Comment by jaggederest | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaggederest | Hacker News Reader

The only reason salaries in SF are ridiculous is because they base hiring on which degree you have, compete for the new graduates so they can work them to death, and only look for people in the SF bay.

If you relax any of those criteria, you suddenly don't have a programmer shortage anymore.

In addition, programming is inherently not something you can have masses of blue-collar people doing. Once you program something once, there's zero cost to make a copy. That's why blue collar jobs are dying in all sorts of industries where things can be automated - they soon will be automated.

The idea of websites that are 'factory produced' is called facebook pages or any of a number of other as-a-service setups that give you a domain, some pages, and a form-based interface to fill them out.

There's again no need to go bringing a bunch of people into the equation - those sass businesses need virtually no human sales or support compared to a car dealership in every city over 10k people. You can sell your product everywhere on earth with a sales and support system of ~100 people, if you really want to hold a lot of hands.

Yes, there is still a developer shortage, at least for certain technologies.

I'm in Columbus, Ohio, and its near impossible still to find a local Rails & Backbone developer who is looking for work and does a good job. I'm not going to work them to death, and i'd be willing to pay a decent salary.

Friends in NY, Boston, Austin, Chicago and DC have reported similar findings in looking for qualified individuals. These people aren't looking for rockstars, but often just someone who will do the job well.

If you're willing to hire remote, it still isn't always easy to find someone, but it does get much easier comparatively.

One of our summer Dev Bootcamp students moved back to Columbus, Ohio. Shoot me an email at jesse@devbootcamp.com and I'm happy to put you two in touch. :)

Can't promise he's what you or anyone you know is looking for in terms of a potential employee, but it might be nice from a community-building standpoint!

Thanks Jesse!

What experiences have you had with bad programmers?

So far as I am concerned, if people haven't at least tried out hiring remote, they have no room to complain about shortages.

Even if you want someone who speaks english as a first language, you're still closing the door on at least 90% of the population that could contain someone who would work for you and do a great job.

> Yes, there is still a developer shortage, at least for certain technologies. (...) its near impossible still to find a local Rails & Backbone developer

I don't understand this. Why not hire a good programmer and give them few weeks to learn those technologies? Has anyone here hired a programmer who was good but failed at his job because they couldn't learn whatever language fast enough?

I mean, I can understand certain companies want people with very specific skills -- say, embedded programming -- that can hit the ground running. And some companies have enough candidates that they can afford to exclude the ones who don't have those skills. But if you talk about shortage then it seems you're not one of those companies.

>and only look for people in the SF bay.

This may be true in small startups which cannot necessarily afford looking for candidates beyond the bay area or internationally. It's expensive flying a candidate in who has a 10% chance of becoming a potential hire. Then when you give them an offer, they've probably already decided to move to the bay area and are choosing between 10 different offers. If they're outside the country, you need legal help for immigration.

"Only look for people in the SF bay" is not true for any tech company larger than 400 people.

I love how you assume that hiring someone means them moving to your area. That's not how it should work - isn't that why we're building the internet at all?

>If you relax any of those criteria, you suddenly don't have a programmer shortage anymore.

This is absolutely not true. I am working in SF with a number of electrical engineers working as software developers. I have a degree from a small state college.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com