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It is a quality, not a quantity problem. At a previous company I interviewed hundreds for engineering positions (Ruby & Rails or JS/Backbone.) Our average was

It is a quality, not a quantity problem. At a previous company I interviewed hundreds for engineering positions (Ruby & Rails or JS/Backbone.) Our average was 1 offer extended for every 300 phone screens. The problem wasn't that we extended 50 offers and got rejected; money was not a part of the equation. We simply couldn't find the quality we were looking for. Specifically, coding schools have capitalized on the gluttony of open positions, but don't actually go towards solving the problem. There isn't a shortage of bodies, there is a shortage of experienced developers.

coldcode 12y ago
Where was this previous company located?
hiou 12y ago
Serious question: Why did it never occur that you might need to take in a less experienced developer and train them? Wouldn't it make sense that there are no experienced developers available because they are currently fully employed?
- nathanvanfleet 12y ago
  I work with less experienced developers. They really put a drag on the project. They need to be watched and you have to give a lot of pointers and refactoring suggestions. And then their tasks just don't end up coming in fast enough either. Personally I think I'd learn a lot more if I was working with more advanced devs where I could learn from them than seeing the mistakes I would have made years ago.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago
    So, basically you are saying you want to be the less-experienced dev, but not work with them. I think the prevalence of this attitude is a key part of the problem.
  - Bahamut 12y ago
    And then a more advanced dev might say the same of you. People should come first. Everyone has to start from the beginning at some point.
  - wyclif 12y ago
    Everybody wants to hire a flying purple unicorn that is a master of "full stack." It seems nobody has time for "jack of all trades, master of some." But knowing only one or two domains is a step on the ladder of programmer competence, and there's no shame in it at all. As other commenters say, you have to start somewhere. And it's incredibly hard as a developer to go from intermediate to truly advanced mastery—there's very little training and mentoring coming from the employer direction (because, as Sweet Brown says, ain't nobody got time for that: anybody who is a real "ninja" is swamped), and therefore the only sane strategy is to take complete responsibility for your own career development, continuing education, and improval of skillset. But that's just another reason why developers should be paid more.
- jtbigwoo 12y ago
  Not sure why this was down-voted. If I rejected over 99% of applicants, I'd start to thinkg I was either looking in the wrong place or looking for the wrong person. I once posted a job on monster.com and we rejected probably 50 resumes for each one we interviewed. We were looking in the wrong place. At a different job, we had a terrible time trying to find somebody with 10+ years of embedded systems experience in a town that didn't really have that kind of industry. In retrospect, we probably could have found a less experienced person that we could train. We were looking for the wrong person.
- lobotryas 12y ago
  Not op, but I am in a similar position and can offer insight. I am unlikely to hire a candidate who would need training because I simply do not have the time to train them. I need someone who gets things done, can self-train if needed, and who already has the minimum required experience so they have minimum impact on team velocity. Moreover I live in an "at will" employment state, so any money/time I spend training a person can just walk out the door at any moment (something I have seen happen just because a person was offered even more money elsewhere).
epicureanideal 12y ago
I suspect if you advertised $250k salaries you would get a much more qualified applicant pool.
- general_failure 12y ago
  Totally agree. All these interviewers ask all sorts of questions and then want to pay you only 120k.
- greenyoda 12y ago
  Exactly. If the salary he's offering is attracting interest primarily from recent coding-school grads, he's not offering anywhere close to a salary that would convince a good, experienced developer to leave their current job and join his company.
- goshx 12y ago
  But then you are not going to fill the position with someone unemployed... you are just filling the position with someone that was working somewhere else... which doesn't solve the original issue.
  - josho 12y ago
    I left software development because my salary was maxed in my market. Rates have not been going up. However, offer me that kind of salary and I'll be back in in a heartbeat. My point is simply if there was a shortage rates would go up and those in senior levels would stay in their field. Also, go talk to those doing enterprise software sales, banking, mba degrees, etc. They will all be making more than software developers. So, either there is a shortage or developers are really bad at negotiating their salaries. (I actually suspect both is true, but the shortage is really because folks are looking for perfect match candidates)
  - epicureanideal 12y ago
    In addition to josho's comment, which I agree with, a higher salary would also attract more people into the market. Some people might think $100k+ is already a "high enough" salary to encourage people to join the field, but the fact is software engineering is hard. Harder than most people want to work. I try to convince people to become software engineers all the time, and I tell them all about the salaries and benefits they can expect, and most of the time they just sigh and repeat that it's too hard. Also, living in regions of the US where salaries for engineers exceed $100k per year also means incredibly high living expenses, so higher salaries would be necessary to entice people to move from out of the area. As it is, I know people making HALF of what would be entry-level for software engineers, but elsewhere in California, and they have a MUCH better standard of living than entry level engineers. As in, they own a 3 bedroom house with a big yard, a couple of cars that easily fit into a 2-car garage or can be left in their spacious outdoor parking space, OR on the street where there is no-time-limit parking. This standard of living could easily run $2M in the bay area (the mortgage payment alone would be more than my friend's salary, before taxes), but can be had for about 1/10th of that elsewhere.
waterlesscloud 12y ago
More than once I've walked away from comically low offers and seen the company still advertising the position as much as a year later. Money is definitely a factor.
epicureanideal 12y ago
Also, what was the source of these hundreds of candidates? I've personally experienced a situation where all our candidates came from a headhunting body shop where almost all had terrible coding skills and yet management refused to consider candidates from other sources. I suspect the process of filling the candidate pool was probably broken at your previous company too.
beachstartup 12y ago
> Our average was 1 offer extended for every 300 phone screens. 1 in 300? are you serious? i have a real hard time believing that. are you literally calling every resume you get? do you know how to filter a pile of resumes? we are a tiny startup offering normal wages and we are at a 1:5 ratio between offers and phone screens. we might have to interview 10 people to get someone on board. then again, we don't expect our mid-level ruby and python web developers to answer graduate-level algorithms questions, which seems to be kind of an insane expectation these days among employers who take themselves a little too seriously.
dismal2 12y ago
you spent almost 6 weeks (30-45min per screen) hiring ONE candidate for a remedial webdev position?! something other than the candidates is wrong here.

