#CSjobs #highpayscale #jobdemand #jobmarket #ITindustry
Have you ever wondered why Computer Science jobs are so lucrative, even though there seems to be a shortage of positions compared to the number of applicants? π€ It can be frustrating to see such high demand for CS professionals while also noticing that the number of job openings isn’t increasing at the same rate. So, why are CS jobs so high-paying if the supply of jobs is low and the demand is high? Let’s delve into this issue and explore some practical solutions that can help you navigate the competitive job market in the IT industry.
## The Dilemma of High Demand and Low Supply
In the field of Computer Science, the demand for skilled professionals continues to grow rapidly as technology becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives. Companies across various industries are constantly seeking talented individuals who can develop innovative solutions, manage complex systems, and analyze big data. However, despite this high demand, the number of CS job openings doesn’t always keep pace with the influx of candidates looking to secure these coveted positions.
### Why Aren’t Salaries Decreasing?
If there are lots of candidates and few jobs, wouldn’t employers lower the salaries in order to save expenses? This seems like a logical assumption, but the reality is quite different in the world of Computer Science. Several factors contribute to the reason why CS jobs remain high-paying even in the face of a competitive job market:
1. **Specialized Skills**:
– Candidates with specialized skills in areas like artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and machine learning are in high demand and can command higher salaries.
2. **Industry Growth**:
– The rapid expansion of tech companies and startups fuels the need for skilled CS professionals, leading to competitive compensation packages.
3. **Talent Shortage**:
– Despite the abundance of applicants, there is still a shortage of qualified candidates who possess the necessary technical expertise and problem-solving capabilities.
## Practical Solutions for Job Seekers
If you’re looking to stand out in a crowded pool of CS job applicants and secure a high-paying position, here are some practical solutions to consider:
### 1. **Continual Learning**:
– Stay updated on the latest technologies and trends in the industry through online courses, certifications, and workshops.
### 2. **Networking**:
– Build connections with industry professionals, attend tech conferences, and participate in hackathons to expand your network.
### 3. **Internships**:
– Gain hands-on experience through internships or co-op programs to demonstrate your skills and adaptability to potential employers.
By actively pursuing these strategies and showcasing your expertise in the ever-evolving field of Computer Science, you can increase your chances of landing a high-paying job despite the competitive job market.
In conclusion, the disparity between the supply of CS jobs and the demand for qualified professionals may seem perplexing at first glance. However, by understanding the factors that contribute to the high-paying nature of these positions and implementing practical solutions to enhance your skills and marketability, you can position yourself for success in the thriving IT industry. Remember, the key to thriving in a competitive job market is to continuously refine your skills, network effectively, and seize opportunities that align with your career goals.π
The supply of good candidates is low.
Because its hard. The number of GOOD programmers is a lot lower than ones who are mediocre or downright awful. Good programmers cost a lot of money.
Because senior developers are still highly in demand and most of those who were laid off have found work elsewhere by now. The supply of jobs is not low at all.
The answer is quite simple: good developers are worth their salary.
There was, is and will always be gazillions of tech problems and shortage of good and experienced tech people.
Focus on git gud, you never have to βworryβ about these kind of things.
To give an idea how bad most candidates are: in my manager’s 2+ years managing at the place we used to work at, he never got a satisfactory answer to the coding interview question: “write a function that takes two booleans, and returns true if one is true and the other is false, or the first is false and the other is true.” – To be technical, he didn’t feel the need to ask me that in my interview, but still, that’s a *lot* of supposed “software engineering” candidates who can’t do jack squat.
I watched a candidate with 15 YOE in frontend development fail that question worse than I would imagine anyone failing it, and that was with constant coaching from my boss to help him and encourage him to success.
you are forgetting about years of experience
the supply of new grads isn’t low
Itβs hard to find experienced and good candidates, so salaries need to be higher to attract those candidates. Similarly how in professional sports, good athletes are rare so higher salaries are needed to attract them. Hope that comparison makes sense.
