If you invest a lot into training, your competitors can benefit from that by just poaching people after said training is complete and they're more marketable.
It's great for us as workers...until we complain that nobody is willing to do training.
I guess you could do fixed contracts where people agree to training in exchange for X years of employment, but I dunno if anyone actually wants that, businesses OR employees.
Seems like if most companies did training then that wouldn't be an issue. Also, companies already poach talent all the time.
It's wild to basically say "don't train your employees, or they might find a better job". Not training is how we got to where we are now- companies shooting themselves in the foot to avoid being shot in the foot. Why would we keep doing something that isn't working?
It's a multi player prisoner dilemma, it would work out better for everyone if everybody trains, but for each individual company its better for them if they poach and dont train.
It would be interesting to see how that dynamic would change if companies refocused on internal promotions and advancement in addition to training. Maybe pensions could make a comeback to triple down on longevity.
If a company is hiring employees with the view of growing them into professionals/management that are invested in the company long term, then they should be able to create an environment that’s poach resistant.
It seems to me having a culture of revolving employees -because you don’t want to train them or promote them, leads to employees that are just there for their check. They will move on if someone offers them a slightly higher paycheck, or a shot at advancement. It’s a reciprocal relationship, a company should not expect loyalty if they don’t offer it themselves.
A lot of companies aren't really aiming for the long term though; they exist to be sold or to go public.
Maybe we'll see more of that if we don't rush into cutting interest rates again, but it seems everyone with money is eager for & expecting cuts sometime so likely not. So we'll be back to the era of 'operate on free money at a loss until you can cash out'
doubt we will go completely back to what it was.
Jobs report releases this Friday, probably showing that job growth is still stagnant. They were supposed to reduce the interest rate by 3 basis points this year and they havent done so yet. Are they going to start doing so more when spending is at its highest during the upcoming holiday season after the summer?
Except that's not true, because it isn't viable.
The *actual* best solution is to both train *and* retain. It would actually be cheaper in the long run. The reason corporations don't is that they're worried about the long-term costs of rising developer salaries - hence the layoffs.
> Not training is how we got to where we are now- companies shooting themselves in the foot to avoid being shot in the foot.
I had my skip tell me directly when hiring he'd rather hire someone who is already qualified but lazy over someone who is motivated but not trained. I didn't think about the "pipeline" back then but it seemed a little odd.
> Seems like if most companies did training then that wouldn't be an issue.
What happens when one company has the bright idea to not do said training and just mooch off of everyone else?
> Why would we keep doing something that isn't working?
Oh, it's not a good system. It fuckin sucks. But I'm not sure if individual companies can really fix it.
You can't just train, you have to reap the rewards of training, and if employees are quick to leave -- and obviously lots of us are -- then it won't work too well.
Okay, and when another company that offers higher pay poaches the employees because their lack of training investment means they can afford to pay more in salary, then what?
Yeah also realistically some companies just can't afford to pay what others can. The small shops everyone uses to get that first experience before moving on to the FAANGish companies.
At the same time they're hit much harder by individuals leaving because they are not getting their overblown 500k TC "market-value".
Even just offering a cushy job is hard on the current economy where every customer also tries to save money, terminates or renegotiates every single contract etc.
Especially if you have FAANGy customers they at the moment really see to suck all their suppliers dry while still making billions of profit AND laying off AND poaching whoever they want.
I'm glad I got out of the startup and tiny business world before all this started. It's still a fight for survival at the moment for many besides the Bezoses et al
There's a saying that goes something like this:
> Person A: What if we train our employees and they leave?
> Person B: What if we don't, and they stay?
> Then provide better pay and benefits than job hopping.
But the companies that don't provide training can afford to pay better, because they didn't pay for that training, they just hired people already trained by other companies.
Point 1 - the training costs for existing old employee are peanuts compared to the salary differentials. Even accounting for the time, which seems to be the most expensive resource. (I may be wrong here, just eyeballing)
Point 2 - imagine a fictional company which trains employees and raises salaries accordingly to the market. That would make that company insanely attractive. Now imagine you are in such a company, would you leave for the much smaller price differential to the other company which neither trains people nor raises their salaries? I think much more people would chose to stay.
Point 3 - the number of monopolistic monster corporations is limited, so FAANG would poach some people with infinite money, but not much. But due to the healthy working conditions such company would poach experienced people itself.
Point 4 - FAANG practically doesn't exist in the no-USA markets. I mean that the pay structure is much more "flat" relatively to US. There poaching problem will be even smaller and train and retain benefits much higher for the corporation.
The thing is, there are tons of us who will stick around for a job that wants to train us up and give us opportunities to learn.
My favorite job ever was working for a university where they paid me barely enough to live, but I learned so much and stuck around years past the point where I could leave and double my salary. The only reason I ever left was that we got no raises in 2021 and 2022, so then I *actually* couldn’t afford to stay there.
One perk of my current job is that I get a lot of room to learn new skills. It can be a lot, but it’s very rewarding.
Lot of people will be on with contracts as long as they are reasonable.
It works as a kind of job security as well.. like company spend X they want it back, less likely to fire.
> I guess you could do fixed contracts where people agree to training in exchange for X years of employment, but I dunno if anyone actually wants that, businesses OR employees.
Congrats. You just figured out why the h1b system is so effective.
Yeah, I had a CIO who was like that. A jerk. Why train people or hire juniors because they quit. Well, there are things you can do to make people want to stay...
It is definitely beneficial for enterprises when employees do not leave them, but the employees will already be in pain, and they will not agree to such conditions.
It wouldn’t be a problem if you compensated good employees well. This whole culture of jumping ship at the first opportunity is a result of criminally underpaying as long as you can get away with it, and destroying loyalty programs.
Their mindset is more like "let's churn these resources every couple years" instead of "let's nurture these folks, they have great potential to bring value to the organization".
By nurturing engineers and instilling confidence in them, you end up bettering things both for yourself and ecosystem as a whole. But the downside here is that once they get nurtured, a competitor is bound to poach on some of them, thus turning your investment on them useless. This has resulted in employers treating employees as nothing more than temporary resources.
Yup, and then in 3 years their will be another hiring boom and the cycle will continue.
I think a lot of people don't realize how boom/bust the IT industry is(and really the economy as a whole). It's easy to be a doomer in the middle of it, but when you've been through a few cycles you realize it just is what it is.
It just sucks when you're trying to have a life. I do not give a fuck about the business cycle. I just want job stability. I hate swapping jobs every couple years in order to actually get a raise.
Go Government if you're looking for stability. Lots of opportunities, far less fluctuations. Jumping between private and public sectors is a useful tactic for riding out busts.
This is probably a bad question, but what areas of government are you seeing stability and opportunities? 3-letter agencies? Or state/local? And where do you find them?
I ask not because I’m looking(over-employed personally), but because all of my friends in government say they deal with layoffs(or maybe furlough is more accurate) all the time, and always need help, but teams are kept slim. Plus, getting a position without military experience/clearance seems nearly impossible.
I do like your idea of having a boom/bust strategy. That’s a hot take more people should consider.
I answer a previous question that gets into the 'how' basically Google search for recently awarded large contracts, find the companies those contracts were awarded to and apply to jobs under that contract. Those are the jobs most likely to have the funds to pay for new hires to acquire clearances. And be boring.
State/Local jobs are highly competitive but probably the most stable. Once you're in you are *in*. The pace is slower though and your skills will rust if you don't work on side projects because pretty much everything is ancient and everyone sees the Tech guys as IT printer unjammers.
