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Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

blog.pragmaticengineer.com

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Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#271

Post by johnnyanmac »

lazide wrote: post #258
crooked-v wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s really hard to see what a team/people on it is actually doing if people are remote. If you're totally disconnected from the work, sure. But for someone actually paying, it shouldn't be that hard to see whether the list of priorities for this month is actually getting finished or not.

Beyond the most trivial work, that really isn’t simple or straightforward without watching everything like a hawk. Outsourcing manufacturing had the same problem - people thought they could send drawings to China, and with some straightforward checks, could get what they wanted cheaper. That was not at all the case, however, and there is a LOT of QA, additional checks, additional data leakage and competitive risks, e…

>Beyond the most trivial work, that really isn’t simple or straightforward without watching everything like a hawk.

Sounds more like a personal problem than a technical one. Besides, if it was actually enough of an issue there wouldn't be so much outsourcing. I just see it as more smokescreens to cut costs.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#272

Post by johnnyanmac »

mattkw wrote: post #50

This analysis is more of an excuse for speculation about applications of LLMs in software engineering, than an analysis of the factors leading up to this. The headline doesn’t tell the whole story. SE openings precipitated in the year that followed the peak. Compared to that massive decline, openings over the last year have been relatively stable but on a downward trajectory. Most of us are personally familiar with t…

>The headline doesn’t tell the whole story. SE openings precipitated in the year that followed the peak. Compared to that massive decline, openings over the last year have been relatively stable but on a downward trajectory

When was the peak of AI? My impression was around 2022, and the crash started the next year.

I don't think AI is the cause so much as projected economic headwinds and S174. But I can see AI being indirectly responsible. Not because of replacing jobs, but because Companies want to redirect dev funds saved into powering AI servers. I believe Meta said as much at the beginning of 2025 (or maybe it was Google?)

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#273

Post by johnnyanmac »

softwaredoug wrote: post #17

Companies have moved away from tech innovation driving growth. Instead they’ve realized they’re defending mature, boring business models. They need to keep the lights on with some good-enough engineers. Just think how much the investor narrative has shifted from early 2020s. Back then everyone talked about the business areas they were expanding into using tech. Now, investors get hyped up when you do the same thing,…

Yes and no. They are more or less trying to drain their workforce, yes. But they are also investing very hard in AI, which is about as speculative as you can get at the moment. Keep just enough (and maybe reduce that amount by 10%) to keep the mature tech running and then throw any extra power into the AI hype bubble.

So it's a bit of both extremes at once.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#274

Post by lazide »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #271
lazide wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond the most trivial work, that really isn’t simple or straightforward without watching everything like a hawk. Outsourcing manufacturing had the same problem - people thought they could send drawings to China, and with some straightforward checks, could get what they wanted cheaper. That was not at all the case, however, and there is a LOT of QA, additional checks, additional data leakage and competitive risks, e…

>Beyond the most trivial work, that really isn’t simple or straightforward without watching everything like a hawk. Sounds more like a personal problem than a technical one. Besides, if it was actually enough of an issue there wouldn't be so much outsourcing. I just see it as more smokescreens to cut costs.

Sure, ‘Chinesium’ is a personal problem.

It saves a ton of money if you can get people to buy the end product (costs are often literally 1/2 or 1/10th). Profit is a major motivator.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#275

Post by beAbU »

2-3-7-43-1807 wrote: post #167
throwaway638637 wrote: post #20

Kind of strange to see no mention of outsourcing in an otherwise detailed analysis

everything provided by offshoring to india is just an expensive tech debt full of spaghetti code. it simply doesn't work and causes harm to the customers. but because cheap it keeps getting sold. working with indians is a nightmare bar none. and i'm saying this as someone who has been to india and is also personally intrigued by its culture. but it's conway's law all the way - visit places like mumbai or delhi and th…

I think this is a bit unfair and biased to make such broad statements as you are doing here. From my experience, the outsourcing company rarely takes the time to properly onboard outsourced workers, they are not treated as part of the team, and the really shitty work that no-one else wants to do is the work that gets outsourced.

I reckon there's a lot of "garbage in garbage out" going on, and if an org took the time and effort to actually treat Indian (or any outsourced team) devs like their own, things will be much better. But when you do that the overhead shoots up, and that cost/benefit analysis you did during the proposal to offshore flies out the window.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#276

Post by Lockal »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #243
Lockal wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> programming languages can't be ambiguous Yes, in C++ we call it "unspecified behavior" and "undefined behavior"

Those occur when you've made an unambiguous statement that has no valid semantics. ("God should get a promotion."†) They don't occur when you've made an ambiguous statement ("We saw her duck.") As I noted above, it isn't possible to make an ambiguous statement. † I'm aware that that isn't an unambiguous statement. This is for the simple reason that it's next to impossible to make an unambiguous statement in a natural…

The case "God should get a promotion" if I understand correctly, is soundness (as in Rust) issue, with equivalent in C: `int increment(int x) { x + 1; }` - sound, not valid.

The case with legal documents is equivalent in C sequence points for comma operator with something like `print(i++, i++)`. Imagine Boeing documentation with text "In case of blinking indicator press button A and stop immediately". Button "A and stop"? Button "stop" after button A? Authors can hope that a sane human can resolve this ambiguity, but if it is done by compiler/interpreter/robot, it can have an avalanche effect.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#277

Post by rightbyte »

vouwfietsman wrote: post #236
rightbyte wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the write up. I am having an emotional crisis having to defend bureaucrats against us. (I conveniently blame their systems not being FOSS, not us programmers blindly following orders. No... not our fault).

I love me some FOSS but I don't think that helps here, does it? In the end the person having domain knowledge is no longer in control of the process, because its been transferred to an automated system. Therein lies the issue, even if the software can be modified it cannot be done by the domain expert, or on the fly, or at low effort.

A FOSS system could be changed by the beurocracy in a more straight forward manner than a procurement circus with the copyright holder of the software, is my reasoning.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#278

Post by shafyy »

vaidhy wrote: post #156
shafyy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at engineering salaries in Germany, 90-100k is what you pay for a senior engineer or PM, not a mid-level one.

Salary is not the same as paying a contractor. So, while salaries for senior engineers is 100k, as a contractor they might be charging 150K per year ($75/hr).

Yes, true.

Re: Software engineering job openings hit five-year low?

#279

Post by thaumasiotes »

nradov wrote: post #61
yolovoe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is most information...

That really depends on the domain. In fields like manufacturing, resources extraction, and pharmaceuticals most of the valuable information is locked behind corporate firewalls.

Even just general knowledge tends not to be on the internet if it was produced before that would have been expected.
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