when designers don't choose to work for their useless startup.
- shareme 15y ago
  You are being overly simplistic, but its a valid point. And quite frankly a few of us have reversed the VC/Angel criteria for picking startups and use that as an interview/offer acceptance filter... I know out of the last 3 months only one startup out of 20 made to the almost offer stage, I am awaiting them signing a big client that funds my position.. It came down to: 1 People involved. 2 Product/Company/market vision 3 User/client growth 4 Mixture of honesty and transparency..told me where they could be honest and transparent and where they could not disclose and the reasons why.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
georgieporgie 15y ago
In other news, HR still has no idea what it's doing, but is convinced that arbitrary heuristics which eliminate candidates implicitly lead to optimal hiring, business managers still don't understand tech work, and Wikipedia is widely believed to trend toward accuracy. (in other words, hiring people is hard work, really hard work, but we pretend that employing arbitrary requirements [e.g. must be employed, must have exact experience in variant x of library y on platform z] equals the necessary hard work)

13 points by bchjam 15y ago

He is hopeful, though, that as more VCs consider other parts of the country to seed their ventures, the problem may take care of itself. "The University of Michigan graduates 8,000 engineers a year," he (Steve Blank) said. "Why don't we fund these companies cheaply in Ann Arbor?" Why not indeed. But then some of those VCs might have to travel outside the Bay Area. It's a self-perpetuating cycle - everyone's there because everyone's there, and I don't see that network effect going away any time soon. Everyone was on Windows because everyone else was on Windows. Everyone moves to iPod/iPhone, and the network effect brings everyone over to iPhone (yes, exaggerating a bit, but not much).

kenjackson 15y ago
8000 engineers per year? Assuming four years to graduate, doesn't that imply about 32k engineering students? If you add up all three UM campuses there are about 58k students. Engineers make up more than half of all students? I find that hard to believe for a non-engineering school (ala MIT or GT).
- mrgordon 15y ago
  Exactly. I've read sources that claim there are only 11,000 computer science graduates nationally per year. Here's the source: http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187 http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187
  - misterbee 15y ago
    If you include other sources of software professionals: math, applied math, physics, and engineering, you'll probably get closer to 50,000 per year. Add in non-college and college dropout and you'll get even more. (The "8,000 from one school in one year" estimate is too high, though, yes.)
- bugsy 15y ago
  Great catch. Here's their statistics on graduation rates by degree. It's a few years old but the latest isn't going to be all that different. http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_degrsbystudyfield_10.pdf http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_degrsbystudyfi... Aerospace engineering - 102 Biomedical engineering - 48 Chemical engineering - 68 Civil Engineering - 50 Earth Systems Engineering - 1 Engineering - 9 Engineering Physics - 10 Financial Engineering - 16 Nuclear Engineering - 16 Now I'm going to guess none of the above degrees are the majors we are talking about for these startups, who are looking for software developers. More relevant: Computer Engineering - 84 Computer Science - 158 Electrical Engineering - 170 --- Total: 412 Maybe we should throw in all the Math, Physics, Linguistics and Music majors as well? Those are fields that are often sorted through for developers. It's a small number of each that goes into programming, but not insignificant. In any case, this is Ann Arbor only. Can the claim of 8000 engineering graduates per year be substantiated for the entire system. Seems unlikely, but we need more data, and we'd definitely have to be including every field that has any possible connection, perhaps someone had a statistic that said there were 7002 STEM degrees granted system wide per year, and that turned into "around 8000" and then "8000"? Ah, here is a year by year summary and one that puts all forms of engineering in one category: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_degrssummary_10.pdf http://sitemaker.umich.edu/obpinfo/files/umaa_degrssummary_1... year - # eng degrees 2006 - 1034 2007 - 1065 2008 - 1150 2009 - 1198 2010 - 1254 That is undergraduate ONLY. There are also on that list comparable numbers of graduate degrees, so double the number for all degrees altogether: 1254 + 1035 = 2289 engineering degrees conferred in 2010. It's kind of amazing that they have the same number of grad students as undergrad, that means there is a near 1:1 ratio between grad students and undergrad, so each undergrad theoretically could be taught privately by a single grad student tutor if they wanted. So to hit 8000 we need only 3 other U. Michigan campuses the same size as Ann Arbor.

