4 ms·

As always with posts about employment, the idea that there's higher demand than supply for engineers is a lie. The demand for highly experienced cheap engineers

As always with posts about employment, the idea that there's higher demand than supply for engineers is a lie. The demand for highly experienced cheap engineers is high, the demand for junior developers is almost non existent. New CS grads struggle to find employment, there are tens of thousands of very capable devs in open source that cannot find employment. Nobody hears about it because only those that succeed are actually spending time on forums like these talking about it. We have a big problem in the culture of employing developers that is closely related to how the startup market operates. The market is willing to shovel money at a problem rather than spend time, therefore the market will pay someone with specific experience in their problem far more than pay someone less and have more time to learn the domain. This results in siphoning of experienced developers away from new developers, which artificially reduces the number of experienced devs. The market is creating the problem for short term profit, and then turning around, lying and saying "there's not enough devs".

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> New CS grads struggle to find employment Sorry, but I call major bullshit on this. Sure, if you have a D average at a low tier school, perhaps. But if you are a competent coder who got good grades in school, I see many companies ready to hire new grads left and right (obviously folks who graduated during the height of the pandemic had different issues to deal with). I don't know if we're quite at the "anyone who can fog a mirror can get a job" stage like we were in the original dot com boom, but we're not that far away.
- devwastaken 5y ago
  I know 3 of them. They only receive responses from jobs similiar to, but not actually software dev. Basically tech support jobs but you have to know the basics of a windows/bash command line. No dev work involved. Companies advertise they're hiring. Like they advertise that they're profitable, make the best products, and are better than their competition. That doesn't mean it's true. Many positions are "nice to have", so they will stay there until they get someone with far more experience on paper than they actually need - someone willing to get paid less of course. People lie, especially companies. That's the nature of the market. Even if we had 5x the devs than employers, employers would still say otherwise. This is because more competition between applicants means you can pay people less. Infact even during the dotcom boom my sister actually got a degree in "web development", and nobody wanted anything to do with her. I don't know who comes out with these lies about "high demand" employment but so far all I've seen is confirmation bias by those already employed - ignoring all the rest of the people who can't get anywhere, leave it behind, and go work at something else.
  - flunhat 5y ago
    The data doesn't bear this out though -- the median* salary for a software developer is not only substantially higher than the national average salary, the rate of growth is also higher: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5n4R_Osks_fVsVmedxJKsp9zPuRlc5VuDObk0DSeHzyrbAE181ThHXKgsSiTJUgnVYItw7aI7ovRqgKvdqxAkflmC9eQ2Z3v3CZbxToxgnJlSfXANViai37EdxHiz9xZltWWXBzH https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5n4R_Osks_fVsVmedxJKsp9zPu... That's empirical evidence of a tight labor market that's difficult to fake. Why else would salaries rise so quickly from such a high base? Even if employers lie (they do), the salary numbers from BLS are separate from that. Of course, there are always people who slip through the cracks unfortunately. But avoiding anecdotes and looking purely at the numbers, it's difficult to find a labor market in the USA that's tighter than the one for software engineers.
    - totony 5y ago
      >Why else would salaries rise so quickly from such a high base? This can be explain by FAANG paying more, or people being more risk averse of having bad devs (ie hiring less, but paying more for more skilled).
- shagie 5y ago
  I believe a bit of the difficulty that new grads have with trying to find employment is a combination of: * Reluctance to move / restrictions on where they want to move (only SF, Seattle, NYC) * Extreme focus on product development (and not applying for the operations jobs that keep many large orgs running). * Focus on working for a high salary at a big tech company (and not applying to jobs at companies that aren't seen as big tech... say... this job - https://csx.taleo.net/careersection/basic_faceted_search/jobdetail.ftl?job=047091 https://csx.taleo.net/careersection/basic_faceted_search/job... ) I believe that there is extreme saturation in certain desirable sectors of the field and "where is everyone?" in other areas.
  - opportune 5y ago
    I doubt people only wanting to move to Seattle/SF/NYC is the problem. What about all the people who only look for jobs in their hometown or regional hub where there are approximately 0 jobs for software engineers? From what I’ve seen that is a much more common problem, people basically limiting their search parameters to a very small set of all open jobs, rather than looking at the three cities that have the most jobs.
    - shagie 5y ago
