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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Well, since companies are always complaining about the chronic "shortage of tech talent" I'm sure everyone here will be employed within a few days, amiright?

EDIT: Honest, non-snarky question, then: If you believe there really is this shortage of tech talent, why is this effort needed? I don’t believe there is such a shortage and I wish these guys best of luck.

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The shortage is not evenly distributed.

That, and there isn’t a shortage. There is a shortage of engineers willing to work for the wage being offered. When there is a shortage of a particular type of engineer, it’s because the company wants to pay $75,000 for a position that the market demands be $95,000. Thus the “shortage” and the “need” to bring in low cost H1 workers to fill that shortage.

Seems like if an engineer can easily hold out for 95k, it's because there is indeed a shortage that is big enough to do so. If there was a surplus of engineers instead, then more would be willing to work for lower pay, no?

Tangentially related but I believe Soundcloud actually paid above the average Berlin start up salary. Maybe someone else can confirm this?

There absolutely is no shortage. The distribution issue is taken out of the picture by looking at large firms like Google and Apple that can hire broadly. Google prides themselves on their interview system that has a high false negative rate. If there were any kind of shortage, they would probably be desperate to improve their hiring efficiencies. They are most definitely not concerned with that. On the other hand it is always in the buyers best interest to bitch about a "shortage" especially when they have regulatory influence. Why wouldn't they want to lobby for anything that can bring supply prices down? The day you see blog posts about Google or Facebook streamlining their interview processes (for both type I and II errors), I'll concede.

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