[village-idiot]

Most of the time when business executives talk about “lack of available talent”, they usually mean “lack of talent at the price I’m willing to pay”.

Everyone’s a free market enthusiast until the market says they have to pay more, it turns out.

[kasey_junk]

At current prices it’s entirely possible that some software businesses are not viable. Saying that out loud (or even admitting it to yourself) is not a great look.

Further, the software industry is such that failures are more common to successes when it comes to software projects. I suspect if that ratio got better or predictability did, we’d see wages rise even more (at least for those predictably successful devs). As it stands you can throw all of the money at the software hiring problem and still be making a terrible gamble on whether you’ll get software out of it.

[village-idiot]

The first point is possible, but given an era of super low taxes and massive stock buybacks, I doubt that many of these places can't afford developers, I bet they just would prefer to use that money elsewhere.

I think your latter point is much closer to the mark.

[Thrway0700]

Funny thing is I am trying to get some people from market where they don't make a lot of money and trying to pay 1.5 to 2x what they can get. Still getting people to work is a hassle. I also have no need for ninja/rockstars. It might be that they have comfy jobs already and are afraid of change... Free market is not just about money it still is complicated mixture. So just calling executives greedy is not catch all truth. Maybe I should try to pay 3x more, but business is not there for 3x average salaries for that area.

[village-idiot]

Maybe it's possible that the fair market rate is actually 3X the local average salary? If that's true then my original point stands, that there are devs, you just can't/won't afford them.

Of course, there could be other factors at play, as you mentioned. Life is complicated, economics more so.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

The same can be said of private individuals and housing. But that doesn't mean the level of willingness to pay is trivial or unjustified, and it doesn't mean people who think house prices are too high are greedy.

[village-idiot]

There's a pretty big difference between purchasing a home and hiring someone's services with the expectation of making a profit.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

Of course. But there's also a lot about the two that are similar. The commonality I observed is one of them.