      That was a bit of the "Reluctance to move" aspect. I've moved across country twice and from one end of a state to another twice... its a pain, but I like new places. One of the companies that I worked for (smallish city in rural midwest). There were a few tech jobs there (and a reasonable sized tech company)... several of my co-workers had never been further than about 100-200 miles away from where they were born (and then, only as vacation). Yea... the reluctance to move is a problem. I attribute part of this to my (gen X) and the "this is how things are" that I got from my parents (boomers). My father's family had a few moves through the years... not too many, but a few. My mother's family moved several times (and once even to another territory) as part of my grandfather's career. Once my parents were married, they moved twice before settling down. For me, when I graduated college, it was almost expected that I move somewhere else for a time. And I did. My brother too... and my sister. My brother (gen X) has moved five times since graduating college and my sister (gen X / millennial cusp) has also had five major moves since graduating college. I believe there's a generational shift in that expectation of moving out - possibly from the financial insecurities that the dot com crash, '09 recession, and the '20 recession have instilled in the millennials and gen Z as they look for jobs... though that's just a guess. > rather than looking at the three cities that have the most jobs. There are a lot of cities/metro areas that have a lot of jobs that people tend to pass by. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm - note that there are other classifications that are applicable, but I can't get a page that has a set of them together... so just using this one as an example. If you look at the raw employment figures, Dallas, Chicago, DC, and LA are way up there too. If you expand this to the location quotient (based on how many jobs there are compared too other jobs) you'll find many other cities have quite a few jobs too. Huntsville, Durham, and Madison are also up there.
rachofsunshine 5y ago
This is true, at least of developers who lack both experience and impressive credentials. A new grad from, say, UC Berkeley might be fine, a new grad from my own alma mater (which has a direction in its name) will often struggle, and a hobbyist without a CS degree has an even bigger uphill battle. The reason we didn't talk about it as much in the main post is that our approach to the problem of credentials hasn't changed all that much. We still have quizzes, and someone who is having a hard time getting their foot in the door (a) is likely to be willing to put in the effort to take them and (b) will benefit from doing so. That's not a complete solution to the problem (it helps people with skills get hired, but doesn't in itself help people get skills that you only get on the job), but it's better than the status quo. We haven't forgotten about people struggling as they look for their first job. (And I certainly never will: to get personal for a sec, my first job search was a miserable multi-year affair that nearly killed me.) We've got some experimental irons in the fire here (e.g. a program that basically highlights people who haven't gotten as much attention as they 'should' based on their skills) that we're not quite ready to talk about in great detail. If they work, you'll hear more about them soon. If they don't, we'll try something else.
- forbiddenvoid 5y ago
  > hobbyist without a CS degree has an even bigger uphill battle This was me when I tried Triplebyte. I wish it had worked out. I don't really blame TB for the failure, but I think there was a lot of optimism on the part of TB that wasn't shared by the companies I interviewed with. TB was just another placement option for every one of them, and I found it challenging to overcome what felt like walking into several onsite interviews completely blind to what was expected of me.
  - rachofsunshine 5y ago
    This (what's expected of you in a specific company's onsite) is exactly the sort of data we'd love to make available and searchable.
sosodev 5y ago
I graduated a year ago from a no-name state university with roughly a 3.0 GPA. Today I work for a big startup making ~200K a year… so
- bradlys 5y ago
  How do you work at a startup making $200k salary with one year of experience? You must be working at a public company.
  - sosodev 5y ago
    Well they went public right after I started but I still consider them a startup.
WoodenChair 5y ago
> As always with posts about employment, the idea that there's higher demand than supply for engineers is a lie. The demand for highly experienced cheap engineers is high, the demand for junior developers is almost non existent. Yeah I don’t think this is true. I teach undergraduate CS and our data shows (which we publish at admissions so is public) we regularly have close to 100% job placement within 6 months, with 90+% of that being CS related. I know many of the students personally and they are almost all landing good software development jobs. I think we have a good program but I hear the same from colleagues at other schools. “Good software development jobs” of course is a relative term. CS related does not mean Amazon at >$100k, although a few achieve that.
- devwastaken 5y ago
  I've seen now multiple mail in letters that ask "Have you found employment related to your degree", or a question similiar to it. If you have a compsci degree and end up working an IT phone support job that is counted as "related". Which completely skews the results. Or, better yet, some ask "are you gainfully employed?". There's good programs out there, but they are in the minority. If you run a good program, that's great. In my experience most places offering compsci are there to take the federal loan money and hand you a piece of paper.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

