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Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

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Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#111

Post by ravenstine »

WorldMaker wrote: post #91
ravenstine wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghosting after a take home test really bites. Either provide feedback or give an expectation on how long it will take to make a decision. Don't make me do free work and leave me hanging. But yeah, it does happen. I used to advocate for take home assignments, but now I really don't know what the answer is for directly assessing skill. Leetcode sucks, but take home assignments have their own problems. Maybe the problem…

Lawyers take a Bar exam until they pass it and then never have to take it again. They just have to stay up-to-date/active with the associated Bar (so many hours of training a year; etc). Real Engineers take a Fundamentals of Engineering exam followed by the Professional Engineering exam in their discipline/focus. Then Engineers have to stay with the associated Professional Society (so many hours of training a year; p…

I would pay $1000 to take one test so that I don't have to do another one for at least a decade. There's some real money to be made in selling the idea of accreditation to employers.

Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#112

Post by _xrp0 »

PainfullyNormal wrote: post #84
_xrp0 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't find a job with a "proven track record" in this market , you're doing something horribly wrong. I'm willing to bet $100 that your resume is not stellar. Many people are bad at evaluating themselves. I've seen countless posts by juniors apparently "grinding hard" to get a job, and you just take 1 look at their resume and everything makes sense. Zero research on how to write resumes, zero prep, projects ar…

> If you can't find a job with a "proven track record" in this market, you're doing something horribly wrong. Can you define both what "horribly wrong" looks like and what "not horribly wrong" looks like? Because I can't. The problem with a "proven track record" is that nobody believes what you write on your resume and nobody wants to bother looking at your code. That leaves hiring on "feel" and I have no idea what s…

> nobody believes what you write on your resume

That's nonsense.

It's quite straightforward actually: go through the CVs of engineers working at top companies and look how their resume looks different from yours.

Chances are that they're actually selling themselves properly, using lots of jargon, using strong action verbs, and following the advice that has shown to work for the last decade.

Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#113

Post by WorldMaker »

ravenstine wrote: post #111
WorldMaker wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers take a Bar exam until they pass it and then never have to take it again. They just have to stay up-to-date/active with the associated Bar (so many hours of training a year; etc). Real Engineers take a Fundamentals of Engineering exam followed by the Professional Engineering exam in their discipline/focus. Then Engineers have to stay with the associated Professional Society (so many hours of training a year; p…

I would pay $1000 to take one test so that I don't have to do another one for at least a decade. There's some real money to be made in selling the idea of accreditation to employers.

Bar exam and MCAT exam prep industries do seem to make good money in some states some years. An appeal to capitalism isn't the worst idea for how to sell the idea to employers.

(ETA: Though arguably it is exactly how we got multiple companies like leetcode that are building the worst of both worlds, the standardized testing and extremely spotty employer buy-in across a handful of non-federated competitors.)

Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#114

Post by pjz »

everforward wrote: post #82
Sevii wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People really don't talk about landslide risk enough. A project with a high tech debt or operations burden is at high risk of losing enough people to zero out the project. Lose one or two people at the same time and suddenly the rest of the team is in an untenable situation. Maybe they were thinking casually about leaving before, but now that their burden has increased by 30% its more serious. Then you just keep losi…

I don't think that's unavoidable, but businesses typically fail to correctly reassess the value of those employees. If the business responded appropriately, I think people could be convinced to stay. E.g. if they offered: 1: An instant promotion with raise for anyone not at the max level for an IC, to acknowledge that they are now the most knowledgeable people on that product. 2: Double pay until those slots are fill…

I worked at a place where we had an open dev/support slot for multiple months to cope with increased load due to our success. In the meantime we all just did more support and less dev. My suggestion to management that the existing team split the salary of the open rec until it was filled (since we were doing the work anyway) was met with just short of outright laughter.

Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#115

Post by PainfullyNormal »

_xrp0 wrote: post #83
ipaddr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is pretty rough now. Layoffs are flooding the market, pay is not going up and companies happy to interview are scared to hire.