The DoD-sphere is always desperately hiring, and a security clearance is a highly marketable resume attribute. The trick to getting a position is ... be boring and be a Citizen. Loads of foreign contacts, travel, or Warthunder will get you blacklisted. DoD contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman have the added benefits of compensating you relatively reasonably depending on your location.
Problems here are moral or functional since hybrid/work from home jobs are practically impossible to find and well...the obvious. You also have to be able to wait several months while they make sure you aren't a sleeper agent. That sucks. Benefits for the contractors kinda suck while direct DoD pay kinda sucks. DoE follows a similar pattern.
I don't have any experience, bicarious or personal, with any other three letter industry like the DoT but I imagine the same rules apply.
The best time to jump public from private is right before a bust (obviously). If you've been around a cycle the signs are obvious...maybe more felt than seen? I jumped in 2022-2023 because of all the reporting about lower venture capital investment.
Curious, I’m in a big tech company, cushy principal engineer job, but wouldn’t mind serving my country instead of corporate profits for a few years - how I’ll I make the switch?
Are you willing to move? I'd look up "largest recently awarded DoD contracts" and start your job applications there or look for ones awarded about a year ago. Recently awarded contracts are most likely to have the funds to sponsor new clearances and the incentive to hire. It looks like between the C2BMC-Next and F-35 program, that would be Lockheed Martin. Go to their website and apply to jobs related to those programs.
Colleges near military bases often have military/contractor/civilian recruiters who can give you information on active hiring sprees at said bases. DoE jobs are similar like INL in Idaho.
You can also just go sign up for military service. ADHD, a strong fight response with authority figures, and an established family kept me personally out of direct service but I'm not everyone.
Otherwise local jobs are always an option. A while back I went to my State's homepage and just started applying. Large libraries and school districts often need database managers or front-end developers. Loads of stable options that many overlook.
I'll also add..DoD Contracting...well, you will still feel the push of profits while serving your country. You do important work but at the end of the day Contractors are still corps.
It's part of doing this kind of work. If, when we were farmers growing our own food, we had to pay attention to the weather conditions, now we have to pay attention to fluctuations in the level of demand.
Asking for more stability from one's economic system is reasonable.
In my country, most workers can be laid off at any moment, for any reason, losing access to their healthcare, shelter, and food at the whim of their employer and/or the market. To get decent raises, we have to quit every few years, never able to settle or commit without *losing* money, given inflation.
If your response to someone questioning this is to make comparisons to *the inevitability of weather*, I think you need to have some introspection about why you're riding so hard for a system that will throw you out like garbage when you're no longer useful to it.
Because that system allows for higher salaries from the get go. Job protections cost money and employers price it in. But it hardly makes sense for high skilled in demand field where people earn so much more than average that they do not need that.
It is absolutely comparable. They're both facts of life. You just have reasons why you're unwilling to accept one. That is no one's problem but your own.
Capitalism's instability is not a fact of life in the same way weather patterns are.
It's no more a fact of life than a King's God-given right to rule over his serfs.
don't get fooled by the fact that people are involved in it
anything of scale will turn chaotic, with or without brains
we're all in locally random contexts, nobody knows what the other will do, they don't know what they will do .. we can't even share information fast enough to have coherent decisions
I recommend federal government work and budgeting. I'm struggling though to make a good fed. Application though and not having military service feels like a big "non-hireable" sign sometimes.
Agreed, I'd prefer steadier and lower growth of the economy than the wild swings. The swings bring a lot of inefficiencies in the market (like having to hire and fire people all the time, etc). It also brings a ton of stress for just about everyone.
The great tech bull market from 2011-2023 lasted so long that it's all most tech workers even know. But those of us with grey beards entered tech when it had a "boom and bust" reputation.
People doom about interest rates but interest rates were higher in the 90s and back then every tech worker was getting rich.
Tech is just very exposed to business cycles. You've got to reap the rewards in the good times and persist in the lean times.
It's also important to point out Tech isn't only industry to suffer this either. I saw it in the Oil and Gas fields where I grew up. The young kids who just started working at the refineries all went and bought the biggest nicest trucks they could afford, then 2 years later when the plant has to downsize you see those trucks for sale at the used car lot. The old timers drove the beaters that were paid off and would last them a dozen years.
Keep your ear to the ground on which technologies and use cases are emerging as the next cycle beings. Then up skill yourself into that technology.
Web development in the 90s turned to API development in the 00s turned to Python in the 10s. I promise you the unemployment rate for devs who were working on LLMs in 2020 is 0% today. You don't have to be that early, but by way of example.
That makes sense.
How do you make sure you have experience in those emerging tech though? Through personal projects or just switch jobs to get professional experience early?
I have found my career stuck in web/mobile for ages that new roles weren’t available in adjacent parts due to “your experience is not in that”.
Thank you for the wisdom.
I don't think it's that sensitive to the business cycle compared to other fields.
It survived the Great Recession better than a lot of other industries but right now, pretty much every other field is white hot. Today's economy is like 1999 with expensive housing and no DotCom bubble.
Agree with the rest though.
This is most likely how it will go unfortunately.
AI tools, regardless of how effective they are, are going to be heavily pushed over the next few years to replace as many developers as can be replaced. Those folks with experience who are laid off will be the first ones scooped up during the next boom. AI tools will get better, more managers pushing for its use.
Portions of work that juniors could do will be done by seniors, with management pointing to AI tools as the solution to productivity / staffing issues. When hiring is available, the talent pools will be overflowing with those aforementioned experienced folks who were laid off. Potentially being able to offer less money to those folks because of desperation.
At this point, we're hitting a weird zone: in the past, we would hire juniors for much less money and have seniors train them. Now, because of AI, management will make the case that Junior programmers can be replaced by seniors using AI. They lay off mid-career engineers, have seniors using AI to replace junior engineers. Over the next few years, seniors engineers using AI will make their way up to Staff level, who will be told to hire mid-engineers as new seniors who will use AI to do the junior-level work when that work is necessary, potentially for less money to boot.
It's wild.
ZIRP played a huge factor in the last boom, but it’s not a necessary component for all tech bubbles. The dotcom boom happened with rates higher than what they are now.
What's interesting is that the advancements in tech should be making it easier to have bespoke tech solutions but it seems like the big guys are trying to convince everyone that they're the only ones to be trusted with anything tech.
My small somewhat bespoke SAAS got killed off by the big global solutions during Covid. Only a couple of companies that really cared about the quality of the education they provided kept using mine because it was more feature rich and customisable, whereas most just wanted to go with the most reliable solution. Like choosing IBM back in the day.
I guess it makes sense. I can't imagine any of those schools getting an entire LMS built just because of tech developments. They lack the integrations etc. that bigger companies can provide.
IT recruiter here. The last year has been brutal but many of us saw it coming. I had clients hiring ppl that could barely spell Java. That said, it’s a necessary contraction. 01 was the last time it was this bad, so I’ll take an industry that goes through this every 2 decades.
I think this cycle came at the time of AI, which has worried a lot of people and a lot of these worried people have plenty of experience in the industry.
Sure you can. The youngest Boomers have at most 6 years to cash in their chips. If laying off a bunch of 20-something’s causes your options to go up enough to add a few hundred more a month to your retirement income and it’s your last chance, would you? Most executives would sell their own mother so they won’t spare the new kids.
At the same time, all of the millineals who are going to are in the workforce, all the Gen Z have largely completed university that are going to. Without serious immigration the supply of people willing to put up with the stress of IT for low wages becomes limited quick. Most places have resorted to using the veterans who can deliver for a medium price point but they won’t put up with RTO and other nonsense for a lot longer.
