| No. That just means that there are unviable businesses when software engineers are priced correctly. If there are 10 businesses that each need to hire 10 engineers, but there are only 80 engineers, then the price of the engineers will be determined by which 8 businesses have a business model that can afford those 80 engineers. The other two businesses don't have a viable business model. They can't sell enough X to account for the cost of the engineers. Likewise, if you have a business that depends on building an electric car, and you can't afford to buy lithium at market price and still make the car cheap enough, then that isn't because there is a shortage of lithium. Its because you don't have a viable business model based on the price of lithium. In my example above, there is no shortage of Ferraris. There is only a shortage of people willing to sell their Ferrari at $10. Or stock. There are 100 open positions for AAPL at $129, but only 80 offers at that price. Thats not a shortage of AAPL stock. That just means there's only 80 people willing to sell at that price. However, if you offer $160 for AAPL, suddenly you'll find a lot of sellers. Only 80 engineers looking for work? Find someone that looks good on LinkedIn and offer them double their salary. Suddenly more than 80 engineers available. |
You make the assumption that individual employees are economically rational individuals. That is, they will optimize their lives to maximize income without regard to other factors.
It also asserts that employers clearly advertise pay for a position, which we know is not usually the case. It's not like you can peruse job boards and know exactly what every company will pay you. Sure, sometimes they have (very side) salary bands, but the vast majority of tech workers don't know what their offer will be until it is made.