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"The reason is that almost everywhere I turn, I hear clients and employers complaining about how they can’t find enough good developers."

There are good developers for every kind of job. A good developer for a small bakery around the corner is very different from a good developer for the core search team at google.

The issue then is not why aren't there more good developers, but why can't employers find developers that fit their needs.

This is something that's been covered widely, most notably for hn by pg. If people that are starting tech companies have trouble hiring good programmers, imagine how difficult it would be if you aren't a tech start up company looking to hire programmers.

A small step toward the solution is to write on your blog a distilled checklist of how all of the companies you've worked for were able to describe what their needs were.

Once you are able to describe a problem, it is much easier to find a solution.

1 comments

The other issue is that a lot of companies have extremely low estimates on what good developers cost. I've been to several smaller places where I knew my knowledge+skill could really help them out. The jobs sounded interesting so I bid the lowest number I could afford to. My number blew them out of the water. So I continue to do less interesting stuff in finance.

This is very true, but I'd like to add that old cliche: money isn't everything.

I'm making about 65% of what I was making 2 years ago, but the experience is far better. I have awesomely talented coworkers, get to work on fun stuff, have freedom to explore interesting alternative side projects/ideas, work from home and coffee shops every day, and have no strictly defined schedule. As far as some people are concerned, I don't have a job at all - but that's what you get when you love what you do and the company treats you like a responsible adult (an all-too-rare thing).

While I do sometimes feel that the money is not enough month-to-month, I have enough to invest some in retirement each month, pay a little extra on my mortgage each month, and occasionally buy a new Apple gadget. Not having any other debt (besides mortgage) makes this easier, too. If there's a bigger lesson here, it's to eliminate your debt while you're making the big bucks at the boring job - because that'll free you up to take the more interesting but lower-paying job when it comes along. Don't be a slave to your lifestyle.

People who say "money isn't everything" are often selling themselves short. You can have all of those things you mentioned, and still get paid a good salary, you just need to find the right company.

Too often, I've found that the companies that don't pay well are also filled with terrible employees, simply because the only people left are those that couldn't get a job anywhere else.

Also, any manager that says "we're not going to pay you as much as the industry standard for someone with your experience, but hey, you get free soda in the break room and you can work from home a few days a week" is ripping you off. Plain and simple - he figured out that spending a few cents on sugar water lets him save $thousands on salary.

You can make six digits plus, and still work from home, and chances are you'll be working with smarter and more talented people because they just won't let any schmuck that can't get a better job stick around.

I'm not sure why you'd assume that being okay with being paid average (or even slightly below) is such a crime. How does this translate to the company being filled with "terrible employees" and the like? I think you're assuming that everyone's goal in life is to just make as much money as possible and damn the risk. It's not.

The company I work for has been around for more than 10 years but is very small and fiscally conservative. I've worked for plenty of high paying startups (often from home and coffee shops and doing interesting things) who die in less than half the time this one has been around. In some cases, they died because they were paying above average wages in a misguided attempt to compete for the best of the best. That didn't work out so well. Of the 5 or so startups I've been with in the last few years, only Tapulous remains in business. Sure, they all paid great and I got rid of my debt during those years, but it didn't work out so well for them, did it?

>In some cases, they died because they were paying above average wages in a misguided attempt to compete for the best of the best.

It's not misguided. I've worked in every size of company, from a <5-man startup to fortune 5 and the best developers I've ever worked with were at a mid-sized hedge fund. The work was relatively boring and the management was shockingly bad but the much higher pay brought in some really talented developers. The only reason the place didn't fold was because of the effort of these developers.

It's not the money I'm thinking about, it's freedom with my time. The more money I make now, the less I have to worry about making later. The things I'm really interested in no one is going to pay me to do (research, but I don't have a PhD), so the only solution is to make enough to take big blocks of time off every few years.

I get that a lot too. It's why I've stopped targeting a lot of small (10 people or less) companies. Too many conversations seem to go like this: "I just bought a copy of Microsoft Office for $500, why should I pay $1500 for <much simpler piece of custom software>."

Even worse is when they didn't buy Office, but had it come "free" with their PC's.