Comment I Honestly Don't Believe There Is A Coder Shortage (Score 0) 225
There was a widespread claim a few years back that there was a half-million shortage of Software Engineers that would reach one million by 2020. I cry bullshit on that, as it is quite difficult for many coders to find work - guys with grey hair such as myself, women, latinos, African Americans and those who specialize in coding other than web or mobile apps.
I only got back to work when I totally gave up on getting into mobile or web then hung out my shingle as a driver and embedded coder. That's worked out well but what I _really_ like a about coding?
"Check this out Mom. See what happens when I click _this_ button?" "Yes...
"I wrote that!" "OH MIKEY!"
Mikey Likes To Make His Momma Proud.
I have traced that million-coder shortage claim to the Obama Administration's Official Whitehouse Blog from 2013, which reported that there would be openings for 1.4 Million coders in 2020, but that there would only be 400,000 new CS graduates.
But consider that my own degree is in Physics yet I do just fine. That blog cited the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics for both figures but I have been unable to find the original publication - if there even is one. I emailed a specific individual at the BLS who was in that general line of statisticsifying but got no response. Later this week I'll send a few dead trees to them.
My own take is that hiring managers and recruiters are completely unable to judiciously select the right candidates to interview due to - as I've read repeatledy, no citation but RSN I'll have one - that job board posts for coders result in on the average one thousand applications.
Surely that would make your own eyeballs bleed.
The Balkanizations of languages, applications - web back end, front end, mobile, embedded, systems, MIS even nuclear weapons design - results in it being very very difficult for the right coders to connect to the right companies. That and the fact that Google Trends convinced me that the single most-consistently searched-for keyword is "jobs" resulted in my building what - by 2020 I hope - will be a comprehensive list of links directly to the Jobs or Careers Portals of every Computer Industry that hires through its own website. BEHOLD:
(The exceedingly basic web design is intended to enable my site to work well for the ancient boxes and browsers found in the developing world, most rural public libraries as well as those owned by low-income people.)
About a month from now I'll form a Non-Profit Corporation to take over the operation of Soggy Jobs. The IRS takes about a year to approve 501(c)(3) Tax-Deductible Status, at which point I'll apply for charitable grants from Google.org, employment- and economic development-oriented philanthropists, and government employment and economic development agencies.
That will enable me to hire - just at first - an Entry-Level SQA Engineer, a Journey-Level Back End Developer and a Senior Front End Developer; I've got lots of plans for modern boxes and browsers that I shan't divulge until they... wait for it... Beta.
After the IRS approves my deductible status I'll form subsidiaries in most industrialized nations then apply for their non deductible statuses. That's going to be really complicated and will require some cash as I'll have to retain a bunch of non-profit corp formation attorneys.
San Francisco consistently gets the most hits. My most-loved page is that for San Luis Obispo County, California, where this really is both Software and Hardware, with the city of SLO being the home of one of the two California Polytechnic campuses, yet in my own hard experience when I lived there for a year it was exceedingly difficult just to find the actual companies that employed coders like me.
Spending some time at the Facebook and Reddit employment groups led to my understanding that those who need work the most yet are the least able to actually obtain it are entry-level and minimum wage workers, as well as single mothers who quite desperately require remote work. For the first two I will soon be focussing on Cafe Industry Companies - not just Barista work but also Cafe Management, Prepared Food Supply Chain and the like.
My plan for late this year is to comprehensively list all the Cafes in the Counties where - quite arbitrarily - I've lived myself. After I've built some real automation, I'll reach out - oh how do I hate that term! - to large multinationals to request they set me up with feeds that will enable both I and them to add new locations as well as remove closed locations within a day of the actual events.
For the single mothers, after I've got perhaps five hundred Cafes listed I'll start focussing on Customer Service, Technical Support and - if I can actually find any such openings - Remote, Entry-Level SQA.
You can help me out in two different ways; the first is easy as pie: email the homepage URLs of any Software or Hardware firm you think I should list to incoming@soggy.jobs
By the end of Spring, anyone will be able to submit all the locations any company via a mercilessly-moderated web form, which moderation will be loosely based on the Advogato Trust Metric:
The other major focus of this site is a peer certification system. The members of this site certify each other, specifying one of three skill levels. Then, I've got a trust metric that takes the whole pile of certificates and decides a trust level for each member. What makes the system interesting is that it's attack resistant. If a bunch of attackers were to create lots of accounts and mutually certify each other, only a very few would be accepted by the trust metric, assuming there were only a few certificates from legitimate members to the hackers.
If you want to list Foo, Inc. in Seattle, SFO and Portland, you'd submit Foo's homepage just once in a single text field, then enter each of their locations in that same form. You'll click a checkbox if Foo has too many shops for you to conveniently list, at which point at first I then late my staff will use a somewhat manually-operated bot to find then list every single Foo, Inc. location that walks the Earth.
The second will cost you $25 but will get you an autographed copy of my upcoming Vocal CD. And yes: I'm quite a good singer. How to claim your $25 CD? Contribute to my Indiegogo campaign, to be launched on Wednesday, February 20th.
(The above link will redirect to my actual Indiegogo campaign on the morning of the 20th. Contribute. Or Don't.)
(I'm a Baritone.)