The problem is exasperated by these companies treating engineers like children. "Toss them another Mt. Dew, and they'll work another all-nighter."
With all the VC and buyout money out there, a true rockstar is going to be a founder or have serious equity in their company. They'd be an idiot for anything less.
Raising salary always comes up as the "answer" to the talent shortage, but it's a highly localized answer. Sure a company can fill all their openings by raising their salaries--they'll do it by recruiting currently-employed engineers from another company.
That doesn't "fill a hole" industry-wide. It just moves it to another company. If there are more holes than qualified engineers, there's a shortage.
To make the case that talent shortages are caused by low salaries, you'd need to show me a lot of people who are qualifed but currently willfully unemployed, waiting for the right offer. I'm not aware of many engineers who fit that description.
That's not a solution. That's the issue. Smart people don't work for those companies. Then, said companies turn around and complain that there is a shortage of talent*
*willing to work for $80k in the Bay area.
At Goldman/JPM/MS, the going rate (inclusive of bonus) right now seems to be:
100-150k for analysts (1-3 years out of undergraduate); 200-300k for associates (3-5 years out); 300-500k for VPs (6-8 years out); 500k+ for MDs (8+ years out)
And we're not talking about the guys bringing in a billion dollars as traders. This is for the rank-and-file.
Also _most_ people do not ever make MD, let alone in 9 years.
Sorry, far from being upset, that sounds to me like a great trade-off. Sure the companies aren't doing it out of altruism, but the net result is quite positive. All those 'underpaid' American born engineers working in silicon valley can comfort themselves knowing that they will still be among the 1% richest people in the entire world.
N.B. Look up PPP before objecting based on how much an apartment in SF costs.
It's not an invisible line. It's a line that was defended and delineated by the blood of people who wanted to establish and preserve a nation.
Isn't it enough that nationalism killed 100+m people in the 20th century, do we really need to have it hanging around our neck in the 21st?
How exactly is that justification for continuing to treat people born on one side of a line as valuable human beings and those on the other worthless? Is it a moral sunk cost theory -- as long as we've committed all these atrocities in the name of nationalism might as well keep going?
Inside versus outside isn't theoretical. People in other communities will not come to your defense when you need help, they will not perpetuate your culture and values, and they are not part of the body politic that animates your democracy.
I would have thought that reasoning went out of fashion circa September 30, 1946.
Who can't negotiate? It's your fault if you can't/won't negotiate.
I'd posit that the reason finance pays more for engineers than STEM is because most of us think that the atmosphere at a finance company will suck and as a result they have a smaller labor pool (I've literally never responded to a single financial recruiting email).
If there is a pool of labor willing to accept a free lunch and campus-like atmosphere, coupled with cheap imported labor, in lieu of perhaps $100,000 in pay, it depresses wages across the entire industry.
I'd posit that the reason finance pays more for engineers than STEM is because most of us think that the atmosphere at a finance company will suck and as a result they have a smaller labor pool (I've literally never responded to a single financial recruiting email).
And this is the funny part. Do you really believe working somewhere like EA is different than working somewhere like Goldman Sachs?
As far as people who take low salaries screwing up your salary: If they're willing to do the job for that and they're not appreciably worse than you at that particular job, maybe that's what you're worth for that role, too? Almost every industry out there has it much worse than software when it comes to the 'race to the bottom'.
Or there could be a collection of people that decide to enter different industries because of this, causing a labor shortage?
Whereas the reason there are open positions for programmers at high tech companies is that these companies want star programmers
Maybe they should try paying like stars. What percentage of engineers that aren't founders or within the first five employees make over $300,000 a year? The money is in Silicon Valley, Google's 2011 net income was $299,874/employee [1], but the vast majority of engineers aren't going to be the ones to get it. How about paying a market wage, instead of offering a "free lunch" to people that cannot negotiate. I am not interested in playing video games at work, I have a house for that. Last I looked at it, the difference in pay between finance and stem jobs is enough to hire a personal chef to deliver lunch to you at work every day, and cook for you at home, and buy all the games you want, with a bunch of money left over. Apple and Google are both posting ~25% net profits because engineers are willing to work for peanuts, and a free lunch. On top of that, cost of living in the bay area is outrageous, we're talking $35,000/year for housing, unless you want to live like a college student.
An average (median) engineer should be making $200,000 a year, and the "rockstar" (>80th percentile) engineers that everybody is trying to hire for $85,000 and 0.5% of equity, should be making $350,000+. These are hard jobs that few people can do at all, and fewer can do well. Great engineers can create millions of dollars of value a year.
It seems that the industry has shifted focus, now that the collusion agreements have been squashed, toward importing cheap labor. This problem has been solved in other industries through partnerships and professional societies (e.g. in the legal industry, with large partnership firms and bar associations). In the interim, it seems like the best way to capture value is to build companies to flip in talent acquisitions, while planning to leave to do it again as soon as you're vested.
[1] Goldman Sachs 2011 net income was $162,913 per employee. Average pay was $367,057. It's harder to get data on Google, but it looks like the mid-career median salary is $141,000.
Google's Gross Profit (Total Revenue less Cost of Revenue) was $24.7B in 2011, and GS's was $24.5B. At the same time, Google had 32,467 employees to GS's 35,700. Yet, the Google net income was $9.7B compared to $4.4B on the GS side. The difference seems to be made up entirely by the difference in employee compensation.