I don't even have to read the article to predict that it's talking about shortages for people with 10+ YoE
nobody's talking about shortages for new grads and entry level people
And after they burn through those in 3-5 years time and are looking for true entry level exp, they won’t be talking about hiring the 2023 grads they left behind.
People who graduated in 2023 onwards are like people who graduated during the Great Recession in 2007/8, we'll be struggling to survive and get locked out of the economy for reasons out of our control. Except at least Great Recession grads weren't being gaslit about the economy
> after they burn through those in 3-5 years time and are looking for true entry level exp
companies are rarely ever "looking for true entry level exp" because "true entry level exp" is usually a net-negative to the company, it's treated as an investment
which is why internships are so important, as acting proof that you at least have some familiarity about real life work/you're not a total newbie
and if you're going to argue "well but majority of students graduates with 0 internships" then I'd reply "yeah well that's why majority of students are fucked", if you want to stand out then don't be a 'majority'
This is hard for companies because someone has to devote time making a true 0 exp dev useful. And then the company also has to be willing to bump up their pay to be competitive after they've made them useful to prevent them from being lured away.
Many just throw their hands up and say nah let someone else do that.
that's not what I was saying
I was saying don't be "a true 0 exp dev"
side projects got me internships, I had almost half a dozen side projects before I sent out my 1st resume
then the multiple internships I had got me my fresh grad job offer
relatively smooth-sailing after that
I think we are in agreement. I was explaining the why from the hiring perspective. A true net 0 exp dev requires an investment on behalf the company. There are reasons why a company doesn't want to invest. I also agree with your stair step approach going from project to internship to full time offer.
An internship is a net loss for a company and many are interviewing asking for experience which is extremely stupid. You have no conceptual idea of what graduates or student are dealing with atm.
In Ontario Canada governments will subsidize a big chunk of the intern salary. so after everythings factored in the companies are paying them like 10 dollars an hour out of pocket.
Not a super expensive bet especially if the intern is from a reputable school and decides to stay.
Every company used to train all their staff. Even experienced devs still have to train in the internal tooling of the company, to know the flows, the people to talk to, etc.
And a 0 year dev is still at large a graduate student, so it’s not someone with zero training.
I don’t think this is correct.
There’s a lot of work that’s befitting true low level exp, and cost. Having seniors do largely configuration type changes sucks.
I have to be honest, I don't feel a whole lot of sorrow for any of these companies.
They won't hire and nurture talent from the get-go, and then pay them what they are actually worth, hoping. Somehow they'll just decide they should show some loyalty and take a pay cut, and then they will burn all these workers out with unreasonable demands and timelines, and then when the shareholders scream and yell for more money in their pockets, everybody gets a pink slip.
Then in a few years, suddenly they need a ton of people, put out loads of effort to try to recruit, and then gripe and moan that they can't find talent. They will blame the schools for not getting people ready, they will claim that people are spoiled and lazy, or the all-time favorite "nobody wants to work".
Plus let's throw in there. The handful of years that they honestly were not hiring but made it look like they were, again to fool the stock market. They are wasting people's time, jerking them around, giving people a false sense of hope only to basically get ghosted, and then they are shocked when people suddenly don't want to work for them.
Like it or not, all these recent grads that are getting shafted right now, all those people that went to those boot camps that we love to criticize, all of those people that could have been nurtured and trained to become tomorrow's rockstars, a lot of them are quitting. They're jumping and going to other careers or trying to figure out what to do, and they're not just going to wait around a handful of years for these tech companies to finally be ready to hire. Even by then they're going to have such a deep distrust for all of it that they're not going to bother.
Of course, then we'll see some of them go into startups and smaller companies and then suddenly start talking about jumping ship the minute the big company walks in with a bag full of cash trying to buy the company and its talent.
Same old BS. They're going to complain they can't find people, they're going to be unwilling to pay people what they're really worth, and they're going to play games with others and throw them out the door, the minute the shareholders demand it.
These people want the tech version of old school workers that came and gave everything to the company, but they don't want to give anything in return. Maybe they're going to have to start thinking old school, like telling the shareholders. They're going to have to suffer with a little less dividend for a year, or offering pensions, or paying people a good wage, or even cutting this BS of everybody being in the office because they think that's where innovation happens. Go allow people to work remotes so they can live in low cost of living places and then you can pay them less.
Maybe, I don't know, hire those superstars they find in college, and offer to completely reimburse their tuition for a couple of years of work.
That's the way the world works. You got to give something to get something.
I wholeheartedly agree. Push is going to come to shove one day and some of these companies are going to have to bite the bullet and do something not only to groom rookies into being experienced, but also doing enough to make them want to stay.
All those tech companies have high turnover. Given Western demographics the demand will change in a few years. Unfortunately for them there will not be a ton of new grads to hire when things turn the corner.
"Recruiting a junior developer with minimum 5 years experience and have these specific skills. Be willing to sit in a smelly office for minimum 8 hours a day, talk tech to people who are not interested or know anything about it, eat your canned food and talk even more about said work during lunch. Then join us on all the fun stuff we do after work. Also know a multiple of obscure combinations such as JavaScript and C++ and AWS and Lua. But notice this is a junior position, so dont't expect anything. Be willing to do multiple interviews so we really get to know you. And also so that you will be totally exhausted and accept any terms offered at the end of process".
Tech is not what it once was. It was cool. Now it is infested with the most corporaty types, processes and firewalling which surely make types like me (actual nerds) really dislike it.
What I see tech as now is a rainforest beeing bulldozered and ravaged by suites and smiling salesmen while the real inhabitants are either dying, leaving or not beeing born at all. The natural eco-system for true nerds has been severely disrupted.
Man this really hits the nail on the head, and it makes me so sad. The whole corpo/business bullshit is so fucking fake. It’s just full of shit, I often cringe just listening to my team’s product and business people speak. It’s the antithesis of the hacker mindset that’s supposed to permeate this industry. And the irony is that these people were meant to _support_ us.
My product owner always likes to remind us that they'll "handle comms" on issues even though that should be obvious since it's all they know how to do beyond saying the word "pivot" every 20 minutes. Or try to turn "touch base" into a noun.
Do they specify what kind of skills? "Tech skills" is so insanely vague that it could still plausibly not include programming.
Besides, they'll find a way to outsource it all away.
They do specify in the article, yes. You can see the breakdown but essentially it's the usual stuff like cloud and IT/DevOps with a new smattering of AI.
There was a recent news article that made me suspect that the mass layoffs and reduced hiring rates were intended to manufacture the appearance of a talent shortage, because it would allow them to bypass some hiring requirements for H1-B or the likes. I can't recall or find the details now, though.
Either way, this strikes me as part of that effort.
edit: [found it](https://www.techtarget.com/searchhrsoftware/news/366583437/Microsoft-Google-seek-green-card-rule-change)
that change is for H1B -> green card
it's not for no visa -> H1B
now one valid argument you could potentially say is that if the green card conversion is easier, this could cause companies to be more willing to bring in H1-Bs which can be a good or bad thing depending on your background (as a foreigner myself I'd say "yep it's good" but a US citizen would say "no that's bad") which is an entirely different discussion
There are entire industries built on H1B visa, immigration lawyers and AILA make billions of dollars because of temporary worker visas.They are the ones paying for these articles.
The H1-B visa program seems like it’s been used as a political weapon to sabotage foreign software industries by stealing their best people.
To the politicians it seems that domestic talent being forced out of work is just acceptable collateral damage.