Layoffs hit overvalued, bloated companies, and the majority of laid of people are non-technical staff, or junior employees. None of this has ANY effect on competent software engineers. Most of my peers keep getting massive offers left and right. Nothing has changed for them.

> Most of my peers

This is the job market equivalent of "it works on my computer."

Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#116

Post by SantalBlush »

trinsic2 wrote: post #106
SantalBlush wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One thing really smart ppl have in common is that they see the world as it is. This is completely false. Isaac Newton spent more time studying alchemy and biblical prophecy than he did on mathematics and physics.

Are you saying alchemy and spirituality is not as important as science? If that's the case, good luck with that view. Understanding and contemplating on both creates a Wisdom. Intelligence can only take you so far, the world is way bigger than science could ever be capable of containing.

It was quite clear what I was saying; the study of science is better at improving our ability to see the world "as it is" than things like alchemy or prophecy, and yet Newton pursued the latter two things much more, despite being a brilliant person. In other words, there is considerable evidence that he did not see the world "as it is".

>Understanding and contemplating on both creates a Wisdom. Intelligence can only take you so far, the world is way bigger than science could ever be capable of containing.

If you believe that, say, trying to create gold by mixing crushed rubies with distilled water while Saturn is in the seventh house of the moon demonstrates that someone sees the world "as it is", then the onus is entirely on you to show that. In the meantime, I have no problem declaring you wrong. Moreover, the above comment is full of platitudes that aren't really relevant to the discussion of whether or not very smart people see the world "as it is". I'd rather not digress any further, so I won't reply again.

Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#117

Post by ipaddr »

_xrp0 wrote: post #83
ipaddr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is pretty rough now. Layoffs are flooding the market, pay is not going up and companies happy to interview are scared to hire.

Layoffs hit overvalued, bloated companies, and the majority of laid of people are non-technical staff, or junior employees. None of this has ANY effect on competent software engineers. Most of my peers keep getting massive offers left and right. Nothing has changed for them.

Do you have hard data examples like peer A got 100,000 in New York for Python developer?

Shopify laying off 10% of their workforce could have an effect with Ruby developers.

Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#118

Post by eurasiantiger »

nrmitchi wrote: post #51
lelandfe wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question from LaunchDarkly, btw, was as follows (asked to "500 software developers across a range of industries and job titles"): > Have you or someone you worked with ever left a job due to pressures from over minimizing mistakes (i.e. avoiding rollbacks or failed deployments)? [0] ...Which I also would not be comfortable summarizing as "minimizing deployment errors" [0] https://resources.launchdarkly.com/ebooks…

In any reasonable setting this would be considered priming the respondent for a particular answer and should definitely not be trusted as an unbiased response.

Not far off from handing packs of free cigarettes to medical conference attendees, having an exit poll ask them which brand of cigarettes they have in their pocket, and using the results in marketing like ”69% of doctors smoke Narcoholic brand cigarettes!”

Re: Developers are burned out, quitting jobs and creating a crisis for recruiters

#119

Post by Silhouette »

_xrp0 wrote: post #83
ipaddr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is pretty rough now. Layoffs are flooding the market, pay is not going up and companies happy to interview are scared to hire.

Layoffs hit overvalued, bloated companies, and the majority of laid of people are non-technical staff, or junior employees. None of this has ANY effect on competent software engineers. Most of my peers keep getting massive offers left and right. Nothing has changed for them.

None of this has ANY effect on competent software engineers.

Maybe in your part of the world or the industry. I know at least a few excellent people with excellent track records and previously excellent career paths who have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time since COVID and its aftermath, just like I did in the GFC and the Dot Bomb before.

They say pride comes before the fall. I imagine that over the next couple of years some relatively young developers who have coasted along on the wave of tech growth through the 2010s and never experienced a big bust in the industry before are going to learn that those nice salaries and equity-backed top-ups aren't nearly as valuable or guaranteed as they've become used to.

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