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Comment by devwastaken | Hacker News Reader

The shortage is artificial. Companies do not want inexperienced developers, and they are unwilling to invest in the education and experience of developers. They want someone that already has all the credentials they want, on paper. Regardless of if they're actually good or not. That's a natural result of favoring short term goals over long term investment and the ever increasing corprotization of development jobs. If anyone but your actual dev leads are creating and hiring for dev jobs - you're apart of the problem.

Propaganda like "job shortages" are a nice way of saying "we need to import more workers", whilst rejecting hundreds of domestic applicants.

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I couldn't disagree more. The shortage is very real, the current crop of "American programmers" are a bunch of incompetent, entitled brats who seem to think everything is owed to them. Many of these unemployed "American Programmers" are the dregs, the bottom decile of programming talent which no company can employ. And their unemployability is exacerbated by their attitude problems.

note: I am a 3x entrepreneur and my opinions are based on my 2 decades of experience in IT.

1. Some unemployed devs don't find their work and successfully make their own business. Many work on the OS software you use. It's odd why you would think otherwise if you have that level of experience.

2. I know a number of good developers that are respectable, they just don't have the work experience in the form of "Worked at X for 2 years". A quick gander at github can reveal a number of highly skilled projects done out of self creation and not sourced from a company.

3. I haven't come across many "self entitled" programmers, but certainly many self entitled managers and business owners whom wave their hands around in the air acting like they know something they don't. Too many MBA's and people running companies they know little to nothing about, and base their "practices" almost entirely off confirmation bias. Managers and owners are by their nature more prone to incompetant brattiness - humans like to think power = competance.

4. Software dev has become more like making music - everyone does it, very few get a record deal and make good money. Whether the music is 'good' isn't much of a relationship with having a job in it or not. Plenty of bad devs with good resumes.

> "are a bunch of incompetent, entitled brats who seem to think everything is owed to them"

> "their unemployability is exacerbated by their attitude problems"

I'm trying to remain polite about this, but with the tone and attitude you strike, I'm having a hard time taking your opinion for anything other than bitter frothing. Maybe you can elaborate on why you believe they're entitled, have attitude problems, or are brats.

Thank you for being polite, but IMHO my post wasn’t tonally any different than the GP, ergo your indignation is misplaced.

Since you asked, I speak with the experience of starting 3 businesses across Pharma, Defense and Media industries. I have also been involved in hiring multiple people across sectors, both in tech and non-tech jobs. As you also know, for defense that involves White-as-Wonderbread US citizens only, I also have interviewed almost exclusively from a certain complexion-gender combination club. Thus have formed my own pattern recognition, with an n of several hundred. If you are open to listening I can share a few illustrative anecdotes. Admittedly my posts are just opinions as I can only offer my own perspective. Although this study, and multiple others, seems to support my viewpoint.

p.s. Truth hurts.

I wonder if the pharma & defense is why you encountered so many entitled and incompetent wannabe programmers.

As a programmer with morals, I would never work in pharma, defense or media. I can't be the only one.

I'm curious to hear to objection(s) to working in "pharma" if you have the time.

Well, it's all relative. Assuming all corporations are equally amoral (or close enough), defense means war profiteering, whereas (traditional) media is a blight on our society that has largely abandoned any pretense of social function and actively holds us back by playing on our collective fears.

On the other hand, pharma as a concept certainly needs to exist to save lives. As a Canadian, pharma is not so bad here, but I believe their existence as a for-profit* entity is contrary to the purpose of universal healthcare, which I think is a common enough sentiment. American pharma, however, actively profits from the inequality inherent to the (rather evil) lack of universal healthcare system. Any positives for society seem strictly incidental, as exemplified by the price of insulin.

I could not agree with you more regarding media. And no, not "big media" just media. It's absolutely miserable and has let us all down.

I also agree with your point regarding profiteering. This behavior can be observed in many industries, not just pharmaceutical, but it seems a more egregious violation when it affects our health or the well-being of someone we know.

Your comment grabbed my attention because I couldn't immediately think of anything to support the sentiment of it being immoral to work in the pharmaceutical industry so I was naturally curious to find out.

Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective.

Do you have any data you can share to back up your specific assertions ("the bottom decile")?

Claims of "there are too few good programmers" tend to have an implicit "...at the price we wish to pay...".

Which in turn implies a "developers are equally valuable to all companies".

There are companies where the value of a programmer isn't the same as the value of a programmer in another company.

There is no way for small SaaS company with revenue of a few million overall can compete with the amount that a tech company with the revenue of a million per employee is the norm.

and conversely "..at a capability we have". Sloganeering like you did is very popular on fora like HN, but the reality is quite different. There is 110% employment in tech even if you a C-grade programmer you have a job, the rest are insufferable, incompetents who are unemployable at any wage.

> That's a natural result of favoring short term goals over long term investment

It’s extremely hard to justify investing in junior engineers when the trend in our industry is to jump between jobs every 1-3 years. What’s the point of hiring and training/mentoring anyone if the industry average tenure is less than, say, 5 years?

I think calling it artificial is going a bit too far.

At least from my perspective, our entire industry is relatively new (if you look purely at the average / median years of experience in out industry).

5-7 years is often considered “senior”, while in other industries it can take 10-15+ years to really be considered “senior” in your role.

It’s not surprising that many companies want “senior” level experience since “senior” really just means “not a beginner” at many companies. And not surprising that companies are reluctant to hire junior devs when jumping between jobs is so commonplace.

> It’s extremely hard to justify investing in junior engineers when the trend in our industry is to jump between jobs every 1-3 years.

Employees job hop to get raises and title changes. If employers were more willing to invest in anyone, not just Juniors, this wouldn't be as much a problem.

Some people do want to job hop a lot, but many don't. This industry is actively hostile to the people who might otherwise be loyal to their employer, because it does not reward loyalty at all.

Yes this! Both most recent companies I’ve been at have/had problems retaining good people, especially past 4 years. At this point I think there must be some adage among leadership that is better to get fresh meat after a while.

That said I have known peers to go in and say they are looking at leaving and all of a sudden a solution is found…

You're both looking at the same problem but one is describing the horse and one is describing the cart, we're not sure which goes first but only one of us has any agency to tip the scales and that's employers. Employees will do whatever is best for them, but an employer can attempt to make sure what's best for them is to stay at their company.

There are many things companies can do to improve employee retention. Regular raises, promotions, internal transfers for people who like new challenges, pension plans, etc. Instead quotas for churn are somehow popular.

If employers would have a pay 'stair' for new programmers jumping would not be advantageous. The root problem is employers punnishing not job hopping.

Here is the cruel contradiction perceived by some job hunting devs:

Firms don't want to pay the wages of experienced developers.

Firms don't want to train inexperienced developers.

Thus you find the young developer who thinks that old developers have it made and the old developer who wishes they were young.

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