https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-you-...
"Now, let’s review some microeconomics. In a free market, it is almost axiomatic that the market always clears. That’s a technical term that means that when somebody tries to sell something, if they are willing to accept the market price, they will be able to sell it, and when somebody wants to buy something, if they are willing to pay the market price, they will be able to buy it. It’s just a matter of both sides accepting the market price."
No, there's a shortage of software people who are firstly willing to work for the £30K you seem to think is reasonable and secondly (implied by the pay on offer) willing to put up with being treated as if they are a junior, unskilled office worker.
Which is why those with any ambition become contractors and consultants, or leave the county...
Following that logic, there must be a massive shortage of CEOs and high-level executives (given their salaries) - let's import them from Romania and significantly lower the costs across the economy!
It's the EU workers who are willing to work for £30k because non-EUs need to earn more than £35k after 5 years to apply for settlement in the UK.
It was true then and it remains true to-day.
Software development contracting and consultancy is a very different matter and can easily get you into the top one or two percent of incomes in the UK.
The fact that a lot of small and medium businesses in the UK attempt to treat (and pay) the one as the other is part of the reason they're always bleating about not being able to find staff.
But I started out by finding software engineers that were interested in security and were willing to learn and turned them into higher-paid security folks.
If we have 2000 people, we need 1000 doctors and 1000 secretary and it takes 8 years of training to be the former and 1 year for the later, won't doctors be paid more even without shortage to take into account risks and length of studies?
In some cases, of course, that's because there's a professional association (like the AMA) that limits the number of new workers in that field.
> Working conditions and pay for programmers are incredible and would be a life changing improvement for most people.
Pay is excellent, as you say.
Working conditions ... may or may not be good, depending on your perspective. Half the people I meet don't want to sit in an office all day. Many others refuse to work at Amazon (or even buy from them) or some of the other big companies because of their reputation and what they're doing to the city. "Brogramming" still exists. I know many programmers who get asked to work late without penalty to the company.
> That the profession hasn’t been flooded with talent is a strong indicator that there isn’t enough talent out there.
I know plenty of ex-programmers and people who would make great programmers if they only wanted to. From my perspective, I'd say the talent exists, and the money is incredible -- therefore the working conditions must be pretty severely lacking.
While prospective purchasers tend to describe a situation in which market clearing price is above the price they are willing to pay as a shortage, it's not. A shortage is when nonprice rationing results in unmet demand willing to pay above the actual trading price.
There's also a planning concept of a shortage in the form of supply inadequate to meet some threshold deemed essential, e.g., by society or authorities (which tends to result in economic shortage as price controls or nonprice rationing are imposed). Market price differences alone don't establish the existence of either type of shortage.