> New CS grads struggle to find employment Sorry, but I call major bullshit on this. Sure, if you have a D average at a low tier school, perhaps. But if you are a competent coder who got good grades in school, I see many companies ready to hire new grads left and right (obviously folks who graduated during the height of the pandemic had different issues to deal with). I don't know if we're quite at the "anyone who can fog a mirror can get a job" stage like we were in the original dot com boom, but we're not that far away.

devwastaken 5y ago
I know 3 of them. They only receive responses from jobs similiar to, but not actually software dev. Basically tech support jobs but you have to know the basics of a windows/bash command line. No dev work involved. Companies advertise they're hiring. Like they advertise that they're profitable, make the best products, and are better than their competition. That doesn't mean it's true. Many positions are "nice to have", so they will stay there until they get someone with far more experience on paper than they actually need - someone willing to get paid less of course. People lie, especially companies. That's the nature of the market. Even if we had 5x the devs than employers, employers would still say otherwise. This is because more competition between applicants means you can pay people less. Infact even during the dotcom boom my sister actually got a degree in "web development", and nobody wanted anything to do with her. I don't know who comes out with these lies about "high demand" employment but so far all I've seen is confirmation bias by those already employed - ignoring all the rest of the people who can't get anywhere, leave it behind, and go work at something else.
- flunhat 5y ago
  The data doesn't bear this out though -- the median* salary for a software developer is not only substantially higher than the national average salary, the rate of growth is also higher: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5n4R_Osks_fVsVmedxJKsp9zPuRlc5VuDObk0DSeHzyrbAE181ThHXKgsSiTJUgnVYItw7aI7ovRqgKvdqxAkflmC9eQ2Z3v3CZbxToxgnJlSfXANViai37EdxHiz9xZltWWXBzH https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/5n4R_Osks_fVsVmedxJKsp9zPu... That's empirical evidence of a tight labor market that's difficult to fake. Why else would salaries rise so quickly from such a high base? Even if employers lie (they do), the salary numbers from BLS are separate from that. Of course, there are always people who slip through the cracks unfortunately. But avoiding anecdotes and looking purely at the numbers, it's difficult to find a labor market in the USA that's tighter than the one for software engineers.
  - totony 5y ago
    >Why else would salaries rise so quickly from such a high base? This can be explain by FAANG paying more, or people being more risk averse of having bad devs (ie hiring less, but paying more for more skilled).
shagie 5y ago
I believe a bit of the difficulty that new grads have with trying to find employment is a combination of: * Reluctance to move / restrictions on where they want to move (only SF, Seattle, NYC) * Extreme focus on product development (and not applying for the operations jobs that keep many large orgs running). * Focus on working for a high salary at a big tech company (and not applying to jobs at companies that aren't seen as big tech... say... this job - https://csx.taleo.net/careersection/basic_faceted_search/jobdetail.ftl?job=047091 https://csx.taleo.net/careersection/basic_faceted_search/job... ) I believe that there is extreme saturation in certain desirable sectors of the field and "where is everyone?" in other areas.
- opportune 5y ago
  I doubt people only wanting to move to Seattle/SF/NYC is the problem. What about all the people who only look for jobs in their hometown or regional hub where there are approximately 0 jobs for software engineers? From what I’ve seen that is a much more common problem, people basically limiting their search parameters to a very small set of all open jobs, rather than looking at the three cities that have the most jobs.
  - shagie 5y ago
    That was a bit of the "Reluctance to move" aspect. I've moved across country twice and from one end of a state to another twice... its a pain, but I like new places. One of the companies that I worked for (smallish city in rural midwest). There were a few tech jobs there (and a reasonable sized tech company)... several of my co-workers had never been further than about 100-200 miles away from where they were born (and then, only as vacation). Yea... the reluctance to move is a problem. I attribute part of this to my (gen X) and the "this is how things are" that I got from my parents (boomers). My father's family had a few moves through the years... not too many, but a few. My mother's family moved several times (and once even to another territory) as part of my grandfather's career. Once my parents were married, they moved twice before settling down. For me, when I graduated college, it was almost expected that I move somewhere else for a time. And I did. My brother too... and my sister. My brother (gen X) has moved five times since graduating college and my sister (gen X / millennial cusp) has also had five major moves since graduating college. I believe there's a generational shift in that expectation of moving out - possibly from the financial insecurities that the dot com crash, '09 recession, and the '20 recession have instilled in the millennials and gen Z as they look for jobs... though that's just a guess. > rather than looking at the three cities that have the most jobs. There are a lot of cities/metro areas that have a lot of jobs that people tend to pass by. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151251.htm - note that there are other classifications that are applicable, but I can't get a page that has a set of them together... so just using this one as an example. If you look at the raw employment figures, Dallas, Chicago, DC, and LA are way up there too. If you expand this to the location quotient (based on how many jobs there are compared too other jobs) you'll find many other cities have quite a few jobs too. Huntsville, Durham, and Madison are also up there.