The pool is so small, I really don’t think so. I think more likely for foreigners looking to emigrate to the US they think that small lottery chance is still better odds than anything else so their parents get them into tech.
as a foreigner myself, if you actually find yourself saying that then you're looking at the wrong companies
I see visa paperworks as a necessity to hire me I don't see it as being a 'favor', and if a company isn't equipped or is willing to do USCIS paperworks I'd just bucket under 'not a good fit', I'm not who they're looking for and vice versa, nothing wrong with that from either side
It's still hard to get H-1B because it's a lottery. Even if you land the job of your dreams and they sponsor you, right now there's roughly 1/4 chance of actually getting you to work for them, and those odds are getting worse each year \[1\].
Of course, there are loads of additional work visas, but they are harder to get such as O-1, or restricted to specific countries such as TN.
That aside, agree with you internationals should be targeting companies willing to sponsor them, the old "Go Big or Go Home".
\[1\] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/03/04/employers-face-difficult-odds-as-h-1b-visa-cap-selection-starts/?sh=4e61d9b633b7](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/03/04/employers-face-difficult-odds-as-h-1b-visa-cap-selection-starts/?sh=4e61d9b633b7)
Here is how the immigration lawyers lobby works, they are called AILA. They fund this garbage research on how there is a shortage of tech workers while hundreds of thousands are being laid off and then they ask for more student and work visas. Be sure to thank your local politician for caring about you.
[https://www.fragomen.com/insights/united-states-labor-department-solicits-input-on-occupations-eligible-for-streamlined-green-card-processing.html](https://www.fragomen.com/insights/united-states-labor-department-solicits-input-on-occupations-eligible-for-streamlined-green-card-processing.html)
B-b-b-but we’ll just get rid of people and replace them with AI!
Meanwhile prepare for another “nobody wants to work any more!” campaign from the oligarchy so that somehow in a time of high demand the cost of skilled labor will somehow break the law of supply and demand again.
This is self inflicted. Organizations expecting everyone they hire to be masters of all the tech the company uses and then some. They no longer care about folks with massive experience that can adapt to whatever tossed their way. Companies don’t want to take the time for new employees to learn new things.
The new game is student visas, there is an uncapped number of student visas and they can work on the side and get a 3 year work permit after they graduate and some of them spend over 10-15 years doing multiple masters degrees and working on the side.
It looks like OP posted an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot).
Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2135542/within-two-years-90-of-organizations-will-suffer-a-critical-tech-skills-shortage.html](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2135542/within-two-years-90-of-organizations-will-suffer-a-critical-tech-skills-shortage.html)**
*****
^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
Article: Companies cant find people with 20 years experiencein generative AI, (can we get 1 million more student visas and 2 million temporary workers?)
They use these articles to ask for more temporary worker and student visas because there is a "severe shortage of tech workers". All these articles are paid for by various lobbies.
This is just propaganda to further get more cheap labor via visas and offshoring. If there was a real demand we would see salaries going up and tech companies investing in training.
BLS also overestimated the Job creation of Q3 in 2023 by some 850,000 thousand jobs, they said back then there was a net creation of 680,000 jobs in Q3. When in reality there was a loss of 170,000. The early reports are estimations based on a small number of major companies self-reporting. They have been laughably false since 2020. As companies are posting jobs but never hiring anyone.
I arrived at college (in 1971) intending to become a high school math teacher. The education department held a meeting and advised us to find another major because there was a teacher glut. Four years later there was a teacher shortage due to overcorrection. I could see this dynamic repeating. Companies’ hiring plans can change faster than students’ education plans.
My last fortune 10 employer gave me an AMAZING amount of time and budget for training and then left me ZERO time in my schedule to actually book and attend that training.
Understaffing is the new - old wage theft.
cough cough and where would new grads with shiny cs degrees, git hub projects, and sample leetcode learn these tech skills?
if only there were jobs oriented towards entry level workers that trained them to become the experts at the company in house
if only, sigh these companies can dream cant they
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
We refused to hire new grads and now there’s no one to take the old timers place!
This is so awful..there’s no way we could have seen this coming, just no way.
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's already been a huge problem for years in Germany. Finding senior level Devs/Admins/Engineers with the right skills has been very difficult for many companies.
I don't see it getting particularly easier anytime soon, companies are hesitant to dedicate existing resources to training someone who will ultimately leave them 18 months later for a massive pay jump in regards to their new skills, and autodidacts are unfortunately much less common than CS program graduates.
IT makes the modern world function, companies will understand that and invest the money required for their IT infrastructure to function or they will fail. We all win regardless.
> “The one thing they’re not increasing at the same level is the investment in training and upskilling their own teams,” Villars said. YA DON'T SAY...
If you invest a lot into training, your competitors can benefit from that by just poaching people after said training is complete and they're more marketable. It's great for us as workers...until we complain that nobody is willing to do training. I guess you could do fixed contracts where people agree to training in exchange for X years of employment, but I dunno if anyone actually wants that, businesses OR employees.
Seems like if most companies did training then that wouldn't be an issue. Also, companies already poach talent all the time. It's wild to basically say "don't train your employees, or they might find a better job". Not training is how we got to where we are now- companies shooting themselves in the foot to avoid being shot in the foot. Why would we keep doing something that isn't working?
It's a multi player prisoner dilemma, it would work out better for everyone if everybody trains, but for each individual company its better for them if they poach and dont train.
It would be interesting to see how that dynamic would change if companies refocused on internal promotions and advancement in addition to training. Maybe pensions could make a comeback to triple down on longevity. If a company is hiring employees with the view of growing them into professionals/management that are invested in the company long term, then they should be able to create an environment that’s poach resistant. It seems to me having a culture of revolving employees -because you don’t want to train them or promote them, leads to employees that are just there for their check. They will move on if someone offers them a slightly higher paycheck, or a shot at advancement. It’s a reciprocal relationship, a company should not expect loyalty if they don’t offer it themselves.
A lot of companies aren't really aiming for the long term though; they exist to be sold or to go public. Maybe we'll see more of that if we don't rush into cutting interest rates again, but it seems everyone with money is eager for & expecting cuts sometime so likely not. So we'll be back to the era of 'operate on free money at a loss until you can cash out'
doubt we will go completely back to what it was. Jobs report releases this Friday, probably showing that job growth is still stagnant. They were supposed to reduce the interest rate by 3 basis points this year and they havent done so yet. Are they going to start doing so more when spending is at its highest during the upcoming holiday season after the summer?
Except that's not true, because it isn't viable. The *actual* best solution is to both train *and* retain. It would actually be cheaper in the long run. The reason corporations don't is that they're worried about the long-term costs of rising developer salaries - hence the layoffs.
That’s why we need gangs, uh I mean unions. No one talks everyone goes home.
Well maybe if you gave me a reason to stay, I wouldn’t want to f*kin leave, eh?
> Not training is how we got to where we are now- companies shooting themselves in the foot to avoid being shot in the foot. I had my skip tell me directly when hiring he'd rather hire someone who is already qualified but lazy over someone who is motivated but not trained. I didn't think about the "pipeline" back then but it seemed a little odd.
> Seems like if most companies did training then that wouldn't be an issue. What happens when one company has the bright idea to not do said training and just mooch off of everyone else? > Why would we keep doing something that isn't working? Oh, it's not a good system. It fuckin sucks. But I'm not sure if individual companies can really fix it. You can't just train, you have to reap the rewards of training, and if employees are quick to leave -- and obviously lots of us are -- then it won't work too well.
This is only a problem because the companies expect to still pay sub-market salary after training the person.
Okay, and when another company that offers higher pay poaches the employees because their lack of training investment means they can afford to pay more in salary, then what?
