We are walking into a Technical Hiring War and folks just don't seem to get it

Canada just made getting TN work visas for Canadian Citizens way more difficult to slow down the outflow of Canadian Technical talent to USA.

USA is experiencing less students than ever enrolling into Computer Science programs and those that do are taught how to program games from the engine up. It is getting more and more difficult to find programmers who can code below the engine. For example it's starting to get difficult to find Graphics programmers who actually have written their own Shaders from scratch. Technical talent is getting lazy using engines and relying on their functionality to make a game rather than have the ability to retro-fit the engine so it screams for the intended purpose. All in all it's cheaper to just buy an off the shelf engine than it is to create your own engine which I suppose is also the reason Graphics Experts for example are getting harder to locate.

Amazon, Google and Facebook making offers to recent Computer Science graduates with NO previous work experience on average $90K base, $10K relocation and $25K sign-on bonus - this has caused the cost of programmers to significantly rise and many programmers have multuiple offers - It's a bidding war out there and many game companies are just not recognizing the trend - still clinging to the old theory it's cool to work for a game company!

Actually it is NO longer that cool as it once was. The industry is unstable due to its high tech nature, and folks are getting tired of job hunting each year as their game company closes or since the talent is more expensive less programmers are hired with more work to do thus the excessive work hours the game industry used to rely on is now stopping. People would rather work for a stable entity like Google than the unstable Games industry.

WAKE UP WE ARE IN A HIRING WAR FOR TECHNICAL TALENT!

We are in a HIRING WAR! Not enough North American talent to fill the needs we have and we can’t obtain visa’s like we used to do to handle the situation. UDemy did a survey and projects that by 2015 only 20% of the US population will be qualified for the 80% of the technical jobs! This is because we are seeing a dramatic reduction in college students entering into Computer Science programs.

We are feeling this squeeze now and it’s going to get way worse. The average job is now open 4 to 6 months before it can get filled and I expect this number to increase to 6 to 8 months this year.

Also the game industries hiring needs have changed dramatically. We used to only hire folks with experience on proprietary platforms like Playstation, Xbox, Wii, GameBoy, Geneiss, etc… NOW we seek the same exact talent that ANY business seeks as we rapidly move to cloud and client / server based mass market social games. So not only are dealing with a shrinking talent pool we are also now seeking the same talent any business wants. Generally business companies pay better base salaries as game companies would offer royalties to offset the low base salary they offer the same talent.

Also the sexy allure and status of working for a game company has waned. Our industry has a reputation of long work hours and poor work / life balance and burning out folks. The normal business sector only works a 40 to 45 hour work week.

High-tech industries by nature are unstable and come and go… people are getting tired of joining a game entity only to be laid off within a year or two and have to job hunt all over again or worse relocate time and time again to a new city.

In these economic times I am finding folks less risk oriented and seeking stability which our industry traditionally does not offer. Also folks don’t care anymore about stock options – it’s show me the money in my base salary or don’t annoy me with your job offer attitude going on in the market. Look at the recent Zynga experience. Their public offering was a disaster and most of the staff thought they would be rich making money on the stock – which of course rarely happens. The Executives at a game entity make money not the working staff. The talent pool is finally realizing that stock is worthless.

Many game entities seem in denial about what is going on and they must adjust and start to pay the correct salaries or risk a short life span. Last year I had a client seeking a Game Programmer and they would only pay a base of 120K max for the job. My team contacted over 300 candidates with the skills they sought and discovered the average salary was 175K. I could not get this company to re-consider their salary range and they ended up hiring someone under qualified to fill the job after having it open for over 8 months.

Also last year I had a candidate get a job offer – try to resign from her current job – but offered 25K to stay in the job and my client trying to hire could not compete so the candidate stayed. So companies are slowly realizing how difficult it is to hire staff.

Google and Facebook have contributed to this problem on Average they offer newly graduating students 90 to 105K base salaries this has caused a rise across the board on what any company has to do to compete for talent.