rachofsunshine 5y ago

This is true, at least of developers who lack both experience and impressive credentials. A new grad from, say, UC Berkeley might be fine, a new grad from my own alma mater (which has a direction in its name) will often struggle, and a hobbyist without a CS degree has an even bigger uphill battle. The reason we didn't talk about it as much in the main post is that our approach to the problem of credentials hasn't changed all that much. We still have quizzes, and someone who is having a hard time getting their foot in the door (a) is likely to be willing to put in the effort to take them and (b) will benefit from doing so. That's not a complete solution to the problem (it helps people with skills get hired, but doesn't in itself help people get skills that you only get on the job), but it's better than the status quo. We haven't forgotten about people struggling as they look for their first job. (And I certainly never will: to get personal for a sec, my first job search was a miserable multi-year affair that nearly killed me.) We've got some experimental irons in the fire here (e.g. a program that basically highlights people who haven't gotten as much attention as they 'should' based on their skills) that we're not quite ready to talk about in great detail. If they work, you'll hear more about them soon. If they don't, we'll try something else.

forbiddenvoid 5y ago
> hobbyist without a CS degree has an even bigger uphill battle This was me when I tried Triplebyte. I wish it had worked out. I don't really blame TB for the failure, but I think there was a lot of optimism on the part of TB that wasn't shared by the companies I interviewed with. TB was just another placement option for every one of them, and I found it challenging to overcome what felt like walking into several onsite interviews completely blind to what was expected of me.
- rachofsunshine 5y ago
  This (what's expected of you in a specific company's onsite) is exactly the sort of data we'd love to make available and searchable.

sosodev 5y ago

I graduated a year ago from a no-name state university with roughly a 3.0 GPA. Today I work for a big startup making ~200K a year… so

bradlys 5y ago
How do you work at a startup making $200k salary with one year of experience? You must be working at a public company.
- sosodev 5y ago
  Well they went public right after I started but I still consider them a startup.

WoodenChair 5y ago

> As always with posts about employment, the idea that there's higher demand than supply for engineers is a lie. The demand for highly experienced cheap engineers is high, the demand for junior developers is almost non existent. Yeah I don’t think this is true. I teach undergraduate CS and our data shows (which we publish at admissions so is public) we regularly have close to 100% job placement within 6 months, with 90+% of that being CS related. I know many of the students personally and they are almost all landing good software development jobs. I think we have a good program but I hear the same from colleagues at other schools. “Good software development jobs” of course is a relative term. CS related does not mean Amazon at >$100k, although a few achieve that.

devwastaken 5y ago
I've seen now multiple mail in letters that ask "Have you found employment related to your degree", or a question similiar to it. If you have a compsci degree and end up working an IT phone support job that is counted as "related". Which completely skews the results. Or, better yet, some ask "are you gainfully employed?". There's good programs out there, but they are in the minority. If you run a good program, that's great. In my experience most places offering compsci are there to take the federal loan money and hand you a piece of paper.