[cperciva]

I don't think this quite captures the situation. Companies aren't complaining about a lack of credentialed developers; they're complaining about a lack of competent developers.

In 2000 there were far more people graduating with computing degrees than in 1995; but the average quality was far far lower. The people who suddenly found that they couldn't get jobs when the dot-com bubble burst? Most of them didn't belong in the industry in the first place.

[akeefer]

I finished undergrad in 2002, and no one was hiring then, even for Stanford CS grads. No one wanted people fresh out of school because there were so many unemployed engineers with 5+ years of experience that there was no incentive to take someone straight out of school.

[maxxxxx]

I knew plenty of people who were top-notch developers who didn't find jobs back then.