There is a huge pool of exceptional junior engineers

I mentioned why this is happening in a previous comment on HN [0].

I can't justify spending $120k or more on base salary for a new grad who lacks table stake skills becuase a program like UCB or MIT (let alone much lower ranked programs) reduced the requirements for fundamental theory and OS classes, offered the ability to take padded classes to bypass requirements (look at Cal's BA CS requirements in 2015 [1] versus 2025 [2]), or offer the ability to take these classes pass/fail thus reducing the incentive to study.

Sadly, Bootcamp grads also soured an entire generation of hiring managers away from nontraditional hiring. Screw you YC for enabling predatory programs like Lambda School (YC S17).

That said, I think an apprenticeship style program where a community college new grad earning $50k and gets a paid bachelors degree or directly hiring a bachelor degree new grad for $70k-90k while working would probably solve the issue. This is assuming those new grads don't meet the curriculum bar of the students they are competing with abroad. I think Shopify tried something similar and it worked.

I'm also not sure an "AI first" approach is the right approach unless you are looking for someone to manage generic CRUD type work (and that kind of work is a race to the bottom anyhow from a salary perspective). If I'm hiring a prompt engineer, then imo a Linguistics or Philosophy major (or any major where you are taught Structuralism) with a CS minor would probably be the best bang for your buck.

There needs to be coordinated reform in CS curricula, hiring incentives (eg. providing tax credits comparable to those which CEE, Israel, and India provide to attract FDI), and ease of doing business in order to resolve this crisis.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45413516

[1] - https://berkeleyguidearchive.github.io/2014-15/undergraduate...

[2] - https://undergraduate.catalog.berkeley.edu/programs/A5201U

You get the best bang for your buck if you just hire teachable people and fill the gaps that matter to you.

Sometimes teachability subsides over the course of your career: A senior I know has terrible git hygiene but is so close to retirement, he simply won't change. But some juniors I've mentored have significantly improved their ability to compose an atomic commit with a quality commit message, and are now valuable team contributors.

Even the core concepts of your CS162 course are easily within the grasp of a CS major from a less rigorous program; you could assign some required reading as part of your onboarding process if missing these concepts would prevent them from thinking critically about problems in your org.

I can't justify paying a junior engineer $120k-140k base salary to train them in OS fundamentals over several months in an industry as competitive and commodified as cybersecurity when competitors in Israel, Czechia, Poland, and India are able to hire experienced engineers at a lower dollar amount than a number of junior engineers in the US expect.

This is why the majority of startup activity in the space has shifted to Israel, the CEE, or India with a nominal American HQ hosting a CEO, CRO, and sales reps.

And this is the issue - we live in a globalized world, and a large portion of junior engineers in the US do not have the skills commensurate to the salary provided.

A business is not a charity.