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Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

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Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#141

Post by giantg2 »

surgical_fire wrote: post #131
giantg2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Easily" my ass. "The industry favors eager people who are hungry to continually learn and grow. While there can be short term bumps in the road, those that fit these characteristics have and will continue to do extremely well." That wasn't my experience. The people you describe making so much money are statistical outliers who got lucky. I'd love to live in whatever bubble you do. All I'd have to do to make stupid l…

> "Easily" my ass. I personally know multiple people that transitioned into IT well into their 30s, from a variety of professional backgrounds. They might not be employed at a FAANG making 500k a year, but they make enough money to live comfortably. Certainly above average for the rest of the population. Easy? I don't like to undervalue other people's achievements, so I wouldn't call it easy. They certainly put their…

Now this seems like a fair assessment I can agree with.

I do want to add that in my 30s I'm seeing my mental abilities diminish pretty rapidly, so I don't know how long I can keep doing this. I've also seen people switch to other careers as they get old because they can't handle it anymore. So it seems to go both ways.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#142

Post by hellisothers »

giantg2 wrote: post #84
evilduck wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok? You can play the victim all you want but entry into tech is by every measure easier than comparably compensated career fields.

And that's not what's being discussed here. What we are discusing is the distorted view in the original comment. The original comment was comparing the top earners of one field to the median earners for another. It would be better to compare the medians. For example median dev salary is about $110k. Median physician salary is about $205k. So no, these are not comparably paying jobs. And one does not "easily" earn mor…

Keep in mind almost all “salary” data I’ve seen for tech is just that, “salary”, it doesn’t include RSUs which begin to make up 50% or more of your TC which brings it to parity (or more) in your examples.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#143

Post by barrysteve »

2devnull wrote: post #139
giantg2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Easily" my ass. "The industry favors eager people who are hungry to continually learn and grow. While there can be short term bumps in the road, those that fit these characteristics have and will continue to do extremely well." That wasn't my experience. The people you describe making so much money are statistical outliers who got lucky. I'd love to live in whatever bubble you do. All I'd have to do to make stupid l…

Timing is everything.

Timing is wisdom.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#144

Post by barrysteve »

iaseiadit wrote: post #95
sage76 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tech is a rare industry where you can easily pivot into it later in your career Everyone I know who is older and already in the industry, is having a bad time trying to change jobs.

I work for a FAANG, and I don’t know of a single IC here that was hired in their 40s or older. Almost everyone we’ve hired is in their 20s, with a handful in their early 30s. As a 40+ IC, I’m praying I don’t get laid off because it looks rough for older workers.

15years ago I was reading the same ancedotes in slashdot comments. Tech is familiar with ageism, and the occasionally crusty greybeards refusing to go into management.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#145

Post by aio2 »

giantg2 wrote: post #100
aio2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yall need to calm your asses. It's just a comparison to other job

It's more than that. It's the continuation of a distorted view of reality in which the world is a meritocracy and everyone can be rich if they just try hard enough. That's there's nothing stopping anyone from taking a job that doesn't require years of training and making 2x+ the median for that role and using just an anecdote to back it up. This type of stuff is detrimental to the choices and mental health of the nex…

It's up to you to percieve this the way you wish, but please don't not force these assumptions onto other people.

Thanks!

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#146

Post by 908B64B197 »

giantg2 wrote: post #140
908B64B197 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adjusted for location/COL Isn't the majority of COL housing? Of course, with a mortgage, you actually build equity into an asset (the house) that you can later resell. From my experience, SV caliber devs command SV comp pretty much worldwide.

I'm not sure how that can be true. I would expect the if there were demand for the higher quality devs then we would see them skewing the distribution locally (like on Glassdoor). There are certainly some higher paid devs in the distribution, but the overall distribution is lower than SV. If the demand is low, then I would also assume the pay would be lower.

> I would expect the if there were demand for the higher quality devs then we would see them skewing the distribution locally (like on Glassdoor).

Glassdoor or salary surveys aren't the most reliable source of information for outliers. There's a proportion of devs that are flying completely under the radar and who are completely invisible to most local companies, even if they are in the same "local market" [0]. Because they are extremely valuable, they don't interview a lot and tend to hop between companies where they know people (or get fast tracked internally). When hiring is red hot, they might completely disappear from the hiring pool by junior year.

[0] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#147

Post by giantg2 »

aio2 wrote: post #145
giantg2 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more than that. It's the continuation of a distorted view of reality in which the world is a meritocracy and everyone can be rich if they just try hard enough. That's there's nothing stopping anyone from taking a job that doesn't require years of training and making 2x+ the median for that role and using just an anecdote to back it up. This type of stuff is detrimental to the choices and mental health of the nex…

It's up to you to percieve this the way you wish, but please don't not force these assumptions onto other people. Thanks!

Not an assumption. You can look up median wages on the BLS and see they are vastly different.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#148

Post by mech422 »

giantg2 wrote: post #141
surgical_fire wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Easily" my ass. I personally know multiple people that transitioned into IT well into their 30s, from a variety of professional backgrounds. They might not be employed at a FAANG making 500k a year, but they make enough money to live comfortably. Certainly above average for the rest of the population. Easy? I don't like to undervalue other people's achievements, so I wouldn't call it easy. They certainly put their…

Now this seems like a fair assessment I can agree with. I do want to add that in my 30s I'm seeing my mental abilities diminish pretty rapidly, so I don't know how long I can keep doing this. I've also seen people switch to other careers as they get old because they can't handle it anymore. So it seems to go both ways.

FWIW - I'm 55 and still going strong after 40 years in tech... You sure you're not just burned out ? I go thru phases every 5-10 years where I don't even want to look at a computer :-P

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#149

Post by Sugimot0 »

majewsky wrote: post #85
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to HN, technology never improves. The first version of something is always the way it will ever be. OpenAI hasn't improved at all from GPT-3 to GPT-4, and all the billions flowing into this field will cause zero improvements in the next 30 years. This place needs to change its name to LudditeNews.

The main concern of the luddites was not "technology = bad" like most popular caricatures of them, but that their livelihood was obliterated by the first wave of factory owners taking all the profits that were previously shared with the workers for themselves. Really they were pushing in the same direction as those who today are calling for machine taxes or UBI.

Ehhh I'd argue they had more in common with socialists/communists, they were literally destroying the means of production in worker solidarity to improve their condition and bargaining ability. Marx even refers directly to the situation of the guilds in industrialization.

The belief is that new means of production should be embraced, owned, and operated by workers to benefit the many and not just the few exploitative capitalists (which are those who own means of production).

Instead of exploiting lay-offs and long shifts, and disregarding safety to save the capitalist money, the factory would instead be built and operated for the benefit of workers and society, prioritizing safety and sharing shorter shifts among a larger workforce to preserve jobs.

From a socialist/communist perspective machine taxes and UBI are like cheap bribes to avoid the issue and preserve the exploitative system in place. The luddites probably would have felt the same had they been offered a pity sum or machine tax from factory owners to "offset" their condition.

Re: Tech jobs remain a good bet despite mass layoffs in Silicon Valley

#150

Post by bombolo »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #114
bombolo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, I talked about very short snippets and you counter my argument with a video showing very short snippets. If I wasn't scared before, I'm even less scared now. But if all you do is write trivial code anyone can learn to write in 1 week, with extremely detailed instructions, perhaps your job is in danger indeed. That's not what a software engineer does anyway.

You completely ignored my original point about this tech replacing the bottom 80%ile of coders, not the top 20%.

Maybe it can replace the bottom 1%
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