Maybe try interviewing a few people who you think "aren't worth interviewing." It could be that your standards are unreasonably high and you're dismissing plenty of capable people.
And lets be honest, looking at most job postings, most people have absolute ridiculous expectations of candidates. Most things you can and should be able to train to some extent on the job.
I just saw a job posting that was looking for someone with 3+ years of experience, and the list of required skills would have taken easily double that working flat out to acquire
> and the list of required skills would have taken easily double that working flat out to acquire
You're reading too much into those requirements. Nice-to-haves are not must-haves. I've been involved in hiring processes for a front-end position that listed non-trivial experience with React and among the half dozen candidates who applied the company even considered a high-schools dropout who only had to show a 50-hour HTML online course.
Fair point. "Aren't worth interviewing" may have been a little harsh. I can assure you, there are no "harsh requirements" on our listing.
That would be the case if we had too many applicants! It seems we need to use a recruiter or something, everyone here seems to think its ridiculous that we can't find people.
I truly, honestly doubt that is the case. Are you hiring remotely or only in an expensive locale? Are you expecting more than 40 hours a week or do you have a good work/life balance? How are your benefits?
All of these things matter more the older you get since older engineers tend to already have a home and don't want to move to California, have a more involved personal life, and expect things like medical benefits. You might be discriminating on age without consciously knowing it.
I wonder what problems a 5 person startup is trying to tackle that they can't find technical talent worth interviewing... just from the way you wrote it already makes me feel like a place I wouldn't want to work for
HN is a bubble full of people grinding leetcode, working at a big tech company or a start up, and writing code in their spare time as a hobby.
Once you start interviewing people, you will realize how utterly incompetent most of them are. I am talking about people with multiple years of full-time experience in the field and a relevant degree who cannot even implement a basic FizzBuzz. And I am not exaggerating it for comedic value, I legitimately met many people like that by now. Prior to seeing this myself, I could've sworn this was just a joke people used to describe incompetent people, but this is real. And being able to pass FizzBuzz doesn't even scratch the surface of being competent, but a lot of people cannot manage to get past that stage.
Honestly, it sounds like more of a problem with the test-givers than the test-takers.
People with experience have more dignity than to perform a dog-and-pony show for some startup on a whiteboard. Remember, in this market you need them more than they need you.
I mean, it isn't just startups that do whiteboard coding interviews. In fact, if you want to check my comments on HN, I said pretty directly that I do not work for a startup.
Every single engineer who was or is employed at any big tech company has went through whiteboard interviews. If you are trying to imply that big tech companies cannot manage to attract experienced people, then I question the validity of that.
There are certainly incompetent people in most any industry. But the reality is most organizations manage to keep their systems running and ship products with average or below average developers doing much of the work. How do you reconcile that fact with your observations?
Have you considered the possibility that you're asking the wrong questions? Or perhaps your organization isn't good at identifying candidates with low skills but high potential?
> I am talking about people with multiple years of full-time experience in the field and a relevant degree who cannot even implement a basic FizzBuzz.
I'm sure all of them can implement FizzBuzz, just not on the interview under pressure. It has absolutely nothing to do with competence, but understanding that requires just a little bit of background in human psychology.
If you're supposed to be a professional software engineer and can't do fizzbuzz under pressure that's same as saying you're a professional soccer player but you can't tie your shoe under pressure. That bar is so low that it doesn't matter whether there was any pressure or not.
That really only works for entry level positions. Competent, experienced developers are likely to laugh at your request for code samples. You have to understand what type of candidates you're targeting and adjust the recruiting approach accordingly.
Salary shortage is real. I can't find any startups worth interviewing right now, as a senior SWE. The offers tend to be 50% of what I currently have (despite the "shortage").
Sorry for the snarky tone, but it should be evident by now that the real shortage is for "highly talented souls willing to work for peanuts"--which is kind of oxymoronic. People want to hire "highly talented" and smart individuals, but expect them to be dumb enough to sell themselves short?
The startup offers I've seen in the bay area for SWE a couple years out of school are pretty high, $150k - $185k which is pretty good cash comp from a startup.
Higher than that is probably not a realistic expectation for most startups that are not flush with cash. They'd probably be happy to pay it or more for John Carmack, but you're probably not John Carmack.
Most startups shouldn't as they're lousy ideas doomed to fail. For anybody who hasn't done a startup you find 99% fail and the other 1% with a genuine exit strategy sure won't share the wealth with non-investors. That rules out employees who get some 'shares' at the promised IPO and forgo a decent salary in lieu of making the megabucks from IPO. It won't happen to you but if it does well done for being damn lucky.
