Yes...? All of this has happened. Twitter has become remote friendly. My employer is 100% no remote but continues to make exceptions and we have 6 or so remote employees now.
Salaries have skyrocket in the last five years. So I'd say...yes, there is a shortage of talented developers.
"talented" in that context usually means "has the ability of an experienced developer at the salary of a more junior developer."
If you accept that talented software engineers are the people who are simply good at software development then there are plenty - but they're often older, more experienced, and consequently paid more.
Actually, a shortage means that there is an external force that prevents the price from rising, such as government intervention[1]. If salaries have skyrocketed in the last five years, that is a sure sign that there isn't a shortage; although perhaps a shrinking pool of those who can afford the available supply.
As higher and higher salary offers are made, fewer and fewer companies can justify the costs. As fewer companies can afford to hire developers, fewer developers are needed. Thus, in a functioning market where prices are rising, the number of businesses in the running to hire developers can never exceed the number of developers available. As soon as there is another business wanting to hire a developer, the price will rise until someone stops wanting a developer because it has become unaffordable.
Software development wages have risen faster than general wages for decades, haven't they?
Besides those rare outliers at rare outlier companies, like that dude at Google that makes $300K who everyone on HN seems to know, are software development wages actually going up to the extent that would indicate a "shortage"? Are they even 10% (inflation adjusted) over where they were a decade ago?
When people talk about developer shortage, they often have developers fit for these jobs in mind.
I don't. Who are you talking about?
Idk, people who have problems they need solved today (not after stringing along would be devs for months for the latest fad-de-jour) opportunities are out there, but take some looking outside of the crap posting resumes and useless meetups…
> - People with 0-2 years of experience
What are these people supposed to be doing? You can't have 3-5 years of experience without having 0-2 years of experience first.
If anything, there is a shortage of developers who:
- Have 3-5 years of experience ("Senior, but not too-Senior" engineers)
- Have narrow-enough skill sets
- Are willing to settle for a very narrowly-defined role
- Are willing to live in specific areas
- AND Are willing to work for the compensation offered
Picky companies can't seem to find these mythical employees in large numbers, so they throw their hands up and declare "shortage of engineers!"
Here are some software engineers that are largely getting ignored:
- People with 0-2 years of experience
- People with 10+ years of experience
- Software generalists
- Engineers who would also like to broaden their roles/responsibility (+architecture, +project management, +design?)
- Remote engineers
- Engineers who demand more than "competitively average" packages