College2Startup Blog

What Unemployment? Nothing like that in United States of Software

The New York Times recently reported a zero job growth in the US in August 2011 with surveys finding that job growth over the past 3 months were at 35,000, a far cry from the 90,000 jobs expected to keep up with the growing work force. Don’t mention this in the software industry especially startups, the situation is almost the complete opposite with demand for qualified engineers more than twice the supply. Many jobs are being phased out since they can now be automated, and several others are constantly outsourced because the labor is much cheaper. If there is one thing you don’t want cheap labor for, it is building software and that has contributed to the boom in the industry. Not too many people predicted this and those who did never cared to encourage young students to consider careers in Computer Science, and now the supply of talent coming out of our universities CANNOT keep up with the demand.

We have seen this first-hand at College2Startup and it was a big reason why the startup was created in the first place. Why are there so many software engineering jobs and not enough candidates? why don’t parents and universities encourage more students to get into Computer Science & physics knowing for a fact that in a few years most human activities will be run by computers? How can we get the software jobs into the hands of the right candidates?

In the past week alone, there have been 3 different startups who have indicated in their job submissions to us that they are going to pay you $10,000 if you refer your qualified (software engineer) friend or family member that eventually gets hired. That’s how competitive the hiring space is for startups. They all want the best people and they know every other startup out there wants the same, so it’s game on. One college2startup user who got hired in early August by a NYC startup came out of college in May not knowing how he would go about finding a job with his Computer Science degree, he had planned on working for the Government but also wanted to start his own startup down the road. Two weeks after receiving a job post in his e-mail, he was on his way to NYC from his college town at Urbana champaign to start a new $82K job as a software engineer at a VC-funded startup. The jobs are there in the software industry, but not enough of the matching talent.

Are you in college and bothered about the job market ahead of your graduation, should you consider switching majors? maybe. The industry is booming and doesn’t look like it will be slowing down anytime soon. In the middle of all the unemployment, maybe we can take solace in the never ending demand for Engineers.