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Running a coding school (Codeup), I get this email all the time from recruiters: "Dear xyz, I've been hired to fill this not-so-great job THIS WEEK and we wan

Running a coding school (Codeup), I get this email all the time from recruiters: "Dear xyz, I've been hired to fill this not-so-great job THIS WEEK and we want this crazy exclusive unicorn skillset that about a dozen people in the world have and, you know, we aren't going to pay much anywhere near going rate and we're going to hire as a contractor so we can fire you any time and we're not really interested in training a person who'd actually want this gig at the rate we're wanting to pay. So, do you know anyone?"

lowglow 12y ago
yeahhh... this happens. I don't get how companies want to compete for talent without paying a reasonable market rate. You should also add Codeup to https://schools.techendo.com/ https://schools.techendo.com/
zyxley 12y ago
Just as an individual, I get similar recruiter pings all the time. It's always contractor jobs (typically with a set term of 6 months and a "possibility" of longer-term work) with a tangential relation at best to the skillset and experience on my resume. The cherry on top is that the pay, if it's even outlined at all, is always insultingly low compared to the job I already have. On the upside, just mentioning my current salary to some of the please-call-me-I-have-just-the-job-for-you recruiters has been enough to make them stop trying to contact me at all.
- drivingmenuts 12y ago
  I get calls for potentially awesome jobs from people I can't fucking understand even though they're apparently speaking English. Not "don't want to understand" - literally, can't.
jrochkind1 12y ago
If there was really a tech shortage -- and had been for years -- wouldn't the labor supply rise to meet demand? Wouldn't there be people willing to work less than the going rate (which is far above a living wage), wouldn't the going rate be dropping? I don't know the answer, I think what is going on may actually be kind of complicated. But that's the kind of question raised, you can't explain away the question of whether there's a shortage or not by saying "It's just that people aren't willing to pay the going rate."
- jacques_chester 12y ago
  > If there was really a tech shortage -- and had been for years -- wouldn't the labor supply rise to meet demand? Much of the demand for skilled labour is in the USA, much of the supply of it is not in the USA.
- runako 12y ago
  > Wouldn't there be people willing to work less than the going rate (which is far above a living wage), wouldn't the going rate be dropping? Possibly, except that there are a lot of pressures on people to move out of programming. Some examples: folks over 35 aren't welcome a lot of places; financial incentives often push programmers out of programming into e.g. project management. So you have a lot of people constantly leaving the field, somewhat by the design of the roles offered. Oh, and every programmer is reading HN trying to figure out how to start their own gig. Higher wages and other job fixes (e.g. security, status, professionalism) might bring a lot of these people back into the recruiting pool.
  - gohrt 12y ago
    Luckily, 50 is the new 35, now that 35 year olds have figured out how to dress like 25 year olds at the office.
- killface 12y ago
  The real problem is that to compete in today's world, your website: 1. Needs to have great design 2. Needs to be rock-solid in terms of stability 3. Needs to be snappy to use 4. Needs to be able to handle a Reddit traffic swarm 5. Needs to have individualization and customization 6. Needs to play nicely on computers, tablets, and phones The person (or people, more likely) who is good at all of this just isn't available at rates the companies want to pay. This is the important distinction. Hiring somebody for 100k/yr is pretty much the minimum ante for a good developer in a tech city. But these "entrepreneurs" and "founders" think that is too much money, and instead claim there's a shortage. In reality, if you're competing for top talent, 150k/yr should be your ante, and be prepared to go well into the 200s. This shouldn't be a surprise. To get even average talent from a consulting/contracting company, you're paying about 125/hr (of which 60-70 goes to the developer). That's 250k/yr. So why are companies freaking out at paying over 100k/yr for a full-time person who they can invest in? Hell, cut out the contractors and pay your people 200k/yr, and watch the good people come talk to you. This is what Amazon and the like are doing now. I'm hearing 22 year old kids who haven't coed a line of code in a professional capacity, getting offers of 120k/yr with a 20k signing bonus. Netflix pays a significant chunk of its engineers over 200k. The only real problem is that it's getting more expensive to do business in a tech world. But compare the skill sets that used to draw 100k/yr, and the skill sets now required to get 145k/yr (100k/yr in 1998 dollars = 144k in 2014 dollars). Before, you could just know HTML and some shell scripting. Now, you need to know multiple frameworks, how to deal with scalability, multiple data stores, "full stack," etc. If anything, the good talent in this industry is still dramatically under-paid. A common metric is that the company should make from you about 7x your salary to justify your position. So if a company is making 2.1 million, you should be getting 300k. But we all know that's not what's happening. Instead, our wages are being capped and forced down due to illegal collusion between the top tech employers. This all comes down to the people who own the businesses wanting to treat tech people as interchangeable cogs, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
slantedview 12y ago
This comment exactly epitomizes the problems. It's not about supply - it's about price.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  With constant demand, supply determines price -- its about supply, and effect that has on price.
bradhe 12y ago
> we want this crazy exclusive unicorn skillset that about a dozen people in the world have Can you elaborate on this? Some specific examples? My hypothesis is the reality is that much of technology has become commotitized...and peoples' expectations for what they need don't line up with reality. Previously, this has to do with experience: We want to pay a senior java engineer with 10 years experience $75k. Rarely does it have to do with "skillset" outside of experience, as far as I've seen anyway.

