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>Labor has never been in such high supply, and it has never been cheaper. But qualified labor is in short supply, and it's never been more expensive. > "There

by mbesto 13y ago

>Labor has never been in such high supply, and it has never been cheaper. But qualified labor is in short supply, and it's never been more expensive. > "There are more technical jobs open than qualified candidates to fill them." I'm going to be very pedantic here. This statement is in fact true. Had the word "qualified" been taken out, then you are absolutely right, there is no shortage. However, the problem with STEM jobs isn't the lack of "on-paper" qualifications, but rather "off-paper" qualifications. Everyone wants the next Facebook engineer, but they are in limited supply. Case in point? Me. On paper, I've written web apps in Rails, Python, JS, and PHP for 5 years now, but I do not consider myself on par with my technical co-founder. On paper I am 100% qualified to fill a majority of these positions, but in reality, I'm not. Our expectations are offset by the stories we hear daily about Dropbox, Facebook, Google, etc. We are just seeing starting to approach the bend of the hockey stick in the "software is eating the world". It's only until we have a large quantity of qualified engineers when the hockey stick starts shooting upwards.

FD3SA 13y ago
This is another perception issue that I keep encountering. The job description you've written above is for an extremely senior engineer, what some would call a product architect (e.g. your co-founder), not a fresh graduate. In fact, being a new graduate is now, by your own admission, considered to be an unacceptable level of training for a "Facebook engineer". This is corporate bullshit, and you've fallen for it. If companies want someone who has mastered a technological stack, this is not an "engineer". This is an architect. And this position should be paid significantly more than an engineer. Although you may not consider yourself a competent engineer by the "Facebook standard", not only are you a competent engineer, but a senior engineer by every definition of the word. The fact that your evaluation of your own competence is so warped by corporate PR is extremely worrisome. What I see here is that the bar for the definition of "competent engineer" keeps going higher and higher, without a commensurate increase in salary. This is a classic symptom of excess supply.
- mbesto 13y ago
  > This is corporate bullshit I spent 4 years at the largest business software company in the world and have spent 3 years on and off in very small (3 employee) startups. I would presume my bullshit meter is fairly well tuned. > you've fallen for it. I haven't. I tried finding a technical co-founder that didn't cost me an arm and leg, and it's taken me 6 years to do so. (YMMV) > This is an architect. And this position should be paid significantly more than an engineer. This is laughable. I've seen more architects in my day than most people have seen sales people. Just type in "SAP Architect" on any job search and compare it to the number you get for "Rails Architect". Architects are the bullshit powerpoint pushers I used to see day in and day out in Enterprise IT, who, after 5 years of never coding or implementing, fell short of guiding their dev teams because they couldn't keep up with the ever-changing technology stack. You know who should be paid more than anyone else? The person that can build a small team, make crazy revenue in a very short (relative) amount of time. It doesn't matter what you call those people, but they do exist, are in short supply and should be compensated equal to their productive output. > What I see here is that the bar for the definition of "competent engineer" keeps going higher and higher, without a commensurate increase in salary. Actually this has more to do with time than anything. The Next Big Startup™, can't afford to spend 6 months on software, when they can higher Rockstar Dev Mcgee™ who can create it for them in 1-2 months. Lastly, I'm failing to see the motive behind "corporate bullshit" you speak of. Google and Facebook do not want to pay these insane salaries, so it's in their interest to actually (1) have a large supply and (2) promote that there is a large supply, not the opposite. Their compensation packages are a direct effect of the shortage of supply of qualified talent. If this "corporate bullshit" is being lead by a small amount of vocal developers who are artificially padding their salaries by crying "supply shortage", then this is far from being "corporate". The question ultimately becomes, what is our idea of "competent". From what I've seen, there is massive demand for people to create the next AirBnB/Dropbox/etc, which requires some very talented individuals to run and maintain. The other 99% clones of those companies that fail are because they don't have those competent people. So it's a loser's game with a bunch of people who demand that they win. Thus, the situation we are in. EDIT: This video by Gabe Newell says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU#t=12m20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU#t=12m20s (from about 12:20 to 16:00 - these "least correctly valued" people are no longer incorrect valued, that's my point)

by mbesto 13y ago

FD3SA 13y ago

This is another perception issue that I keep encountering. The job description you've written above is for an extremely senior engineer, what some would call a product architect (e.g. your co-founder), not a fresh graduate. In fact, being a new graduate is now, by your own admission, considered to be an unacceptable level of training for a "Facebook engineer". This is corporate bullshit, and you've fallen for it. If companies want someone who has mastered a technological stack, this is not an "engineer". This is an architect. And this position should be paid significantly more than an engineer. Although you may not consider yourself a competent engineer by the "Facebook standard", not only are you a competent engineer, but a senior engineer by every definition of the word. The fact that your evaluation of your own competence is so warped by corporate PR is extremely worrisome. What I see here is that the bar for the definition of "competent engineer" keeps going higher and higher, without a commensurate increase in salary. This is a classic symptom of excess supply.

mbesto 13y ago
> This is corporate bullshit I spent 4 years at the largest business software company in the world and have spent 3 years on and off in very small (3 employee) startups. I would presume my bullshit meter is fairly well tuned. > you've fallen for it. I haven't. I tried finding a technical co-founder that didn't cost me an arm and leg, and it's taken me 6 years to do so. (YMMV) > This is an architect. And this position should be paid significantly more than an engineer. This is laughable. I've seen more architects in my day than most people have seen sales people. Just type in "SAP Architect" on any job search and compare it to the number you get for "Rails Architect". Architects are the bullshit powerpoint pushers I used to see day in and day out in Enterprise IT, who, after 5 years of never coding or implementing, fell short of guiding their dev teams because they couldn't keep up with the ever-changing technology stack. You know who should be paid more than anyone else? The person that can build a small team, make crazy revenue in a very short (relative) amount of time. It doesn't matter what you call those people, but they do exist, are in short supply and should be compensated equal to their productive output. > What I see here is that the bar for the definition of "competent engineer" keeps going higher and higher, without a commensurate increase in salary. Actually this has more to do with time than anything. The Next Big Startup™, can't afford to spend 6 months on software, when they can higher Rockstar Dev Mcgee™ who can create it for them in 1-2 months. Lastly, I'm failing to see the motive behind "corporate bullshit" you speak of. Google and Facebook do not want to pay these insane salaries, so it's in their interest to actually (1) have a large supply and (2) promote that there is a large supply, not the opposite. Their compensation packages are a direct effect of the shortage of supply of qualified talent. If this "corporate bullshit" is being lead by a small amount of vocal developers who are artificially padding their salaries by crying "supply shortage", then this is far from being "corporate". The question ultimately becomes, what is our idea of "competent". From what I've seen, there is massive demand for people to create the next AirBnB/Dropbox/etc, which requires some very talented individuals to run and maintain. The other 99% clones of those companies that fail are because they don't have those competent people. So it's a loser's game with a bunch of people who demand that they win. Thus, the situation we are in. EDIT: This video by Gabe Newell says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU#t=12m20s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU#t=12m20s (from about 12:20 to 16:00 - these "least correctly valued" people are no longer incorrect valued, that's my point)