I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…
Panic at the Job Market
131–140 of 1001 posts
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#132I generally like the article but the author seems to have a really inflated view of what jobs are paying. At one point he’s claiming that a stable non tech company like a tractor manufacturer is paying 5k-10k. Even assuming that’s including taxes so divide by two, and constraining to just software employees for that claim. There is no way the average pay is nearly a million a year. The average software engineer in th…
>At one point he’s claiming that a stable non tech company like a tractor manufacturer is paying 5k-10k For anyone that came to the comments before the article, it claims that number is per day
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#133I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…
All of his analysis about financial markets, can apply to all jobs, all hiring. Don't think he explicitly states that, but all hiring is down. Or at least all entry positions it seems like. From a SWE perspective. Doesn't it seem like systems are falling apart? You can only cut back programmer/tech jobs for so long, someone has to know how it all works. This is what I don't get, all around me, people don't know how t…
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#134It really sucks right now, but recent grads and juniors are suffering the most right now, to my understanding. There's an over-production of CS grads, as the industry looked very lucrative, so a lot of people decided to go software engineering route. It's hard to make a case for start ups to bet on inexperienced people. For mature companies, why pay for 2 juniors, when you can get a senior for 1.5 price, who might do…
For me, it's been the opposite: the last 2 years have been the best time I've had working in tech since the early 2010s.
Around 2019 I was seriously considering leaving the field (if it didn't pay so much) as the entire industry had turned into a bunch of leet code grinding, TC chasing, mediocre drones. It was incredibly hard to find people working on actual problems let alone challenging/interesting ones. Nobody I worked with for years cared one bit about programming or computer science. Nobody learned anything for fun, nobody hacked on personal projects during the weekend, and if they were interest in their field it was only so they could add a few more bullet points to their resume.
But the last two years I've worked with several teams doing really cool work, found teams that are entirely made up of scrappy, smart people. Starting building projects using a range of new tricks and techniques (mostly around AI).
Right now there are so many small teams working on hard problems getting funding. So many interesting, talented and down right weird programmers are being sought after again. People who like to create things and solve problems are the ones getting work again (my experience was these people were just labeled as trouble makers before).
I'm probably getting, inflation adjusted, paid the least that I have in a long time, but finally work is enjoyable again. I get to hack on things with other people who are obsessed with hacking on things.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#135There might be some good points buried in this post, but all I get is bitterness without much self-reflection. They seem like they'd be difficult to work with and would blame you for it.
Why is compensation the only consideration in the entire article? I mean, money is nice, but don't you care what you are working on?
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#136I generally like the article but the author seems to have a really inflated view of what jobs are paying. At one point he’s claiming that a stable non tech company like a tractor manufacturer is paying 5k-10k. Even assuming that’s including taxes so divide by two, and constraining to just software employees for that claim. There is no way the average pay is nearly a million a year. The average software engineer in th…
I think they're using some kind of "daily equivalent average pay, factoring in exponential growth of the stock divided by actual days worked over a career" - > Under the modern tech landscape, stable “hyperscale ultra-growth” companies are paying experienced employees the equivalent of $10,000 to $50,000 per day if we include the value of their exponentially growing yearly stock grants. Assuming a $250k salary, that'…
The entire article is just the whimsical fantasies of someone with no understanding of market reality.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#137I will add my two cents for people who believe that this might be related only to the SWE and tangent industries: It's really not. I have many friends (in Europe) who are trying to get through to different jobs in unrelated industries ranging from finance to fashion, or just trying to get promoted vertically (or horizontally), failing rather miserably. Most jobs are now hoops after hoops, not taking into consideratio…
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> That does not seem to affect Gemini or Mistral Chat, so I think the instructions need to be updated to cover more AI engines.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#138Re: Panic at the Job Market
#139Wild that explanations of the tech job market like this are still being written without referencing the tax consequences of Section 174 changes.
No one understands or is willing to research these things anymore. Everyone (or at least everyone who is screaming and being heard) is mumbling points about interest, boom/bust, AI, etc... The reality, in my opinion, the governments have made it so hard to start and maintain a business that the market is not liquid for employment anymore. It's not catastrophic, but rather dead (as not moving). Here are the employment…
You just said "numbers down, government bad"
What is the point? Analysis? This is like people on Fox just calling names.
Re: Panic at the Job Market
#140>According to all the interviews I’ve failed over the years (I don’t think I’ve ever passed an actual “coding interview” anywhere?), the entire goal of tech hiring is just finding people in the 100 to 115 midwit block then outright rejecting everybody else as too much of an unknown risk. As a (now) senior/staff-level engineer back out on the job market for the first time in a while, I'm begrudgingly coming to accept…
Hazing people to invent some genial algorithm that all of humanity failed to for decades, except for some lucky individual somewhere; on demand, on short notice, with time pressure, and in a high-stakes environment will never be a good interview. But also, the people that do that do not keep interviewing for long.
Personally, I haven't been in an interview for a long time (as a candidate). But most of the "best practices" from the time I was are now common jokes. I have seen many of those practices applied, but even at that time there were many places that were reasonable.