Kind of strange to see no mention of outsourcing in an otherwise detailed analysis
Amen no one wants to talk about it for some reason.
Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
171–180 of 279 posts
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Our company just let go of all our remote LATAM hires. We paid high end in their LCOL areas. They were somewhere between ok and not good. Felt like we got about what we paid for - their cost was about 50% of a US dev. They were as productive as a low end US dev, so in some cases ok value but since hiring low performers tends to hurt a team overall they weren’t worth it. We’re a mid range company (decent cash comp, no…
>Felt like we got about what we paid for This is the usual ebb and flow of offshoring in the tech industry that's been going on since the 90s. There has never been a scalable arbitrage for tech talent by going over to another geo, and there won't be one in the foreseeable future. What US HCoL talent gets paid is unfortunately the fair and natural market rate for that caliber of talent, at least if you need to hire mo…
You don't get paid for talent, or education, or responsibility, or any other reason that could be plausibly presented as fair. You get paid for friction: how easy it would be to replace you, and how much harm it would cause if a good enough replacement cannot be found. On the average, as individual circumstances vary.
There is friction in turning fresh graduates into experienced developers. There is friction in hiring people in a region where you are not operating already. There is friction in using additional middlemen. There is friction in learning to do business in a new situation or in a new culture. But the friction can be overcome – in the long term and when the scale is large enough.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#173The charts show software dev gaining more jobs under the COVID demand and stimulus swing, and then losing more as those went away and monetary policy got tighter than even it had been even before the COVID stimulus. The easiest explanation for the whole chart is "Software dev is more reactive to the monetary policy environment than most other industries, because more of it is funded by new capital investment -- wheth…
I tend to agree with you, if only because the swing in Europe on the IT job market has had less amplitude and is more spread out, similar to the difference in stimulus policy.
Zurich IT market died after COVID. Not sure about other hubs.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#174I am not sure how things work in US but, living in an Eastern European country, I can say that salaries started growing, almost reaching western european levels, after which many foreign companies closed offices and moved to cheaper countries like India and Pakistan.
India salaries are growing too. The top end of Indian devs get paid more, in India, than many US devs at the lower / medium end
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind of makes you wonder what percentage of software devs are actually working the famed "bullshit jobs"?
I believe many software tools work like a vice for beurocrats making the beurocracy way less efficient. Like, forcing some not very edge case friendly set of text field validation rules onto the beurocrats such that he can't just do what he tries to do as he could with paper work. In many orgs. nowadays the processes seem to be made to fit the computer programs not the needs of the beurocracy.
That seems a little backwards. I'm not sure exactly what you mean with making bureaucracy less efficient, but form validation is an example of automated, technologically enforced bureaucracy - in some sense, it's a more efficient form of bureaucracy. It's certainly less flexible, but lack of flexibility is arguably the point of bureaucracy; less flexibility suggests more rather than less efficient bureaucracy.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#176FRED wants the implication to be AI related, but it seems pretty clear that all/most of this decline is related to their interest rate policies creating a raft of bullshit companies funded by too many dollars chasing ever more far-fetched returns...
Returns are no longer the actual goal. The actual goal is the perception of far reaching future returns. The perception of those returns is much more valuable than the actual returns. Because the wealthy don't want profits and dividends that get taxed. They want ever increasing stock prices so they can continuously grow their asset base to borrow against so they can never sell said assets this triggering capital gain…
Investing for distant future returns is not bad and favours long-term thinking over short-term profit. It is closer to the best (though abstract) metric, net positive value created, which naturally translates to ROI in an ideal world.
The problem is that in this non-ideal world value creation can become completely detached from returns: when instead of investing into people creating value, or distant future returns, or even medium term returns, it becomes about investing into other people investing in it—not too different from a pyramid scheme and various pump-and-dumps.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#177Kind of strange to see no mention of outsourcing in an otherwise detailed analysis
Because it doesn't really play a big factor. India has been around forever with an educated, cheap workforce that knows English really well.
Outsourcing is a cost savings measure. It's a symptom, not the cause of the issue
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
Returns are no longer the actual goal. The actual goal is the perception of far reaching future returns. The perception of those returns is much more valuable than the actual returns. Because the wealthy don't want profits and dividends that get taxed. They want ever increasing stock prices so they can continuously grow their asset base to borrow against so they can never sell said assets this triggering capital gain…
The 10% interest they would have to pay on the loans is almost as much as the capital gains would be.
If capital gains tax is 15% that 5% on let’s say $1mil is $50k that is not „almost as much” if you can pay 10%.
You are not getting rich by throwing $50k to trash.
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#179I am not sure how things work in US but, living in an Eastern European country, I can say that salaries started growing, almost reaching western european levels, after which many foreign companies closed offices and moved to cheaper countries like India and Pakistan.
Where in Eastern Europe? At least from my perspective (I've done hiring at several companies, albeit just hiring individual remote workers rather than open a local office) developers in Poland and Czechia are still very competitively priced (less expensive than north/western Europe and A LOT less expensive than the US).
Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe many software tools work like a vice for beurocrats making the beurocracy way less efficient. Like, forcing some not very edge case friendly set of text field validation rules onto the beurocrats such that he can't just do what he tries to do as he could with paper work. In many orgs. nowadays the processes seem to be made to fit the computer programs not the needs of the beurocracy.
That seems a little backwards. I'm not sure exactly what you mean with making bureaucracy less efficient, but form validation is an example of automated, technologically enforced bureaucracy - in some sense, it's a more efficient form of bureaucracy. It's certainly less flexible, but lack of flexibility is arguably the point of bureaucracy; less flexibility suggests more rather than less efficient bureaucracy.
Yes and no, form validation is a double edged sword: without it whoever receives the data may have to deal with inconsistencies, so removing that will increase efficiency.
However, the flexibility and adaptability of human interaction is lost when an intermediate digital system enforces rules without exception, and that loss can absolutely result in inefficiencies because the world is always changing and your digital models rarely reflect reality.
Let's say you work for a government agency processing stolen bikes. To fill in your form you must select a category of bike, but "fatbike" is not an option as the software was built in 2012. As a human using paper, you could easily talk to your colleagues and agree that you can now check the "e-bike" checkmark and write "fat" beside it to indicate a fatbike. In the software world, some company (hopefully the one that built the original software) will quote you 50k to do it, it won't work correctly, and you'll thank them for the pleasure of dealing with them.
In another example, let's say you have to get a building permit to build an extension to your house, and based on your postal code the system tells you that you are too close to a nature reserve and are not allowed to do any construction, and the system rejects your application. The government has recently ruled that this does not apply anymore to residential housing development, to improve the housing crisis situation, but the software is not up to date with this change. In a paper world the human could simply approve the permit based on their knowledge of the real world, in the software world the computer program will never approve your permit.
This whole thing may sound anti-automation. Its not meant to be, rather its a reminder that the processes we automate should leave enough flexibility and adaptability to deal with the real world. This does not come for free though: the bike system would need to allow you to add categories, or a free-form details field. The permit system should work in an advisory manner, but allow overrides by a professional specifying a reason, or it should allow you to disable/modify/create rules on the fly.
However, no matter what you do, form validation will always leave somebody out in the cold, some edge case uncovered, that a human could always resolve, but a system cannot.