[akeefer]

It's true that many people who say "there's a shortage" are really saying "I can't find a top 1% engineer who will work 60 hours a week for $80k a year in Silicon Valley." Well, duh: raise wages, provide better working conditions, or look elsewhere.

But I think you've taken it too far by defining "shortage" in such a way that it's impossible. If I said "A profitable company with sane hours is having trouble finding high-quality engineers at $120k+ a year" it's a little more reasonable to say, "Hmm, maybe that means that there's a 'shortage' of good engineers, in the sense that society and the economy as a whole would benefit from having more talented engineers." Just saying "look elsewhere" or "pay more" completely sidesteps the whole point, which is that where there's a "shortage" there's an obvious opportunity to profitably address it in a way that benefits the economy and society.

To use your analogy, if the beef supply was constrained such that the cheapest hamburger was $100, would you say, "There's no shortage: supply and demand have met at a price of $100?" Or would you say, "Wow, hamburger prices increased by like 20x, there's a shortage of hamburgers?" I think most people would say the latter; the former simply isn't a useful definition of the word "shortage." It means that relative to some general idea of "normal" (as defined by previous conditions, or conditions in related markets), the market seems distorted by a lack of supply.

[Retric]

Market's don't work that way. Developers are worth different amounts of money to different companies. Google gains something like 1 million in value per year per developer and they would still be profitable if the market rate for a talented Dev was 600k/year. Most companies are not that flexible and there are a lot more dev's out than just what Google needs which drives down salary's until some companies barely breakeven by adding staff and some dev's move on to better paying opportunity's.

[akeefer]

Sure, but that's not what I was arguing against; my point is that just because that's how market works it doesn't mean you can't say there's not a "shortage" of some skill. If the only companies that can hire engineers have to be able to pay them $600k a year, wouldn't you reasonably say that there's a shortage of engineers? I sure would. If supply was so large that great engineers were working for $40k per year, wouldn't you suggest that there was a glut/oversupply of engineers?

In either case, saying there's a "shortage" or a "glut" isn't saying anything about supply and demand, it's implying some sort of course of action that you should take: i.e. go study engineering (yourself) or promote engineering schools (as a society), or go study something else/promote other types of skills.

I'm not arguing over market economics, I'm arguing that just because supply and demand work like that it doesn't mean you can just dismiss anyone who talks of there being a "shortage."

[Retric]

Many bankers make over 600k / year but nobody says there is a shortage of bankers. I would suggest that the only reasonable way there is a true shortage of some profession is if it's growing rapidly AND the pay is rapidity increasing, but looking at how flat developers salary's have been over the last few years and slow the growth has been it's hard to argue that there is a shortage. Honestly, a steady supply and demand at a given price suggests that the supply and demand is balanced. Despite how much developers want to make more money and employers want to pay them less.