Researchers Say the Tech Worker Shortage Doesn't Really Exist

Beeftopia sends this excerpt from an article at BusinessWeek: "There’s no evidence of any way, shape, or form that there’s a shortage in the conventional sense," says Hal Salzman, a professor of planning and public policy at Rutgers University. "They may not be able to find them at the price they want. But I’m not sure that qualifies as a shortage, any more than my not being able to find a half-priced TV." ... The real issue, say Salzman and others, is the industry’s desire for lower-wage, more-exploitable guest workers, not a lack of available American staff. "It seems pretty clear that the industry just wants lower-cost labor," Dean Baker, the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, wrote in an e-mail. A 2011 review (PDF) by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the H-1B visa program, which is what industry groups are lobbying to expand, had "fragmented and restricted" oversight that weakened its ostensible labor standards. "Many in the tech industry are using it for cheaper, indentured labor," says Rochester Institute of Technology public policy associate professor Ron Hira, an EPI research associate and co-author of the book Outsourcing America.

Comments

Sure

[Greyfox]

If you want skilled tech workers, fire most of your HR department except for the one person who fields the sexual harassment claims about Gary in accounting, refuse to do business with any recruiter and start doing your own recruitment off github and recommendations from your good developers. If you want to retain those people, show them some respect, pay them a decent wage and offer them meaningful work. It would also help if you understood the market you're targeting and the problems you're trying to solve. If you don't understand what your developers are capable of and what they're doing, the only means you have to evaluate them is the market response to your product.

I think the "tech worker shortage" is really just a shortage of people who have no idea how to run a technical company.