tokenadult 15y ago

From the submitted article: "'The best people are already working,' said Bhoopathy, who said he pays 'above-market' rates for the right people" In light of the quotation from the submitted article in the first reply here, "The University of Michigan graduates 8,000 engineers a year," how does any one graduate from a state university engineering program show that he or she is one of the "right people" who is worth "above-market rates" to bring on board a start-up's team? The one hiring heuristic mentioned here is hiring someone who already has a job. Is there more to look for? What do people with the best talent do to show their talent? What characteristics are tech start-ups looking for to make sure they hire really talented developers? Edit to respond to a reply below. I'm glad to hear from one of the interview subjects for the submitted story. I'm not a dev myself, and I am still learning about this industry as a matter of curiosity, having an immediate family member who IS a dev. Sure enough, he has an active personal project in development that he contributes to on GitHub and is deeply interested in learning and education. I was drawn to HN because of Paul Graham's essays on education, and my own work is in the content-development aspect of gifted education in mathematics. I rely on my other family member (also an HN participant) for technical advice when he can cram it into his busy schedule.

mrgordon 15y ago
I read something just yesterday that claimed there were 11,000 computer science graduates in the US every year so (even if the figure I read was somewhat off) it seems like most of those Michigan engineers are not writing software. I'd be interested to see more accurate figures if anyone has them handy. Here is the article mentioning the 11,000 figure: http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187 http://www.peacepowerlove.com/archives/5187
yakshaving 15y ago
I was interviewed for that article (The quote re: The best people are already working"... was me). We tend to prefer people who are 1- Open source contributors to projects that are related to what our project is about 2- Have active Github profiles. 3- Have a deep interest in learning and education 4- Are willing to put up with some experimentation (aren't afraid to rip out features and add new ones quickly) 5- Have worked for other startups Finally, we start with contract positions before deciding to bring people on full time. Do you have any other suggestions to reach out to devs who fit the bill who are currently still employed? Much harder to find out details about if they're not on github contributing to open source stuff.

bugsy 15y ago

Things that are extremely, trivially easy to do: 1. Throw wads of money at something. 2. Pay off politicians. 3. Shmoozing. 4. I'm the sales and idea guy. Things that are very hard to do: 1. Design a product that people find useful and are willing to use. 2. Design a product that people are willing to spend money on. There's an enormous glut of VC backed companies filled with and powered by the easy trivial stuff. These folks tend not to respect engineering design and inventing skills, which they see as commodities they should be able to buy for a pittance. Then they complain that there is stiff competition for talent when designers don't choose to work for their useless startup.

shareme 15y ago
You are being overly simplistic, but its a valid point. And quite frankly a few of us have reversed the VC/Angel criteria for picking startups and use that as an interview/offer acceptance filter... I know out of the last 3 months only one startup out of 20 made to the almost offer stage, I am awaiting them signing a big client that funds my position.. It came down to: 1 People involved. 2 Product/Company/market vision 3 User/client growth 4 Mixture of honesty and transparency..told me where they could be honest and transparent and where they could not disclose and the reasons why.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

georgieporgie 15y ago

In other news, HR still has no idea what it's doing, but is convinced that arbitrary heuristics which eliminate candidates implicitly lead to optimal hiring, business managers still don't understand tech work, and Wikipedia is widely believed to trend toward accuracy. (in other words, hiring people is hard work, really hard work, but we pretend that employing arbitrary requirements [e.g. must be employed, must have exact experience in variant x of library y on platform z] equals the necessary hard work)