As someone who is two years out of college with CS degree I very strongly related with this post.<p>The reality of what the press says and what tech companies say about recruiting is belied 100% by my experience looking for a job.<p>First of all, for job seekers, your ability to discover good-fit/good-match employers blows. Supposedly everybody needs 'engineers.' Yet 80%+ of job listings seem to be from recruiters who will vaguely describe their job, don't have a good understanding of the skill required, and can't tell you who they're hiring for. Okay, maybe a third of those recruiters have decent job descriptions. But still.<p>Likewise, most of the jobs listed from non-recruiters either list unreasonable/stupid/silly experience requirements (5yrs+ plus experience with agile development? You can 'learn' agile in a week), or are obviously legacy companies that nobody in their right mind will want to work for (coldfusion? really?).<p>And invariably when you do find something from an interesting company that's not through a recruiter, what they want is 5 years experience with their exact technology stack.<p>I know quite a few skilled programmers and they do not have loads of people hunting them down throwing money at them (though somebody should be).<p>What I believe has happened is that only programmers in a narrow community with a narrow set of experiences are being considered for reasons that are not sensible.<p>I would encourage any company that's trying to find good people to make good people aware that they're looking. I won't go through wishy-washy recruiters. Anybody else who cares where they work isn't going to be doing so either.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. This has been going on for decades in the Valley - the only thing that has changed is the names of the players.