coldcode 12y ago

Where was this previous company located?

hiou 12y ago

Serious question: Why did it never occur that you might need to take in a less experienced developer and train them? Wouldn't it make sense that there are no experienced developers available because they are currently fully employed?

nathanvanfleet 12y ago
I work with less experienced developers. They really put a drag on the project. They need to be watched and you have to give a lot of pointers and refactoring suggestions. And then their tasks just don't end up coming in fast enough either. Personally I think I'd learn a lot more if I was working with more advanced devs where I could learn from them than seeing the mistakes I would have made years ago.
- vonmoltke 12y ago
  So, basically you are saying you want to be the less-experienced dev, but not work with them. I think the prevalence of this attitude is a key part of the problem.
- Bahamut 12y ago
  And then a more advanced dev might say the same of you. People should come first. Everyone has to start from the beginning at some point.
- wyclif 12y ago
  Everybody wants to hire a flying purple unicorn that is a master of "full stack." It seems nobody has time for "jack of all trades, master of some." But knowing only one or two domains is a step on the ladder of programmer competence, and there's no shame in it at all. As other commenters say, you have to start somewhere. And it's incredibly hard as a developer to go from intermediate to truly advanced mastery—there's very little training and mentoring coming from the employer direction (because, as Sweet Brown says, ain't nobody got time for that: anybody who is a real "ninja" is swamped), and therefore the only sane strategy is to take complete responsibility for your own career development, continuing education, and improval of skillset. But that's just another reason why developers should be paid more.
jtbigwoo 12y ago
Not sure why this was down-voted. If I rejected over 99% of applicants, I'd start to thinkg I was either looking in the wrong place or looking for the wrong person. I once posted a job on monster.com and we rejected probably 50 resumes for each one we interviewed. We were looking in the wrong place. At a different job, we had a terrible time trying to find somebody with 10+ years of embedded systems experience in a town that didn't really have that kind of industry. In retrospect, we probably could have found a less experienced person that we could train. We were looking for the wrong person.
lobotryas 12y ago
Not op, but I am in a similar position and can offer insight. I am unlikely to hire a candidate who would need training because I simply do not have the time to train them. I need someone who gets things done, can self-train if needed, and who already has the minimum required experience so they have minimum impact on team velocity. Moreover I live in an "at will" employment state, so any money/time I spend training a person can just walk out the door at any moment (something I have seen happen just because a person was offered even more money elsewhere).

