Yet, I don't see any significant raise in the salaries I'm being offered (2 years experience 40'000€ for 40 hour week), if the companies are so desperate to find developers why aren't they making their offers more attractive? Or am I missing something ?
These corporations may have started having some issues retaining key employees and discovered that expertise and takent doesn't spring from nowhere, which affects productivity to their surprise as highly skilled employees aren't growing on trees and can't be replaced as soon as their employee leaves. So before they need to do something about working conditions (i.e. absurdly long hours and stressful environment) and wages they instead try to manipulate the job market by requesting a sudden influx of canonfodder to shift the negotiating power back into their hands.
There can be cultural reasons which make this more sticky in some places like France perhaps. I came across a survey in Japan where companies also said they were having trouble hiring and only 1/11 companies said they would consider raising wages. America has the highest software developer salaries in the world because there is more of a cultural acceptance of the free market and realization that it can make good business sense to pay more.
I come from a place where salaries advance very slowly and unfortunately, in places like this, companies would rather pass on good candidates than pay more. It means their company grows slower. But they get to keep the illusion of control.
It comes down to the founder's dilemma [1] that permeates through the culture of a company - Does the owner want to be rich or king? If the company owner/managers are more interested in being king, they will generally not pay higher salaries unless the situation gets so dire than they begrudgingly are forced to. You want to try to work for companies where they want to be rich. Unfortunately, in a place where the general culture does not encourage this, these companies will be very tough to find.
I think this is right, and it applied to your milk. For example I would be shocked if the price of milk was doubled from AU$3 to AU$6 here, but at say 3 cartons a week the total cost of that would be about $40 a week. Whereas if I have to pay another $40 a week due to an interest rate rise I'd take it. It's a weird psychological thing (makes it hard to live in another country!)
> Does the owner want to be rich or king?
Another option is to work for a company (ideally contract work) that doesn't have a single owner or small cohort of owners. This would be a large corporation.
It should be more like, pay $200000 because he's good rather than because he is a senior engineer. Companies should get rid of the titling bull crap and just let it all be based on salary.
Moving into “team lead”/architect role seems to change the range to $125K - $155K. The only way to make more is by being a billable consultant. That ranges from $145K - $175K.
[1] These are the salary ranges for most cities outside of Silicon Valley/West Coast, DC, and New York where the salaries and cost of living are a lot lower.
It's easier to blame the market than admit "we are terrible at recruiting."
It's also a potential killer advantage for startups to be able to recognize budding coder talent that doesn't check off all the boxes that say FAANG recruiters have. It's still very much an inefficient market, and people that can't code aren't necessarily the best at recognizing coder talent.
The whiteboard thing seems to be a US obsession.
I've also had written tests with questions to do with the job, not trick questions, just straight, normal, day-to-day problems. Usually 10 or so that start easy and get harder.
(If you're in an architect type role I guess you have a higher salary)
But even those consulting companies are having issues getting new developers but don't seem to be getting their salaries much higher.
I think this is a deliberate play on the company's part, as it's a way to compartmentalize candidates according to their negotiation skills. Full time jobs are essentially for people who are poor at negotiation and at figuring out what options are available, and the company gets to have them at the fraction of their value. For smarter people, the company bites the bullet and takes them in as consultants, with much higher pay. This way, the official wages for full-time employees get to stay low and you can always say to a gullible candidate that the maximum salary for the position is so and so.
This is all about Western Europe and about huge, bureucratic and successful corporations that have more money that sense (banks etc.). I don't think it applies to smaller companies which are not swimming in money.
The Spanish market is full of small consultancies and they still charge a 2.5-3 times the worker salary to their clients.
This makes very hard for anyone to get a salary above 45k euros because paying above 150k (21% VAT included) is hard to justify just for one person.
If you want more money, ask for it. If they offer $40,000, then tell them you won't touch this job for under $140,000. If the rest of the developers did the same, they would start paying that, but they won't because everyone wants stability.
Then you get to the point where $500K is not enough as a salary, and companies know this also, so you are going to quit and start your own business. If they can keep you around for longer and longer before you quit, the lower they start you, the more time they can keep you, in essence growing their business.
Either start your own company, or ask for a lot more and be prepared not to receive the offer.
As a developer, you are better off working for a company where software is the product, not a cost center. Don’t be perceived as interchangeable with other SSII engineers.
The hope is that their complaints will be answered by a Republican congress allowing them more cheap, disposable labor, not a recognition that labor generally needs to be paid more.
People (meaning also, people in business) can and do say any damned thing. What are they doing?