Yeah I don’t think this is true. I teach undergraduate CS and our data shows (which we publish at admissions so is public) we regularly have close to 100% job placement within 6 months, with 90+% of that being CS related. I know many of the students personally and they are almost all landing good software development jobs. I think we have a good program but I hear the same from colleagues at other schools.

“Good software development jobs” of course is a relative term. CS related does not mean Amazon at >$100k, although a few achieve that.

Note that the same argument works as evidence against recruiting bias and pay disparity. Discriminating against people or paying them less due to factors unrelated to job performance is leaving money on the table. Such discrimination persisting would imply that the market is very inefficient in this aspect.

This only applies if there's no way hiring practices could possibly improve, which given the existence of some data on the subject seems unlikely. In particular, it's not too far-fetched that people with some coding literacy may make better hiring decisions than Muggles.

>Large employers in this company would like to have labor costs reduced, especially for costly positions like software development. I'm not saying that is necessarily a sinister thing, but things like this should be thought of in the context of reducing labor costs.

Reducing labor costs in the long run reduces average prices and increases real incomes. Historically, it's not usually a bad thing; in this case, real incomes[1] go up whenever cost savings are passed to consumers.

The market may not be perfect, but it's usually better than fiat and ignorance.

[1]: cost-adjusted income, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_income

Well, and you'd be wrong. Here's my anecdote against yours: I'm a hiring manager at a large tech firm, and I see lots of candidates with CS degrees and even some years of experience, who can't code well at all. Definitely not at a level to make comparable pay to partners at law firms :)

> Students are going to CS programs these days for the money

Yes, and many of them are not good software engineers at all.

> I just saw an HN article about an airline attendant who became a developer

You know, there are gifted people everywhere. If someone taught themselves enough programming to make it to "partner at law firm" level compensation range, they are naturally talented and have the right combination of personality traits (which is rare, the specific fact that this person was a flight attendant or hair stylist or whatever is irrelevant).

> bar is any higher for a significant number of development jobs than say, for example, an auto mechanic

I don't know who you are and what you do or don't know, but for high-paying serious tech jobs this is completely false.

Just an idea: Try increasing salary. Good CS grads already have people hiring them and they have a ton of debt to repay.

I am not quite so sure my immigrant coworkers make noticeably less than I do, although I cannot really validate this claim either as I don't ask people who much they are paid.

> Employers see engineering as a cost sink and want to do everything possible to reduce budgetary pressures.

Yes and no. Employers see developers as a debt pool, because they are a cost factor unlike people in sales who actually generate revenue, but typically they see hiring, recruiting, and retention as even more expensive and riskier endeavors.

That drives all kinds of counter-intuitive behaviors regarding expenses and developers. Companies are typically willing to hire more developers than they need, because hiring is expensive and isn't always quick. Companies are also willing to prioritize slower more expensive technologies that require more developers so long as it means a reduction in recruitment and hiring risks.

I find that process horribly broken. Why is it so hard and deceptively untrustworthy to hire people generally in software? I don't believe it is the hiring process that is to blame, but rather the candidate pool in consideration for the required skills or experience.

That's nonsense. FB pays upwards of $200K per year to fresh CS graduates. Compare that to $60K made by a chemical engg graduate. If there were plenty of talented developers why are they paying such astronomical salaries?

First, US is already the third country in list for highest paid programmers, there is not much room to grow.

Second, Companies are in business, not for charity.

Companies are there for profit so if they could hire a beginner programmer for 50k, they should, otherwise they would be out of business and you would be buying everything made in China.

> The problem is that finding those 6 experienced devs is _HARD_. And they're usually very expensive and know their value.

It's harder than finding uncaring juniors, sure.

But if you need 40+6 people, or 6 experienced people, that's nearly 8x salary.

In silicon valley money, you'll need to pay those uncaring juniors about 150K.

I guarantee you that you can very easily find those 6 experienced people in a few weeks if you're offering over $1M/yr to them. In a month you can staff all 6 positions.

If you're saying you want ~8x performance but not interested in paying ~8x salary.. then yes, it's harder to find the people.

If anything, this comment is out of touch with reality as it stands for most software developers in the US.

The median salary for a software developer in the US is over $100k. In Silicon Valley MSAs it's even higher of course.

The median income for similar careers like computer programmer is also very high even if it's less than $100k and those careers cover far fewer people anyway.

This is one of those things that seems like it should be true in principle, but doesn't seem to be true in practice. I don't believe my employer is generous. I'm certain if they could generate the same value for a significantly lower cost they would.

Software engineers from a top school, who passed the most hardcore interviews in the most selective firms in the world, to live in the most expensive city on the planet where a single bedroom flat is $4k a month.

Of course, then you can pay them less.

I think the point is to bring in as much cheap[er] labor as possible. I mean, obviously people have been managing to cope with complex languages in complex multi-hundred and multi-million lines of code for decades, but now, with the startup craze, there is a need for a vast amount of developer force, that may not be as capable as before. When people go into the business for money reasons alone, things get bleak. I think that concept is for these people. And I get it, money is important! But I think there should be at least some passion there there too, and that's not just for software development, but for most walks of life.

Sure, except we talk all the time about how bad hiring practices are in our industry, how bad we all are at discerning talent. So I don't really see this being a positive thing for existing developers (increasing supply and pushing wages down), though who's to say we deserve the situation we're in presently?

Large employers in this company would like to have labor costs reduced, especially for costly positions like software development. I'm not saying that is necessarily a sinister thing, but things like this should be thought of in the context of reducing labor costs. That's all it is, I think --as opposed to fancy notions about democratizing technology and so forth.

So it looks like software would vastly improve if silicon valley companies moved to india or russia or some other place with abundant supply of capable developers.

Regardless, what you said doesnt show that it was a strawman, it was still a valid conclusion, but you re offering the real reason behind it.

If the situation is zero-sum, then you absolutely have. Your post is exhibit #254,689,472,096,776 of people lying about this, and other people have caught on.

>There are many cases where you can adjust how many spots you have available if you make more intelligent decisions about resource allocation or are willing to make junior hires that cost less than senior ones and train them up.

So let's say instead of an Asian senior dev making $180k a year, you now have an Asian junior dev and a Black junior dev making $90k. That doesn't disadvantage the Asian who would have been a senior dev making $180k? Preposterous.

No, it really isn't. Read my article and the linked economic research.

> if there was 10 fold increase in programmers

There has been a 10 fold increase in programmers since 50 years ago, but more than a 10 fold increase in the amount of programming work, so salaries have done just fine. Also, those programmers are already there, in other countries, so artificial barriers can only create so much salary disparity before companies will pursue other options. At that point, why were you bothering trying to keep them out in the first place?

Read the linked article: it is not a zero-sum game.

An endless supply of passionate, naive, and young talent. I guess at least 50% of my graduating CS class at one point or another wished to create a game. Far fewer wished to create a database engine, an operating system, or a B2B web service.

When you have that many people who want to make a particular type of software, getting a chance to do so acts as something economists call a compensating differential. Working on games is actually part of a game developer's compensation, and thus the companies can afford to pay them less in other ways.