Why is there an engineer shortage? | Hacker News Reader

Why is there an engineer shortage?

7 pointsnphyte14 comments

For hyper environments like SV, probably because there is a shortage of hyper individuals in the general population.

For more general environments, it's probably not a shortage of engineers, just a shortage of engineers who will enthusiastically work at the rates that employers would prefer to pay.

I think there is also a different thing going on. Most companies expect their hires to already have significant experience, but little are ready to train new hires to match (future) needs. It's understandable where it comes from: employees are not that loyal anymore, so any training would be an investment that returns to somebody else.

On the other hand, times when companies were loyal to their employees are long gone, and this is pretty much why employees switch jobs so often nowadays.

This gem from Joel On Software (2000) blog is very relevant:

"Now, let's review some microeconomics. In a free market, it is almost axiomatic that the market always clears. That's a technical term that means that when somebody tries to sell something, if they are willing to accept the market price, they will be able to sell it, and when somebody wants to buy something, if they are willing to pay the market price, they will be able to buy it. It's just a matter of both sides accepting the market price.?"

Almost any situation described as a labor shortage is actually just a complaint about the price of said labor. Offer a $10 million/year salary, and see how easy it is to get the engineers you're keen on. "That would be a ridiculously high salary", you say? Great, you've established my point; now we're just haggling...

Also with such a high salary, people would quit very quickly just because they would be able to retire.

A lot of companies don't care to train them anymore.

It's a matter of money and career perspective. Being a good software developer requires a lot of learning. The job can be quite stressful and your knowledge devalues continuously because of tech change. In the long run other professions probably are more attractive, don't require permanent re-learning and at least provide an option to climb up a career+$ ladder. Provide better pay & conditions and you'll see more engineers.

Is there? http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/the-myt...

The question is too general. There are shortage for certain requirements of engineer. For example experienced engineer to build self driving car is in shortage, or engineer understand high speed trading.

I don't think there is a shortage for engineer without much real world experiences.

More realistically Why is there shortage of engineers who are young, smart (no, not the looks), excellent on data structures and algorithms, has good knowledge on bigdata, loves analytics, has awesome great frontend development skills?

Because all those engineers are already employed, or if they're not, they have their own projects they're working on.

Because large companies have come to falsely believe that supply and demand don't apply to them. Large companies want people with Windows and Linux experience, mostly to work on dreary Windows projects, at code-monkey prices. Pay more, and you'll see more good candidates.

There are probably local shortages in certain areas like Silicon Valley, and a surplus in others. the shortage wouldn't be as bad if remote work were more common.

if you are asking why more people don't take up engineering I would tell you that you need to think what percentage of the population has the cognitive ability to write code day in/out and then filter the list for personal characteristics,hobbies,jobs that were given to them, equal opportunities etc. Then think of how much our society has switched focus to software development in the last decade.

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