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Ask HN: Hiring software engineers in '16 vs. prior years?

14 pointslscore72010y ago7 comments

Hiring Managers:

I'm curious to hear how your experience has been finding software engineers over the last 6-12 months. How's the length of time from job opening-to-hire versus recent years? Any metrics to support whether it's been more difficult or easier recently?

Thanks for your input.

7 comments

7 comments · 3 top-level

iends10y ago· 3 in thread

I can't speak to 2016 as we've only recruited one person this year. However, towards the middle and end of 2015 it was very hard to find good developers in Raleigh, NC. It seems like everybody noticed, too, and as a result salaries seemed to have jumped up a bit. I know a number of senior engineers who were able to get 20% or so raises by jumping to a different company.

lscore720OP10y ago

Yeah, that sounds similar to our experience. We saw a fairly steady uptick in the difficulty of recruiting engineers between '11 and early '15, then a significant shift around early/mid last year. We've been able to recruit about half the number of qualified candidates compared to the previous few years. I'm interested to hear how others have fared.

ddorian4310y ago

Have you considered hiring remote ?

lscore720OP10y ago

I'm just an agency recruiter, so I'm at the whim of the employer. My experience trying to represent remote jobs has consistently been the opposite: the supply of qualified candidates is excellent versus the relatively few remote positions. (So, strong enough that these employers rarely need to a hire a contingency recruiting agency).

sheepmullet10y ago· 1 in thread

Lots of talent available and no issue hiring but then we pay 30% over market.

If you pay market rates then you only get the people actively looking for work or your company is so obviously amazing that devs will take a risk on you.

scalesolved10y ago

This a thousand times over, there are so many job opportunities out there at the moment but relatively few outside of the Valley are willing to up the market rate even though there is a huge lack of talent.

throweway10y ago

Any Australia anecdotes would be heartily appreciated. A falling AU dollar and stagnent dev wages make the US look so well paid. Almost to the point i could get paid more with a remote US job let alone an onsite one.

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