The untied states and other western countries have exported (for the most part) the jr and midlevel developer positions therefore the job market is mainly for really smart really experience people.
1. Tech is relatively inexpensive compared to the revenue it can produce because software can be used by millions of customers once built
2. Good developers are rare, especially ones that can effectively communicate with stakeholders
Universities pumped out a lot of people barely interested in their profesion
Supply of jobs isn’t that low, and demand is really only so-so at the senior levels.
If I was hiring, I could hire 10 developers tomorrow, no problem. What if I want *good* developers? I honestly probably couldn’t get *one* unless I was paying significantly over market rate.
Unit economics. Small teams doing big things. A lot of stuff is built with surprisingly low headcounts
people arenβt commodities. cs is very broad. The people writing new network protocols arenβt the same as the ones creating new encryption algorithms arenβt the one making new databases, arenβt the ones making frontend
That’s because your priors are wrong. CS jobs are so high paying because the demand of employers is high and supply of exceptional job candidates is low.
Wages are sticky
Thatβs kinda like saying
> why do professional boxers make so much? Thereβs a title boxing and ufc gym in every city and theyβre always full, there must be tons of boxers out there
Way easyer to scale with a small team compared to industrial stuff
This can be answered with another, similar question: why are there millions of people who know how to playfootball and would be willing to play professional football given the chance, but you still have professional football players with massive salaries?
They are only exceptionally high paying in one place: USA. In other advanced economies it’s just a middle-class job that pays a bit better than being a civil engineer and a bit worse than being a gynecologist. The reason they still pay high despite lower demand is twofold:
1. The simple economic phenomenon of price stickiness, people resist accepting a lower price for things they sell (including their time) once they got used to a higher price even if it means they need to wait longer to find a buyer.
2. Demand is high and supply low mostly for junior, maybe mid-level jobs. Since at least a decade ago many if not most employers love the idea of hiring only seniors if they can. Where do the seniors come from, do they grow on trees? Not their problem.
Questions like this are a perfect example of the βcandidatesβ. Ieβ¦thereβs a big difference between βcandidateβ and βqualified candidate who can think.β
There aren’t actually a lot of good candidates, even at the entry level. That said, entry level candidates today are MUCH better than they were 10-15 years ago. I do think the market is rebalancing somewhat.
Lots of bad candidates. Demand for talented software engineers still exceeds supply by a landslide. Software engineering is an incredibly challenging job.
Just because there’s a lot of applicants, it doesn’t mean that they’re worth a crap when it comes to developing and implementing the work needed.
Ill argue and go so far as to say that the vast majority of people think they’re better than they really are, a factor that leads to plenty of lying or exaggerating on resumes as well.
Among other things, High Complexity and High Specialization, you can not replace one CS person easily and immediatly by another CS person …
Supply and Demand is only part of the equation. Another part is how much value you can provide. If I can save or make the company I work for hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars a year, I should be paid pretty damn well for that.
They are lowering them. We don’t typically cut salaries but when filling a position the range will be lower. What makes you think this isn’t happening?
I think you are referring to the tech industry, rather than CS jobs. It’s due to the value each employee can bring to the tech company. If I remember correctly, on average, each Meta employee brings in over 250k of pure profit, for example.
We are in a sea of shit with poor quality devs. Every once in a while we find a shiny turd, other much rarer times we find a diamond.
because there is a lack of “skilled” SWEs that companies want to hire. So they need to pay more to attract them to their company. This is true at all levels and not just new grad roles.
It doesn’t matter that you have 15 YOE at company A if company B’s hiring bar is something you cannot pass. In this case you will not get a job, regardless of what you did in the past. YOE really means nothing since roles and responsible are defined differently at every company.
My company recently started opening up headcount again and Iβve been doing a lot of screens. Theyβve all been really bad, I havenβt passed a single one. In the before times I would probably pass 80% of screens.
