If you want some resource as an ingredient to your business, you have to pay for it. The price mechanism is what society uses to decide where the resource goes. It may well be that it's better (by whatever definition) to send these people to work in the large firms rather than startups.
Wrt startups, it's also a signal that this is perhaps not where value is, ie turning coders which are already expensive into some product which needs to be even more valuable. You could for instance start a business that takes unskilled labor and turns it into something else offering high ROI. It's just a matter of developing such a business.
The fact that it's expensive also skews the founding teams towards having coders. Which IMHO makes it more likely they'll succeed, at least in coding intensive businesses.
As a coder I'm not so worried. For the moment it appears demand is outstripping supply, and I'm somewhat sceptical that the marginal supply is particularly good. The first guy to sign up for CS really, really wanted it. The last guy, he might be smart, but he was just as likely to go into management consulting or banking. And coding in particular seems to reward people who have real interest. I'm sure a lot of other fields are like that, but coding especially so. You're sitting in front of a machine that allows you to practice and look up advice 24 hours a day. Other fields are typically limited, eg you can only practice sports for so long each day. That will tend to advantage people who are interested, rather than those who need a paycheck (which isn't a terrible reason either).
> You're sitting in front of a machine that allows you to practice and look up advice 24 hours a day.
I don't think you become a better coder by going on sleepless coding sprees. Sure, sometimes its necessary and productive - but over all I think it has as little impact on your development as an engineer as a researcher binge reading academic articles (sure, sometimes you need to when approaching a new area/problem) but I don't think that's what defines you as a researcher either.
Wrt startups, it's also a signal that this is perhaps not where value is, ie turning coders which are already expensive into some product which needs to be even more valuable. You could for instance start a business that takes unskilled labor and turns it into something else offering high ROI. It's just a matter of developing such a business.
The fact that it's expensive also skews the founding teams towards having coders. Which IMHO makes it more likely they'll succeed, at least in coding intensive businesses.
As a coder I'm not so worried. For the moment it appears demand is outstripping supply, and I'm somewhat sceptical that the marginal supply is particularly good. The first guy to sign up for CS really, really wanted it. The last guy, he might be smart, but he was just as likely to go into management consulting or banking. And coding in particular seems to reward people who have real interest. I'm sure a lot of other fields are like that, but coding especially so. You're sitting in front of a machine that allows you to practice and look up advice 24 hours a day. Other fields are typically limited, eg you can only practice sports for so long each day. That will tend to advantage people who are interested, rather than those who need a paycheck (which isn't a terrible reason either).