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Comment by throwaway98az8 | Hacker News Reader

Having had applied to and even interviewed at some of the companies/jobs listed in the blog post, I will provide an alternative explanation:

These roles are just like many others in the field, companies are supposedly desperate to fill them, but set unrealistically high expectations for the hiring bar so the role is never filled.

Context: 6 years professional experience, open to moving anywhere in US, experience at two SV unicorns, fine taking a reasonable pay cut to work on these things, still rejected or never heard back from every job of this type I've applied to/interviewed for.

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As a similar but "dual" experience: I am a very desirable candidate in my specialty. My resume is really really good looking, to the point where jobs have commented that they were worried I was fake. I've never been turned down for an interview, and only turned down for a job or internship once.

Having been offered positions at a number of companies who "really need" someone with my skillset, a lot of these places are shockingly inflexible on pay. I make 3-4x what (I infer) they normally pay people in nominally similar positions, and they seem absolutely unable to match that for procedural reasons, even though based on their description that seems like a reasonable investment for a specialist they really really need. The companies I end up working for are typically outsize successful, and I attribute a lot of that to their willingness to fork over some extra cash when it makes rational sense, and shockingly few companies in SV fit this description.

There are reasons to be inflexible on pay. I imagine it works enough of the time, and a candidate will accept the lower pay. I hypothesize also that inflexible pay policies make it more difficult to be accused of discriminatory pay practices.

I came to say something along these lines. Why would ea be any different to the rest of the tech sector? They want to hire someone with 10 years experience for the (sector adjusted) price of a recent graduate, and the interview process is unreliable as ever so when the perfect candidate walks in the door they probably fail to recognise them anyway.

Having been in a form of ea myself for around 10 years I'd also add that it takes a long time to start being effective. Lots of skills besides tech to learn, which will be very specific to whichever form of altruism you're involved with. So although I haven't looked at those job postings, the simultaneous over and under supply could possibly be explained by skills mismatch.

Not sure if you've advertised it as such to these potential employers, but you should not reveal your hand (that you're willing to accept a lower comp than what you currently earn)

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