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Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

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Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#161

Post by psunavy03 »

palmotea wrote: post #134
spacemadness wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to understand lots of people on HN want to be one of those people on top eventually so they will bend over backwards to apologize for the executive class until they supposedly get there.

> You have to understand lots of people on HN want to be one of those people on top eventually so they will bend over backwards to apologize for the executive class until they supposedly get there. Oh, I totally understand that. HN is full of workers LARPing as tycoons; advocating for policies, attitudes, and ideology that are most likely going to end up being harmful to their own interests.

[flagged]

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#162

Post by yubblegum »

strict9 wrote: post #27

It's not AI it's offshoring. This is what I've seen and heard throughout my network. Relentless cost cutting is sold to public and internal staff as AI productivity gains. But it's just on-shore staff reductions. Moving support, design, development and product management away from customers and to the lowest bidder will work for a while. But eventually it won't and the pendulum will swing back in the other direction.

In 2010 I sat in a meet with an exec from an NYC investment bank with my boss, the ceo of a boutique (not Indians ..) outsourcing consultancy. We were in his office and outside was an entire empty floor of cubicles. He casually mentioned how the outsourced work is "crap" and how they usually end up having to redo the projects up to 3 times. He then went on to say how they outsourced "this floor" and their plans for outsourcing the other floors.

The economic equation never made any sense. There is, imo, a geopolitical element to the outsourcing pheonomena in context of software and India (which btw was spearheaded by MorganStanley and friends) back in late '90s: India used to be firmly in the non-aligned group and has had long standing pseudo-aliance with USSR/Russians. Giving the IT sector to India was part of the carrot to get India to shift to the West. China got the manufacturing, India got the software.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#163

Post by quesera »

entuno wrote: post #138
quesera wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This used to be addressed by the fact that people were loyal to companies In my observation, employers stopped being loyal to employees long before employees stopped being loyal to employers.

I'm sure you can find plenty of example of both. But TBH, I don't think it really matters which side you try and point the finger at after decades of decline - the point is that the employee/employer relationship has fundamentally changed, and it's hard to see it ever changing back.

Agreed. It's not about blame, just that employers are almost always working with a better perspective and more information.

Business circumstances made it advantageous, and then necessary, to break the social contract.

It might be possible to go back, but I can't imagine any series of events that leads in that direction which doesn't break the global economy in the process.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#164

Post by const_cast »

nradov wrote: post #139
const_cast wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would describe a poor office environment as an open one. Cubicles are much better, and offices a little better than that. These are not just unproductive environments, they're unpleasant. Having to be "on" for 8 hours a day because you don't even get a vague idea of privacy is exhausting.

Have you ever worked in a factory or restaurant or construction job site? I understand that some office environments aren't great for knowledge work but complaints about poor working conditions are a bit overblown.

Yes, I've worked in a restaurant. It's a pretty good environment to be a restaurant worker. Probably not a good environment to be programming in.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#165

Post by palmotea »

ty6853 wrote: post #144
palmotea wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to understand lots of people on HN want to be one of those people on top eventually so they will bend over backwards to apologize for the executive class until they supposedly get there. Oh, I totally understand that. HN is full of workers LARPing as tycoons; advocating for policies, attitudes, and ideology that are most likely going to end up being harmful to their own interests.

There are also a lot of people totally oblivious to the local minima locations of the working class life. Like the fact that a young, elderly, or childless person may be able to realize the benefits of revolution for either themselves or at least their unborn or adult children, a very large segment of middle age society has young children who paradoxically would be better off from the revolution but may be more likel…

> the middle age worker have always been some of the most resistant to revolution, but not because they are bootlickers.

That may be true generally, but not here. It's typically bootlickers who read a few libertarian economists and have let themselves be tricked into thinking 401k means they should want the same thins as a capitalist tycoon.