lowglow 12y ago

yeahhh... this happens. I don't get how companies want to compete for talent without paying a reasonable market rate. You should also add Codeup to https://schools.techendo.com/ https://schools.techendo.com/

zyxley 12y ago

Just as an individual, I get similar recruiter pings all the time. It's always contractor jobs (typically with a set term of 6 months and a "possibility" of longer-term work) with a tangential relation at best to the skillset and experience on my resume. The cherry on top is that the pay, if it's even outlined at all, is always insultingly low compared to the job I already have. On the upside, just mentioning my current salary to some of the please-call-me-I-have-just-the-job-for-you recruiters has been enough to make them stop trying to contact me at all.

drivingmenuts 12y ago
I get calls for potentially awesome jobs from people I can't fucking understand even though they're apparently speaking English. Not "don't want to understand" - literally, can't.

jrochkind1 12y ago

If there was really a tech shortage -- and had been for years -- wouldn't the labor supply rise to meet demand? Wouldn't there be people willing to work less than the going rate (which is far above a living wage), wouldn't the going rate be dropping? I don't know the answer, I think what is going on may actually be kind of complicated. But that's the kind of question raised, you can't explain away the question of whether there's a shortage or not by saying "It's just that people aren't willing to pay the going rate."

jacques_chester 12y ago
> If there was really a tech shortage -- and had been for years -- wouldn't the labor supply rise to meet demand? Much of the demand for skilled labour is in the USA, much of the supply of it is not in the USA.
runako 12y ago
> Wouldn't there be people willing to work less than the going rate (which is far above a living wage), wouldn't the going rate be dropping? Possibly, except that there are a lot of pressures on people to move out of programming. Some examples: folks over 35 aren't welcome a lot of places; financial incentives often push programmers out of programming into e.g. project management. So you have a lot of people constantly leaving the field, somewhat by the design of the roles offered. Oh, and every programmer is reading HN trying to figure out how to start their own gig. Higher wages and other job fixes (e.g. security, status, professionalism) might bring a lot of these people back into the recruiting pool.
- gohrt 12y ago
  Luckily, 50 is the new 35, now that 35 year olds have figured out how to dress like 25 year olds at the office.
killface 12y ago
The real problem is that to compete in today's world, your website: 1. Needs to have great design 2. Needs to be rock-solid in terms of stability 3. Needs to be snappy to use 4. Needs to be able to handle a Reddit traffic swarm 5. Needs to have individualization and customization 6. Needs to play nicely on computers, tablets, and phones The person (or people, more likely) who is good at all of this just isn't available at rates the companies want to pay. This is the important distinction. Hiring somebody for 100k/yr is pretty much the minimum ante for a good developer in a tech city. But these "entrepreneurs" and "founders" think that is too much money, and instead claim there's a shortage. In reality, if you're competing for top talent, 150k/yr should be your ante, and be prepared to go well into the 200s. This shouldn't be a surprise. To get even average talent from a consulting/contracting company, you're paying about 125/hr (of which 60-70 goes to the developer). That's 250k/yr. So why are companies freaking out at paying over 100k/yr for a full-time person who they can invest in? Hell, cut out the contractors and pay your people 200k/yr, and watch the good people come talk to you. This is what Amazon and the like are doing now. I'm hearing 22 year old kids who haven't coed a line of code in a professional capacity, getting offers of 120k/yr with a 20k signing bonus. Netflix pays a significant chunk of its engineers over 200k. The only real problem is that it's getting more expensive to do business in a tech world. But compare the skill sets that used to draw 100k/yr, and the skill sets now required to get 145k/yr (100k/yr in 1998 dollars = 144k in 2014 dollars). Before, you could just know HTML and some shell scripting. Now, you need to know multiple frameworks, how to deal with scalability, multiple data stores, "full stack," etc. If anything, the good talent in this industry is still dramatically under-paid. A common metric is that the company should make from you about 7x your salary to justify your position. So if a company is making 2.1 million, you should be getting 300k. But we all know that's not what's happening. Instead, our wages are being capped and forced down due to illegal collusion between the top tech employers. This all comes down to the people who own the businesses wanting to treat tech people as interchangeable cogs, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

slantedview 12y ago

This comment exactly epitomizes the problems. It's not about supply - it's about price.

dragonwriter 12y ago
With constant demand, supply determines price -- its about supply, and effect that has on price.

bradhe 12y ago

> we want this crazy exclusive unicorn skillset that about a dozen people in the world have Can you elaborate on this? Some specific examples? My hypothesis is the reality is that much of technology has become commotitized...and peoples' expectations for what they need don't line up with reality. Previously, this has to do with experience: We want to pay a senior java engineer with 10 years experience $75k. Rarely does it have to do with "skillset" outside of experience, as far as I've seen anyway.