Pascal Aschwanden
Aug 25, 2017 · 2 min read

Your right, Companies do pass on a lot of great talent. I think the biggest problem isn’t the lack of Javascript developers. The problem is a lack of interviewing skills by the hiring company. Engineers are great engineering but we suck at interviewing people. I’ve seen this countless times at high growth companies where we try to hire engineers and pass on so much talent, because the engineers who do the interviews aren’t equipped to do interviews: they are simply not trained for it.

Also, I think you are overstating the demand for JS engineers. It’s more accurate to say there’s a balance between engineers and the demand for hiring those engineers, unlike other industries where there’s a vast oversupply of workers. Furthermore, increasing the supply of engineers doesn’t increase the demand. A company doesn’t simply decide to hire 2 engineers, when only 1 needed. The number of engineers available is not a limiting factor to startup success ~ market demand is. Alot has been written about this, spoiler alert: Market beats product and team, everytime. http://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html

If there was such an enormous demand for developers as you suggest, I think we’d see engineering salaries go much higher. Right now, the average developer makes significantly less than a doctor or lawyer. The average engineer’s salary is roughly equivalent to a project manager. And, when you factor in cost of living/housing, engineers (and other employees too) in the bay area, the compensation picture isn’t so rosy. Companies aren’t moving to more cost effective regions because they don’t need to. There’s plenty of talent to go around, right where they are. At a fast growing company in SF, we had 3+ rounds of layoffs where we laid off lots of talented engineers and still had more than enough talent lined up around the block to rehire the equivalent lost count and then some more, for greater growth.

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    Pascal Aschwanden

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