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There is no shortage of workers. This is a myth. Always has been. In economics, supply = demand. There's never a surplus. there's never a shortage. If yo

There is no shortage of workers. This is a myth. Always has been. In economics, supply = demand. There's never a surplus. there's never a shortage. If you want more engineers, raise wages. They will come. If you don't want to raise wages, then you really didn't want them. Saying there's an engineering shortage is like saying there's a hamburger shortage because I don't want to pay more than 25 cents for a hamburger. If I pay $5, I could get a nice hamburger .and ... ta da ... end of "the great hamburger shortage" in this case. Silicon Valley has the wealthiest people in the world and is a very expensive place to live. Engineering careers are quite short and living in an efficiency and washed up at 38 is not as inviting as our "we need more workers" mantra repeaters would have us beleive. If they raise wages, they'll get what they want. Another alternative of those giant visionary West Coast capventure brains is use the principle of "capital mobility": just move the capital to where the labor is cheap. Not very hard, folks.

eli_gottlieb 15y ago
I was going to say, myself: if they want more workers, they could try moving out of the San Francisco-Seattle bubble. Portland, Boston-Cambridge, Texas, Raleigh and New York all have good supplies of tech workers who would love to work on Silicon Valley-grade projects earning Silicon Valley-grade salaries but who won't abandon our entire lives to move to Silicon Valley.
- untog 15y ago
  I'm in New York and I'd say that it also has the same problems that Silicon Valley does, these days. Places like Austin and Raleigh seem like very viable destinations, though.
  - shareme 15y ago
    Lets deal with reality folks..99% of start-ups are not at stages were they pay the going salary rates.. Has nothing to do with supply and demand or anything else. Or famous Jason Calacanis blow hard likes to claim they do not want to work..that does not work either.. what works is transparency about at what funding stage you are at to the potential employee..
    - tosseraccount 15y ago
      It's not about supply and demand? It's about transparency? It's about "funding stage" ? I don't get it.
      - TheCapn 15y ago
        To me it sounds like he's trying to say that the vast majority of startups aren't in a position to offer lavish wages to obtain talent; they're still trying to receive funding to get off the ground. He suggests that the companies should be transparent with the state that "they don't have money yet, but we're hoping to soon" as a pitch that'll draw workers?
- anamax 15y ago
  > if they want more workers, they could try moving out of the San Francisco-Seattle bubble "more workers" isn't the only problem. And, even if it is, do those other people have enough of the relevant workers?
nicholasjbs 15y ago
(Hacker School cofounder here) I agree wages should increase. There are some signs that's happening already, and I hope it continues. To be honest, we're much more excited about the education side of things, but the press seems to focus largely on the recruiting and hiring angle. For us, our current referral setup is a fortuitous model that lets us continue experimenting and growing the school, but it's a means to an end and not the end itself.
akeefer 15y ago
It's true that many people who say "there's a shortage" are really saying "I can't find a top 1% engineer who will work 60 hours a week for $80k a year in Silicon Valley." Well, duh: raise wages, provide better working conditions, or look elsewhere. But I think you've taken it too far by defining "shortage" in such a way that it's impossible. If I said "A profitable company with sane hours is having trouble finding high-quality engineers at $120k+ a year" it's a little more reasonable to say, "Hmm, maybe that means that there's a 'shortage' of good engineers, in the sense that society and the economy as a whole would benefit from having more talented engineers." Just saying "look elsewhere" or "pay more" completely sidesteps the whole point, which is that where there's a "shortage" there's an obvious opportunity to profitably address it in a way that benefits the economy and society. To use your analogy, if the beef supply was constrained such that the cheapest hamburger was $100, would you say, "There's no shortage: supply and demand have met at a price of $100?" Or would you say, "Wow, hamburger prices increased by like 20x, there's a shortage of hamburgers?" I think most people would say the latter; the former simply isn't a useful definition of the word "shortage." It means that relative to some general idea of "normal" (as defined by previous conditions, or conditions in related markets), the market seems distorted by a lack of supply.
- Retric 15y ago
  Market's don't work that way. Developers are worth different amounts of money to different companies. Google gains something like 1 million in value per year per developer and they would still be profitable if the market rate for a talented Dev was 600k/year. Most companies are not that flexible and there are a lot more dev's out than just what Google needs which drives down salary's until some companies barely breakeven by adding staff and some dev's move on to better paying opportunity's.
  - akeefer 15y ago
    Sure, but that's not what I was arguing against; my point is that just because that's how market works it doesn't mean you can't say there's not a "shortage" of some skill. If the only companies that can hire engineers have to be able to pay them $600k a year, wouldn't you reasonably say that there's a shortage of engineers? I sure would. If supply was so large that great engineers were working for $40k per year, wouldn't you suggest that there was a glut/oversupply of engineers? In either case, saying there's a "shortage" or a "glut" isn't saying anything about supply and demand, it's implying some sort of course of action that you should take: i.e. go study engineering (yourself) or promote engineering schools (as a society), or go study something else/promote other types of skills. I'm not arguing over market economics, I'm arguing that just because supply and demand work like that it doesn't mean you can just dismiss anyone who talks of there being a "shortage."

