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by mockingbirdy 2891 days ago
I don't know the situation in the US, but here in Germany the companies always say "Oh no, we don't have enough computer scientists" and continue to pay low salaries. Many people thought that CS grads were needed and chose it, but they earn average salaries and sometimes even have to fight for the good seats.

Our definition of skill shortage is that there are only 3 applicants for one open position. This means a skill shortage doesn't mean there's no one. It means that there are 3 people hoping for the job, but the companies would love to see as many as they can so they can push the salaries down.

> particularly because of the level of difficulty and the required determination

Maybe my imagination is limited, but I think there's a finite set of things we need until it gets exponentially harder to make big leaps (all industrial nations suffer from this phenomenon in advanced sectors) - basically the law of diminishing marginal returns [1]. And we will continue to improve the developer experience so it gets easier to build computer programs.

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingmargina...

1 comments

“We don’t have enough X” can also mean “teach more X in schools/tertiary education so we don’t have to pay for training”.
This is exactly what they're doing. I think it's irresponsible to manipulate the youth and telling them that everyone should be a programmer. The companies won't feel responsible for all the jobless or unhappy people they've created through lobbying and will blame politics. Man, I seriously hope I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I'm not.