Yes, and those articles are totally unconvincing drivel. If there really was a shortage, and the role is truly crucial, then they'll increase their offer. But the UK is not going to be able to fill those roles when engineers can get an offer in SV from Google, Facebook, or Apple.

"There's no shortage of smart, hardworking engineers. There's a shortage of smart, hardworking engineers willing to work for very little money." ~ David "Pardo" Keppel

If you're having trouble hiring, it's probably because you're not paying enough. It turns out that talented people are worth paying a lot for.

And then the companies come and ask to raise the number of visa's for foreign workers.

But nobody says we need to increase the number of visas for CEOs and VCs. That's because the cultural expectation is that those people make lots of money. Engineers need to stop selling themselves short, or allowing MBAs to short them, as if they are mere "code monkeys."

This argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me when it comes to bigger companies like Google, MS, Apple, etc. etc. Do you know how much H1Bs at these companies make? The data is open, you can look at how much Google pays them in the Bay Area for example. To say that Americans WON'T accept such salaries is ridiculous to me

UK startups aren't flooded with easy VC money to the extent that Valley startups are. That's how they're able to throw around big salaries and equity, it's almost funny money. Once these companies mature and have to come back to the reality of managing costs, the talented engineers will once again bail to the newest hypergrowth startups.

I'm sure startup money is a large part of it, but bottom line is that corporate culture at-large still hasn't adjusted to the reality that great technical people can make or break your company and that maybe they actually are worth the kind of money that used to be reserved for management types or sales.

I agree. There's a reason why Software Engineers make $85k at Apple but make $180k at AirBnB.

They have been saying this in the UK for the last 50 years :-(

And its not if Chartered Engineers (PE) earn anything like say a senior hospital consultant or a Barister.