Tech Jobs stays open for months, unemployment under 4% | Hacker News Reader

Tech Jobs stays open for months, unemployment under 4%

techflash.com

30 pointsintesar56 comments

I'm just waiting for salaries to reflect demand. I'm not moving from a small-town dev job to the Valley for a 15% pay jump and a huge cost-of-living increase.

I feel sorry for all my classmates who aren't in software dev. It's a nightmare out there. I know lots of recently-graduated unemployed business/humanities majors.

It's our fault too. We automate the easy and empower the capable.

I don't feel too bad about that. I do feel bad about not peer-pressuring them into programming more.

Raising the standard of living for all - just like all the other technologies from the wheel (putting people who haul things on their backs out of work) to the loom, to the Ditch Witch and so on.

Plenty of jobs in online retail, even with no programming skill (adwords, seo, etc.)

Perhaps it's the laundry list of technologies, frameworks and related technologies associated with a primary language. Some of these expectations are legitimate, but some/many border on postings just shy of "deep expertise in just about everything".

For giggles, I decided to head over to indeed.com and take a random posting for a Java Developer. I only chose one and below is what they are looking for verbatim:

"* BS degree or equivalent in computer science, electrical engineering, or related field is preferred * A minimum of 5-7 years of relevant work experience * Strong knowledge of Java and J2EE related technologies (JVM, JMS, Servlets etc.) * Knowledge and experience with Internet technologies and protocols (e.g. HTML, XML, TCP/IP, HTTP) * Extensive knowledge of creating high availability large volume systems * Solid experience and ability with the use of a dynamic scripting language such as JavaScript, Perl, Ruby or Groovy (we use Groovy) * Experience in OOAD principles and methodologies * Exposure to Hibernate, Spring or other lightweight container * Expertise with more advanced programming environments and concepts highly desired (e.g. J2EE, multi-threaded programming, high availability design etc.) * Wide experience with code control system and build tools (Maven/Ant) * Solid understanding of design patterns (Gang of Four) * Exposure to and desire to work in, a strong team-based environment * Knowledge or exposure to modern Agile methodologies such as SCRUM, TDD and XP * Knowledge and experience with unit testing practices desired * Experience/exposure to Test Driven Development and Simple Design"

Depending on how literal these requirements are to be taken, any one of these can knock you out of the running (you've got solid Java skills under your belt, but due to your specific environment you've got no JMS or no scripting language experience, or you're light on Spring, etc.)

I didn't post another one I found interesting, but it was asking for Ajax/CSS/front end experience.

The only equivalent I can think of is: "Real estate lawyer needed. Must have experience in constitutional, IP, marriage, family and international law. Any experience as it relates to the Geneva Convention considered a plus."

The best part of that article is the one comment complaining about employers being picky. The person leaving the comment uses "excepting" instead of "accepting" and "thou" instead of "though". Perhaps your writing skills have something to do with your unemployment?

Here in the South (and namely Greenville, SC) we've had a shortage of talented IT (devs mainly) since 2008. Great gigs here and great opportunities but most folks don't or can't relocate (due to being upside down in a home someplace) or can't fathom a 'pay cut' since our area doesn't pay Silicon/Boston/NY rates yet our cost of living is quite a bit lower (at least has been).

If you're a talented developer and out of work more than a month you either are horrible at interviewing, have terrible soft skills, or really aren't that good. Or you might be on vacation :)

I doubled my salary over the last couple of years by moving from Seattle to the Bay Area. Unless SC would involve a much smaller hit, the cost of living there could be $0 and I'm still better off here. I'm not assuming valley rates are sustainable compared to almost anywhere in the world, but somehow they haven't ended yet.

I was getting job offers close to bay area wages from seattle when I moved down to the bay area several months ago. I think seattle has caught up money wise.

How much lower is it? If it's more than 24'000 then the valley is still a better deal. The number next to your wage also has positive carrer benefits even if you net the same amount in the end.

"The first function of unemployment (which has always existed in open or disguised form) is that it maintains the authority of master over man. The master has normally been in a position to say: ‘If you do not want the job, there are plenty of others who do’. When the man can say: ‘If you do not want to employ me, there are plenty of others who will,’ the situation is radically altered.’"

