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90% Of Software Developers Work Outside Silicon Valley (qz.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Quartz report: So much code to write, so few developers. The chronic talent shortage afflicting Silicon Valley is now all over the US -- and the developers are too.
A study by the software trade group The App Association analyzed government and private sector data to map where software developers live, and it identified 223,054 open positions around the country. It found that most developers live far away from the technology epicenter of Silicon Valley, and job openings follow a similar pattern. The upshot: Silicon Valley-style talent wars are moving away from tech hubs to smaller metro and even rural areas. Everywhere from rural Vermont to the middle of Montana is in need of programmers. "You can find places where you didn't expect software developers to be, but they are part of the local economy," said association spokesman Jonathan Godfrey in an interview. "It's pretty much everywhere."
Why would I pay $3000/month to share a ROOM with four other people making $120K when I can BUY a four bedroom house on one acre of land in the country for $825/month on half that salary anywhere between the Rocky and Appalachian mountain ranges? I'd take the boring enterprise 9-5 job at a no-name B2B service company any day of the week and enjoy my big house and yard with my kids any day of the week.
One look at the map in TFA and this came to mind: https://xkcd.com/1138/
I guess it surprises someone that "software development" includes a whole lot of people all over the country. Databases don't query themselves, and there's always a lot of corporate tools in every line of work. Software developers make them...
10-15 years ago i made a vigorous proposal to move all software developers into silicon valley for easier categorization. Cattle ranchers would be moved into cattle valley, and car repairmen would be moved into car valley (this makes indexing and normalization easier.) problems began to mount from the start. Some people complained they "didnt want to leave" their friends and family. others answered back with "sure ill move but i dont have a job" and "when will i see my wife again, you told me she was safe." Whiners.
Anyhow once id approacher 40% of developers I noticed they didnt stack well, and many of them complained of food shortages and transportation problems. Id instituted a "no family" policy to try and remedy this, and it worked for a while, until people told me that id have to find a way to get new software developers imported. Constructing a giant tube, i used it to hydraulically propel anyone from about age 17 on who tweeted even a cursory interest in software into my silicon valley. things were working well, so long as once weekly I greased all my programmers so they could move freely in the valley and made sure to flood their cubicles with nutrition slurry once or twice a day. Then the real issues started to mount. once id hit 80% of all developers, their combined mass and pressure was enough to begin to elicit a gravitational field. Project managers now had to come with an escape velocity equation in their salary, and pizzas from neighbouring cities were delivered from 3 miles outside the valley by letting go of the pie and hoping for the best. I unfortunately had to give up on my grand vision of a valley of programmers when a rogue sysadmin at a rest stop accidentally flew into the valley and impacted it with enough force to blanket the valley in a dark cloud of coffee beans and office chairs. its now a cold, barren wasteland inhabited by a race of creatures that subsist entirely on fried meat and energy drinks. they communicate in an arcane language of 3 letter abbreviations and social justice causes.
Good people go to bed earlier.
A trade group for the software industry claiming there are a quarter million software jobs open around the country. Yet oddly, when people with years of experience apply for these positions they are routinely told they don't have the experience the company is looking for.
Granted, not every candidate has the experience for every position, but it seems quite odd that for all the people who apply for a position, not one is qualified. Ever. Not even remotely close qualified. Even with the thousands of new developers being sent to pasture every month from other companies.
And here we have a trade group for the software industry essentially claiming the same thing. Coincidence? You decide.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
You dont have to be from silicon valley to be interested in software, and the best developers are the ones who learned out of personal self interest. such people will be all over the place.
It makes sense that employers who need and value them will accept telecommuting in exchange for securing that talent, given the so called scarcity. (sweetening the deal, rural US wages are much lower than on the coasts.)
I really dont see what is so unusual about this statistic.
Film at 11.
Why do people think that Silcon valley is the be all and end all of software development?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Breaking News!
The world doesn't revolve around California.
In related news, New York and London are also not the center of the universe. This news may come to a shock to just under 0.5% of the world's population that live in these locations.
I'm actually surprised that as many as 10 percent work inside Silicon Valley.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
there is a shortage of "qualified applicants".
There is not a shortage of talent.
qualified applicant == a person with the skillset we want that will also work at well below median pay, work much more than median hours without overtime, and is beholden to the company and cannot leave easily. They also have to be local, so they can attend those all important meetings.
I hope that helps.
The chronic talent shortage afflicting Silicon Valley is now all over the US—and the developers are too.
There is no chronic shortage. It is a myth invented by tech companies to get the H1-b quota boosted.
And if any company is having a hard time recruiting people, they are doing something very wrong. My company hasn't had to use a recruiter or job board in over 8 years. HR just sends out an email to everyone saying they're looking for someone and in about two weeks, the new person starts. Somebody on the team knows someone with the skills who's looking for a new job.
Also, don't immediately discount unemployed folks. Just because they're out of work doesn't mean they're no good - especially in this day and age of people being replaced by H1-bs and offshoring.
And as far as new grads are concerned, "elite" schools don't have a monopoly on hard working smart kids.
And maybe your system isn't as cutting edge as you think it is. I've seen too many jobs where at most a BS CIS is all that's needs and many times a 2 year tech grad would be able to do a wonderful job. But they want the MIT grad to do their web page.
The real question I was wondering why does anyone find that surprising?
While Silicon Valley is a major technology hub (10% of the software developers is HUGE!) there is need for software development across the globe. Many Major colleges teach Computer Science and Computer Engineering around the world, However there are a lot of Major ones in the North Eastern US. It is insane to think that all these people whose home is spread across the world, will travel away from it to study in colleges in one half of the country, then travel 2000 miles to the other end of the country for work?
Most of these people tend to stay near their homes or their colleges (Hence why a lot of communities like having colleges in their area, causing a lot of new business around those areas, from young new grads, who have nothing to lose and startup new companies).
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Most of _everything_ is outside Silicon Valley.
Is this news to anyone?
of course not, but they still need to be local to have their daily browbeatings in person, and attend all those critically important meetings.
H1Bs are perfect fits.