> The "tech shortage" is a real myth
Except that's wrong. As much as you may dislike the tech industry, you can't contradict the data that shows there are more job openings than developers in the Bay Area
Except that's wrong. As much as you may dislike the tech industry, you can't contradict the data that shows there are more job openings than developers in the Bay Area
One west coast company has interviewed me. The company recruiter sent me like 14 "how to prep for tech screens" links and recommended I check them out days before the actual tech screen. I'm on a job right now so I don't have time to be doing that sort of thing so I didn't prep. It made me expect I was going to have to implement a BSP decompiler with a hand tied behind my back.
The guy who called me allotted 50 minutes to solve 1 problem "two if I finished the first early" on collabedit. I finished both in 6 minutes. I'm a good, experienced developer but I'm no genius. Their tech screen was so ludicrously easy it made me wonder what the current standard is for developers.
After I finished the guy said "huh I normally don't have to end these early. Great I guess." I pressed him a little and he went on to say his questions had done a great job invalidating candidates. Most people couldn't do it.
It's pretty beguiling since my midwest salary demands would be peanuts compared to my west coast equivalent. There'd have to be >60% remote-related productivity penalty for it not to be a no brainer to hire people like me.
The last few years has taught me that job seekers and dev seekers both have a hard time connecting.
Here's basically what they asked me to do:
#1) Write a function that accepts one parameter. An array of numbers. Convert those numbers to pseudo-binary strings. Instead of "0" use "Y" and instead of "1" use "X"
#2) Do the reverse, Write a function that accepts an array of pseudo binary and convert it to an array of numbers.
Anyways, thanks for answering!
My 6 minutes didn't include them explaining the question or them going over my answer. I didn't really explain my work. I did talk a little while I wrote, but after I finished he just went through my code line by line himself.
They were kinda shocked at what I did with it, because no one else had went that far with such a simple thing. Honestly, I thought it was stupid and boring, considering I've been a dev for so long - its a bit insulting.
At least the kind of test you got was a bit more interesting...
Just fyi, its probably because many developers don't touch binary.
I work with numbers all day but they are currency transactions and accounting data. I haven't cared about transforming something to/from binary in 10+ years and couldn't do it without googling.
However, the number of devs (and accountants) who can't figure out a 4-4-5 calendar reliably is quite impressive.
If you remember binary is just base2 I bet you could do it. Since you do accounting stuff, could you split a number into each base 10 component? 462 = (400,60,2). A bit of thinking leads me to 10^i, a for loop and some conditional subtraction / modulo. Binary is just 2^i.
So, no, I'm going to refuse a screen that prevents me from solving it the way I'd solve other problems I don't do regularly.
Wait, WAT?!
I am flabbergasted that this could possibly take a 'serious' computer-y person with ANY knowledge of just about ANY programming language an hour to do. I mean, 6 minutes is very good, it would take me longer to type it all out and run through the bugs in my code.
But an hour!? What are the other applicants doing in that time for Christ's sake? Playing hop-scotch?
Jeeze, maybe the big 4 really aren't kidding when they say that they can't find anyone good...
The point I was trying to make wasn't to trash the other candidates. My mistake if it came off that way.
My point was: If the pool of qualified candidates is so small they have unfilled positions, why's it so hard for me to get remote work out there?
(As a side note: I'm happy to trash the charlatans who lie about their education, cheat on exams and hire freelancers to interview for them. :/)
A much more accurate measure of supply and demand is salaries. And runaway salary inflation has not happened. If you need a developer you can simply pay them more. This site is filled with developers willing to leave their job for a large pay bump.
And if you're not willing to pay them more, it's not a shortage, it's just a wish for cheaper labor.
At a low price, the market will demand a lot of a good or service, but there's less incentive to supply. At a high price, the market will demand less of a good or service, but there will be more incentive to supply.
Let's apply this to developers. At minimum wage, there would be a lot of demand for developers. However, there wouldn't be much incentive to become a developer. As a result, there would be far more job openings than people interested in working the job.
At 500k a year, fewer people would want the services of developers, because they'd only be needed for very high value projects. However, lots of people would be lining up to take the job.
Economic theory tells us that supply and demand will meet at an equilibrium. So if there are far more job openings than developers, that suggests that the curves are not yet in equilibrium. As salaries for developers rise, demand will fall, until they are in balance.
Markets aren't perfect, and the real world is messy. But supply and demand are still in effect, and your comment suggests that you haven't even considered this. Saying that is a shortage of developers at 100k a year makes as much sense as saying there's high unemployment among developers who will only work for 500k a year.
Except that even that rarely happens. People who talk of a shortage of developers, amazingly enough, most often don't even mention salary. It's as if they have no concept of how salary affects both supply and demand.
Now, in this particular iteration, we do have a number, $500,000 a year. However, many of us on this forum are calling malarkey. Show us some numbers that you're actually offering and paying this salary and we'll talk. Otherwise, many of us suspect this is all bluster.
If you simply count job openings, you'll overestimate actual available work by a really large margin.
Also...someone applied to a product manager position at my girlfriend's job. They were well qualified. A week later they get an email saying "hey you aren't being considered as we're going to focus on other candidates but we'll keep your resume on file." Turns out...they had cancelled the position about three weeks before, basically forgot to take it down, and then sent out the same standard rejection letter to everybody. And I should mention this company is one of the larger Internet job boards, so even more ironic.
Also I get how not following up or "ghosting" maybe happens in dating, but there needs to be a higher standard in recruiting. With all the waiting and guessing, we're causing a lot of friction in the economy. Indeed Prime has this thing where if you don't explicitly respond to a message within 72 hours I think, they suspend your account for a week. Stuff like that could help out.
According to cost of living calculators, I would have to make almost a half of a million every year living/working in the bay area to keep my current standard of living. Are they going to offer me that salary to relocate? I don't think so (and most don't want me to work for them remotely either).
The blame is on the founders who choose overpriced locations and either cannot or will not pay correspondingly high wages.
There are enough jobs out there that senior devs can laugh those off.
That's not a tech shortage - that's a sanity shortage on behalf of the startups (often new MBA grads with no experience who think their Hot Idea funded by their VC friend deserves devs taking pay-cuts for their lottery ticket options. News flash: senior devs have played the game too long to be bilked for suckers like that)