-- The Times, 1943 (via http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=11941)

Seems to be a major shift occurring in required skill set which does not help when you are trying to move from a Senior role to Senior role.

At least in my experience in the NJ/NY region, I have been looking for Flex/AS3 work for a few months, and have not seen a single interesting role advertised.

Personally it's quite daunting to make the 4th major shift in my career. Started out in classic ASP/COM, moved to Java when Microsoft introduced .NET, moved to Flash/AS3 about 4-5 years ago developing web video solutions.

Now I don't know where to start retooling, should I work in Mobile, or move back to web backend, or web frontend work... or a mixture of all three. Also after 15 years it's hard to take that pay cut and start back at zero again.

The others might be fine but I'd advise against moving to web frontend unless you're really interested in that. Senior web frontend positions are pretty much non-existent and from what I can tell those guy don't get anywhere near as much respect or pay as other programming positions.

> Senior web frontend positions are pretty much non-existent and from what I can tell those guy don't get anywhere near as much respect or pay as other programming positions.

Depends on the industry/area. In SFBay a talented javascripter can command as much as a talented Rubyist if you are willing to work at a startup. Bonus points if you also have a graphic design or UX chops.

The move from AS to JS is also not going to be as big a jump. Further, if you are taking a pay cut to shift stacks then I would suggest that you are getting in on new stacks too late.

I agree front-end guys don't get a lot of respect compared to the back-end guys. However, most of the back-end guys I know still think coding in tables is the way to go.

The thing you have to remember is supply and demand. Companies will pay you when supply is low, since they are in need of good talent. If you're a good negotiator - like myself, you can write your own ticket.

It's the nature of that kind of work. I blogged about this phenomenon a little while ago: http://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/jack-of-all-trades...

Nice post, definitely got me thinking about where I need to go next

There are some technologies that are practically guaranteed to be good investments, like becoming expert in JavaScript. You can use JavaScript on both the frontend and backend, for example.

Expect to always be retooling. Embrace it, in fact. I made a switch in my career from being an employee to being a freelance web developer. That forces me to always stay on top of things. I also think of myself as "that guy who can build you a web app" instead of a frontend or backend guy. As a consequence, I've learned frontend stuff, backend stuff, design, business dev, anything needed to get the job done.

I think it's a sign of a healthy economy that puts pressure on workers to always be updating their skills. An economy that has workers who can adapt quickly to changes in demand naturally reduces unemployment.

Link your previous stacks with new stacks. If you knew C/C++ very well, it will definitely help you when you work on iPhone Objective-C work. Your work with C#/COM will help you with WP7 dev work, etc. A guy who can do front and back end well is also valuable too. Play your experience in older stacks to your advantage to show your versatility.

If the job stays open for months then either the role isn't that important, or the hiring company is doing something seriously wrong. Finding good people is not difficult ("site:linkedin.com works for x", where x is google, facebook, whatever). Attracting them is harder - either the company needs to sort itself out internally to meet candidate expectations or it has to modify its business model to pay the expected wages.

Or... the business isn't located in a tech hub or major city and there just aren't many developers in the area. It's not a profession where people are so desperate to find work that they'll move just anywhere for the job. My father's company had a software dev position open for almost a year because it was in a relatively low population area -- the pay and benefits they offered were well above market for the region.

Working in a low population area is risky because there is also a lower pool of available places to work if that position doesn't work out. It's impossible to attract people from outside the region unless you are paying above market rates for higher population areas, which few employers are willing to do. So, they're stuck trying to find someone in the local talent pool.

Echoing steverb, the problem is not a lack of talent per se (although there may also be that) but that your father's company decided to do software in an area that's not suited for is and is unwilling to do what's necessary to attract talent anyway. "pay and benefits ... well above market for the region" doesn't mean jack to the outsider you're implicitly trying to recruit. Might mean something if you make the case for equilivent standard of living, but as steverb pointed out something generally needs to also be done to accommodate the possibility the job doesn't work out.

