We are NOT (at least many of us) opposed to immigration. We want more Americans. What we don't want is a class of temporary workers to out-compete domestic workers because they 1) can't switch jobs and 2) are cheaper.

Maybe you're just in the wrong part of Australia?

I've heard that Sydney isn't so great either. Once devs hit seniority they run along to join a hip Melbournian startup, get gobbled up by Atlassian, or just migrate to Silicon Valley.

There are plenty of fish in the sea, at least around here. All you have do is go to a meetup group or two to see that.

Did you ask companies to see their applicant lists and CVs or something?

Any of the meetups I've been to in Australia are mostly employed people(half only there to try and find other devs), recruiters and uni students or recent grads. Which meetups did you go to it would likely be worth adding them to my list for next time I'm in Melbourne.

If the industry got that problem fixed, they could drive down labor costs for all intermediate and senior devs, not just foreign ones.

I see this a lot but people making this argument never seem to consider the fact that demand can increase substantially in a field over a very small amount of time. You blame it on companies not training talent but haven't even considered that the numbers just aren't there.

Again costs aren't an issue so driving down costs is at best a tertiary goal.

When you suggest someone pay developers more to hire them away from the competition you aren't solving the problem you are just moving it to another company.

If the wages go up because there is more demand (or it's a job that people are unwilling to do), you will be amazed how quickly more devs will appear.

Putting the band aid of cheap workers from overseas will not fix the problem either.

A bunch of new people flooding into the field are zero use to companies that need higher level employees to grow. And will be zero use for a number of years.

I get planning for the future is good but it doesn't solve the current problem at all.

I understand your point about there not being enough senior devs locally, but I'm still iffy about that being true. I would accept that argument if the wages had doubled in the past few years or so, but that hasn't happened. The companies aren't trying hard enough.

See my recent edit. I keep an eye on the market and I haven't seen any crazy wage increases.

I'm not against being convinced of the point but atm I'm just not convinced that there's no senior devs to find, at the right price.

Also, how long have these visas been going on for?

It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem I guess. Because of the band-aid fix of the visas, the wages never go up and there's no extra incentive for people to become devs.

edit: I can't reply any more, I guess because it's become too deep.

You say I don't know the problem, but I am actually intermediate-level IT, and atm I have little incentive to move up because the wages are not commensurate with the extra responsibilities in my opinion.

So I feel I do have some knowledge of the problem at least anecdotally, as I would personally be applying for those positions if I felt I would be fairly paid for the extra stress/time/responsibility.

I am investigating ways to invest the money I have made/am still making in the best ways for the best possible return, and also looking to downshift by pursuing projects/businesses in my free time that I am simply interested in - that have no guarantee of financial success, while also looking into the possibility of moving to a less expensive part of the country.

I am not looking for a promotion which includes taking on more stress and less free time in exchange for an insufficient pay increase. It would need to be significant for me to take the chance, and from what I have seen out there, I haven't found anything that would satisfy me, although if I was actually out of work now perhaps I would accept less.

If that makes me unqualified in your opinion to comment about whether pays are sufficient for exactly the type of job that I'd be applying for, I don't care. I also don't care if you think I'm ambitious enough. I'm very sure I wouldn't want to work for you anyway.

There was even an out-of-work dev commenting that he was looking for work in this very thread. I don't know what more I can say.

It does make you unqualified because you haven't been on there other side of the table trying to hire ever.

The only person I saw was looking to change jobs which is to say leave their current employer with a need for an intermediate developer.

I know it'd be more work doing stuff for myself but at least I'd have more control over my own destiny, plus the possibility that it would work out very well, which I don't have now working a 9-to-5. It'd be pretty disappointing if it fell in a flaming heap though.

Well, I do feel that being a prospective employee makes me qualified to comment, so there you go. Just because I haven't put a job ad up with an artificially lowered pay and had no applicants doesn't mean I haven't seen what's on offer out there.

Have you considered, like people have been saying in these comments, that you may not have been getting applicants (such as myself) because the conditions or pay weren't as reasonable as you think?

ie, Do you really think if you doubled the pay you were offering you wouldn't have got more applicants?

If I left my job, for argument's sake, say to work at your place, someone with a lower level of skill could start at my old job and learn it as they go, like I had to with little training so many years ago. Some old people leave, some new people start. I think there's lots of skilled people out there. We shouldn't be bringing in slave labour from overseas so we can continue with our artificially lowered pays. If we're going to do capitalism we might as well do it properly... So if your business can't afford to pay what its costs are, then it is not a viable business.

Also obviously that guy who did apply was not happy with the pay or conditions at the place he was working at, so there's that.

Anyway we obviously don't see eye-to-eye on this issue.

You are convinced there is no problem when you admittedly have no experience with the issue. You're also expecting to see changes that wouldn't fix the problem because of your lack of experience with The problem.

If your business can't hire workers, you will have to raise salaries. If you can't afford the higher salaries, you don't have a viable business (at least, without the use of wage arbitrage and indentured servants).

The extra supply of labor will come into the market as soon as they're receiving signals that wages are rising, working conditions good, etc. Until then, it seems like a waste of time: why study really difficult software when you will be competing with folks willing to work much more cheaply.

You might have to wait a bit for this pipeline to fix itself since you purposefully broke it this past decade by using visas to game the system.

You're also assuming the growth in jobs has been steady and predictable which it hasn't a spoiler in demand runs the whole idea that we just need more juniors starting.

The problem is companies can't wait so they can bring in workers who pay taxes here and contribute to the economy or they can move there jobs over seas. I expect we'll be seeing a lot more of the latter going forward.

I guess this all depends where your perspective sits.

The companies that choose to remain in Australia then are handicapped by an inability to find good talent and either limit growth or move overseas. The later ones make the above developers choice even easier since there are now even more jobs over there.

Where after you looking with shitty wages and awful working conditions? And what other career paths do you think these people bailed out into that have better pay?

1) Foreign and outsourced labour taking the entry level jobs preventing experience from accumulating.

2) Turning many jobs into glorified web apps and CRUD. Can't really go senior on that. You could on OSS or big and long personal projects but that takes a lot of time and thus money.

2) I don't know if you remember this but back before everything was a crud web app they were crud desktop apps. Most development work just isn't ever that exciting.

Lastly you don't consider at all that demand has outpaced the pipeline.

You've gotten so used to your cheap labor, indentured workforce,that you can't even contemplate employees participating in a free market?

As for contractors, all's fair in the free market except when contracting to government who are blind to /real/ value due to a range of bureaucratic reasons.