So if talent is cheap and we have many smart people unemployed why don’t we get organized and experiment on startup ideas we always wanted to build?
IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
101–110 of 592 posts
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#102Everyone is talking about layoffs and lack of hiring, but I've found the problem to be that companies are cutting costs by silently increasing workload on existing employees. Everyone is getting burnt out trying to keep a 300-person engineering team running on only 100 head count. That leads to more incidents, slower delivery, less innovation, longer hours. Even those who are still employed are seeing working conditi…
To me it looks like tech is just falling more in line with other industries pay/workload. I think there are many who joined the tech workforce during the pandemic thinking the norm was to make $135k while doing 10 hours of real work a week from home, twiddling a few lines of bootcamp level javascript to appease your largely absent boss. Many may forget, or not have been there, but 10-15 years ago tech jobs were notor…
Takes a low IQ person to accept ridiculous workload for kinda ok money
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#103What happened to IT is the same thing that happened to blue-collar workers. They’ll use you until they actively create a lower cost labor market.
“there’s a power in the union..”
Yes, there is a power in a union and it’s about time we unionize and unite SWE before AI takes our rights and jobs.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
These issues are caused by (1) the buy-out by Elon Musk involving a large amount of debt, and (2) Elon Musk annoying "woke" advertisers who have subsequently deserted the platform. The actual engineering hasn't been as affected or rather while it has been affected it hasn't been affected to the magnitude that you might expect given the size of the lay-offs.
> The actual engineering hasn't been as affected or rather while it has been affected it hasn't been affected to the magnitude that you might expect given the size of the lay-offs. Are new features being added? Honest question -- I don't use the product. Keeping the lights on for a product with 10% of the workforce isn't shocking or new. We do it in this industry all the time. Can you iterate and ship with 10% of the…
Features are both being added and removed. Actually, the main difference is that more feature are being added than were before, but this is being done in a more haphazard way. Sometimes things appear to break but are then fixed. It's not awful though, is what I'm saying.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. I work as an SWE at a non-FAANG, non-tech Fortune 100 company. We already had an IT staff in India and would hire consultants in India, but this has been accelerating over the past year - virtually all hires or new consulting contracts have been in India. Some of the SWEs in the US are even being put under PMs in India.
My company is actually doing mostly Europe and ex-US North America
I've actually considered setting up a Mexican corporation to run C2C contracts through for those who want LATAM hires, but the logistics seemed pretty onerous, especially since I don't live near the border. I'd be willing to do a single trip there to finalize everything, but it seems like as a US resident/citizen you'd need to basically stay there for weeks/months while everything is set up, or make multiple trips for each step of the process.
It's hard not to get angry at the company when you see them hiring at median US wages ($100-120k US equivalent) but specifically refusing to hiring folks in the US, when the company is US-based.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#106Every F500 company is Almost There on automating absolutely everything through ServiceNow and that's without AI being in the mix yet. There's always going to be a place for coders who can massage the API links between packages or run an ERP, but you don't need IT when your firm is disposable line staff, institutional knowledge lives in the codebase, and HR has mostly been replaced by Workday. UBI when?
Serious question: Why is the answer to firms automating everything "give me money for doing nothing" and not "get a different job?" Don't get me wrong I would love shorter work weeks, fewer hours a day, etc. for the same pay. That was the promise of all this additional productivity, after all. But even that is still getting paid for work. I just can't rationalize the idea of paying an entire population for nothing.
What other job would you recommend? It seems like the ones considered low hanging fruit for automation, the drudge-work, are actually resistant, but I don't really feel like asking people if they want fries with their burger.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#107Every F500 company is Almost There on automating absolutely everything through ServiceNow and that's without AI being in the mix yet. There's always going to be a place for coders who can massage the API links between packages or run an ERP, but you don't need IT when your firm is disposable line staff, institutional knowledge lives in the codebase, and HR has mostly been replaced by Workday. UBI when?
Serious question: Why is the answer to firms automating everything "give me money for doing nothing" and not "get a different job?" Don't get me wrong I would love shorter work weeks, fewer hours a day, etc. for the same pay. That was the promise of all this additional productivity, after all. But even that is still getting paid for work. I just can't rationalize the idea of paying an entire population for nothing.
Ever read Vonnegut's _Player Piano_? Eventually there's just no real work to be done, unless you want to invent even more bullshit jobs for the FIRE sector.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same. My "team" is doubling in size, but all the hires are international.
It’s time we unionize as software developers. You saw what the UAW achieved, Software Engineering needs the same type of protections
Protectionism doesn't work beyond selfish short-term interests. American cars are not exactly paragons of technical or mechanical prowess compared to their Japanese or German counterparts.
I've been a software developer for the better part of two decades, I'm not worried about the C-tier code coming out of rural India. You shouldn't be either unless you're a really bad dev.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I'm more likely to be loyal The funny thing, is that I've been told that "Old people are just cruising to retirement," but it's OK to establish your entire business infrastructure on the idea that your young, energetic, engineers will not remain at the company for more than 18 months.
> but it's OK to establish your entire business infrastructure on the idea that your young, energetic, engineers will not remain at the company for more than 18 months. Yeah, it's a tough nut. It's understandable that SV companies want ambitious strivers that move on every 2 years, for the same reason many of these CEOs consider the "job done" as soon as they get "an exit". The life of the company is measured in mont…
I was just struggling, this morning, with the Apple App Store Connect Web interface.
We're in the final stages of releasing an app, so we're spending a lot of time on that Web app.
It's...challenging. I know that they have big issues with security, privacy, and sheer scope (I'll bet they get millions of submissions, every day), but the site is dog-slow, the CDN breaks constantly, I need to refresh the page quite often, and they seem to forget where I was, the last time; necessitating that I follow the breadcrumbs back to where I was (I have admin accounts on several orgs).
I've released over 20 apps on the store, and have dealt with this, for a while. It's actually getting worse.
But Apple is a multi-trillion-dollar company. I think they could afford for this to work a bit more smoothly, and, quite frankly, I'm surprised, as they have some of the best, and most experienced engineers on the planet, working for them. These are the types of things that lots of sites seem to be doing quite well.
Re: IT employment grew by just 700 jobs in 2023
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me it looks like tech is just falling more in line with other industries pay/workload. I think there are many who joined the tech workforce during the pandemic thinking the norm was to make $135k while doing 10 hours of real work a week from home, twiddling a few lines of bootcamp level javascript to appease your largely absent boss. Many may forget, or not have been there, but 10-15 years ago tech jobs were notor…
Takes a low IQ person to accept ridiculous workload for kinda ok money
Only when there are better options available in the same industry. Nobody is getting a CS degree from a good school then switching to nursing because they can make the same money with better hours (or better money with the same hours).
The gravy train might be ending, I just wish it would end with the jobs that actually do nothing (product) rather than engineering first, but oh well.