Please fix the headline. This might work:

"Tech jobs stay open for months, unemployment under 4%"

I think the problem is that good jobs (you can save to buy house) are gone. Basically, in SV, you can get 150K salary with 20 years experience and PhD only at Facebook, Google, Oracle, etc. However, these companies are extremely picky and positions like that are rarely open.

Smaller companies (and startups) are just looking for programmers - preferable fresh from college.

I predict this trend will continue: low end of programming business will grow and salaries will be suppressed because level of entry will be lowered as time goes. The high end of programming will shrink and it will be available only in big corporations.

> I think the problem is that good jobs (you can save to buy house) are gone.

Assuming that you are in the San Francisco area, doesn't this have as much to do with the difficult real estate situation as the job market?

Not really. Actually, my friends in other professions with similar education (lawyers, public servants, marketing, advertising, hedge funds) have no problems saving for a house. In other words, real estate market in San Francisco seems to be healthy: people are buying houses. It is just not for programmers.

Thanks for clarifying. I wouldn't know; I'm on the east coast. :)

Don't often see "public servant" and "hedge fund" in the same salary bracket! Teachers, I guess?

> Basically, in SV, you can get 150K salary with 20 years experience and PhD only at Facebook, Google, Oracle, etc.

Absolutely false. If you've got 20 years experience and a Ph.D and are getting $150k at Google, you're getting seriously screwed (a senior/staff SWE is makes more in base + year-end bonus + RSUs). If you're at Facebook, you're still probably making more in _base_ and (again) get RSUs and bonuses worth something.

Outside of these companies, there are tons hiring -- especially for mid-career folks. In fact, Google is a great place for folks early in their career, but they have issues hiring mid-career folks (but they've been getting better about it).

My advice is, know something other than "read text from a database and display it on the screen". Writing basic business/consumer CRUD applications is a solved problem. Yes, it used to be that one would have to use C/C++ and much "tricky" programming to reliably do this (I still remember how complex CRM, ERP and CMS packages from the 1990s were!), but that's not the case now. Nowadays this involves stringing several open source / commercial libraries together, rather than actually building core technology. Not only is building these applications a solved problem, for non-software companies it's actually more beneficial to purchase and customize these applications rather than build their own.

I remember reading stories (in Coders at Work, I believe) where a young programmer working for a hospital (building a record keeping system) had to code/debug assembly. These days he'll be lucky to write a few lines of PHP, but most likely will just end up customizing an existing EMR system.

If you want your programming ability to be an asset you can leverage, there are two ways: you can be a systems/networking/distributed systems developer, or you can learn a topic like computer vision, AI/machine learning/NLP. In first case you should know C, C++, socket programming, distributed systems and (for few companies) general JVM basics (garbage collection, performance) like the back of your hand (this is something you can still do to a large extent on your own time). In the second case, you should be sure to have a solid grasp of the Computer Science / Math / Stats involved.

Both of these are applicable in many areas: from finance, to highly scalable web applications, to stand-alone products (web browsers require a lot of systems programming chops, there is also data mining software, enterprise search, security/spam prevention...). You don't need a Ph.D for both of these, and (unfortunately) outside of Google, Oracle, Facebook and a few other companies (that have a healthy relationship with the academia) a Ph.D. is considered a negative. They do require persistence, passion and willingness to invest time and take risks: taking jobs in companies willing to take a risk _on you_ by giving you challenges and responsibilities.

There was a time when a factory worker or auto mechanic could save and buy a house.

My auto mechanic lives right next to my parents, but has slightly more expensive home. My dad is a mathematician, my mom is a software engineers and this is all in Silicon Valley. Yes, they're in Almaden and not in Menlo/Atherton.

A rank-and-file software engineer working on say business applications or relatively non-specialized software can still afford a home in Fremont (even less expensive).

If you want to buy a home in the 280/101 corridor or in Manhattan, yes, you need to do something different. Don't expect to have a 98-99th percentile income without being at 99th percentile in your profession (but again, doable for a Staff Engineer at Google, or someone who joined a relatively safe-bet pre-IPO startup like Facebook).

Quality people are easy to find, the job boards are full of them.

Good luck finding a quality company or competent management.

Quality people are easy to find, the job boards are full of them.

I'm fairly certain those are the same people we're always talking about being unable to solve fizzbuzz.

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