4 ms·

Instead of a 'shortage of workers', the situation should be more adeptly described as a 'shortage of skilled workers'. I do think there are tech workers floatin

by hw 12y ago

Instead of a 'shortage of workers', the situation should be more adeptly described as a 'shortage of skilled workers'. I do think there are tech workers floating around, but the really good ones are hard to come by. Extending immigration helps, but does not solve it, as only a bunch of the pool are actually good talent. Maybe immigration needs to be tweaked to help filter down the pool even more, for example, raising the minimum H1B wage for its skill levels. A disparity in the minimum wage only enables companies to bring in workers that are 'meh' and only pay the minimum cause it's cheap labor, albeit not top talent. Question for the anti-immigration folks is, if immigration was reduced or stopped entirely, would that necessarily result in higher wages for everyone else? Are talented engineers really not being able to find a job that wants to pay what they want? Are the decent, run-of-the-mill engineers not able to find a job that pays market or slightly below market? Would companies then outsource even more anyway?

cellis 12y ago
>> would that necessarily result in higher wages for everyone else? Unless companies like Google relocate ( to where? ) then yes, wages would absolutely rise, because they don't allow WFH [1], ergo the only engineers available would be those in the Bay Area, NYC, etc. No, they wouldn't outsource critical infrastructure to places like India or China, who hacked them. I also don't see them picking up and leaving and going to e.g. Vancouver. I think the only way to address this "great engineer" thing without American engineers crying foul is to gasp introduce standardized testing that all the American tech companies -- who can't get the amazing talent -- agree upon and then select the 99th percentile of the candidates that pass it and pay them in the 99th percentile of wages for the bay area. This would be an objective measure and Americans wouldn't be suspicious of whatever criteria VCs/founders use to measure "great programming ability". Make the interviews and the criteria public, bring it to the light, then people would be more inclined to believe them. Right now I simply hear a bunch of hand-wavey math and see a bunch of rich people whining about how they don't have engineers to build their things. Yes, I know there are flaws with standardized tests, but it's the best of bad things. [1] Most companies. Yahoo notoriously, but most companies aren't in favor of allowing WFH.
- fredophile 12y ago
  A lot of west coast companies are in Vancouver. It's not their headquarters but having a Vancouver office gives them access to large pools of foreign talent that they can't easily bring into the US. It's also conveniently located in the same time zone as California and Washington which reduces the difficulties of having remote workers. Any standardized test will be gamed. Just look at all of the books and other resources you can find for how to solve the types of problems that get asked in coding interviews.
- plinkplonk 12y ago
  Uhh India hacked Google?(I know about China). References? Google has an office in Bangalore and people here do work on "critical infrastructure".
Terr_ 12y ago
> the really good ones are hard to come by Perhaps "hard to accurately identify through an inefficient market"? Pretty much everybody has some horror stories about interviews and rejections unless they founded the company or got in through some side-channel relationship.

by hw 12y ago

cellis 12y ago

>> would that necessarily result in higher wages for everyone else? Unless companies like Google relocate ( to where? ) then yes, wages would absolutely rise, because they don't allow WFH [1], ergo the only engineers available would be those in the Bay Area, NYC, etc. No, they wouldn't outsource critical infrastructure to places like India or China, who hacked them. I also don't see them picking up and leaving and going to e.g. Vancouver. I think the only way to address this "great engineer" thing without American engineers crying foul is to gasp introduce standardized testing that all the American tech companies -- who can't get the amazing talent -- agree upon and then select the 99th percentile of the candidates that pass it and pay them in the 99th percentile of wages for the bay area. This would be an objective measure and Americans wouldn't be suspicious of whatever criteria VCs/founders use to measure "great programming ability". Make the interviews and the criteria public, bring it to the light, then people would be more inclined to believe them. Right now I simply hear a bunch of hand-wavey math and see a bunch of rich people whining about how they don't have engineers to build their things. Yes, I know there are flaws with standardized tests, but it's the best of bad things. [1] Most companies. Yahoo notoriously, but most companies aren't in favor of allowing WFH.

fredophile 12y ago
A lot of west coast companies are in Vancouver. It's not their headquarters but having a Vancouver office gives them access to large pools of foreign talent that they can't easily bring into the US. It's also conveniently located in the same time zone as California and Washington which reduces the difficulties of having remote workers. Any standardized test will be gamed. Just look at all of the books and other resources you can find for how to solve the types of problems that get asked in coding interviews.
plinkplonk 12y ago
Uhh India hacked Google?(I know about China). References? Google has an office in Bangalore and people here do work on "critical infrastructure".

Terr_ 12y ago

> the really good ones are hard to come by Perhaps "hard to accurately identify through an inefficient market"? Pretty much everybody has some horror stories about interviews and rejections unless they founded the company or got in through some side-channel relationship.