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Comment by Kephael | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe there is any shortage of computer science talent. I believe there is only a shortage of students graduating with CS degrees from schools like Stanford and MIT which is what many employers are looking for. NACE figures really seem to indicate we don't need more junior level programmers as 42.5% of graduating seniors majoring in CS did not have a full time job offer (not even in unrelated fields) at the time of graduation. http://career.sa.ucsb.edu/files/docs/handouts/2014-student-s...

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It's about supply and demand.

More people who can program means that programming is a less valuable skill and that programmers are compensated less. And cheap labor is the holy grail.

Things like this are pushed by the business elite and then sold to the public by politicians as enabling a middle-class lifestyle. Which will be true, for a little while, in some parts of the country. Already that is barely true in other parts of the country. The next state over from me, junior developer wages start at 25k and rise to the mid-50s as you become more senior. Yes, the cost of living is lower, but not that much lower.

I doubt truly substantive change can be made in the developer market through increased government funding of the curriculum, but they will find other ways.

As someone who has been trying to hire CS talent, I can say that most of my interviews have been pretty underwhelming. Maybe 10% possess the level of talent and interest that we're looking for, and as few as 50% can even code fibbonacci. Like 20% are able to write a successful nlogn sort. And that's after I tell them that sorting will be a part of their interview!

I'm not sure that more schooling is the answer, but I do feel like we are always strapped for talent. The people who pass are usually spent a significant amount of time teaching themselves.

More schooling is definitely not the answer. By your numbers, funneling more kids into CS programs is creating 9 extra employable graduates with debt for every 1 extra graduate worth hiring.

How many people do you interview annually? Do you happen to keep metrics of what things your top performers did well at the interview? I'm curious to know if implementing a sort correlates with performance.

I've probably done > 100 interviews, and it's hard to see the correlations. Man, I so wish I would have kept records.

Of the many people that I've worked with, I'd say < 0.5% have been 3x programmers, maybe 5% have been 2x programmers, 20% have been 1x programmers, and the rest have been ... meh. (In comparison to me, and I'd guess that I'm probably a 3x programmer.) And, ALMOST ALL of these people had successfully passed an algorithm and programming based interview.

>Maybe 10% possess the level of talent and interest that we're looking for

I am curious how you judge "interest."

have you tried recruiting people without CS degrees?

Degrees from standford or mit only matter in your first job, or to idiots. There is a shortage of good practitioners. In the startup I worked in, in seattle, we basically failed because we could never hire the 15 more people on top of the 5 we had. We paid market prices plus the usual worthless questionable stock options, but everyone we liked had multiple offers. My new company wants to hire 20 devs a month for the next 2 years. Microsoft keeps shedding people but amazon, google, facebook, oracle, hp, emc/vmware everyone is hiring like crazy.

> We paid market prices plus the usual worthless questionable stock options, but everyone we liked had multiple offers.

And they didn't take yours. I don't mean to be critical, but in my experience, when a company says they pay "market prices", they mean the market in their imagination instead of the real market. Maybe the offer wasn't big enough. There was some reason those candidates turned you down.

And sure, maybe you couldn't afford to make bigger offers. Not all businesses are viable. If I could hire labor for $0.50/hour I'd own a business, but I can't.

> emc/vmware

VMWare was in the news recently as cutting 900 jobs. Maybe they are hiring. In which case I expect we would find that expensive senior developers are being laid off and cheap new grads are being hired.

right, fair points. i agree market rate is usually code for bullshit. a year or 2 ago vmware was a competitor. as far as salaries, I can say something about the range we paid. I thought it was high for a startup. an intern might make 75k (I know google and msft pay more), a person with a few years (~5) of exp makes 130k and a senior engr makes 150+. a very senior eng. or lead might make over 180k. sure, google pays more. but these are decent salaries.

> .... only matter in your first job, or to idiots.

Today, every job is your first job. We are all contractors, constantly re-interviewing and justifying ourself to our customers.

And the idiots are in charge. Every founder who needs my help seems to be a 20-something kid who thinks knowledge is something you can pick up at a trade show or week-long intensive at some resort.

Your last line doesn't make sense. If they think that, then they are going to fail. Hence, they won't be in charge...

In an ideal world yes. In realworld, many "founders" are not there because of any great skill to competence. I now a couple that are just rich kids playing with a few million of family money. They hire their friends and work on getting investor money to keep the party going, but nobody has any real hope for the long term. Being involved with a tech startup is almost a fashion trend for some people.

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