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Software development is supposedly a high-demand skill. And, I hear that companies can't seem to hire anyone qualified. I still get dozens of recruiters conta

• ryandrake 12y ago
  Or perhaps, those $150K jobs are few and far between, and in reality there is no labor shortage. If supply gets low, price (wages) will go up. Price is not going up. Therefore supply is not getting low.
  • tech2000 12y ago
    So all those recruiters he mentioned are just prank calling or they all have the same single job and tons of applicants? I don't get it.
    • ryandrake 12y ago
      Or, all those recruiters are spamming him with jobs that pay below market, because since (as I postulate) there is no actual shortage of labor, there are likely many people out there willing to work for at-or-below-market wages.
      • EC1 12y ago
        I thought this too. Then I entered a job and interviewed 100~ candidates. There is absolutely such a shortage, and this isn't even for anything complex, this was just for a frontend position. I genuinely had to ask a few candidates if they've ever programmed in JS or HTML before this interview, can't even imagine the type of bullshit at higher levels. You can staff your entire company in under a day, sure, but they're going to be utterly useless. Most are, mainly because they don't delve into it beyond school work / work so they never blossom into someone who is very good.
    • lugg 12y ago
      Almost all (inhouse/exclusive excluded) recruiters that claim to be "working on filling a position" don't have a specific position at all. They are simply finding candidates. Once they have a candidate they will ring around their client base and see if they can find a place for you to go. They will chase any potential candidate they can see getting a 20-40k payout (20%~ first year salaray) This gives senior devs with solid linked in profiles quite a warped view about the state of things. When companies go out actively looking they don't get exposed to these types of candidates because most of these possible candidates are not actively looking. Hence the "shortage of talent". In other words, there is a talent shortage, but most talented people (i.e. anyone reading this) won't see it because they're all too busy being traded around the block.
      • Cymen 12y ago
        This is why Hired.com is interesting. I tried it after a couple rounds of interviewing where it either seemed like salary was a sticking point or the interviewees were unprepared. With Hired.com, I was able to explain my value in a context that those who I would like to work for would understand. I received a number of solid offers, interviewed with a handful and accepted one. Every person that contacted me was direct from the company that I would work for and these were real positions.
        • ende 12y ago
          Agreed, solid product.
        • deleted 12y ago
          [deleted]
        • ditonal 12y ago
          Its a good idea but its a huge time waster if they don't ban the multiple companies that ran bait-and-switch games on me. Also their fee is very high, which employers claim not to care about but definitely do.
          • Cymen 12y ago
    • joe_the_user 12y ago
      Recruiters call anyone who's made an effort to find a software job in the last ten years, seriously. I get calls and email from ten year old resumes. The less they know about someone, the more they promise. The recruiter world is really weird, a lot of them are pretty marginal and just looking to pad interviews (or something, it's hard to tell). Calls are absolutely not a gauge of the job market. Sometimes it is literally true that every recruiter is calling about the same job.
  • Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    I think in our industry it is a combination of the two. Our colleagues are quite happy to take pats on the back and ego stroking in lieu of compensation.
• EC1 12y ago
  Why don't I strap on my job helmet, and squeeze down into a job cannon, and fire off into job land where $150k salaries are just ripe for the picking. I'm trying to find a kick ass salary, I'm great at what I do, but the only place I can find such high salaries are contracts in Switzerland. $180k - $225k. What kind of frontend/uiux jobs are out there for $150k~?
  • kevinnk 12y ago
    High end at Google for UI designer is ~160k according to Glassdoor. That's in line with what I've heard from friends as well. UI design does have lower salaries than other types of software development, in some cases much lower, so I doubt you're going to be getting 150k+ unless you're pretty senior.
    • EC1 12y ago
      The thing is I'm not just frontend. I build product from A-Z. I can ideate it, build a strategy, a business plan, mock it, design it, code it, deploy it, market it. What role should I be looking for? I'm great at stepping back and looking at it from the bigger picture instead of hammering out details. Should I be looking for project management roles? Product designer? Art director? I have no idea.
  • EpicEng 12y ago
    Front end devs are a dime a dozen. I'm not saying that they're all very good at what they do, far from it, but you also have to consider that a company's bottom line is not necessarily negatively impacted by hiring an average performer in that area. It helps to have skills which are more rare and, as such, demand more compensation.
