Hacker News Reader

Comment by rawtxapp | Hacker News Reader

Yep, as evidenced by the fact that FAANG seems to have no issues finding new developers.

FAANG employers are always complaining about talent shortages.

I mean from their perspective, of course, they would want there to be 100x the amount of talent, that way they can just pay less. But the fact that they still have thousands of new hires every week and the fact that they are still turning down highly qualified candidates tells you that they are doing just fine.

I've interviewed many candidates and even the ones that were really good got rejected which is kind of sad to see.

Every successful company is always understaffed, because they're growing faster than they can hire.

Most of them mistake that for talent shortage.

And yet I've seen plenty of people leaving for less stressful companies.

The world-wide pool of *good* developers is not infinite and both Amazon and Google have been lowering the hiring bar...

FAANGs can afford to pay very high salaries. Good for the devs who can get those jobs. But there are quite many companies that cannot match FAANG level of pay but still pay well and have a good environment. Are you saying that unless a company can pay FAANG level, they should struggle to find devs ?

I'd happily hire a full time live-in butler for minimum wage plus room and board. Are you saying that unless I can pay the market rate, I should struggle to find a butler?

"pay the market rate"

Is FAANG salary really market rate ? That's the question.

It's the market rate for a live-in butler. If you can't afford that, maybe just get the cleaning staff who comes in once a month and order pizza once a week.

I'm not saying they should struggle, I'm saying they should re-adjust their expectations on how many/what level of engineers they can get. You can't get greatest level of engineering when those engineers have options that pay them 2-3x what these companies are offering.

That's a fair take.

If they are struggling to find devs, then by definition they do not pay well enough.

Are you saying that unless every company can pay FAANG level salary, they are not paying well enough ? For example, lets say a tech company in Boise Idaho can pay 120K salary for a senior dev while FAANG pays 200-220K for similar role but you work in California. Should that company in Idaho struggle to find devs ?

If they aren't getting the people they need, yes obviously they're not paying enough.

What other definition of 'paying enough' could you possibly use? You pay people to get them to work for you. If they aren't willing to work for you then you're not paying them enough to work for you.

> Should that company in Idaho struggle to find devs?

Not sure how we've got to saying I think they 'should' struggle to find devs? I think they probably will though.

Tell me how do you define 'paying enough' that isn't measured by some metric like 'getting people to work for you'?

You can’t get a senior dev for 120k. Market rate for a senior dev is easily approaching 200k and that doesn’t count FAANG (in which case total comp for a senior dev looks like 400k /year). These numbers are only going up, due in part to reasons mentioned in the article.

It’s totally possible that many businesses are not viable.

There is room to get that money for the most part though. Pull it from exec salaries.

"You can’t get a senior dev for 120k"

In Boise Idaho ?

Yeah. Locally you’d be making like 170k at least and with remote, you’re back up to market rate of 200K+.

> For example, lets say a tech company in Boise Idaho can pay 120K salary for a senior dev while FAANG pays 200-220K for similar role but you work in California. Should that company in Idaho struggle to find devs ?

Why not pay 200-220K? That's the market rate now.

Yes. If they want FAANG level developers, they will have to pay FAANG level salaries.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com