3 ms·

> There is no such thing as a developer shortage; there is a shortage of wildly, identifiably competent developers willing to work for the salaries you're offer

by azakai 13y ago

> There is no such thing as a developer shortage; there is a shortage of wildly, identifiably competent developers willing to work for the salaries you're offering. Depends on the subfield. If you want to hire 1,000 ARM JIT superhackers, those people just don't exist in the entire world. There are just not 1,000 people total that know ARM, know JITing on ARM, and are strong hackers. You could advertise double the usual salaries for those positions, and still those people would not show up, because they don't exist. So your only hope if you need 1,000 of them is to train them, which takes time and has risk. For something like web development on the other hand, sure, I do think the market is far more flexible and if you double salaries, more developers will show up fairly quickly.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
IAmARealDev 13y ago
> ...if you double salaries, more developers will show up fairly quickly. Because throwing money at a problem is always the best way to solve it, right? Why would anyone consider hiring the type of developer they actually need? Here's the inconvenient truth about startups in the Bay Area... lots of them have basic CRUD apps with little to no traffic that a self-taught programmer out of high school could build. They don't need "engineers" with CS degrees from top schools who are Google or Facebook material.
- collyw 13y ago
  Hmmm. I talked with a taxi driver in Dublin last year. His friend was in the IT business. The friend said that couldn't find enough experienced developers. Well, they were there, but they were asking for too much money.
- mattgreenrocks 13y ago
  > lots of them have basic CRUD apps What's hilarious is they love to throw CS interview questions at you. There should be some sort of term for it; delusions of grander[sic] engineering? Let me make it obvious: technologists don't want to write CRUD apps.
memracom 13y ago
Your attitude sucks. I was with you up until the point where you said that your only hope is to TRAIN them. The developers that I have met are almost all really interested in technology and constantly learning new things. Few developers wait to be trained if there is a useful new technology out there that could solve problems that they would like to solve. So there is a 3rd way, and that is to identify the developers who are into constantly learning new things. It is not hard since you just have to weed out the 10-15% of developers who have given up on learning for one reason or another. If you need developers, just hire a few people who have done some kind of development before, are at least vaguely familiar with the tools and problems that you have, and are willing to work for a graduated salary where they start around 10% lower than normal and work their way up to the full salary in 3 months or so. You will still have to lose a few before three months is up, but the upside is that you will never again have trouble finding people. I used the word normal up there instead of a particular salary number because numbers vary by country and region. The right number for you is probably somewhere above the average salary for your region because if you are weeding out 10-15% of field, then you are by definition hiring above average people. Sure you may miss one or two really great people who demand a high salary or they won't leave their employer. But can you honestly say that you KNOW that these people are good if they are not willing to go through a short trial by fire? You could even rig the graduated salary so that the final yearly total earned is exactly the same as if they had been given a normal salary offer from the beginning. There are lots of smart and skilled people who can learn a new language and a new platform in FAR LESS TIME THAN IT TAKED TO LEARN YOUR CODEBASE AND YOUR BUSINESS. And don't tell me that you only hire people who already know your code and your business, because if you are not churning out mindless Wordpress sites, then I don't believe you.
- memracom 13y ago
  Save this comment to show folks why spell checking is no replacement for proofreading. My brain said TAKES but my fingers wrote TAKED and because I trusted the spellchecker, the error is now forever frozen on the Internet.
epsylon 13y ago
There's no shortage of people smart enough and willing to become JIT ARM superhackers.

by azakai 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

IAmARealDev 13y ago

> ...if you double salaries, more developers will show up fairly quickly. Because throwing money at a problem is always the best way to solve it, right? Why would anyone consider hiring the type of developer they actually need? Here's the inconvenient truth about startups in the Bay Area... lots of them have basic CRUD apps with little to no traffic that a self-taught programmer out of high school could build. They don't need "engineers" with CS degrees from top schools who are Google or Facebook material.

collyw 13y ago
Hmmm. I talked with a taxi driver in Dublin last year. His friend was in the IT business. The friend said that couldn't find enough experienced developers. Well, they were there, but they were asking for too much money.
mattgreenrocks 13y ago
> lots of them have basic CRUD apps What's hilarious is they love to throw CS interview questions at you. There should be some sort of term for it; delusions of grander[sic] engineering? Let me make it obvious: technologists don't want to write CRUD apps.

memracom 13y ago

Your attitude sucks. I was with you up until the point where you said that your only hope is to TRAIN them. The developers that I have met are almost all really interested in technology and constantly learning new things. Few developers wait to be trained if there is a useful new technology out there that could solve problems that they would like to solve. So there is a 3rd way, and that is to identify the developers who are into constantly learning new things. It is not hard since you just have to weed out the 10-15% of developers who have given up on learning for one reason or another. If you need developers, just hire a few people who have done some kind of development before, are at least vaguely familiar with the tools and problems that you have, and are willing to work for a graduated salary where they start around 10% lower than normal and work their way up to the full salary in 3 months or so. You will still have to lose a few before three months is up, but the upside is that you will never again have trouble finding people. I used the word normal up there instead of a particular salary number because numbers vary by country and region. The right number for you is probably somewhere above the average salary for your region because if you are weeding out 10-15% of field, then you are by definition hiring above average people. Sure you may miss one or two really great people who demand a high salary or they won't leave their employer. But can you honestly say that you KNOW that these people are good if they are not willing to go through a short trial by fire? You could even rig the graduated salary so that the final yearly total earned is exactly the same as if they had been given a normal salary offer from the beginning. There are lots of smart and skilled people who can learn a new language and a new platform in FAR LESS TIME THAN IT TAKED TO LEARN YOUR CODEBASE AND YOUR BUSINESS. And don't tell me that you only hire people who already know your code and your business, because if you are not churning out mindless Wordpress sites, then I don't believe you.

memracom 13y ago
Save this comment to show folks why spell checking is no replacement for proofreading. My brain said TAKES but my fingers wrote TAKED and because I trusted the spellchecker, the error is now forever frozen on the Internet.

epsylon 13y ago

There's no shortage of people smart enough and willing to become JIT ARM superhackers.