> There’s just too many high quality candidates and too few positions.

That would be believable if the same positions weren't being advertised for a year or more[1]; e.g. I've had one position[2] sent to me at least 5 times in the last year by different recruiters.

[1] In London, at least. [2] Interesting work and a job I'd want but unfortunately the corporate culture is 100% no-go for me.

London is just too expensive for the salaries some of these companies are offering though..

That was another reason I wasn't interested in that position - I'll suck up a lot of corporate nonsense for contractor money but not for low-perm money.

> There’s just too many high quality candidates and too few positions.

That can't be true simultaneously with "companies are having trouble finding good enough candidates", which is often said these days.

What can be true: There are many high quality candidates, and many positions looking for high quality candidates, but they cannot find each other and overcome matching hurdles.

So you have candidates applying to a large number of positions, and positions seeing applications from a large number of candidates, just because the matching process is so inefficient. Then both sides can legitimately complain about the large amount of work and time it takes.

When two contradictory ideas are true at the same time we call that a paradox.

There are reasons why the current IT hiring status quo seems to be so paradoxical.

https://itnext.io/the-cloud-skills-shortage-and-the-unemploy...

I agree (and I'm fond of the word "paradox" too).

Interesting link, thanks.

I've tried to reconcile that paradox by seeing it as a matching problem which requires both candidates and companies to be overwhelmed with attempts to find a good fit with each other.

However, reading the linked article gives another perspective on it. Which is, frankly, a worrying perspective for candidates, in that it suggests the labour market is shrinking and bifurcating (just like everything else these days) into "haves" and "have nots", where crossing from the latter to the former group may be getting more difficult with time.

I'm not so sure about that. The lobbying for more H1Bs seems to indicate otherwise.

I am quite aware that most positions are for folks that don't have my level of expertise.

I just love designing and writing software; especially software that connects to devices. I'll do it; whether or not anyone pays me.

Well an H1b is basically like an indentured servant that works for a fraction of the cost and much longer hours. Some Companies want low cost labor.

No one wants to buy the cow when they get the milk for free. :)

As long as they are happy with MIT open-source, on my terms, no big deal. They are welcome to knock themselves out.

If they want to own it, though, and have more of a say in what it does, that's another story.

But then collectively as a labor force, where do we go from here? We can't all dumb ourselves down - or won't, and it seems to me that people understand what it is we do less and less.