51–60 of 625 posts
I’m 65 and I have tenure. If I didn’t, I would leave the country. If I couldn’t, I don’t know what I would do. You do not want to be on the open market in the 2020s, that’s for sure. it is nearly impossible for people with CS degrees (especially white males) to get an interview let alone a job. My friend, if you think it’s bad for white men, just wait till you hear what it’s like for black women. 2+ year job searches…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed - I've legitimately considered creating a fake profile at this point to make myself look more Jr with about 10 years of experience. I don't really have much to lose in trying it.
I've been at the receiving end of ageism, and what i now do is drop off some of the older experience(s) from my resume, etc. Also, i try to avoid listing my graduation year from university. Some people suggest even if not fighting off ageism, its only relevant to list the last decade of experience on a resume anyway...so if i ever get questioned, i'd use that as an excuse...but, my strategy is simply to get my foot i…
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And it's not just in programming-related jobs either. Parts of industry and the blue collar market are shitting themselves in Germany right now. Two people I know have been let go (pumps and wood sectors resp.). Another (metal construction) is getting barely more than minimum wage. There's only one dude (chemical engineer) who is doing well (nearing 100k at 5 years work experience). The others are getting by. Politic…
> Fachkräftemangel Why is this German word thrown in without any explanation? I’ve noticed this is a common trend whenever a Germany-adjacent topic is discussed.
The short version is that there is a shortage of skilled workers that absolutely requires immigrants to fill the gaps. However when you look around there isn’t really a shortage; people just aren’t willing to work for little pay. The English term implies that there is an actual shortage.
It might please you to know just how much English other languages are peppered with.
Anecdotally.. but not really. I was worried about the job market but this was unfounded, for me... I started applying in October and had four offers from large tech companies by end of November. A lot of this was through networking to be fair, not “cold applying” (1 was through cold applying, the other 3 through networking). reach out to former coworkers or friends and ask for referrals. YMMV, but I do not think it i…
| A lot of this was through networking to be fair On that note, being in a larger city and doing in-person networking is a much different game than trying to apply online from afar. Plus, I've heard a lot about how useless online applications have become due to AI, ghost jobs, bad HR practices, etc. It makes me wonder if returning to the "come in to the office and drop off an application" days would be better for eve…
With 20 years experience you'd get through our semi-automated processes and get an interview if the skill sets and employment history matched - regardless of a university level experience.
Are you sure it's the degree that's holding you back?
I'm not advising you lie, as it's fraud, but just adding that over here it would be incredibly rare to ask for proof of academic qualifications from 20 years ago when recruiting such an experienced hire.
I myself have around 20 years experience, I have a degree but god knows where the certificate is and additionally the university who issued it no longer exists.
Although my degree is adjacent somewhat it is not in CS. I've never been asked to show it to anyone, never asked a hire for theirs either.
1) I work at a large company everyone in the US has heard of. When I walk in the public areas of the company or at lunch, it looks like we are based in Mumbai. There is no "diversity", it's one country in particular, which is India. (Funnily enough, this demographic isn't reflected in management)
2) I overheard the 4th level (above me) manager complaining to another manager that his department (he oversees the whole floor, let's say a bit under 100 employees) has 30+ open reqs, and HR has only given him a few resumes (unknown what time period this refers to). The last interview I gave was to an H1B who had an audio link in his earbuds to someone who feed him answers to my technical questions.
3) I have 20 years experience, yet this job pays the same amount I was making 10 years ago. There is effectively zero negotiation for salaries. They will happily let you go vs bargain.
4) A previous mega-corp I worked for, GE Healthcare in Wisconsin, looked like India on campus. Utter lack of diversity. I recently got a job solicitation from an Indian recruiter for $40/hr for C++ development at this location.
I think it's very clear that the cat's out of the bag about how to evade high-paying tech salaries. Set the parameters to discourage Americans from hiring, create a bottleneck so that your open reqs last longer, then use their extra-legal powers (unfettered access to congresspeople) to claim they are falling behind profitability, but if they just had those wonderful H1Bs everything will be ok.
1) While A.I. may now be only adding 10-20% of productivity gains, the rapid pace of improvement leaves open the possibility that tha gains can be soon much more than that. So, instead of scaling your company now, if you can afford to, wait out a bit and see where this goes.
2) Even though much of BigTech is clawing back WFH, startups aren't as much. And once you introduce WFH to your culture and processes, it is hard to reason with the idea that you should pay $200K/year for an engineer when it can cost you a fraction (possibly 20-50% of that) to hire them remotely from another country, when also nowadays most of these remote employees are more than willing to work in EST/PST timezones. This used to be the case before COVID, but now many more startups have accepted and adapted to the idea of WFH.
3) While advanced skillsets and deep experience is necessary in many (but not most) startups, and while these skills are more difficult to find in India or Pakistan, the reality is, for many, many tech companies, most of the work doesn't require top-notch skills. You don't need a top 99% percentile in frontend engineering skills for a 1-year-old "name whatever category" app. And with the recent rise of focus on profitability, frugality, and the difficulty in fund-raising, being cognizant of cost per talent is now a thing.
I think Elon and Vivek's comments are more nuanced than they are taken. Elon, given he's at the cutting edge of engineering, must be having difficulty hiring top-99.9%-percentile talent against BigTech, and wants to open the pool of these types of talent from elsewhere. I don't think he wants H1Bs for React Native engineers. I am interpreting his comments as "I want to suck-in all A.I. researchers into America".
Longterm unemployed people turn to the armed forces for employment. Intentional?
Low interests rates fueled a startup boom into the 2010s, capturing that emerging industry within the U.S. economy. AI looks promising, but the best is yet to come, so there’s a chance to reprise the earlier success that we saw into the early 2010s.
High interest rates currently mean that failed startups (those established pre-LLMs) will more easily die off, and bad conditions for software engineering employment will re-align the tech workforce toward AI. If this is a strategy that is being enacted, then I’d expect to see favorable startup funding conditions again, such as low interest rates, within a few years, to make sure the U.S. captures the AI startup market. It’s just not time to do that yet, since we need to wait for a re-skilled workforce and for a better-developed picture of what a typical successful AI startup would look like in the late 2020s.
An economist might say that no conspiracy is required, that this is simply the invisible hand at work.