eli_gottlieb 15y ago

I was going to say, myself: if they want more workers, they could try moving out of the San Francisco-Seattle bubble. Portland, Boston-Cambridge, Texas, Raleigh and New York all have good supplies of tech workers who would love to work on Silicon Valley-grade projects earning Silicon Valley-grade salaries but who won't abandon our entire lives to move to Silicon Valley.

untog 15y ago
I'm in New York and I'd say that it also has the same problems that Silicon Valley does, these days. Places like Austin and Raleigh seem like very viable destinations, though.
- shareme 15y ago
  Lets deal with reality folks..99% of start-ups are not at stages were they pay the going salary rates.. Has nothing to do with supply and demand or anything else. Or famous Jason Calacanis blow hard likes to claim they do not want to work..that does not work either.. what works is transparency about at what funding stage you are at to the potential employee..
  - tosseraccount 15y ago
    It's not about supply and demand? It's about transparency? It's about "funding stage" ? I don't get it.
    - TheCapn 15y ago
      To me it sounds like he's trying to say that the vast majority of startups aren't in a position to offer lavish wages to obtain talent; they're still trying to receive funding to get off the ground. He suggests that the companies should be transparent with the state that "they don't have money yet, but we're hoping to soon" as a pitch that'll draw workers?
anamax 15y ago
> if they want more workers, they could try moving out of the San Francisco-Seattle bubble "more workers" isn't the only problem. And, even if it is, do those other people have enough of the relevant workers?

nicholasjbs 15y ago

(Hacker School cofounder here) I agree wages should increase. There are some signs that's happening already, and I hope it continues. To be honest, we're much more excited about the education side of things, but the press seems to focus largely on the recruiting and hiring angle. For us, our current referral setup is a fortuitous model that lets us continue experimenting and growing the school, but it's a means to an end and not the end itself.

akeefer 15y ago

It's true that many people who say "there's a shortage" are really saying "I can't find a top 1% engineer who will work 60 hours a week for $80k a year in Silicon Valley." Well, duh: raise wages, provide better working conditions, or look elsewhere. But I think you've taken it too far by defining "shortage" in such a way that it's impossible. If I said "A profitable company with sane hours is having trouble finding high-quality engineers at $120k+ a year" it's a little more reasonable to say, "Hmm, maybe that means that there's a 'shortage' of good engineers, in the sense that society and the economy as a whole would benefit from having more talented engineers." Just saying "look elsewhere" or "pay more" completely sidesteps the whole point, which is that where there's a "shortage" there's an obvious opportunity to profitably address it in a way that benefits the economy and society. To use your analogy, if the beef supply was constrained such that the cheapest hamburger was $100, would you say, "There's no shortage: supply and demand have met at a price of $100?" Or would you say, "Wow, hamburger prices increased by like 20x, there's a shortage of hamburgers?" I think most people would say the latter; the former simply isn't a useful definition of the word "shortage." It means that relative to some general idea of "normal" (as defined by previous conditions, or conditions in related markets), the market seems distorted by a lack of supply.

Retric 15y ago
Market's don't work that way. Developers are worth different amounts of money to different companies. Google gains something like 1 million in value per year per developer and they would still be profitable if the market rate for a talented Dev was 600k/year. Most companies are not that flexible and there are a lot more dev's out than just what Google needs which drives down salary's until some companies barely breakeven by adding staff and some dev's move on to better paying opportunity's.
- akeefer 15y ago
  Sure, but that's not what I was arguing against; my point is that just because that's how market works it doesn't mean you can't say there's not a "shortage" of some skill. If the only companies that can hire engineers have to be able to pay them $600k a year, wouldn't you reasonably say that there's a shortage of engineers? I sure would. If supply was so large that great engineers were working for $40k per year, wouldn't you suggest that there was a glut/oversupply of engineers? In either case, saying there's a "shortage" or a "glut" isn't saying anything about supply and demand, it's implying some sort of course of action that you should take: i.e. go study engineering (yourself) or promote engineering schools (as a society), or go study something else/promote other types of skills. I'm not arguing over market economics, I'm arguing that just because supply and demand work like that it doesn't mean you can just dismiss anyone who talks of there being a "shortage."