Comment by crag | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crag | Hacker News Reader

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That is utter nonsense. Maybe in the Bay Area that's true, but not in Florida.

We've been looking for technical employees (cable'ers, phone techs, etc, etc) for a while (in Florida) and usually come up with crap. We start at $20hr, with full benefits, and a strict 40 hour work week (we like to avoid overtime). That is a very high starting salary in Florida. And we've hired and fired 6 different people for the same position over the last 2 years.

And I can't even tell you how hard it is to find a decent programmer here. Sure there are tons of guys who (barely) write Java or VB. None are remotely qualified to write code for my sister let alone the company. Either I end up writing it or I outsource to NYC. And when you do find someone good, there's a bidding war. I lost a programmer I wanted to hire to one of my customers (a hospital). They offered us a fee if we'd send him over. I sent him him over. They're a good customer so we turned down the fee. :)

These are common complaints down here in Florida; the 4th biggest state in the country by the way. It's not helping that our school system down here is a fucking mess. And that many parents are more concerned about their kids learning evolution than math.

There is one ray of hope for us: the military. I just hired our 3rd vet (I'm a vet by the way too) from a job fair held at the Palm Beach VA.

If you're paying $20 an hour and you can't find a decent Java programmer, I'm not sure if it's a failure of the market. I wouldn't program for $20 an hour no matter where I lived, unless life sucked or I wasn't very good. And if pushed by desperation to take that job, I would be constantly trying to find another one.

The $20 he mentioned is for cablers and phone techs, not for programmers, if I understood correctly.

@idiopathic: You're right, I read it badly. Sorry, crag.

If you are having trouble finding staff than you are by definition not paying market rates. If $20/hr gets you crap, then you need to raise your rates. This is capitalism, people don't owe you their labour for what you consider good money.

Indeed. There was a post a month or two ago on HN that captured this fallacy beautifully and I wish I could find it again and/or credit its author:

Q: "We pay salaries competitive with the market average, why can't we find good experienced programmers or engineers?"

A: "So you want top talent for average wages? See the discrepancy here?"

Sometimes you can't find what you need, no matter how much you want to pay. I have enormous difficulty to find good programmers here in São Paulo. Even bad programmers are hard to hire.

I can hire PHP and Java programmers rather easily, but both groups would have a lot to unlearn.

You can always hire people for anywhere, it all depends on your requirements and your compensation. If you can't find them, then you need to change either requirements or compensation.

Have you considered trying to hire from abroad? You may need a high salary by USA standards to hire USA workers to work in São Paulo, but tis doable. You have now found the market rate for programmers in São Paulo

You are right, of course. I guess I'll have to help people unlearn.

Wow,

I was writing from the Bay Area. I suppose I should realize how different the rest of the country is.

And that many parents are more concerned about their kids learning evolution than math.

Can you elaborate on that?

First time I read it I got that many parents do not like it that their kids are learning evolution (they probably want them to learn creationism instead) when instead they should be worrying that their kids are not learning enough math. I re-read it again and I still think that's what he meant.

That's right.

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