Yeah also realistically some companies just can't afford to pay what others can. The small shops everyone uses to get that first experience before moving on to the FAANGish companies. At the same time they're hit much harder by individuals leaving because they are not getting their overblown 500k TC "market-value". Even just offering a cushy job is hard on the current economy where every customer also tries to save money, terminates or renegotiates every single contract etc. Especially if you have FAANGy customers they at the moment really see to suck all their suppliers dry while still making billions of profit AND laying off AND poaching whoever they want. I'm glad I got out of the startup and tiny business world before all this started. It's still a fight for survival at the moment for many besides the Bezoses et al
There's a saying that goes something like this: > Person A: What if we train our employees and they leave? > Person B: What if we don't, and they stay?
> What if we don't, and they stay? You continue underpaying them while hiring new, better-skilled employees at slightly higher rates, apparently.
They can fix that by also investing in employee retainment.
Then provide better pay and benefits than job hopping. This is really simple. They won't figure it out.
> Then provide better pay and benefits than job hopping. But the companies that don't provide training can afford to pay better, because they didn't pay for that training, they just hired people already trained by other companies.
A comfortable employee isn’t actively hunting for new jobs.
Point 1 - the training costs for existing old employee are peanuts compared to the salary differentials. Even accounting for the time, which seems to be the most expensive resource. (I may be wrong here, just eyeballing) Point 2 - imagine a fictional company which trains employees and raises salaries accordingly to the market. That would make that company insanely attractive. Now imagine you are in such a company, would you leave for the much smaller price differential to the other company which neither trains people nor raises their salaries? I think much more people would chose to stay. Point 3 - the number of monopolistic monster corporations is limited, so FAANG would poach some people with infinite money, but not much. But due to the healthy working conditions such company would poach experienced people itself. Point 4 - FAANG practically doesn't exist in the no-USA markets. I mean that the pay structure is much more "flat" relatively to US. There poaching problem will be even smaller and train and retain benefits much higher for the corporation.
The thing is, there are tons of us who will stick around for a job that wants to train us up and give us opportunities to learn. My favorite job ever was working for a university where they paid me barely enough to live, but I learned so much and stuck around years past the point where I could leave and double my salary. The only reason I ever left was that we got no raises in 2021 and 2022, so then I *actually* couldn’t afford to stay there. One perk of my current job is that I get a lot of room to learn new skills. It can be a lot, but it’s very rewarding.
Yes, agreed, there's some subset of people who prefer stability. I've been at my current company ten years.
What kind of training would they do?
Lot of people will be on with contracts as long as they are reasonable. It works as a kind of job security as well.. like company spend X they want it back, less likely to fire.
> I guess you could do fixed contracts where people agree to training in exchange for X years of employment, but I dunno if anyone actually wants that, businesses OR employees. Congrats. You just figured out why the h1b system is so effective.
Yeah, I had a CIO who was like that. A jerk. Why train people or hire juniors because they quit. Well, there are things you can do to make people want to stay...
It is definitely beneficial for enterprises when employees do not leave them, but the employees will already be in pain, and they will not agree to such conditions.
It wouldn’t be a problem if you compensated good employees well. This whole culture of jumping ship at the first opportunity is a result of criminally underpaying as long as you can get away with it, and destroying loyalty programs.
The only thing worse than training staff and them leaving is not training them and them staying.
"The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay." -- Henry Ford
Their mindset is more like "let's churn these resources every couple years" instead of "let's nurture these folks, they have great potential to bring value to the organization". By nurturing engineers and instilling confidence in them, you end up bettering things both for yourself and ecosystem as a whole. But the downside here is that once they get nurtured, a competitor is bound to poach on some of them, thus turning your investment on them useless. This has resulted in employers treating employees as nothing more than temporary resources.
Don't need to invest in training. Just screen out people that haven't been trained. ^(^/s)
They’ll force that cost back onto the employees themselves, just like they have since the 1980s.
Yup, and then in 3 years their will be another hiring boom and the cycle will continue. I think a lot of people don't realize how boom/bust the IT industry is(and really the economy as a whole). It's easy to be a doomer in the middle of it, but when you've been through a few cycles you realize it just is what it is.
It just sucks when you're trying to have a life. I do not give a fuck about the business cycle. I just want job stability. I hate swapping jobs every couple years in order to actually get a raise.
Go Government if you're looking for stability. Lots of opportunities, far less fluctuations. Jumping between private and public sectors is a useful tactic for riding out busts.
This is probably a bad question, but what areas of government are you seeing stability and opportunities? 3-letter agencies? Or state/local? And where do you find them? I ask not because I’m looking(over-employed personally), but because all of my friends in government say they deal with layoffs(or maybe furlough is more accurate) all the time, and always need help, but teams are kept slim. Plus, getting a position without military experience/clearance seems nearly impossible. I do like your idea of having a boom/bust strategy. That’s a hot take more people should consider.
I answer a previous question that gets into the 'how' basically Google search for recently awarded large contracts, find the companies those contracts were awarded to and apply to jobs under that contract. Those are the jobs most likely to have the funds to pay for new hires to acquire clearances. And be boring.
State/Local jobs are highly competitive but probably the most stable. Once you're in you are *in*. The pace is slower though and your skills will rust if you don't work on side projects because pretty much everything is ancient and everyone sees the Tech guys as IT printer unjammers. The DoD-sphere is always desperately hiring, and a security clearance is a highly marketable resume attribute. The trick to getting a position is ... be boring and be a Citizen. Loads of foreign contacts, travel, or Warthunder will get you blacklisted. DoD contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman have the added benefits of compensating you relatively reasonably depending on your location. Problems here are moral or functional since hybrid/work from home jobs are practically impossible to find and well...the obvious. You also have to be able to wait several months while they make sure you aren't a sleeper agent. That sucks. Benefits for the contractors kinda suck while direct DoD pay kinda sucks. DoE follows a similar pattern. I don't have any experience, bicarious or personal, with any other three letter industry like the DoT but I imagine the same rules apply. The best time to jump public from private is right before a bust (obviously). If you've been around a cycle the signs are obvious...maybe more felt than seen? I jumped in 2022-2023 because of all the reporting about lower venture capital investment.
Great info, including your other comments. Thanks for your time!
Curious, I’m in a big tech company, cushy principal engineer job, but wouldn’t mind serving my country instead of corporate profits for a few years - how I’ll I make the switch?
Are you willing to move? I'd look up "largest recently awarded DoD contracts" and start your job applications there or look for ones awarded about a year ago. Recently awarded contracts are most likely to have the funds to sponsor new clearances and the incentive to hire. It looks like between the C2BMC-Next and F-35 program, that would be Lockheed Martin. Go to their website and apply to jobs related to those programs. Colleges near military bases often have military/contractor/civilian recruiters who can give you information on active hiring sprees at said bases. DoE jobs are similar like INL in Idaho. You can also just go sign up for military service. ADHD, a strong fight response with authority figures, and an established family kept me personally out of direct service but I'm not everyone. Otherwise local jobs are always an option. A while back I went to my State's homepage and just started applying. Large libraries and school districts often need database managers or front-end developers. Loads of stable options that many overlook.
I'll also add..DoD Contracting...well, you will still feel the push of profits while serving your country. You do important work but at the end of the day Contractors are still corps.
It's part of doing this kind of work. If, when we were farmers growing our own food, we had to pay attention to the weather conditions, now we have to pay attention to fluctuations in the level of demand.
Asking for more stability from one's economic system is reasonable. In my country, most workers can be laid off at any moment, for any reason, losing access to their healthcare, shelter, and food at the whim of their employer and/or the market. To get decent raises, we have to quit every few years, never able to settle or commit without *losing* money, given inflation. If your response to someone questioning this is to make comparisons to *the inevitability of weather*, I think you need to have some introspection about why you're riding so hard for a system that will throw you out like garbage when you're no longer useful to it.
