More drum-beating about this illusory talent shortage, eh? I'm still waiting to see any signs at all that this shortage actually exists, aside from random "I can't find a rockstar!" anecdotes.
I think calling it a talent shortage is a mistake. It's not a talent shortage, but it is difficult to hire.
As for difficulty to hire, it seems to be driven by all kinds of things.. lots of potential-employees-turned-founders, a pretty decent splintering of tech-stacks, more companies getting more done with smaller teams (and therefore having more specific desires), and shorter term thinking in terms of velocity and exits.. making investing in longer-term talent/training less likely.. to name a few.
As someone that doesn't live in an area with lots of VC funding and investment activity, I disagree that there is no shortage.
It's always been very difficult to find talent but lately it appears to have gotten harder. It hasn't been considered a good idea to study CS for the past decade and we've only churned out about a third of the CS graduates that we did in the previous decade. Thats starting to turn around now, but it will be a while before we get caught up.
I do agree that the startup craze has reduced the talent pool, but I think thats a local phenomenon in Silicon Valley and NYC. In other areas with more traditional employment sectors, it's just not as prevalent. There are certainly some talented devs that have relocated to where the startups are (I have contemplated it myself) but I don't think it reflects the majority at all.
First off, everywhere (with respect to the talent pool) has lots of VC funding and investment activity. I can say without knowing where you live that with almost complete certainty:
1. there's more interest in ability to get companies funded there than ever before.
2. people are leaving your town to work in the bay.
That said, I was pretty lazy when I spat out a list of problems earlier. There's lots of other interesting reasons it's getting harder to find good talent... I'm just not convinced that it's because there are fewer developers (which is the only thing that would define a 'shortage' in my estimation).
If we assume that there are plenty of engineers (you know, to humor me).. then there's only two reasons that you (or I!) would have trouble hiring:
1. They don't know we exist.
2. They don't think our job is better than the one they have.
The bottom line is that both of those things have gotten WAY harder in the last, say, five years. I don't think I could do it justice ranting about why and how I think that is in an HN comment but I think there have been a lot of interesting changes in the way software developers perceive their jobs, find them, etc.. and I think the way most of us hire is lagging well behind these shifts.
It's generally all really good, though. I think during my career (since '97) we've mostly gotten away hiring developers the way you might hire accountants, or anesthesiologists. Software development is a craft, and if you look at the way artisans in other crafts work and find work, you'll see a stark difference. My guess is that paying more attention to industries like architecture, graphic design, or even tattooing is likely a window into what hiring software developers will look like five years from now.
If there is trouble finding people to hire because they are all out starting their own companies that means one or two things:
1) There is an over supply of management. Developers/engineers are able to manage themselves effectively enough that they do not need to spend their time enriching someone else.
2) Engineers are turning to their own business plans because that is the only way to get adequately compensated.
I think #2 is more likely. I believe we are seeing the start of a shift towards engineers making as much or more than the management/CEO types. Engineering bargaining power is on the rise and will only continue to get stronger.
Nah. You're assuming they're finding success doing this. Most of them aren't.
It's a relatively young trend. There's enough people getting funded, and having pretty nice exits to attract loads of developers to heavily prefer founding. Also, the heavy hiring market means that if things don't work out there's a soft landing waiting somewhere.
The truth regarding #2 is that the vast majority of these devs will make far less from these ventures than they would if they showed up at GOOG. It's cheaper than ever to start a company, seed capital is pretty easy to come by.. so why not roll the dice? That's the mentality.
Unfortunately I think all of the furor and entre-porn makes being a founder look more than a bit easier than it is. I think lots of these kids would benefit from a year or two at another startup to get some hands-on experience and mentorship, but I think as an industry we're also a bit more fascinated with youth than experience at the moment.
At any rate, I don't agree that either of your points are major contributors. #2 comes close, but being compensated for founding and running a business (and taking the risks to do so) is very different than being compensated for writing software for someone else's business.
Free market economics tells us that price is the variable that moves so that supply and demand intersect. I.e. it sounds like you are simply not paying enough.
As long as there's no decent form of vocational education, training in-house is a huge investment. You can only properly train one junior for every three to four seniors before it becomes disruptive.
Many companies that have already made the mistake of hiring too many juniors in an attempt to deal with the shortage, and have suffered the consequences (huge drops in quality and productivity, and in the worst case, seeing the experienced seniors they did have walk away frustrated).
Where education fails, major companies like Google and Facebook should take the responsibility for training juniors. Instead they spend their fortunes strip-mining the market.
As a junior developer at a major company, it sure feels like I'm receiving training. Since major companies are hiring both junior and senior developers, are you suggesting they stop hiring senior developers?
I'll believe there might be a talent shortage just as soon as one single person, who is not a colleague with whom I have a close personal rapport, approaches me either directly or through my network with an opportunity. That's what I'd expect to see, even if only occasionally, if there was really a shortage. As it stands, it looks much more like accepted hiring / job seeking practices are just grossly inefficient at matching up talent with opportunities. That's inconvenient, for both sides, but it's not the same thing as a shortage.
