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Comment by coffeemug | Hacker News Reader

>There is NOT a shortage of software developers.

What would have to be true for you to agree that there is a shortage of software developers? Big tech cos have total comp of ~$600k/engineer. Would you think there is a shortage if they had to pay $6m/engineer? $60m? How do you define "shortage"?

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Those aren’t market wages. Those are compensation packages awarded to long tenured employees at cash cow companies as a form of golden handcuff to keep experts on specific in-house systems. They are paid out to keep employees from taking company secrets to competitors. They work because these compensation packages are so far off market that these employees would suffer a huge pay drop if they moved. So in no way do these rates reflect the market. However it is great food for this skill shortage narrative BS.

I'd argue that this is closer to a market rate than it seems because, as you mention, on the open market they can go somewhere else and paying them this much is needed for them to not do that.

How are you defining market rate if not by how much someone thinks they need to pay an employee to stay?

Even after paying $600,000 per employee, Facebook still makes $600,000 profit per employee.

So it is currently at a 50/50 split of the value created between the employee and the company.

I would expect, in a skills shortage, that the employee would be able to demand a much greater share, something closer to -- or even temporarily above -- 100%.

The absolute number, $60,000 or $600,000 or $6,000,000 doesn't seem relevant.

> I would expect, in a skills shortage, that the employee would be able to demand a much greater share, something closer to -- or even temporarily above -- 100%.

It would be really interesting to compare salary/profit ratio of the tech industry to recognized labor shortages in other industries.

I think much of what people are trying to say here is that there is no such thing as a labor shortage in any industry (assuming no artificial wage controls). Also, in the USA you often hear about insufficient supply of workers in certain work categories: software engineer, nurse, teacher. Are those the very highest paid work categories? If not, why aren't the highest paid categories said to be suffering from insufficient supply?

You are of course right that the ratio of profit per employee and salary is irrelevant.

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