Comment by jmyeet
7 hours ago
There's never a labor shortage, only a compensation shortage.
If you're doing 10+ interviews a week, likely you work in Big Tech. And that means several things have happened before you even interview a candidate, specifically screening by ATS, AI systems, recruiters and hiring managers. There are perverse incentives (eg recruiters putting people in the pipeline to boost their numbers) and there's also massive discrimination, particularly age discrimination.
Tech companies in general want to hire grads or near-grades in vast quantities, particularly from the more prestigious US colleges. You get to 40 and suddenly you don't make it through those initial pipelines before you get to interview the candidate. They're not suitable in some way. And over 50? Forget about it.
And if you do make it through these filters, you may still get filtered for not being a "culture fit", which is just code for "not like me". And if the employee pool already skews young, male and from those same colleges, "culture fit" is just a thin veneer that reinforces discrimination.
I dunno, I don't work in Big Tech and I feel the commenter you're-replying-to's concerns. There is some sort of mismatch if my pipeline is this empty and this many qualified applicants are jobless and unhappy about it. Comp is fine and people can live wherever they want, but there is no way my team is going to meet its goal of doubling in size by the end of the year.
I am also not sure the world is quite as discriminatory as you paint it as. I'm over 40. I'm a woman. It's a mixed bag; most places I interviewed during my last job search were very normal about everything. One place rejected me because I "can't thrive in a high-ambiguity environment" and I'm just like ... the interview consisted only of leetcode questions with one right answer, that I got right, so ... just say "our investors are all Republicans and I don't think we should be hiring trans people, yeah we clocked you btw." But it's honestly a lot more rare than I had expected going into it.
I don't really know what's going on with tech right now, or what the future looks like, but despite AI, despite not being fresh out of school, it all feels pretty normal to me. The ZIRP days seemed about the same as things feel now. What's changed is I can ask Claude "what would this crazy design look like?" read it, run it, and say "ewww, no, yeah I knew that would be terrible" without investing the week to write it myself. I am not sure that spells the end of our field.
> There is some sort of mismatch if my pipeline is this empty
The mismatch may just be that you have no idea how to set up your hiring tools or operate your hiring process.
Your empty pipeline is telling you that your comp is not, in fact, fine.
It’s really that simple. If you’re not getting enough qualified applicants then you need to make your offer more attractive. That could involve culture, work environment, or perks, but the biggest thing is pay.
Of course a company’s ability (or willingness) to pay is not unlimited so that may not be a possibility. But then you have to accept that you’re not able (or willing) to pay what it takes to meet your hiring desires. That’s ok. I am not able (or willing) to pay what it takes to meet my luxury-sports-car desires either.
There is an apparent contradiction: you’re offering good pay and not getting many applicants, but there are a ton of jobless programmers. How to square that? The former is something you’re directly experiencing, the latter is something you’re hearing through the grapevine, maybe getting some broad numbers for. The obvious conclusion would be that the jobless programmer situation is not nearly as bad as people say.
> only a compensation shortage.
This is said all the time, and don't get me wrong, I like "compensation" as much as the other guy, but to me this just sounds like a race to the bottom (or sky) for companies.
It's great for those compensated for sure. But what happens once the companies with deepest pockets, FAANG and such, pay the most and drain the job market, what happens to all the other companies then? It raises the bar significantly for any new startup, makes it ever more impossible for any boring, middle-of-the-road company to find anyone remotely capable. Ultimately growth of the tech sector is limited by the number of people you have available, regardless of how much you pay for them. If anything, another country with more potential talent could even surpass the one playing alone in its own sandbox.
I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, and maybe in an economic downturn it's even a good thing, I'm just saying that it doesn't come with no tradeoffs.
If your business (including your startup) relies on paying sub-market wages, that's a "you" problem. You're not entitled to underpay employees because your business can't survive if you don't.
I see this with startups all the time. Cofounders get 30-50% equity with preferences and then want to hire a lead engineer as a first hire... with 0.5% equity and a $100,000 salary.
Big companies already do a lot to pay as little as they possibly can. AI is just the latest foil to suppress wages.
Oh I don't disagree. I don't think of it in terms of entitlement, I think of it in terms of growth and competitiveness.
What I disagree with is "it's not a labor problem, it's a compensation problem" framing.
I think it IS a labor problem, and also a compensation problem. Compensation itself only solves for the local maxima.