[barpet]

Bollocks. Read the whole article. They can't compete with GB or Germany in terms of salaries nothing to do with shortage of people.

They just want to be able to hire Indians,Pakistanis or whoever will be willing to work for the fraction of what even an unskilled person from a remote village in Romania would ask for.

This is not about SHORTAGE of people for the companies. Companies can hire entire teams overseas and especially developers do not need to be hired in local countries. The thing is people from even the poorest regions of EU do not want to relocate hence Finland is looking to repopulate itself with at least semi-skilled workforce outside of Europe.

This whole thing is disgusting. But Finland is free country and they are free to do whatever they think is the best for the country and its people.

[imtringued]

I don't even know why the term shortage is even used in the context of potential employees. If potential employees are scarce then salaries will continue to rise until more people decide to pursue that job. Generally shortages happen if the government decides to implement price controls. If I want to buy bananas for $2.50 and bananas sell for $5.00 in the grocery store. It's not a shortage just because I can't afford it. If the government decides that bananas should cost $2.50 then producers will stop producing their goods because of a lack of revenue. This is a shortage.

[3pt14159]

Though I agree with you in spirit, in practice there are such things as actual shortages. Petroleum engineers in countries that just discovered oil for the first time, for example. Some skills take almost a decade to acquire.

Web development does not generally fall under this umbrella, however.

[collyw]

Most apps are web based these days.

Knowing how to write a complex web app with decent structured maintainable clean code, keep it optimized and secure, the ability to deploy it to to servers at the touch of a button isn't something I would expect from a junior dev.

[3pt14159]

Of course not, but you can get there in a year or three.

[collyw]

I wouldn't expect it from a dev of 3 years either. There may be a few out there but its not the norm.

[fsloth]

"Some skills take almost a decade to acquire."

This. So very much this.

[jazzyk]

Depends on the area of Web development. "At least 5 years of experience in ReactJS required".

Software companies always look for people with the latest fad ^H^H^H skill, which is - almost by definition - in short supply.

[ci5er]

I agree with you philosophically, but what you are describing is a market clearing price. That is, regardless of the price, there are not infinite bananas. Even at one million dollars per pound, there is no way for us to allocate bananas that do not exist. At some point, at some price, people simply say: "well, I guess I want no bananas today".

When nominal demand far outstrips nominal supply, I think it's fair to call it a shortage. Temporary. It will correct. In a less than a decade.

It's funny - the management ego part that is in alignment with your comment (that "there is no shortage")... Because coders have become the modern blue-collar assembly line worker, management types often want to pay assembly line worker prices, and are having a difficult time coming to grips with the fact that these workers might make more money than they do. Outrageous!

[rubber_duck]

>If potential employees are scarce then salaries will continue to rise until more people decide to pursue that job.

This is already happening in areas where there is a shortage (salaries rising) and in the time it takes for new people to acquire the required skills there is a shortage (ie. people would be willing to accept the conditions below the market rate but they can't get trained fast enough/get visas)

[AlbertoGP]

Yes, and in the related links at the right side they even have another article titled "Cost of labour falls in Finland at the highest rate in the European Union".

[pavlov]

"Cost of labour falls in Finland at the highest rate in the European Union"

It should be noted that this is a very intentional policy. Finland's current right-wing government has been working hard (and in many quite confused ways too) to bring down cost of labour.

When elected, the Prime Minister's stated goal was a reduction of 5% across all salaries. (The name for this plan was kilpailukykysopimus, "the competitiveness agreement".) Due to expected resistance from unions, it has been watered down to various benefit cuts, promises of raise freezes, etc. But the atmosphere among the country's economic decision makers is very much one that pushes for salary reductions by any means possible.

Another name for this salary reduction plan is "internal devaluation". As a member of the Euro zone, Finland can't simply devaluate its currency to increase the competitiveness of its exports. So the other way to achieve the same goal is to reduce the internal cost of producing those goods.

(If you ask me, this whole thing is chasing a 1980s recipe for a 21st century problem. The problem with Finland's exports is not cost of goods or even quality; it's a combination of wrong industries and lack of global marketing savvy. The pipe dream of a 5% reduction in production costs won't solve any of that.)

