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Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

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Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#581

Post by chii »

mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

> The people getting pushed out are the intermediates and seniors who aren't high performers.

i argue that's a good outcome. Seniors who aren't high performers should not command high salaries. I think the anomaly that is the post-covid boom is warping salary expectations vs difficulty of job (and the competency required for it).

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#582

Post by xmcp123 »

jdwithit wrote: post #290
atherton94027 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. Did you get any offers yet? It seems the issue is not lack of interviews but lack of offers. Many companies are looking for a goldilocks candidate and are happy to pass on anything that doesn't match their ideal candidate

I got laid off at the end of last year and am currently interviewing for Staff+ DevOps/Platform Engineer type roles. I definitely feel this. I've had a decent flow of recruiter inquiries and had multiple companies go 2-3 rounds of interviews deep with me (not counting the initial "do you have a pulse" recruiter screen calls). Then the communication always seems to dry up and I'm left to wonder what box I failed to ch…

I just had back to back round 6 interviews. Both companies have 8 rounds. And yes, not FAANG.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#583

Post by phendrenad2 »

palmotea wrote: post #8

The ideal software engineer will code himself out of a job and be happy about it. Be that ideal. The shareholders are counting on you!

I prefer to code myself out of a job, and be the shareholder. I'm counting on myself!

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#584

Post by loeg »

DangitBobby wrote: post #518
loeg wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been booggeyman'ing offshoring since before I entered the industry and it's never been all that significant of a factor. Time zones are a big piece but there are a lot of other factors that make offshoring less appealing than a naive analysis of Fully Loaded Cost per head.

How would you it hasn't been a significant factor? We've had offshoring this whole time.

The US tech labor market is much more of a seller's market than when I started. Domestic demand has grown faster than supply, despite any offshoring that has also happened.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#585

Post by gzoo »

hackmack10 wrote: post #349
gzoo wrote: post #207

What happens when AI gets so good that even "Juniors" can compete with "Seniors"? It's going to happen at SOME point. I think what will separate devs will be their creativity and ideas. Those that can think outside the box will be the ones getting hired. With that said, I sometimes feel like eventually the OFFICE MANAGER will be coding everything for their company lol.

Software will become cheaper to write and more software will be written. A senior will always outcompete a junior when it comes to logical thinking and a true understanding of IT. A programmer will always outcompete a non-programmer when it comes to using AI tools. Bottom line, if programmers are fucked, so is just about anyone else.

"Universal Basic Income" is what they are telling us. What do you think

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#586

Post by eranation »

vbezhenar wrote: post #576
eranation wrote: post #520

In my very humble view, the mythical 10x developer can now be a 100x developer, and the 2x developer usually stays a 2x developer. We live in two parallel worlds right now. Some run an army of agents and ship somehow working and testable code, and some try to prove AI is not as good as them.

> somehow working and testable code, And then 1x developer comes and rewrites it to actually work.

I know it sounds like a good take, but I don’t really see it happening much in real life anymore.

It’s more like the 1x developer gets frustrated and defensive, and shows the 5 stages of grief, try using AI and finds all the reason why it’s bad. Then goes ahead and refactors everything and breaks production.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#588

Post by didibus »

mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

> The people getting pushed out are the intermediates and seniors who aren't high performers.

It's almost impossossible to screen for "high performers" though. When interviewing, you just don't know who you are getting, short of like, they can solve your leetcode questions well, and they had good answers to pretty high-level "work experience" questions.

So I don't think this can be true on the hiring side. Maybe on choosing who they let go when cutting down the workforce, they can look at general performance reviews and such, but I doubt it plays a role in hiring.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#589

Post by saxenaabhi »

didibus wrote: post #588
mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

> The people getting pushed out are the intermediates and seniors who aren't high performers. It's almost impossossible to screen for "high performers" though. When interviewing, you just don't know who you are getting, short of like, they can solve your leetcode questions well, and they had good answers to pretty high-level "work experience" questions. So I don't think this can be true on the hiring side. Maybe on c…

> It's almost impossossible to screen for "high performers" though

That's not true? leetcode is crap, but usually you can learn a lot about a person from how they approach problems and on what kind of questions they ask.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#590

Post by saxenaabhi »

koito17 wrote: post #523

I wonder how the figures look for countries outside of the United States. For what its worth, I ended up getting a tech job in Japan instead. Ironically, the requirements at U.S. startups are much higher, and U.S. startups fit the stereotype of Japanese work culture more than Japanese companies nowadays.

I did this search a month ago on Linkedin. Show number of jobs if you search for "Software Engineer".

    US: 77,000
    European Economic Area: 58,000
    India: 51,000
    China: 48,000(probably undercounted)
    UK: 9,000
    Canada: 7,000
    Brazil: 6,000
    Mexico: 4,000
    Aus & NZ: 2,000
    Eastern Africa: 300
    Western Africa: 500
    Southern Africa: 600
    Northern Africa: 1,000

    Within europe:
    Nordics: 3,000
    Germany: 15,000
    France: 8,000
    Italy: 3,000
    Poland: 5,000
    Romania: 2,000
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