Not sure what this says but itβs my experience
Indeed it’s kind of weird, however in some countries the market law strikes hard.
I’ve seen Data Scientists paid 30% less of what the role with the same seniority is supposed to get paid, because there are hundreds of candidates on each job advertisement and even the good ones struggle to land a job.
Because you have kids graduating with no interest in the skill, just the money. They’ve been groomed by their parents in USA or India for years with high paying sw job as their entitlement.
Also, with social media and stack overflow changing attention spans, people have lost the ability to focus and manage the exceptions. I saw some C++ code that made me nauseous and when i gently inquired about why it took 1000 lines of code to do something so simple in a loop, I was told no one cares about speed anymore so we convert everything back and forth between strings. Real world exceptions left core dumps, no logs. No biggie. Process restarts. Crazy.
And that’s why it takes 10 mins to boot to ready.
You answered your own question there. Supply is low because it’s high skilled. High skill means high pay.
Because devs arenβt plug and play. A shit dev will set your project back months. An experienced dev will write well maintained code, thatβs easy to extend and debug, and know what to watch for.
My previous employer thought they could hire 3 interns(me being one) for the price of a senior engineer and get the same result. Boy was she wrong. She eventually hired an experienced engineer who got what she wanted in less time.
You say “if the supply of jobs is low and the demand is high” like thats a contradiction. Low supply, high demand = high price
Well I can only talk from my experience: my job and the job of the developers I lead is not so fun, but weβre mostly prevent doom and destruction with a few small enhancements sprinkled in for good measure and that is worth a lot of money to a company.
I look at it more this way: There wouldnβt be nearly as many candidates if the pay were significantly lower.
Adding on top of what other people are saying here, the overhead isn’t as large as some other industries.
I’m leaving research soon and the equipment and supplies needed for our work costs a shit ton of money. A smaller lab with a handful of people can easily consume $1 million a year in supplies and services alone before salaries. An experiment done in half a day can cost hundreds in supplies alone.
Think about a manufacturing plant that has to spend a buttload of money on raw materials, machinery maintenance, electricity, shipping, etc.
But for our bioinformatics group, who just use their own devices and they only bought parts to build another gaming PC, the cost to run that group is far lower. They just pay a university overhead fee, the upstart cost of a couple gaming PCs and salaries.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – the closest analogues in hiring that tech has are law (multi-modal salary distribution) and Hollywood (audition style hiring, multi-modal salary distribution to the extreme). It is incredibly difficult to gauge whether or not a new hire will be successful, and hiring managers have to fight for scraps of signal to justify a hire decision.
In many ways, the tech interview process is basically a casting call – right down to take homes (send us your audition tape) and live-coding (here’s the script, go do a reading). And just like Hollywood hiring, even getting into SAG and having a few roles at the entry level (tech internships/entry level work analogue) isn’t enough to give signal that you can take the next role on the ladder.
Established personalities command lots of money because they have outsized signal for hiring (track record, history and proof of impact, ability to command confidence that they’ll make a project succeed).
The premise of your question is not true.
That is the explanation.
βLots of candidatesβ, βfew jobsβ, βhigh payingβ. Please quantify the three different things youβre talking about. Preferably with sources.
There’s 5,000 contractors out there that want to install my new kitchen floor and some of them will do it for as little as $300 or $400.
There’s only a handful of contractors I would actually hire for the job. I’ll end up paying thousands of dollars but in return I’m getting a high quality install that I can trust to last for decades.
In short, the supply of jobs isn’t low. The supply of jobs willing to let somebody build experience even in the event they might not do a very good job is what’s low.
I have seen people post on the web that offers are going down some. Typically wages don’t totally collapse. they go down some. if the market remains like this for years to come id expect wages to stagnate and go down.
The supply of people with credentials is high. The supply of good engineers is not as high. Itβs probably a normal distribution, where all of the big companies are constantly searching for those 3 sigma engineers and paying them very, very well to join/stay at their company.