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Comment by noobiemcfoob | Hacker News Reader

On one hand, it appears this article is talking about it trying to keep these postdocs in academia (noting the statement in the article of equal numbers of NYU postdocs leaving academia following the position cutting).

Ignoring that, as someone involved in a group with 4 open positions that have been open for the better part of a year, the shortage is there. It's not so much that there is a shortage of people capable of applying who "kind of" meet the requirements, but truly capable engineers in this field who could pick up the work required are definitely in short supply, PhDs or no.

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If the need for these positions to be filled is sufficiently low that your group can be that picky for almost a year, it would seem demand is pretty low, thus poor evidence for a shortage.

This is not a shortage of people, it's an unwillingness or inability to raise salaries to the point where your group is attracting the people it wants.

I appreciate that the ability to pay people enough to attract them is a problem that is very difficult for institutions and organizations to solve, but living on a sub-standard salary with no job security and few career prospects (how many tenure-track opportunities are expected to open up in the next five years for the people who would fill those positions?) is a difficult problem for highly skilled post-doctoral candidates to solve, too.

I definitely recognize the point of few career prospects making potential applicants hesitant. That's a point I hadn't considered before.

As to the price point, I'm not convinced. Raising the potential salaries for these positions would attract people, obviously, but the price point would attract them away from their current jobs, leaving a vacancy at another company. If this is the situation, raising the salary doesn't suddenly generate new engineers with the necessary skills. The problem is the existing engineers with the necessary skills are already hired and fulfilled leaving only the option of headhunting.

At a more practical level, yes, if we hired these positions, our capabilities would be extended greatly. Hell, hiring one would be enough. However, there is not enough value in that new hire to justify raising the salary above it's current position.

And lastly, no one has been offered the position and then rejected it because of the pay. The last 3 offers given out were immediately accepted. We just haven't found anyone worth giving an offer for these remaining 4.

> And lastly, no one has been offered the position and then rejected it because of the pay. The last 3 offers given out were immediately accepted.

Why would they when there's no meaningful difference in pay between postdoc positions? What would happen if they tried to negotiate for something approaching an industry equivalent salary/benefits?

> As to the price point, I'm not convinced. Raising the potential salaries for these positions would attract people, obviously, but the price point would attract them away from their current jobs, leaving a vacancy at another company.

I'm unconvinced by this argument. Sure, it's true on the level of individual labs/companies; but if every lab paid postdocs something closer to industry, then probably more people would be drawn towards that whole vague sector of "technical work".

Edit: Or phrase it another way. The shortage of skilled postdocs, you'd presumably agree, is bigger than the shortage of skilled engineers in industry. If you offered higher postdoc salaries, the shortage would be spread more evenly across academia and business.

To clarify for some of the sub-comments, the open positions are not postdoc positions, they are openings at a private firm. As such, these positions have industry level salaries and benefits.

> It's not so much that there is a shortage of people capable of applying who "kind of" meet the requirements, but truly capable engineers in this field who could pick up the work required are definitely in short supply, PhDs or no.

Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but you're saying that you're failing to find people who are ready to work on day one without additional training?

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