4 ms·

Everyone and their dog is studying to become a software engineer, why's the shortage? Most who set out to do it give up but you'd still think there would be a l

Everyone and their dog is studying to become a software engineer, why's the shortage? Most who set out to do it give up but you'd still think there would be a lot of developers by now.

adrianN 5y ago
The demand for software is still in the "looks infinite" regime of the s-curve. There is an endless number of manual business processes that could benefit from software.
manigandham 5y ago
There's a strange case (of most professions) where being below average usually means you create more work. And as long as you continue that work with others who aren't very good, the work keeps compounding. This isn't purely technical of course, and involves lots of politics and bureaucracy, but it's how you end up with massive $100M software projects that completely fail. So the shortage is not only in having enough developers but having enough good developers. And that's tough given how vast the industry is, and how fast it moves.
mattacular 5y ago
The shortage is of experience not people who want to get into software development.
btbuildem 5y ago
They outline the "why?" clearly in the article.
habibur 5y ago
> Everyone and their dog is studying to become a software engineer... The thing is... this was true in the 90s, was true in the 00s and was true in the 10s. Yet we are here, shortage in developers after 30 years of everyone and their dog studying software engineering.
- distrill 5y ago
  In my class (2016), there were still lots of people who felt silly about the web, which is where most of the work actually is. I would guess about half of my graduating computer science classmates went on to not work in the industry, because they had their hearts set on jobs that just weren't really available to them (they wanted to work at Blizzard and wouldn't consider anything web or web-adjacent). Perhaps they've reconsidered at this point, but if this pattern held anywhere else then this trend makes perfect sense to me.
  - jalgos_eminator 5y ago
    I would tend to agree. When I was in college about 6 years ago, web/backend work was not seen as "real CS work". Everyone wanted to do something more than work on a CRUD app, but here we are.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    The web does have a stigma, but given how much money pours through the eCommerce industry it's a surprising outcome. I guess it's not that sexy, but it is where the money is. For a while everyone wanted to be an app developer, but that's a real crapshoot too. eCommerce is honest, stable work with relatively low risk for the developer. The domain is well defined, the technology is mature, the companies are already stable and doing business.
spamizbad 5y ago
The funnel for junior software engineers is big but the tip of the funnel is narrow. Most of those who zip through it either went to a name-brand school or got hands-on experience with internships first. Everyone else is just trying to get lucky. On the cscareers subreddit there are a ton of people who either went through bootcamps or taught themselves how to code who have been searching for a role for a year - in the mean time doing personal projects, or trying to pick up some contract work - but no takers for full time salaried work. The true "shortage" is really for developers with 3+ years experience who can "hit the ground running". Most companies will only make limited commitment to junior engineers, favoring mid and senior level developers.
- Animats 5y ago
  The true "shortage" is really for developers with 3+ years experience who can "hit the ground running". Yes. Corporate management wants instant gratification. Not sending people to training classes. World's smallest violin plays.
  - shagie 5y ago
    The flip side of this is the... > Team A hired a junior dev, onboarded them, six months later they were productive and left for another job. Between the costs of hiring, onboarding, and lost productivity for the rest of the team, and wages for the employee, we've realized a net loss of of $150,000. The lead and manager are saying if we were to hire another junior dev, it would set the project *back* by another quarter from its current delayed estimates. > Team B is still looking for a mid or senior to hire, but unlike team A they are only slightly delayed from the readjustments after taking into consideration not hiring someone. Yes, they'd like to have someone hit the ground running... but they'd really rather not incur losses and slipping estimates from losing employees.
    - Animats 5y ago
      So you have an employee retention problem. There's a sense of entitlement from many employers. They expect that the people they want will be available at short notice at the wages they want to pay. And that they won't have to fight to keep them. That seems to no longer be the case.
throw149102 5y ago
Another point is that software engineering (currently) has a situation where the higher the supply goes the higher the demand is. Once an organization starts digitizing their processes, there is a higher additional benefit to hiring another software engineer, because that second one has access to data that previously not accessible programmatically. Previously information that was kept in excel spreadsheets or on paper is now on servers. You would think that it would eventually lead to some stopping point, but there are additional funnels and issues. For example, finding professors in university to teach software engineering is hard, because all of the people graduating from their universities in software engineering know they can make much more money in the industry than in education. Places like Stanford or MIT (who are already trying to be selective on purpose) can afford it, but community colleges or even high schools can't give them 1/3 of what they would make otherwise.