If you're choosing to work at a startup you're basically an investor, but you're gambling your time instead of your capital (sort of - time is an opportunity cost of capital you could be making elsewhere).
Not everyone is good at being an investor, but it's not entirely luck, there is skill in determining what companies are good and what companies are not.
If you’re a cash strapped startup that can’t afford to pay competitive SV wages, maybe you shouldn’t be in SV. There are plenty of cheaper places around the country with world class engineering schools to hire from and far lower cost of living. Madison WI and Pittsburgh PA come to mind.
If they can't match FAANG's salary+totally liquid stock grant compensation (generally $300k+/yr for a seniorish engineer), which most startups can't, they need to offer more equity. I've seen way too many startups offering sub 1% to their first employee, despite asking them to take a large pay cut. It's absurd.
> The startup offers I've seen in the bay area for SWE a couple years out of school are pretty high, $150k - $185k which is pretty good cash comp from a startup.
I agree that is pretty good for a Bay Area startup, but it is far below the total compensation a FAANG company offers today.
After several years, the RSUs at a FAANG could pay out more every year than the salary, and they are immediately sellable on the open market. Startup options are likely to be worthless.
This is why startups have a hard time hiring. A lot of engineers would rather work for FAANG or similar large companies, where they will make a lot more money with much less risk.
Yeah, but I think startups are a different bet - either on comp (betting on equity) or on learning (more access to building a company).
OP seemed to suggest that startups have trouble hiring because they don't pay enough and I think that's not entirely true from what I've seen. They don't pay more than FAANG which is expected, but they're not underpaying for that trade-off.
I do agree though that FAANG salaries have gotten extreme so it's a harder opportunity cost than it used to be. If you can swing $350k at Netflix or $200-400k+ total comp at the others and you work there for 5-10 years that's basically a small startup exit. I think it used to be less dramatic.
I think the misery of the technical interview process is actually the thing that limits mobility most. Some of my extremely capable friends (that do work at FAANGs) don't optimize on moving around or income as much as they could because the process is so painful and anxiety inducing.
The salary difference definitely used to be less dramatic. It is now at least a $100k difference in annual total comp, and it can be more than a $200k difference in some cases.
This should give the rough idea, although it might be on the lower ends, since people with higher compensation tend to avoid attracting attention.
https://www.levels.fyi/
> Higher than that is probably not a realistic expectation for most startups that are not flush with cash.
Then isn't this an admission that there is no talent shortage? Again, that just means there is a shortage of talents who are willing to take the offer and work for $150k.
I mean by that definition sure, but you can kind of take that to any extreme right? Ultimately it's always in a context of a shortage at some price point.
If you imagine there is only one employable tech worker, it'd be strange to claim that there is no shortage because you can hire away the one worker for a 20million dollar salary (or whatever the highest salary is to outbid all of the others).
A phenomenon known as "sticky wages" which means (in part[1]) that people are reluctant to quit and get a new job even if an "economically rational actor" would.
1: The definition also includes the fact that employers are more reluctant to lower wages than they are to increase them, all else equal.
That is a piece of evidence against that. It's not conclusive, because wages can both be rising and be rising less than they would be absent the practice. However, I definitely haven't made a strong case for what I said, just wanted to throw out the name of a theory in case people wanted to Google it an learn more. I'm not equipped to definitely answer a question well-regarded economists debate about, of course.
Are you offering a competitive cash salary? I hear this a lot and then it comes out that the company wants people to work for IOUs which unsurprisingly does not generally go well.
Most startups don't offer nearly enough of an equity stake to compensate for the massive salary gap vs. FAANG. I don't know what your offering is, but I haven't seen an exception to this in a long time.
2. Increasing benefits. (More vacation time, paying for employee education, shorter work-weeks.)
3. Lowering the hiring bar, and spending more effort on mentoring and educating new employees.
4. Hiring remotely.
These all, of course, come with costs, and trade-offs.
If you don't mind me asking, are you looking for FAANG-level talent? If so, are you paying FAANG-level wages, or providing MicroFaceGoog[1]-level work-life balance?
[1] Yes, there are obviously teams at all of those companies that work on death march schedules. They are, generally speaking, the exception.
