Talent shortage? What talent shortage? | Hacker News Reader

Talent shortage? What talent shortage?

lostinjit.blogspot.com

31 pointsfijal7 comments

Good article, the most important being, their is not a talent shortage, their is just a shortage of talent that is willing to give up themselves to join your organization, letting people be themselves attracts talented people to your organization.

It also shows why the whole H1B thing is crap. Companies hiring is completely one sided, and on their terms. The H1B program is more of their terms. Locking labor into regional markets and therefore ably to constrain that labor and that labors compensation. Contrast that will a company that allows remote work, and they have no need for the H1B argument, they can literately access that talent on that talents terms. They have happier employees and those employees don't feel like they are a slave to the machine.

I actually used to be an opponent of remote work when it was in it's infancy, I thought it would isolate individuals and disconnect the vision of the company. My view on the subject over time has turned around as I now see that it created happier individuals that are willing to contribute more effort than is required of them. Technologies such as Skype have done a lot to prevent the disconnectedness that I thought remote work would create.

Totally. It's ridiculous, the number of companies that aren't open to remote workers! If you want top people, you have to make some concessions! Demanding that every employee "take one for the team" to relocate is foolish.

I've been telecommuting for a decade now. Before that, I grew up on a farm where everyone I was surrounded with also worked from home. Working in an office, or other away-from-home location, is a very strange concept to me.

With that said, it seems like this is something that is easily sorted by the market. If top talent want to work from remote locations, top talent will make telecommuting-friendly businesses rise to hire even more workers.

If the on-site businesses hiring B and C players, for lack of a better description, are still winning in the marketplace, perhaps it is the telecommuting that is the downfall?

I don't think it works that way. People who are good at coding are not necesarilly people who are good at creating businesses (not always, but usually).

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear.

My post was made under the common assumption that top developers/engineers/etc. drive the success of the business just as much as the business people. It is why companies go looking to hire the very best programmers, engineers, etc. Otherwise everyone would hire the not-so-good, but inexpensive people.

If we assume the top people are choosing to telecommute, yet the best companies do not allow telecommuters, it means that those businesses are succeeding in spite of not having the very best people.

Since telecommuting is still not common in our industry, either:

A. Not hiring top employees does not impact the success of a business. In fact, top businessmen might have a better chance of success hiring poorer talent.

- or -

B. Telecommuting is preventing some companies, that would otherwise be successful, from succeeding.

- or -

C. Top talent would rather work on-site, and are choosing to work for the companies that support that kind of culture instead.

Why would you censor BS as B*shit?

Possibly because he's not a native English speaker.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com