Comments on Software Rants & Other Miscellany: I'm calling it now: The engineering talent bubble

The only way to stop the trend is to burst the bub...

2010-11-15T10:26:22.476-05:00

The only way to stop the trend is to burst the buble now instead of later...Is that what is needed ..unemployment of millions

I'm glad you're going out on a limb and ma...

2010-11-12T18:27:30.198-05:00

I'm glad you're going out on a limb and making a concrete prediction.

I'll be checking back in two years.

Remember the adage about the most productive engin...

2010-11-12T15:51:43.658-05:00

Remember the adage about the most productive engineers being 10x more productive (at least) than an average engineer. I think at least part of what's going on is we're seeing salaries starting to (at least a little bit) reflect that reality.

It's not all engineers being caught up in this phenomenon. It's the good ones.

I'm not sure if you can call an 'engineeri...

2010-11-12T14:41:54.256-05:00

I'm not sure if you can call an 'engineering bubble' especially when the US has one of the lowest percentages of graduates in engineering. There is plenty of growth still in engineering - maybe you are correct and there will not be huge $10 million bonuses for startups, but there will still be plenty of opportunity for software engineers. We have tons of web applications that are being built and wil continue to be built. Especially with the QE of the United States, you can bet there's going to be a bunch of rich folk wanting to make more startups.

If there is a lack of engineers, they have to pay them higher salaries. 7-digit salary is kind of insane, but supply will definitely increase if they start paying everyone high salaries. We'd want more engineers if anything else - there's plenty of work left to do.

I heard china has tons of engineers - maybe they will take over and fix these high salary problems.

Thank you JTB for both defining the word bubble an...

2010-11-12T13:38:15.778-05:00

Thank you JTB for both defining the word bubble and then describing its specific application in this current instance.

2010-11-12T11:10:07.341-05:00

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Even at radically higher salaries, Google is still...

2010-11-12T10:50:48.197-05:00

Even at radically higher salaries, Google is still paying engineers a small portion of the value they create, especially since the right engineers can theoretically create whole new lines of business. And these salaries are still well below what people would make on Wall Street.

I have a hard time seeing the bubble in that? Yeah, it sucks that talent acquisitions basically reward starting a failed company and discourage just staying at the company in the first place. And, yeah, it sucks that startups can't compete for talent financially. (Luckily they're about a million times more fun and exciting to work at.) But if you had a lot of cash and not enough engineers wouldn't you start spending like crazy to get some?

On the flip side, until Americans get excited about math and science or looser immigration laws, the supply of intelligent software engineers will remain limited. The trend seems to be pretty strongly in the other direction.