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I'm sorry, but the talent shortage is a real thing. We don't have any HR filtering in place - resumes come directly to managers - but we still have a really di

I'm sorry, but the talent shortage is a real thing. We don't have any HR filtering in place - resumes come directly to managers - but we still have a really difficult time filling our open positions.

droithomme 14y ago
If you want this claim of yours honestly evaluated, state your company, location, job requirements, and how much the compensation package is.
lightup88 14y ago
Absolutely it is. Furthermore, the concept that an applicant should dictate whether he/she speaks to a manager is impractical. Just as dismissing screeners as largely incompetent is silly. To be clear-he's absolutely correct that automated screening of applications isn't up to snuff.
vonmoltke 14y ago
Counter anecdote: We don't really have an HR department at all, and we don't have much trouble finding people when we need them. Sure, we get our fair share of chaff like everyone else. Still only takes a month or two to find someone worth hiring. I do not consider that an unreasonable amount of time. For the record, every engineer we have hired since I started, and including me, has been a cold application off a web posting.
ditonal 14y ago
*Shortage of talent at the price you are willing to pay. There are all sorts of legal work and questions I would love to have done if I could get a top-notch lawyer for $10/hr. That doesn't mean there is a shortage of top-notch lawyers, it means that I am priced out by the rest of the market who are offering them better wages. Sounds like you are priced out of the market, if you offer market wages, you will find people by definition of market wage i.e. the price that it costs to successfully hire people, not the price off of salary.com.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  One caveat is that "market wages" most likely will need to offer a risk premium depending on what kind of environment, stability, convenience, etc. you offer. It probably isn't going to be "the industry average for all companies (including the big boys) is $X, so I should need to just offer $X". X could be lower or higher, depending on who you manage to find and who you are.
  - ditonal 14y ago
    I think there's actually a lot of caveats, all jobs are not equal, there isn't perfect information about all available jobs (hence the need for recruiting), etc. But on the other hand, this 'shortage' is being used as a political tool to depress engineering salaries, even though if you applied the same logic to other professions you would find there are worse shortages there. Clearly it would be useful from a healthcare cost perspective if we had more doctors but we aren't expanding visa quotas there. Salary is a huge issue and most jobs want to pay engineers as little as possible. Of course they will rant about how competitive their pay is but if it was so competitive they would probably advertise it, instead of trying to use information asymmetry so they can negotiate them down lower. Then of course, they only hire the best, but salary negotiations inevitably revert to 'market wages', then after all this they can't hire people so they need more immigrants who get deported if they fire them. For some reason, if you can't afford an accountant, you don't get an accountant, if you can't afford a private lawyer, you don't get a private lawyer, but if you can't afford a programmer, there is a talent shortage and we need more skilled immigrants and to subsidize more STEM graduates.
    - hkmurakami 14y ago
      Not to mention the H1B hire -> underpay -> keep them underpaid and shackled with the H1B/Greencard combo.
      - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
        You would quickly find yourself in trouble with the INS.
jjtheblunt 14y ago
If you're in California, it's because no American from outside California improves her/his economic outlook by coming to California, where cost of living is easily several times higher than in many other thriving parts of the country.
- scarmig 14y ago
  Moving to California from the East Coast nearly doubled my salary. Cost of living went up, but by around a factor of 15-20%. Of course, since lots of people are really fucking rich in the Bay Area, it's easy to get caught in the conspicuous consumption game (the biggest part of which is probably housing and location). But if you can avoid that, moving to California can easily mean a whole lot more money, even with taxes + cost of living.
  - toomuchtodo 14y ago
    I'm an infrastructure guy. I interviewed with a fairly well known startup in Mountain View. I was making $120K in Chicago, and was offered $110K to move to Mountain View/San Jose. In what world is that an intelligent choice, when you can make $ITMONIES somewhere where the cost of living isn't going to eat you alive.
    - lern_too_spel 14y ago
      $110k plus equity, right? If you got an offer from an established public company, the salary portion of the compensation package would likely be much higher.
      - toomuchtodo 14y ago
        Very little equity. Not worth the salary differential.
      - ktsmith 14y ago
        You should assume that any equity you are offerred by a startup has a value of $0 because the odds are that's what you are going to see from it.
polymatter 14y ago
Where do you advertise? How do you portray your company? Do you get involved in local meetups? Do you contribute to Open Source? Why do the employees that do decide to leave you, leave? What do they say about you? Do you know the going rate for your open positions? How do you know thats the going rate and how are you confident that that is a rate your potential candidates are likely to accept? Is there a big-brand competitor nearby that sucks up your potential candidates? Is your office hard to get to? Is there a local tech scene or is it a tech desert? Is your company in a non-sexy industry that has a common perception of being particularly boring (eg. Enterprise Java billing middleware) or evil (eg. recording industry, patent troll, oil industry)? And thats before we get to how you are filtering resumes. It can very well be the case that there is a talent shortage in your area/domain. But I think its very hard to conclusively say so on the basis of a lack of qualified candidates flooding through every open opportunity.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]