And I'm not so much advocating for an actual violent revolution than for the fear of one. And definitely not the kind of passivity advocated up-thread, that counsels acceptance that tycoons (real and wannabe) driving over any plans a pleb has for a comfortable life. Don't do that, much better to do something like vote for some psycho who'll bomb all the TMSC fabs and AI datacenters to do a rug-pull over the tycoon's plans to shrink the middle class even more with greater automation.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#166

Post by kreig »

belter wrote: post #45
corp8drone8sf wrote: post #17

Commenting anon, because i'm very concerned about how we are leaving the industry for our children, and how little executives care about the future. 1. anything we used to give to entry-level we now give to offshore workers, typically in Asia. While mean wages metrics look great, the cost savings are an illusion because we spend twice as much time communicating and tacking back and forth to the final answer across ti…

It's not offshoring as much as people think. If you look at statistics for typical IT offshoring and near shoring markets like India, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria they have been in crisis since 2022. Only to show a slight rebound in Q1 of 2025.

On the other hand, here in Latin America, the offshore/nearshore jobs have been increasing in the last couple of years. Source: LinkedIn spam, and a couple of past jobs I've worked have been for nearshore companies.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#167

Post by [deleted] »

palmotea wrote: post #165
ty6853 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also a lot of people totally oblivious to the local minima locations of the working class life. Like the fact that a young, elderly, or childless person may be able to realize the benefits of revolution for either themselves or at least their unborn or adult children, a very large segment of middle age society has young children who paradoxically would be better off from the revolution but may be more likel…

> the middle age worker have always been some of the most resistant to revolution, but not because they are bootlickers. That may be true generally, but not here. It's typically bootlickers who read a few libertarian economists and have let themselves be tricked into thinking 401k means they should want the same thins as a capitalist tycoon. And I'm not so much advocating for an actual violent revolution than for the…

[deleted]

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#168

Post by jimbokun »

nradov wrote: post #139
const_cast wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would describe a poor office environment as an open one. Cubicles are much better, and offices a little better than that. These are not just unproductive environments, they're unpleasant. Having to be "on" for 8 hours a day because you don't even get a vague idea of privacy is exhausting.

Have you ever worked in a factory or restaurant or construction job site? I understand that some office environments aren't great for knowledge work but complaints about poor working conditions are a bit overblown.

True. But it might be worth it for a lot of developers to take less money for a company with real offices or work from home option.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#169

Post by apercu »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #133
apercu wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While mean wages metrics look great, the cost savings are an illusion because we spend twice as much time communicating and tacking back and forth to the final answer across timezones. compensation consultants dont care about that, they care about mean wage metrics 100% this. What you save in dollars is spent in time. Not just more documentation requirements, not just more meetings, not just changing your schedule t…

> What you save in dollars is spent in time. If you're on salary, that costs nothing to the business, so they don't care until it starts to impact them...

You're not wrong, but a well run company would have cost targets for a project, and the longer you are paying people (salary or not) to work on something, the more it costs and your staff aren't working on the next thing. So now it's $ plus opportunity cost.

Re: Sorry, grads: Entry-level tech jobs are getting wiped out

#170

Post by jimbokun »

palmotea wrote: post #7
ty6853 wrote: post #2

I did a lot of driving forklifts, construction, moving, factory work, etc when junior in the job market after graduating near the top of my class with strong internship experience from a top 10 engineering college. Adjusting expectations is important. If you start with the expectation that all you will have is a pot to piss in then it is all up from there. Things may never look up, but when they do, I've found a lot…

> Adjusting expectations is important. If you start with the expectation that all you will have is a pot to piss in then it is all up from there. You're just coaching people to be passive in the face of a hostile society, and that's bad, because it lets society off the hook for providing for its citizens. Also isn't it strange that's mainly expected of the people at the bottom? Maybe the shareholders should start to…

This is bad advice because as an individual you have close to zero influence on recreating society from scratch.

Best to be pragmatic in your personal decisions while contributing to your larger political ideals.

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