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Comment by eikenberry | Hacker News Reader

> On the other hand, competition for dev jobs in general is so fierce (as in the supply of great devs outstrips the demand by a large margin)

This is so much the exact opposite of everything I've experienced that I have a hard time believing it. Finding good developers is near impossible, we regularly interview people for months before finding someone halfway decent. And the last time I looked for work I had several offers for remote positions at east coast companies, which makes it hard to believe this is a regional thing.

What sort of work are these great devs doing that is not in demand?

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I agree fully. It may look like there's fierce competition to someone who has failed repeatedly, but here's what it looks like from the inside: In my experience at three of the big tech companies, we extend offers to everyone who meets the bar. It's never a case of "we have 3 strong candidates, so which one do we choose?". If we have 3 strong candidates at the same time, we attempt to hire all 3 - attempt meaning in competition with other potential employers. If we have 3 weak candidates, we don't settle for the best of the current options - we hire 0 and we wait for more candidates. If you're not getting hired at AmaMicroGoogBook it's not because there's a surplus of great SDEs and some other candidates edged you out for a limited number of seats - it's because you simply didn't make the hiring bar.

Absolutely true. Of those I've interviewed at Alphabet, only about 1 in 7 has gotten an offer. You'd be surprised how many people do really terribly in onsite interviews. Phone screens are even worse.

Where I used to work in the Midwest, we tried to have a similar hiring bar, but just couldn't get as many people. The best we hired were as good as anyone I've worked with in SV, but the worst... well, I won't get into that.

Is your company one of the hot ones right now where developers are lining up?

Assuming not, what's the compensation for the job? Have you tried posting the compensation for the job publicly?

The reason I ask is because as someone who works for one of the big 5, I don't even consider companies outside of the big 5 or top startups. As "cynicalkane" said: "Much of the industry is not only unaware of reality but refuses to believe in it. This includes real engineers who do real work at real companies and comment actively on Hacker News. $250k for a senior engineer is just completely outside their reality."

Are you offering 250+ for senior engineers? If so, broadcast it and people will interested. Else, I'll assume you are going to just offer non-market rates and waste my time.

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