[thrt23049away]

"We currently have a massive shortage in talent to do the job"

no way. i just cannot believe that's true. i'm based in the U.S and i'm currently interviewing ... and spending my evenings studying to be better prepared for upcoming interviews. they all do the same thing: crazy programming puzzles.

i believe what's happening is that companies have become extremely choosy because there is a never-ending stream of candidates. they subject to insane technical interviews and reject good candidate after good candidate with the hope that maybe the next will be just a tiny bit better. And if not, well, there's more after that.

i'm convinced that in 2020 the software engineering profession is absolutely, positively supersaturated.

i'd say more, but i need to stop procrastinating and get back to the video about dynamic programming that i was taking notes on.

[philplckthun]

> "in talent to do the job."

It's a matter of perspective as well though, so both sides are correct. "The job" here can talk about very different engineering roles and levels, which will have a different hiring pool by market and by saturation.

From my own experience running interviews, even in the same "community's" hiring pool in the same location you can expect large differences depending on what position and skill set you're hiring for at that moment.

I find it more worrying that over years I've seen that some engineers are attempting to optimise the interviewing process on their end. Obviously instead interviews should optimise to appeal to candidates and make the process equitable, quick, and accurate, without nonsense like coding challenges that don't relate to the job.

[thrt23049away]

""The job" here can talk about very different engineering roles"

You seem to be saying there is an area of softwre engineering that is not saturated candidate-wise.

Well, don't hold us in suspense -- go ahead and tell us specifically what sort of engineering role you were referring to here!

[philplckthun]

No worries! Snark received.

As we go up the engineering career ladder and land on more specialised roles with the necessary experience, both from a technical and managerial perspective, the funnel definitely shrinks. I won't deny that that looks different from place to place, but it's hard to deny that it will take years still for any saturation we see to take place on the higher part of the career ladder as people specialise more as they get there.

Specifically once we started looking for engineering management and principal level roles that still bring the technical expertise we'd expect the hiring pool was definitely not saturated.

[thrt23049away]

thanks for the additional thoughts.

[polishdude20]

Yes this. If the employers are acting as if engineers are a dime a dozen, then isn't it safe to assume that that's the case? I've been trying to get interviews as well and haven't got one yet.

[recursive]

Well, there's a slight difference. Candidates are a dime a dozen. In my opinion, from my perspective at my non-prestigious-employer, most candidates are not qualified.

[jrumbut]

It must be a regional/industry thing. I've had a former manager and colleague contact me out of the blue really desperate for staff. I've never gotten more recruiting spam, it's at double or triple the usual level.

I was a new dev around 2008 and while there were software jobs around, fewer companies were willing to hire newbies. That could be playing out again.