> James Strawn, who was laid off from Adobe over the summer after 25 years as a senior software quality-assurance engineer.

I can only assume that for the past decade, James has been ignored, or terrible at his job. Every Adobe product has gotten progressively worse to use, forums are filled with bug reports that get ignored release after release, and the increase in system requirements do not reflect improvements in functionality.

Whether because Adobe didn't like what he had to say, or they decided not to listen to him, it's completely unsurprising that he lost his job.

The folks offering $500K/year for AI experts aren't going to take anyone who makes the claim on a resume, they're almost guaranteed to be looking to poach someone at OpenAI or Google. Practically speaking, they're looking to benefit from the experience that those companies paid for...and James doesn't have it.

On the upswing, odds are pretty good that James will have a job in short order, helping to deal with the fallout of 'vibe coders' who don't know how to do real-world testing. He's probably going to run into some combination of age discrimination and salary discrimination (no way he's working for $60K if he has 25 years at Adobe), but once the messes start being too big to ignore, I'm pretty sure he'll be able to become a project manager that helps direct fixes for deployed code that didn't get actual-QA. The need is most definitely there, it'll just take a bit more time to prove to the brass that he's more valuable to the company than the MBAs that are looking at their now-spherical product for more corners to cut.

I bet most the AI hiring is spam/scam co's looking to automate and customize spam. Unlike real work, the "AI slop factor" isn't a show-stopper in Spamville.

A company cannot always expect to poach someone fully trained from another company - especially when the skill is a new one. Training is an investment that will pay off -- depending on how much of a bubble AI turns out to be.

Expecting someone to work 7 days/week is stupid - a good way of causing burn out. The staff may physically be there 7 days/week but where will their minds be ?

> Tech companies are struggling to fill AI-specialized roles despite a surplus of available tech talent.

This isn't very accurate because it makes it seem like the problem is somehow unsolvable.

> Despite struggling to fill AI-specialized roles and a surplus of available tech talent, tech companies refuse to train workers to fill desired roles.

This is accurate because it shows both the problem and the response to the problem.

Context is king.

!) If you want to hire the best find someone with minimal experience and the capability to learn more. DO NOT LOOK FOR THE GUY THAT ALREADY KNOWS HOW TO DO THE JOB. That guy is not leaving his job unless you pay him double what he is worth - because he likes the current people he works with and you are an unknown.

2) If you want to hire people for more than $200,000, you better offer more than just a salary. Once you hit $200k, you are in the top 6% of the USA salary range. At that point you want more free time to enjoy the money, not more money. Expecting people to work 7 days a week because you double their salary is stupid. No one smart enough to make $400k is willing to do that. Quality of life is not just salary, and after $100k people actually care about it. By $200k it becomes the major concern.

3) Age is not a bad thing. Yes it often means their skills are not the most current - but those 25 year olds that have current skills learned them in 1 month. Those old guys and gals can do the same, as long as you offer a real job.

But perhaps they shouldn't be asking for a minimum number of years experience that's longer than LLMs have been around...

The fur industry is struggling because nobody wants to do the job of clubbing seals. Even with big pay offers, they can’t find enough people willing to swing the clubs.

willing to work seven days a week?? tech needs unions

Companies refuse, time and time again, to train employees in the skills they value, and shift blame back on employees.

They can't find them? That's because they shifted personel departments, run by the company, staffed by people who have a clue what the company does, and who can talk to the hiring manager to understand what they want, to HR. HR's purpose is not hire, shift, or promote, but only to do meaningless paperwork.

Then they outsourced it, to people who have no idea what the company does, and have no idea what the hiring manager needs, so they make up requirements (like the ass ad I saw that wanted five years with py