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A comment on I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain about developer shortages. Parent comment

Re:I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain ab... by chmod600 on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:01AM (#27205111)
Let's say you are a forward-thinking manager in a company making artisinal flowerpots. You know tech is the future and will set your company apart, and you want to build a top-tier team to take you there. You are willing to pay twice the compensation per engineer as google.

Now a deluge of engineers show up for interviews. How do you tell which ones are top-tier and which ones are third-rate? Even tech companies struggle with this problem; surely you'll have no chance.

You know you'll get mostly third-rate, because those are the ones looking for jobs. So instead of overpaying, you adjust your pay downward to compensate.

So it looks like there's a shortage to the company (because the top-tier engineers aren't appearing even though they are willing to pay), but to top-tier engineers it looks like they are underpaying.

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Re:I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain ab... by brundolf on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:13AM (#27205174)
Tangent: I've thought about this "bootstrapping dev hiring" problem before (you don't know which candidates are good because you don't have anyone technical to interview them)

I wonder if there's a business opportunity for a firm of experienced devs who do nothing but interview devs for other companies

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Re:I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain ab... by playing_colours on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @05:23AM (#27206281)
It can go beyond hiring developers - companies may need help with deciding on initial MVP, organising development process, and regularly checking for a while if things go well.
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Re:I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain ab... by pmiller2 on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:23AM (#27205236)
That’s very close to what Triplebyte does.
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Re:I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain ab... by brundolf on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @02:32AM (#27205291)
Nice, I didn't know about this
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Re:I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain ab... by playing_colours on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @05:21AM (#27206270)
You can invite an experienced contractor that can help you with bootstrapping development: deciding on MVP tech stack, hiring, and making sure the new team can deliver proper work.

Sure, you need someone to refer a good contractor to you first, chicken-eggs problem.

I wonder if there are companies that can help with it as well - not shops that try to convince you to outsource the whole development to them.

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Re:I am sick and tired of hearing tech companies complain ab... by Redoubts on Wednesday May 19, 2021 @03:55AM (#27205780)
Eh, I don’t like this theory because it’s hard to get real numbers until after the interview. The employer should know precisely what they’re buying at that point.
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