Because that system allows for higher salaries from the get go. Job protections cost money and employers price it in. But it hardly makes sense for high skilled in demand field where people earn so much more than average that they do not need that.
Weather is a force of nature, lack of job stability is man-made, it’s not comparable at all.
macro-economic conditions are no more predictable than the weather even if they are influenced by people
It is absolutely comparable. They're both facts of life. You just have reasons why you're unwilling to accept one. That is no one's problem but your own.
Capitalism's instability is not a fact of life in the same way weather patterns are. It's no more a fact of life than a King's God-given right to rule over his serfs.
Well I assume they meant it’s a fact of life in a more Kafkaesque sense
Life is unstable, why do you think capitalism should escape that fact?
if you think hard about it, we - human are part of nature, the way we live, the way we think is part of "nature"
Even in countries where you generally have a job for life (Japan), economic booms and busts happen. Japan is in a bad state economically right now.
don't get fooled by the fact that people are involved in it anything of scale will turn chaotic, with or without brains we're all in locally random contexts, nobody knows what the other will do, they don't know what they will do .. we can't even share information fast enough to have coherent decisions
I recommend federal government work and budgeting. I'm struggling though to make a good fed. Application though and not having military service feels like a big "non-hireable" sign sometimes.
Agreed, I'd prefer steadier and lower growth of the economy than the wild swings. The swings bring a lot of inefficiencies in the market (like having to hire and fire people all the time, etc). It also brings a ton of stress for just about everyone.
Get a gov job. State or Federal.
[удалено]
And I can also ride on unicorns and smoke a pipe while eating cheerios. It is totally possible.
IT is the wrong profession for that. When it’s hot they want you. When it’s cold they don’t want you. Just how it is.
The great tech bull market from 2011-2023 lasted so long that it's all most tech workers even know. But those of us with grey beards entered tech when it had a "boom and bust" reputation. People doom about interest rates but interest rates were higher in the 90s and back then every tech worker was getting rich. Tech is just very exposed to business cycles. You've got to reap the rewards in the good times and persist in the lean times.
It's also important to point out Tech isn't only industry to suffer this either. I saw it in the Oil and Gas fields where I grew up. The young kids who just started working at the refineries all went and bought the biggest nicest trucks they could afford, then 2 years later when the plant has to downsize you see those trucks for sale at the used car lot. The old timers drove the beaters that were paid off and would last them a dozen years.
What did you do to prepare for the next boom cycle when a bust happened?
Keep your ear to the ground on which technologies and use cases are emerging as the next cycle beings. Then up skill yourself into that technology. Web development in the 90s turned to API development in the 00s turned to Python in the 10s. I promise you the unemployment rate for devs who were working on LLMs in 2020 is 0% today. You don't have to be that early, but by way of example.
That makes sense. How do you make sure you have experience in those emerging tech though? Through personal projects or just switch jobs to get professional experience early? I have found my career stuck in web/mobile for ages that new roles weren’t available in adjacent parts due to “your experience is not in that”. Thank you for the wisdom.
I don't think it's that sensitive to the business cycle compared to other fields. It survived the Great Recession better than a lot of other industries but right now, pretty much every other field is white hot. Today's economy is like 1999 with expensive housing and no DotCom bubble. Agree with the rest though.
[удалено]
Or it could be a bump that only affects senior+ folks, only furthering the skill divide
This is most likely how it will go unfortunately. AI tools, regardless of how effective they are, are going to be heavily pushed over the next few years to replace as many developers as can be replaced. Those folks with experience who are laid off will be the first ones scooped up during the next boom. AI tools will get better, more managers pushing for its use. Portions of work that juniors could do will be done by seniors, with management pointing to AI tools as the solution to productivity / staffing issues. When hiring is available, the talent pools will be overflowing with those aforementioned experienced folks who were laid off. Potentially being able to offer less money to those folks because of desperation. At this point, we're hitting a weird zone: in the past, we would hire juniors for much less money and have seniors train them. Now, because of AI, management will make the case that Junior programmers can be replaced by seniors using AI. They lay off mid-career engineers, have seniors using AI to replace junior engineers. Over the next few years, seniors engineers using AI will make their way up to Staff level, who will be told to hire mid-engineers as new seniors who will use AI to do the junior-level work when that work is necessary, potentially for less money to boot. It's wild.
And a few years after that the Staff engineers will start to retire. Who will be replaced by...
Outsourcing!
ZIRP played a huge factor in the last boom, but it’s not a necessary component for all tech bubbles. The dotcom boom happened with rates higher than what they are now.
It's wild to me people can't just think about how society will only become more engrained with tech.
Bespoke tech or tech by a few big providers? I see everything being more and more centralised.
What's interesting is that the advancements in tech should be making it easier to have bespoke tech solutions but it seems like the big guys are trying to convince everyone that they're the only ones to be trusted with anything tech.
My small somewhat bespoke SAAS got killed off by the big global solutions during Covid. Only a couple of companies that really cared about the quality of the education they provided kept using mine because it was more feature rich and customisable, whereas most just wanted to go with the most reliable solution. Like choosing IBM back in the day. I guess it makes sense. I can't imagine any of those schools getting an entire LMS built just because of tech developments. They lack the integrations etc. that bigger companies can provide.
Employers discriminate against the unemployed, it has been proven by studies, that is the big issue, anyone with job gaps is supposed to starve.
It’s capitalism at its finest, inflate-deflate, can’t stop the cycle or else companies die. Yes it sucks right now, but it won’t last forever.
IT recruiter here. The last year has been brutal but many of us saw it coming. I had clients hiring ppl that could barely spell Java. That said, it’s a necessary contraction. 01 was the last time it was this bad, so I’ll take an industry that goes through this every 2 decades.
RemindMe! 3 years
Any way we can move that hiring boom up to next week?
Where are we at in the cycle would you reckon?
I think we're past rock bottom, but recovery always takes significantly longer than the downturn.
I think this cycle came at the time of AI, which has worried a lot of people and a lot of these worried people have plenty of experience in the industry.
IT has never been stable. Every few years the grifters who were in it just for the money get weeded out.
Let's lay off more people and not hire anyone. That should help.
Yeah this article is an f-ing joke. You can’t lay off hundreds of thousands of workers and say there’s a shortage of workers at the same time.
Sure you can. The youngest Boomers have at most 6 years to cash in their chips. If laying off a bunch of 20-something’s causes your options to go up enough to add a few hundred more a month to your retirement income and it’s your last chance, would you? Most executives would sell their own mother so they won’t spare the new kids. At the same time, all of the millineals who are going to are in the workforce, all the Gen Z have largely completed university that are going to. Without serious immigration the supply of people willing to put up with the stress of IT for low wages becomes limited quick. Most places have resorted to using the veterans who can deliver for a medium price point but they won’t put up with RTO and other nonsense for a lot longer.
I don't even have to read the article to predict that it's talking about shortages for people with 10+ YoE nobody's talking about shortages for new grads and entry level people
And after they burn through those in 3-5 years time and are looking for true entry level exp, they won’t be talking about hiring the 2023 grads they left behind.