[indyaah]

This 5% internal devaluation part sounds bit crazy. A few days back I was trying to understand what was major blunders during Wiemar republic and one of them IMHO was Heinrich Brüning's attempt at 'internal devaluation' in response to allies' 20% devaluation of their currencies.

[blibble]

is leaving the euro and devaluing the currency, rather than 'internal devaluation' (aka cutting salaries) on the Finnish political agenda?

[pavlov]

Nobody is seriously talking about leaving the Euro... Primarily because the internal impact could be crushing. Large export industries would benefit, but private citizens would stand to lose greatly and in unpredictable ways.

Finns have quite a lot of housing debt, and spend a disproportionate amount of their income on housing compared to most other European countries. That debt load could become a huge problem for people when their salaries are converted to a new local currency but the debt remains.

If I have a 300k EUR mortgage, what happens to it? If it remains EUR-denominated while my salary is converted into a reborn FIM currency which then depreciates by 30%, suddenly my debt has effectively become 30% larger too. (Alternatively, if the debts were converted to FIM, the lender banks will still have a lot of EUR liabilities. Could they swallow that? One of the large banks, Nordea, isn't even Finnish. How could the government force a Swedish bank to convert loans into another currency?)

At the same time, the interest rate on those debts would skyrocket: right now it's close to zero, but an independent Finnish central bank would probably have to raise rates by multiple percentage points at once.

This combination would destroy many families' finances. Any government that did this would get a very negative windfall in the next election.

A "FinEuroExit" would be a huge transfer of money and future income from private citizens' pockets to the country's existing established big industries which have been unable to compete in a global market on their own. That doesn't sound like the kind of thing a modern government should be contemplating as their first choice.

[fsloth]

Finland leaving euro is among the least likely political scenarios in the near future. Well, I would have said that of Russia invading Ukraine or UK's brexit as well before those happened.

[yummyfajitas]

Weird, a "right-wing government" pushing a left wing (i.e. explicitly Keynesian) economic plan. It's awesome that your politicians can get past petty partisanship!

Keynesian theory says that to improve the economy (read: put prideful workers back to work and increase outputs), you need to lower real wages. It also postulates that nominal wages are sticky - hence the standard solution for Keynesians is creating inflation to reduce the real value of the same nominal wages. I.e., instead of workers getting 5% fewer Euros, they instead get the same number of Euros but the value of each Euro is reduced by 5%.

For countries on the Euro, inflation isn't possible, so the only solution is to fix nominal wage stickiness.

[barpet]

Yup. Programmer is a new derogatory term for a "worker".

[fsloth]

"Companies can hire entire teams overseas"

Sometimes it's much better to hire a few talented people than an entire team. The young digital companies run by savvy technologists are attempting to play by the lean startup playbook.

[zihotki]

Actually, a plenty of Russians may be interested, especially the ones living in Saint-Petersburg area. It takes only several hours by car and the train connection is very good too, so that they can easily visit parents, friends, etc. And salary in Finland are much higher comparing to Russia.

[olegp]

Yup, we're seeing that at Toughbyte as well, see my other comment. In fact we even have some candidates commuting to Helsinki from St Pete.

[barpet]

Sorry but you have just proved my point. What % of your team is FINNISH ? I mean you know...real Finns and not russians living in / commuting to Finland ? I do not make such differences in personal life but this is something that's important for the country. It's a matter of survival.

[kushti]

Salary after taxes adjusted to pricing difference could be comparable or better in Russia. A pal of mine left Rovio and moved back to Russia just because of better income.

[barpet]

Again you proved my point. There is not a need to let these people in. Especially if they commute. What's the problem with opening an office in St.Pet area ? BTW what makes you think you are entitled to "higher salaries" ?

And this is exactly the point.

If you can deliver you should get paid the same thing in St.Pet. If the company would really need these people they could open an office in St.Pet and offer similar / same salaries.But they do not want to.

[fsloth]

"What's the problem with opening an office in St.Pet area "

If the need is to boost existing teams and not create entirely new teams then that's the problem there. It could be lack of imagination or courage as well :)

[mavdi]

OK, problem understood. But how would you fix it?