More like they don’t want to waste their time on managing lot of prima-donnas.
It doesn't really matter whether there aren't enough candidates, or there are plenty of candidates but they all wipe out during interviews - the result is still an inability to hire at the desired rate, and in that situation you don't court massive layoffs without a reason.
I suggest you hire people who don’t meet the bar and see what happens. The reason your recruiters have dozens of resumes to sift through is because software engineers make bank and that’s not a secret. Most of those resumes will be people who don’t even understand what software engineering really entails and the extent of their experience will be editing a vb macro and taking an online Python course.
> Far less than 1% of these ever make it to a tech screen, and I think the rate of our panel interviews is in the low double-digit percent of that figure.
The majority of people who get rejected at this phase just nearly literally can’t program. I’m an engineering manager so I sit on on-sites once or twice a week and people with long careers that look good on resumes end up not being able to squeeze out trivial code because they haven’t actually programmed for 5+ years.
> There isn't an engineering shortage.
There absolutely is. You’re right that there isn’t a shortage of people who want the paycheck though.
There absolutely isn’t an engineering talent shortage, in spite of the horde of people looking for a paycheck.
Perhaps your technical bar is very low so you can afford to be picky? If so, your company sounds super fucked up. You’re willing not hiring candidates for dumb reasons when hiring is difficult.