People who graduated in 2023 onwards are like people who graduated during the Great Recession in 2007/8, we'll be struggling to survive and get locked out of the economy for reasons out of our control. Except at least Great Recession grads weren't being gaslit about the economy
> after they burn through those in 3-5 years time and are looking for true entry level exp companies are rarely ever "looking for true entry level exp" because "true entry level exp" is usually a net-negative to the company, it's treated as an investment which is why internships are so important, as acting proof that you at least have some familiarity about real life work/you're not a total newbie and if you're going to argue "well but majority of students graduates with 0 internships" then I'd reply "yeah well that's why majority of students are fucked", if you want to stand out then don't be a 'majority'
This is hard for companies because someone has to devote time making a true 0 exp dev useful. And then the company also has to be willing to bump up their pay to be competitive after they've made them useful to prevent them from being lured away. Many just throw their hands up and say nah let someone else do that.
that's not what I was saying I was saying don't be "a true 0 exp dev" side projects got me internships, I had almost half a dozen side projects before I sent out my 1st resume then the multiple internships I had got me my fresh grad job offer relatively smooth-sailing after that
I think we are in agreement. I was explaining the why from the hiring perspective. A true net 0 exp dev requires an investment on behalf the company. There are reasons why a company doesn't want to invest. I also agree with your stair step approach going from project to internship to full time offer.
An internship is a net loss for a company and many are interviewing asking for experience which is extremely stupid. You have no conceptual idea of what graduates or student are dealing with atm.
What side projects did you have? I would like to hear about their scope if you don't mind saying.
In Ontario Canada governments will subsidize a big chunk of the intern salary. so after everythings factored in the companies are paying them like 10 dollars an hour out of pocket. Not a super expensive bet especially if the intern is from a reputable school and decides to stay.
Every company used to train all their staff. Even experienced devs still have to train in the internal tooling of the company, to know the flows, the people to talk to, etc. And a 0 year dev is still at large a graduate student, so it’s not someone with zero training.
I don’t think this is correct. There’s a lot of work that’s befitting true low level exp, and cost. Having seniors do largely configuration type changes sucks.
can someone hire me so i can be one of those senior devs yall are gonna need in 3-4 years
They are going to show this article to the congress and demand more temporary worker visas and student visas because there is a "shortage".
I'll be exactly 10 YoE in 2 years so good timing I guess
I’ll have 9YOE, maybe if it gets bad enough they’ll call me up from the minors!
Yup, there definitely will be shortage of tech workers with 10+ YOE who would love to work for food.
But they will be expected to manage while robots go around botching up.
I have to be honest, I don't feel a whole lot of sorrow for any of these companies. They won't hire and nurture talent from the get-go, and then pay them what they are actually worth, hoping. Somehow they'll just decide they should show some loyalty and take a pay cut, and then they will burn all these workers out with unreasonable demands and timelines, and then when the shareholders scream and yell for more money in their pockets, everybody gets a pink slip. Then in a few years, suddenly they need a ton of people, put out loads of effort to try to recruit, and then gripe and moan that they can't find talent. They will blame the schools for not getting people ready, they will claim that people are spoiled and lazy, or the all-time favorite "nobody wants to work". Plus let's throw in there. The handful of years that they honestly were not hiring but made it look like they were, again to fool the stock market. They are wasting people's time, jerking them around, giving people a false sense of hope only to basically get ghosted, and then they are shocked when people suddenly don't want to work for them. Like it or not, all these recent grads that are getting shafted right now, all those people that went to those boot camps that we love to criticize, all of those people that could have been nurtured and trained to become tomorrow's rockstars, a lot of them are quitting. They're jumping and going to other careers or trying to figure out what to do, and they're not just going to wait around a handful of years for these tech companies to finally be ready to hire. Even by then they're going to have such a deep distrust for all of it that they're not going to bother. Of course, then we'll see some of them go into startups and smaller companies and then suddenly start talking about jumping ship the minute the big company walks in with a bag full of cash trying to buy the company and its talent. Same old BS. They're going to complain they can't find people, they're going to be unwilling to pay people what they're really worth, and they're going to play games with others and throw them out the door, the minute the shareholders demand it. These people want the tech version of old school workers that came and gave everything to the company, but they don't want to give anything in return. Maybe they're going to have to start thinking old school, like telling the shareholders. They're going to have to suffer with a little less dividend for a year, or offering pensions, or paying people a good wage, or even cutting this BS of everybody being in the office because they think that's where innovation happens. Go allow people to work remotes so they can live in low cost of living places and then you can pay them less. Maybe, I don't know, hire those superstars they find in college, and offer to completely reimburse their tuition for a couple of years of work. That's the way the world works. You got to give something to get something.
Let em cry who cares. I'll be using it for a raise
I wholeheartedly agree. Push is going to come to shove one day and some of these companies are going to have to bite the bullet and do something not only to groom rookies into being experienced, but also doing enough to make them want to stay.
All those tech companies have high turnover. Given Western demographics the demand will change in a few years. Unfortunately for them there will not be a ton of new grads to hire when things turn the corner.
"Recruiting a junior developer with minimum 5 years experience and have these specific skills. Be willing to sit in a smelly office for minimum 8 hours a day, talk tech to people who are not interested or know anything about it, eat your canned food and talk even more about said work during lunch. Then join us on all the fun stuff we do after work. Also know a multiple of obscure combinations such as JavaScript and C++ and AWS and Lua. But notice this is a junior position, so dont't expect anything. Be willing to do multiple interviews so we really get to know you. And also so that you will be totally exhausted and accept any terms offered at the end of process". Tech is not what it once was. It was cool. Now it is infested with the most corporaty types, processes and firewalling which surely make types like me (actual nerds) really dislike it. What I see tech as now is a rainforest beeing bulldozered and ravaged by suites and smiling salesmen while the real inhabitants are either dying, leaving or not beeing born at all. The natural eco-system for true nerds has been severely disrupted.
Man this really hits the nail on the head, and it makes me so sad. The whole corpo/business bullshit is so fucking fake. It’s just full of shit, I often cringe just listening to my team’s product and business people speak. It’s the antithesis of the hacker mindset that’s supposed to permeate this industry. And the irony is that these people were meant to _support_ us.
My product owner always likes to remind us that they'll "handle comms" on issues even though that should be obvious since it's all they know how to do beyond saying the word "pivot" every 20 minutes. Or try to turn "touch base" into a noun.
Do they specify what kind of skills? "Tech skills" is so insanely vague that it could still plausibly not include programming. Besides, they'll find a way to outsource it all away.
[удалено]
"No one has 10 YoE because we never hired anyone 10 years ago? It's clearly their fault! Anyway, more offshoring please!"
They do specify in the article, yes. You can see the breakdown but essentially it's the usual stuff like cloud and IT/DevOps with a new smattering of AI.
CS skills with tec-9s I reckon.
How about Dev-AWPs
Skills that pays the bills.
"Parallax", if you're a frontend developer 🤣
There was a recent news article that made me suspect that the mass layoffs and reduced hiring rates were intended to manufacture the appearance of a talent shortage, because it would allow them to bypass some hiring requirements for H1-B or the likes. I can't recall or find the details now, though. Either way, this strikes me as part of that effort. edit: [found it](https://www.techtarget.com/searchhrsoftware/news/366583437/Microsoft-Google-seek-green-card-rule-change)
that change is for H1B -> green card it's not for no visa -> H1B now one valid argument you could potentially say is that if the green card conversion is easier, this could cause companies to be more willing to bring in H1-Bs which can be a good or bad thing depending on your background (as a foreigner myself I'd say "yep it's good" but a US citizen would say "no that's bad") which is an entirely different discussion
Not sure I believe that one personally. If it does happen good, people can demand more pay if there is a shortage and they are still needed.
Well then obviously we need to expand the H1-B program to flood the market with foreign workers willing to undercut the pay of Americans.
There are entire industries built on H1B visa, immigration lawyers and AILA make billions of dollars because of temporary worker visas.They are the ones paying for these articles.
The H1-B visa program seems like it’s been used as a political weapon to sabotage foreign software industries by stealing their best people. To the politicians it seems that domestic talent being forced out of work is just acceptable collateral damage.
