[Clubber]

For those that don't know, Joel wrote many really good software development related articles/blogs in the early to mid aughts. The archives can be found on his site. I'd recommend anyone read them who works on a software development team in any capacity (management, dev, DBA, QA, etc).

[chrisbennet]

My favorite Joel article is: "Whaddaya Mean, You Can’t Find Programmers?"

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/06/15/whaddaya-mean-you-...

"Now, let’s review some microeconomics. In a free market, it is almost axiomatic that the market always clears. That’s a technical term that means that when somebody tries to sell something, if they are willing to accept the market price, they will be able to sell it, and when somebody wants to buy something, if they are willing to pay the market price, they will be able to buy it. It’s just a matter of both sides accepting the market price."

[Nursie]

Yup, this is a massive trope in the UK. "We need to import more people from wherever, there's a real shortage of software people!"

No, there's a shortage of software people who are firstly willing to work for the £30K you seem to think is reasonable and secondly (implied by the pay on offer) willing to put up with being treated as if they are a junior, unskilled office worker.

Which is why those with any ambition become contractors and consultants, or leave the county...

[burntoutfire]

> Yup, this is a massive trope in the UK. "We need to import more people from wherever, there's a real shortage of software people!"

Following that logic, there must be a massive shortage of CEOs and high-level executives (given their salaries) - let's import them from Romania and significantly lower the costs across the economy!

[theriddlr]

Only internationals graduating from UK universities qualify for a work visa with a £30k job. There is a real shortage of software engineers. The minimum pay for a non-EU software engineer coming into the UK was as high as £50k last year in April. It's only got lowered to £30k last month because of Brexit.

It's the EU workers who are willing to work for £30k because non-EUs need to earn more than £35k after 5 years to apply for settlement in the UK.

[spratzt]

When I graduated it was said that if your were good enough to get a decent degree then you were wasting yourself in IT.

It was true then and it remains true to-day.

[Nursie]

IT? Sure. IT is the guys that support the office printer and your outlook login. Useful people but it's hardly rocket science.

Software development contracting and consultancy is a very different matter and can easily get you into the top one or two percent of incomes in the UK.

The fact that a lot of small and medium businesses in the UK attempt to treat (and pay) the one as the other is part of the reason they're always bleating about not being able to find staff.

[spydum]

Totally agree - it still cracks me up in my particular industry. “There’s a shortage of security engineers and architects” is a common trope. No there isn’t- you just aren’t paying more than SWE and other dev salaries. People would consider switching if the money was there.

[wglb]

I was successful in doing this.

But I started out by finding software engineers that were interested in security and were willing to learn and turned them into higher-paid security folks.

[spydum]

absolutely this. most solid security people were devs with an interest who were given the opportunity to flip. the problem is employers want to pay below market prices, for someone who already has all of the skills they want. that just doesn't happen: those people command a lot more money. your approach is MUCH more practical (hire or transfer good interested devs internally, and train them up).

[wglb]

The hard part was working with HR to make the new salaries higher. Not a small task.

[monksy]

Money isn't always the reason. In Chicago there are dev companies that are so toxic or imploding that they're well known.

[wildmusings]

Most people would work in a toxic company for the right price. For an extremely awful job it might be very high, but just about everyone has a number.

[ken]

The bad companies, though, don't tend to offer more money than average. IME, they offer less. When a company is deaf to what developers care about in one department, they're usually deaf to what developers want in other departments, too.

[toasterlovin]

The fact that different professions earn different amounts of money is, in fact, an indicator that the higher paying professions have a shortage of people able to perform the work. Working conditions and pay for programmers are incredible and would be a life changing improvement for most people. That the profession hasn’t been flooded with talent is a strong indicator that there isn’t enough talent out there.

[Znafon]

> The fact that different professions earn different amounts of money is, in fact, an indicator that the higher paying professions have a shortage of people able to perform the work.

If we have 2000 people, we need 1000 doctors and 1000 secretary and it takes 8 years of training to be the former and 1 year for the later, won't doctors be paid more even without shortage to take into account risks and length of studies?

[rileymat2]

No, but the length of study and risk will generally cause the shortage at a particular wage.

[ken]

> The fact that different professions earn different amounts of money is, in fact, an indicator that the higher paying professions have a shortage of people able to perform the work.

In some cases, of course, that's because there's a professional association (like the AMA) that limits the number of new workers in that field.

> Working conditions and pay for programmers are incredible and would be a life changing improvement for most people.

Pay is excellent, as you say.

Working conditions ... may or may not be good, depending on your perspective. Half the people I meet don't want to sit in an office all day. Many others refuse to work at Amazon (or even buy from them) or some of the other big companies because of their reputation and what they're doing to the city. "Brogramming" still exists. I know many programmers who get asked to work late without penalty to the company.

> That the profession hasn’t been flooded with talent is a strong indicator that there isn’t enough talent out there.

I know plenty of ex-programmers and people who would make great programmers if they only wanted to. From my perspective, I'd say the talent exists, and the money is incredible -- therefore the working conditions must be pretty severely lacking.

[toasterlovin]

You're limiting your perspective to white collar workers who could be programmers if they so chose. Do you think that people making $12/hour working in food service or retail wouldn't gladly become programmers if they were able to?

[dragonwriter]

> The fact that different professions earn different amounts of money is, in fact, an indicator that the higher paying professions have a shortage of people able to perform the work.

While prospective purchasers tend to describe a situation in which market clearing price is above the price they are willing to pay as a shortage, it's not. A shortage is when nonprice rationing results in unmet demand willing to pay above the actual trading price.

There's also a planning concept of a shortage in the form of supply inadequate to meet some threshold deemed essential, e.g., by society or authorities (which tends to result in economic shortage as price controls or nonprice rationing are imposed). Market price differences alone don't establish the existence of either type of shortage.

[toasterlovin]

Sorry, I’m using the word ‘shortage’ in the colloquial sense. I’m unaware of any technical meaning it may have in economics.

[thawaway1837]

In addition, salaries in software engineering have been rising faster than pretty much any other field. Further indicating that there is a shortage relative to other fields.

[ken]

Or that people who aren't programmers don't actually consider the working conditions to be all that great.

[Amezarak]

Working conditions and pay are highly variable. Pay outside of a few major metro areas is not that great, and working uncompensated overtime is common in the industry.

[toasterlovin]

Programming jobs are essentially universally better than food service or retail jobs. They're easier, they pay more, they're more prestigious.