This is an underappreciated point, and also why I started a solo consulting business instead of continuing the 9-5. As a consultant I can set my own hours. The past few weeks were leasurely 25-27 hours per week or so (I track the time, so I know), and I do get paid for every hour I work, including commute, time spent on slack, etc.
In this industry there seems to be no place for someone experienced who thinks that working 50-60 hours a week is bullshit, and would like to work half that. That tells me there's no "talent" shortage, since the employers aren't flexible at all when it comes to working part time and receiving proportionally lower pay. The moment you ask to work less than 40 hours a week the employer immediately assumes that either there's something wrong with you or you're willing to work for peanuts.
It's pretty regional. If you live in a place that has eg a bad climate or limited outdoors activities, it might be harder to find local people. You should probably consider hiring remote workers, if you haven't already.
If you are willing to deal with a bit of hassle, hire Canadians. Same timezones, same CS educations, same language, probably a little cheaper (sorry, fellow Canadians), lots of interest in US startups.
> We can't find anyone __worth__ interviewing right now
There is enough research in job markets showing that companies get more picky and advertise more demanding and complicated job requirements as more candidates are available. So your claim is empty, since this is how companies behave regardless of supply. And if you were to measure it, how big artificial barriers or filters are for someone to get hired could be the measure of oversupply, not shortage. With shortage there would be no barriers, everyone applying would be interviewed and likely hired. But given current hazing hours long interview practices it's pretty clear that companies are drowning in oversupply.
This is the real answer, lol. Just wanted to vent. People in this thread are treating me like I'm a shithead listing a position with impossible requirements and terrible pay.
I'm not. I'm an engineer on the team and I wrote my comment (passive-aggressively) because my workload is ridiculous. As I understand it, we're having a very difficult time finding people.
> As I understand it, we're having a very difficult time finding people.
Another possibility is that they don't have enough money to hire another developer, but don't want to admit it to you. Start-up life can be harsh.
Don't burn yourself out. I can tell you from experience that it gets harder and harder to come back from burnout each time it happens. If your workload is ridiculous, it may be talk to your boss about adjusting timelines/expectations to something more realistic, or even time to start looking for another job.
We don't think you're a shithead. We just think you don't understand basic economics like the relationship between supply and demand. And that's nothing to be ashamed of, many engineers are ignorant about economics. If you'd like to improve your skills in that area your local community college has courses available.
I think you mean: we can’t find anyone worth interviewing interested in the offered salary. I guarantee that if you double what you’re offering, your “shortage” will go away.
I hear this a lot, and I likely don’t disagree. But I never see career pages with $$$ next to the job listings. So I’m not sure how most companies get this across. Most I’ve talked to want a phone screen before they have the expectations talk.
Generally I’ve just gone by industry reputation, for where to go. But I wonder if there are any hidden gems out there.
The jobs I apply to say "extremely/very competitive salary." This is the code word for a fuck-ton of money. Of course, this doesn't tell you the salary, but when you see that, you can reasonably assume anywhere from 2x to 10x market rate for total comp.
> So I’m not sure how most companies get this across.
Companies in the US don't advertise pay ranges, but they are easily Google-able, people have friends, Glassdoor is a thing, etc.
A junior at Facebook will make ~160k/year, someone good with ~5 years experience (at FB) will make ~300k/year.
Most startups want to hire the latter person for the salary of the former, while getting them to work harder, for fewer benefits, and fewer vacation days, all in exchange for...
An equity carrot, that has a 1/500 chance of materializing into anything more than lunch money?
A chance to 'change the world' - as if writing an app for ordering dogsitters on demand is the moral equal to providing clean drinking water to poor villages - or curing cancer.
A chance to be a big fish in a tiny pond? You'll still probably be second fiddle to the CTO, and employees 2 through 5...
> Companies in the US don't advertise pay ranges, but they are easily Google-able, people have friends, Glassdoor is a thing, etc.
Meh, glassdoor is off by a factor of 3x when checking in with a few of the companies I just interviewed with. They seem to require an account, but it’s similar to reports like this which are comically wrong:
That's not talent shortage in the market as a whole, just in your segment of the market. Many people are just unwilling to work at a startup, especially if it pays peanuts. Pay more. Offer more perks that large companies are unwilling to offer. Above all, quit pretending that your equity is worth anything.
Move to Georgia. Atlanta has a very low cost of living, a good business environment, and plenty of world class engineers coming out of Georgia Tech. Of course maybe you don't want to live in a state like Georgia. That's understandable but that's a lifestyle choice, not a talent shortage.