  • mamcx 12y ago
    Yeah, is not easy. Also, elsewhere is far different. In my country (Colombia) US 15.000/year is the media. If I could get US 80.000/year? I will very happy...
• Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  > Please, stop taking menial salaries. You live in such a huge bubble if you think that's a reasonable thing to say. Yes, us techies enjoy very nice perks and big salaries, due to us working in a hot sector of the economy and whatnot. But the vast masses out there are not so lucky.
  • Frondo 12y ago
    And it makes you wonder how much higher those salaries could be if we could somehow organize in some collective kinda way, and demand a bigger piece of the pie for our side of the management/worker equation...
    • Florin_Andrei 12y ago
      TBH, I'm not so much worried about those in our line of work. We're doing comparatively fine. But there are a lot of folks out there who are hurting. If I wasn't a nerdy kid who toyed with computers in school, I'd be in a very different place right now. Once that's much less nice. (But yes, you're right in principle.)
      • AnthonyMouse 12y ago
        > TBH, I'm not so much worried about those in our line of work. We're doing comparatively fine. That's not really what it's about though. The upper middle class is what drives the economy. The super rich are not the job creators, the almost rich are. You give an extra $25K/year to a multi-millionaire and it changes nothing for them, but to someone making $150K/year they're not making so much that it doesn't affect their spending. And the almost-rich buy services. They pay people to do the jobs you can't outsource and you don't need a degree to do. So if you want to help the poor, go ask your boss for a raise and then spend the money.
        • swatow 12y ago
          Jobs are not an externality. If you want to help the poor, give money to charity.
• aros 12y ago
  Salaries vary greatly depending on where the employee lives. You're generalizing far too much to the point where your comment is not useful. 80k is a healthy salary in some states that have very low costs of living. In fact, asking for 150k+ (even with years of experience) in some states will just get you laughed at.
• Dudelander 12y ago
  Location seems to be a huge factor in the salary range for Software Engineers. $150,000 is a bit on the high side, but $120,000 for a JavaScript Engineer is pretty common in New York, San Francisco, and even Seattle. Smaller towns tend to offer salaries that are a lot lower. I think it is mostly a matter of scale. Companies with big technical problems have harder problems to solve, and thus are willing to pay a premium for the best talent. They're also more motivated to be located in tech hubs, where it's easier to find talent. On the other hand, a company in Lincoln Nebraska is obviously not planning to grow that much, and will have much simpler needs. Because of this, great skills and mediocre skills command the same economic value, and there is a limit to how much engineers can make.
• 3pt14159 12y ago
  Right out of university: you generally don't command a $100k+ salary. By the time you hit 30 though you should definitely be there unless you are working somewhere with really cheap living. $200k+ is possible even in your mid to late twenties and even outside of Cali and New York.
  • kevinnk 12y ago
    If you're living in the Bay Area and are competent enough to be hired by a big tech company you can absolutely command a 100k+ salary pretty much regardless of seniority. There are Google interns getting paid almost 90k (~7500 monthly.)
    • EpicEng 12y ago
      Well, the parent said "generally", and if you're living in the bay area, that 100k is what you need to get a decent place to live.
    • 3pt14159 12y ago
      > If you're living in the Bay Area and are competent enough... Most people are not competent enough at 24 to be hired by a big tech company. Furthermore, big tech companies pay a "we're no longer cool" tax of about $25k higher than going market rates. The vast majority of graduates are not earning $100k.
• swatow 12y ago
  Look, people. If you have skills, you should be getting paid 150k+ a year. Please, stop taking menial salaries. You're hurting all of us Not everyone is the same. In my experience, employers are quite discerning when it comes to individual's talents, and pay accordingly. I think your statement is a kind of false egalitarianism. You pretend that skill level is fairly flat, and that lots of people should be earning a lot more. And yet the market doesn't reflect that, so you make up a story where the market doesn't really function, and people are willfully taking below market salaries.
• minkzilla 12y ago
  70-80k is a menial salary? What fantasy are you living in?
• aries1980 12y ago
  > If you have skills, you should be getting paid 150k+ a year. and you are an oil-seikh with solid gold bathtube... Come on, most of the developers do not live in Bay Area or in the US. The easy access to millions of $$$ for projects that has no chance to break even in the foreseeable future end up in a distorted expectation and self-esteem. Salary is basically your share the leadership granted you based on the generated value. How much value do you create in a company that has never made any profit?