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Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

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Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost nowhere pays $700k for a SWE. These numbers come from stock grants or similar financial instruments; that money gets realized eventually , but it's not guaranteed in the same way that a fortnightly bank deposit is.

Stock grants are typically vested quarterly, sometimes after an initial waiting period of 1-2 years. RSUs are just cash, I don’t see how they would not be considered being paid. They certainly show up on my W2.

I didn’t say they aren’t considered being paid; I said that they’re speculative instruments in a way that a paycheck isn’t.

In other words: 700k is 700k when realized, but there’s no particular guarantee that so-and-so many units of stock are worth that much; it depends on the market. Comparing TC as if 700k is guaranteed is misleading.

Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#52

I would hardly call this normalizing. > Finding the IT workers they need to meet hiring goals or complete projects is a struggle for more than two-thirds of executives This should tell you everything you need to know about the market. Jobs are being added, but the quality of jobs has deteriorated. If 1000 people were laid off from Google and 1000 jobs opened up for contract roles in consultancies that pay below marke…

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Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock grants are typically vested quarterly, sometimes after an initial waiting period of 1-2 years. RSUs are just cash, I don’t see how they would not be considered being paid. They certainly show up on my W2.

I didn’t say they aren’t considered being paid; I said that they’re speculative instruments in a way that a paycheck isn’t. In other words: 700k is 700k when realized, but there’s no particular guarantee that so-and-so many units of stock are worth that much; it depends on the market. Comparing TC as if 700k is guaranteed is misleading.

You could also get fired even with salary income.

Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intern I just hired as a junior compiler dev said he got silence from all applications. Guy had three prior internships, and great GPA from a top school. It was a really hard to advocate for his hire because we could get somebody with ten years of experience. And this is even with my policy of ignoring anybody from Google.

Why ignore Google peeps? Cuz of salary expectations? Or cuz they suck?

If you do a search for "google"/"amazon"/"faang" on the link below, you find some relevant discussions

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37111256

Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#55
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The potential ripple effect is too big to ignore for much longer. 100,000 engineers is tip of ice berg when it comes to number of people feeling the squeeze. Social media commentary has been trending towards outright hostility towards the rich and politicians, not just in the usual discourse hellholes like Reddit and Xitter, but even here (I have access to dashboards that model and weight discourse; technically propr…

Ok i'll concede that a few people will get modest raises through protests and strikes but thats just after years of stagnent wages and being cheated. But please, you've been looking at your dashboards for too long. This country is too fat and too scared of their government to do anything. Especially upper middle class SWE in between jobs. They probably just vote in Trump again as a form of "revenge" completely forget…

Some dumb shit like the murder of an Archduke.

It won’t be an organized revolution but single unknowable moment which triggers a bunch of people say “fuck this shit”.

Because you’re right; traditional political groups are fading away as people realize everybody is being boned.

The people in charge today have things locked up. Generational churn is an active process. New leadership may be intentionally worse or unintentionally inept.

It’s like trying to predict the next pandemic, not so much a market crash. Markets are social systems and can be sorted socially. Moments that trigger sudden social unrest are more like pandemics; less frequent, trying to predict them involves many more variables.

Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#57

We published the Levels.fyi 2023 mid-year compensation report earlier: https://www.levels.fyi/blog/2023-mid-year-report.html While volume of hiring may have been lower overall so far this year, median compensation has generally remained steady or increased in the first half of 2023 relative to the last half of 2022 for most roles. In particular, the median for software engineer compensation stayed the same, while rol…

being just a regular IT person with 15+years experience and getting paid fairly well for what the local market is, whats the chance of a normal person working at a place that pays $700,000 as a SWE? How do you even approach that? Does someone mid career have a chance to pivot?

I went from making barely $100k to a senior engineer at a FAANG simply by passing the interviews. No special background, I worked at the same function at a 50 person local SEO marketing company before that. I did take 1 year off to "find myself" and do some hobby projects that helped catch recruiting attention - nothing anyone would have ever seen here, but enough materiel to discuss in an interview

Didn't get up to $700k -- that's L7/Director territory (hard to reach) -- but it's definitely possible to get into the $300-400k range just by being a run of the mill engineer at big tech.

Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intern I just hired as a junior compiler dev said he got silence from all applications. Guy had three prior internships, and great GPA from a top school. It was a really hard to advocate for his hire because we could get somebody with ten years of experience. And this is even with my policy of ignoring anybody from Google.

Why ignore Google peeps? Cuz of salary expectations? Or cuz they suck?

For me its because they sucked: they had come to depend on a large Google ecosystem and were disruptively process oriented, occasionally "this is how we do it at Google." The expensive thing was also annoying, although we do have ICs making $300k.

For director level staffing and people management Google guys were too abrasive, and didn't have their hands in the code - but that is a different story.

But anyways can wax poetically about why to avoid folks from Google for days...

Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

being just a regular IT person with 15+years experience and getting paid fairly well for what the local market is, whats the chance of a normal person working at a place that pays $700,000 as a SWE? How do you even approach that? Does someone mid career have a chance to pivot?

Almost nowhere pays $700k for a SWE. These numbers come from stock grants or similar financial instruments; that money gets realized eventually , but it's not guaranteed in the same way that a fortnightly bank deposit is.

Amazon in particular has RSUs 80% vesting only in the 3rd and 4th years resulting in these spectacular TCs.

Re: Tech jobs market normalizing as July unemployment dips

#60
post #22

I would hardly call this normalizing. > Finding the IT workers they need to meet hiring goals or complete projects is a struggle for more than two-thirds of executives This should tell you everything you need to know about the market. Jobs are being added, but the quality of jobs has deteriorated. If 1000 people were laid off from Google and 1000 jobs opened up for contract roles in consultancies that pay below marke…

Seconded. Plus what is up with recruiting culture lately? The ghosting is worse than online dating at this point. There was a time I was annoyed at the canned rejection emails but I'll be damned if I even get a one word "no" these days.

* HR turnover -- they want to be remote, too, and market forces have been impacting them as much as any other field.

* market research -- at a previous gig (F500 multi) our HR team would periodically put out fake listings to gauge the market, see what is available, and as part of the Taleo application, asked about salary range. I'd bet my hat that they're taking the "temperature" of developers to see what is out there and what they'll ask for. I filled out a couple of those job adverts for "generic VMware Admin" for HR.

* high volume -- lots of layoffs and everyone wants to be a remote STEM worker. no time for interaction, no reason to reply, and no shortage of punters.

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