Everyone and their dog is studying to become a software engineer, why's the shortage? Most who set out to do it give up but you'd still think there would be a lot of developers by now.

adrianN 5y ago

The demand for software is still in the "looks infinite" regime of the s-curve. There is an endless number of manual business processes that could benefit from software.

manigandham 5y ago

There's a strange case (of most professions) where being below average usually means you create more work. And as long as you continue that work with others who aren't very good, the work keeps compounding. This isn't purely technical of course, and involves lots of politics and bureaucracy, but it's how you end up with massive $100M software projects that completely fail. So the shortage is not only in having enough developers but having enough good developers. And that's tough given how vast the industry is, and how fast it moves.

mattacular 5y ago

The shortage is of experience not people who want to get into software development.

btbuildem 5y ago

They outline the "why?" clearly in the article.

habibur 5y ago

> Everyone and their dog is studying to become a software engineer... The thing is... this was true in the 90s, was true in the 00s and was true in the 10s. Yet we are here, shortage in developers after 30 years of everyone and their dog studying software engineering.

distrill 5y ago
In my class (2016), there were still lots of people who felt silly about the web, which is where most of the work actually is. I would guess about half of my graduating computer science classmates went on to not work in the industry, because they had their hearts set on jobs that just weren't really available to them (they wanted to work at Blizzard and wouldn't consider anything web or web-adjacent). Perhaps they've reconsidered at this point, but if this pattern held anywhere else then this trend makes perfect sense to me.
- jalgos_eminator 5y ago
  I would tend to agree. When I was in college about 6 years ago, web/backend work was not seen as "real CS work". Everyone wanted to do something more than work on a CRUD app, but here we are.
- ehnto 5y ago
  The web does have a stigma, but given how much money pours through the eCommerce industry it's a surprising outcome. I guess it's not that sexy, but it is where the money is. For a while everyone wanted to be an app developer, but that's a real crapshoot too. eCommerce is honest, stable work with relatively low risk for the developer. The domain is well defined, the technology is mature, the companies are already stable and doing business.

spamizbad 5y ago

The funnel for junior software engineers is big but the tip of the funnel is narrow. Most of those who zip through it either went to a name-brand school or got hands-on experience with internships first. Everyone else is just trying to get lucky. On the cscareers subreddit there are a ton of people who either went through bootcamps or taught themselves how to code who have been searching for a role for a year - in the mean time doing personal projects, or trying to pick up some contract work - but no takers for full time salaried work. The true "shortage" is really for developers with 3+ years experience who can "hit the ground running". Most companies will only make limited commitment to junior engineers, favoring mid and senior level developers.

Animats 5y ago
The true "shortage" is really for developers with 3+ years experience who can "hit the ground running". Yes. Corporate management wants instant gratification. Not sending people to training classes. World's smallest violin plays.
- shagie 5y ago
  The flip side of this is the... > Team A hired a junior dev, onboarded them, six months later they were productive and left for another job. Between the costs of hiring, onboarding, and lost productivity for the rest of the team, and wages for the employee, we've realized a net loss of of $150,000. The lead and manager are saying if we were to hire another junior dev, it would set the project *back* by another quarter from its current delayed estimates. > Team B is still looking for a mid or senior to hire, but unlike team A they are only slightly delayed from the readjustments after taking into consideration not hiring someone. Yes, they'd like to have someone hit the ground running... but they'd really rather not incur losses and slipping estimates from losing employees.
  - Animats 5y ago
    So you have an employee retention problem. There's a sense of entitlement from many employers. They expect that the people they want will be available at short notice at the wages they want to pay. And that they won't have to fight to keep them. That seems to no longer be the case.

throw149102 5y ago

Another point is that software engineering (currently) has a situation where the higher the supply goes the higher the demand is. Once an organization starts digitizing their processes, there is a higher additional benefit to hiring another software engineer, because that second one has access to data that previously not accessible programmatically. Previously information that was kept in excel spreadsheets or on paper is now on servers. You would think that it would eventually lead to some stopping point, but there are additional funnels and issues. For example, finding professors in university to teach software engineering is hard, because all of the people graduating from their universities in software engineering know they can make much more money in the industry than in education. Places like Stanford or MIT (who are already trying to be selective on purpose) can afford it, but community colleges or even high schools can't give them 1/3 of what they would make otherwise.