I'm sorry, but the talent shortage is a real thing. We don't have any HR filtering in place - resumes come directly to managers - but we still have a really difficult time filling our open positions.

droithomme 14y ago

If you want this claim of yours honestly evaluated, state your company, location, job requirements, and how much the compensation package is.

lightup88 14y ago

Absolutely it is. Furthermore, the concept that an applicant should dictate whether he/she speaks to a manager is impractical. Just as dismissing screeners as largely incompetent is silly. To be clear-he's absolutely correct that automated screening of applications isn't up to snuff.

vonmoltke 14y ago

Counter anecdote: We don't really have an HR department at all, and we don't have much trouble finding people when we need them. Sure, we get our fair share of chaff like everyone else. Still only takes a month or two to find someone worth hiring. I do not consider that an unreasonable amount of time. For the record, every engineer we have hired since I started, and including me, has been a cold application off a web posting.

ditonal 14y ago

*Shortage of talent at the price you are willing to pay. There are all sorts of legal work and questions I would love to have done if I could get a top-notch lawyer for $10/hr. That doesn't mean there is a shortage of top-notch lawyers, it means that I am priced out by the rest of the market who are offering them better wages. Sounds like you are priced out of the market, if you offer market wages, you will find people by definition of market wage i.e. the price that it costs to successfully hire people, not the price off of salary.com.

hkmurakami 14y ago
One caveat is that "market wages" most likely will need to offer a risk premium depending on what kind of environment, stability, convenience, etc. you offer. It probably isn't going to be "the industry average for all companies (including the big boys) is $X, so I should need to just offer $X". X could be lower or higher, depending on who you manage to find and who you are.
- ditonal 14y ago
  I think there's actually a lot of caveats, all jobs are not equal, there isn't perfect information about all available jobs (hence the need for recruiting), etc. But on the other hand, this 'shortage' is being used as a political tool to depress engineering salaries, even though if you applied the same logic to other professions you would find there are worse shortages there. Clearly it would be useful from a healthcare cost perspective if we had more doctors but we aren't expanding visa quotas there. Salary is a huge issue and most jobs want to pay engineers as little as possible. Of course they will rant about how competitive their pay is but if it was so competitive they would probably advertise it, instead of trying to use information asymmetry so they can negotiate them down lower. Then of course, they only hire the best, but salary negotiations inevitably revert to 'market wages', then after all this they can't hire people so they need more immigrants who get deported if they fire them. For some reason, if you can't afford an accountant, you don't get an accountant, if you can't afford a private lawyer, you don't get a private lawyer, but if you can't afford a programmer, there is a talent shortage and we need more skilled immigrants and to subsidize more STEM graduates.
  - hkmurakami 14y ago
    Not to mention the H1B hire -> underpay -> keep them underpaid and shackled with the H1B/Greencard combo.
    - seanmcdirmid 14y ago
      You would quickly find yourself in trouble with the INS.

jjtheblunt 14y ago

If you're in California, it's because no American from outside California improves her/his economic outlook by coming to California, where cost of living is easily several times higher than in many other thriving parts of the country.

scarmig 14y ago
Moving to California from the East Coast nearly doubled my salary. Cost of living went up, but by around a factor of 15-20%. Of course, since lots of people are really fucking rich in the Bay Area, it's easy to get caught in the conspicuous consumption game (the biggest part of which is probably housing and location). But if you can avoid that, moving to California can easily mean a whole lot more money, even with taxes + cost of living.
- toomuchtodo 14y ago
  I'm an infrastructure guy. I interviewed with a fairly well known startup in Mountain View. I was making $120K in Chicago, and was offered $110K to move to Mountain View/San Jose. In what world is that an intelligent choice, when you can make $ITMONIES somewhere where the cost of living isn't going to eat you alive.
  - lern_too_spel 14y ago
    $110k plus equity, right? If you got an offer from an established public company, the salary portion of the compensation package would likely be much higher.
    - toomuchtodo 14y ago
      Very little equity. Not worth the salary differential.
    - ktsmith 14y ago
      You should assume that any equity you are offerred by a startup has a value of $0 because the odds are that's what you are going to see from it.

polymatter 14y ago

Where do you advertise? How do you portray your company? Do you get involved in local meetups? Do you contribute to Open Source? Why do the employees that do decide to leave you, leave? What do they say about you? Do you know the going rate for your open positions? How do you know thats the going rate and how are you confident that that is a rate your potential candidates are likely to accept? Is there a big-brand competitor nearby that sucks up your potential candidates? Is your office hard to get to? Is there a local tech scene or is it a tech desert? Is your company in a non-sexy industry that has a common perception of being particularly boring (eg. Enterprise Java billing middleware) or evil (eg. recording industry, patent troll, oil industry)? And thats before we get to how you are filtering resumes. It can very well be the case that there is a talent shortage in your area/domain. But I think its very hard to conclusively say so on the basis of a lack of qualified candidates flooding through every open opportunity.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]