Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

If you listen to tech CEOs, there's this huge "shortage of software engineers". Surely any former Cisco employee with software experience will be snapped up within days by all these tech companies desperately searching for tech talent.... Any day now....

View on HN

If you listen to tech CEOs, there's this huge "shortage of software engineers".

There is no shortage of software engineers. What there is, in the eyes of those CEOs, is a shortage of H1-B visas -- i.e., cheap labor from abroad with low mobility. Of course, the alternative is to invest in training citizens and permanent residents, who will then go and get higher-paying jobs elsewhere. So the myth of the software engineer shortage lives on...

Low mobility? Immigrants on H1-B can change employers.

I can assure you most H1-B employees would be scared to mess with a good thing. Unless they are well experienced with H1-B or their job offer is quality w/ promises of an immigration lawyer taking care of it.

Yes, several of my friends are "stuck" working for big companies that people on HN wouldn't want to work for until they get their green cards.

They can, but it is significantly complicated and expensive than for a non H1B

Hardware focused Engineers like EEs are probably who are being let go.

There is a shortage of good software engineers. There are many people currently employed who call themselves software engineers but I'm not sure what they're actually doing. I saw this a lot when I was doing hiring -- people who can't even write simple loops or know what 12 mod 5 is.

Shortage in specific languages or areas or just a vague "software engineer"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com