epicureanideal 12y ago

I suspect if you advertised $250k salaries you would get a much more qualified applicant pool.

general_failure 12y ago
Totally agree. All these interviewers ask all sorts of questions and then want to pay you only 120k.
greenyoda 12y ago
Exactly. If the salary he's offering is attracting interest primarily from recent coding-school grads, he's not offering anywhere close to a salary that would convince a good, experienced developer to leave their current job and join his company.
goshx 12y ago
But then you are not going to fill the position with someone unemployed... you are just filling the position with someone that was working somewhere else... which doesn't solve the original issue.
- josho 12y ago
  I left software development because my salary was maxed in my market. Rates have not been going up. However, offer me that kind of salary and I'll be back in in a heartbeat. My point is simply if there was a shortage rates would go up and those in senior levels would stay in their field. Also, go talk to those doing enterprise software sales, banking, mba degrees, etc. They will all be making more than software developers. So, either there is a shortage or developers are really bad at negotiating their salaries. (I actually suspect both is true, but the shortage is really because folks are looking for perfect match candidates)
- epicureanideal 12y ago
  In addition to josho's comment, which I agree with, a higher salary would also attract more people into the market. Some people might think $100k+ is already a "high enough" salary to encourage people to join the field, but the fact is software engineering is hard. Harder than most people want to work. I try to convince people to become software engineers all the time, and I tell them all about the salaries and benefits they can expect, and most of the time they just sigh and repeat that it's too hard. Also, living in regions of the US where salaries for engineers exceed $100k per year also means incredibly high living expenses, so higher salaries would be necessary to entice people to move from out of the area. As it is, I know people making HALF of what would be entry-level for software engineers, but elsewhere in California, and they have a MUCH better standard of living than entry level engineers. As in, they own a 3 bedroom house with a big yard, a couple of cars that easily fit into a 2-car garage or can be left in their spacious outdoor parking space, OR on the street where there is no-time-limit parking. This standard of living could easily run $2M in the bay area (the mortgage payment alone would be more than my friend's salary, before taxes), but can be had for about 1/10th of that elsewhere.

waterlesscloud 12y ago

More than once I've walked away from comically low offers and seen the company still advertising the position as much as a year later. Money is definitely a factor.

epicureanideal 12y ago

Also, what was the source of these hundreds of candidates? I've personally experienced a situation where all our candidates came from a headhunting body shop where almost all had terrible coding skills and yet management refused to consider candidates from other sources. I suspect the process of filling the candidate pool was probably broken at your previous company too.

beachstartup 12y ago

> Our average was 1 offer extended for every 300 phone screens. 1 in 300? are you serious? i have a real hard time believing that. are you literally calling every resume you get? do you know how to filter a pile of resumes? we are a tiny startup offering normal wages and we are at a 1:5 ratio between offers and phone screens. we might have to interview 10 people to get someone on board. then again, we don't expect our mid-level ruby and python web developers to answer graduate-level algorithms questions, which seems to be kind of an insane expectation these days among employers who take themselves a little too seriously.

dismal2 12y ago

you spent almost 6 weeks (30-45min per screen) hiring ONE candidate for a remedial webdev position?! something other than the candidates is wrong here.