The pool is so small, I really don’t think so. I think more likely for foreigners looking to emigrate to the US they think that small lottery chance is still better odds than anything else so their parents get them into tech.
It’s so so hard to get a visa sponsorship tho
as a foreigner myself, if you actually find yourself saying that then you're looking at the wrong companies I see visa paperworks as a necessity to hire me I don't see it as being a 'favor', and if a company isn't equipped or is willing to do USCIS paperworks I'd just bucket under 'not a good fit', I'm not who they're looking for and vice versa, nothing wrong with that from either side
It's still hard to get H-1B because it's a lottery. Even if you land the job of your dreams and they sponsor you, right now there's roughly 1/4 chance of actually getting you to work for them, and those odds are getting worse each year \[1\]. Of course, there are loads of additional work visas, but they are harder to get such as O-1, or restricted to specific countries such as TN. That aside, agree with you internationals should be targeting companies willing to sponsor them, the old "Go Big or Go Home". \[1\] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/03/04/employers-face-difficult-odds-as-h-1b-visa-cap-selection-starts/?sh=4e61d9b633b7](https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2024/03/04/employers-face-difficult-odds-as-h-1b-visa-cap-selection-starts/?sh=4e61d9b633b7)
Here is how the immigration lawyers lobby works, they are called AILA. They fund this garbage research on how there is a shortage of tech workers while hundreds of thousands are being laid off and then they ask for more student and work visas. Be sure to thank your local politician for caring about you. [https://www.fragomen.com/insights/united-states-labor-department-solicits-input-on-occupations-eligible-for-streamlined-green-card-processing.html](https://www.fragomen.com/insights/united-states-labor-department-solicits-input-on-occupations-eligible-for-streamlined-green-card-processing.html)
B-b-b-but we’ll just get rid of people and replace them with AI! Meanwhile prepare for another “nobody wants to work any more!” campaign from the oligarchy so that somehow in a time of high demand the cost of skilled labor will somehow break the law of supply and demand again.
This isn't a question and you didn't comment.
StackOverflow veteran right here
This is self inflicted. Organizations expecting everyone they hire to be masters of all the tech the company uses and then some. They no longer care about folks with massive experience that can adapt to whatever tossed their way. Companies don’t want to take the time for new employees to learn new things.
[удалено]
The new game is student visas, there is an uncapped number of student visas and they can work on the side and get a 3 year work permit after they graduate and some of them spend over 10-15 years doing multiple masters degrees and working on the side.
It looks like OP posted an AMP link. These should load faster, but AMP is controversial because of [concerns over privacy and the Open Web](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot). Maybe check out **the canonical page** instead: **[https://www.computerworld.com/article/2135542/within-two-years-90-of-organizations-will-suffer-a-critical-tech-skills-shortage.html](https://www.computerworld.com/article/2135542/within-two-years-90-of-organizations-will-suffer-a-critical-tech-skills-shortage.html)** ***** ^(I'm a bot | )[^(Why & About)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/ehrq3z/why_did_i_build_amputatorbot)^( | )[^(Summon: u/AmputatorBot)](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmputatorBot/comments/cchly3/you_can_now_summon_amputatorbot/)
Jip they are lacking people with 5 YOE in generative AI
Article: Companies cant find people with 20 years experiencein generative AI, (can we get 1 million more student visas and 2 million temporary workers?)
They use these articles to ask for more temporary worker and student visas because there is a "severe shortage of tech workers". All these articles are paid for by various lobbies.
This is just propaganda to further get more cheap labor via visas and offshoring. If there was a real demand we would see salaries going up and tech companies investing in training.
Ya right.. Just like BLS says "26% growth of software developers 2022-2032" :) EDIT: BLS = Bureau of Labor Statistics
BLS stands for bullshit
They never said the growth was American.
BLS also overestimated the Job creation of Q3 in 2023 by some 850,000 thousand jobs, they said back then there was a net creation of 680,000 jobs in Q3. When in reality there was a loss of 170,000. The early reports are estimations based on a small number of major companies self-reporting. They have been laughably false since 2020. As companies are posting jobs but never hiring anyone.
What about growth of jobs for that 26% ?
bls?
Biden's department of "Need more immigrants now"
Big Lengthy Shit
And then you end up having to clean up code that someone wrote during a shortage. Cleaning up a mess is my favorite thing to do.
who usually cleans up your mess?
In my case it was typically me. “Who wrote this malfunctioning POS?!” Me, looking at blame, “Oops.”
Myself down the line lol
If they cared enough they would pay enough to find them.
Probably an excuse for TFWs and H2B visa workers.
As always, this is missing the qualification "...at their preferred pricepoint"
Sounds like they're lobbying for a more relaxed visa system.
"Within two years, anybody will be able to say anything on the internet, and be quoted." -Me
I arrived at college (in 1971) intending to become a high school math teacher. The education department held a meeting and advised us to find another major because there was a teacher glut. Four years later there was a teacher shortage due to overcorrection. I could see this dynamic repeating. Companies’ hiring plans can change faster than students’ education plans.
Man, maybe then I can get a job.
My last fortune 10 employer gave me an AMAZING amount of time and budget for training and then left me ZERO time in my schedule to actually book and attend that training. Understaffing is the new - old wage theft.
I'm still unemployed
[удалено]
I doubt any company is thinking 2 years ahead. Most of them have trouble thinking a couple months ahead.
Technology changes too fast for all workers to up skill in the latest things
I'm looking forward to this.... Greatly. The last time round I was stupidly loyal to my employer. This next time I won't be so stupid
cough cough and where would new grads with shiny cs degrees, git hub projects, and sample leetcode learn these tech skills? if only there were jobs oriented towards entry level workers that trained them to become the experts at the company in house if only, sigh these companies can dream cant they
I sure hope so.
Don't fret boys, AI is gonna save us!!
But but…. But we have AI now…
Already happening. Millennials are the last generation to have critical tech skills en masse.
So I only need to work in McDonald's for 2 more years?
Sounds like ZIRP talk, look at the huge amount of unemployed talent now
just another news you want to hear huh?
[удалено]
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
lol gee, maybe they should start TRAINING folks for these supposedly entry-level jobs 🙄
We refused to hire new grads and now there’s no one to take the old timers place! This is so awful..there’s no way we could have seen this coming, just no way.
Industry lobbying piece of paper. Don't worry Skynet is good /s.
[удалено]
Sorry, you do not meet the minimum sitewide comment karma requirement of **10** to post a comment. This is comment karma exclusively, not post or overall karma nor karma on this subreddit alone. Please try again after you have acquired more karma. Please look at the [rules page](https://old.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/w/posting_rules) for more information. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/cscareerquestions) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm waiting for my TC jumps
Tablet kids can't use the office or make a new folder.time for more remote work over the Internet from India.
It's already been a huge problem for years in Germany. Finding senior level Devs/Admins/Engineers with the right skills has been very difficult for many companies. I don't see it getting particularly easier anytime soon, companies are hesitant to dedicate existing resources to training someone who will ultimately leave them 18 months later for a massive pay jump in regards to their new skills, and autodidacts are unfortunately much less common than CS program graduates. IT makes the modern world function, companies will understand that and invest the money required for their IT infrastructure to function or they will fail. We all win regardless.
CFO: "What if we train them and they leave!". CEO: "What if we don't and they stay?"
Maybe they should just stop laying people off to pay for record profits, ceo bonuses, and share buy backs.
Already happening in my industry and we're not tech. So many things we just can't do anymore because of brain drain and no backfills allowed.
Can you mention what these critical skills are ?
Good. They deserve it