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Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

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Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#311

Post by Karrot_Kream »

layer8 wrote: post #295
BoorishBears wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unironically my favorite kind of HN comment: to say something incredibly rude and/or condescending but wrap it in the right kind of thoughtful language to qualify as HN nice The original punchline ("you don’t learn the actually valuable lessons.") was just a bit too sharp, so you even edited in a psuedo-clarification which actually just repeats that punchline but in a softer way, masterful!

My intention was actually to inspire others to maybe also start preferring long-term/maintenance work, because I feel there’s a lack of enthusiasm for that. Almost invariably after submitting, I see how I could clarify and/or expand on my thoughts, so I often do end up editing.

This seems wrong? Like if you look at a collection of open SWENG positions, most of them are maintenance roles at large companies. Greenfield software doesn't have the revenue needed to justify much headcount.

In my experience separating the roles out is silly if you're an engineer yourself. We do this a lot and that leads to silly mentalities. Greenfield developer vs maintenance engineer, MVP engineer vs Big Tech dev, FOSS hacker vs FOSS maintainer. Each of those dichotomies speaks to cultural differences that we humans amplify for no reason.

In truth the profession needs both and an engineer that can do both is the most effective. The sharpest engineers I've worked with over the years can hack new, greenfield stuff and then go on to maintaining huge projects. Hell Linus Torvalds started out by creating Linux from scratch and now he's a steward of the kernel rather than an author!

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#312

Post by alienbaby »

Eridrus wrote: post #59
mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

> they're just as capable as using AI as anyone They're just as capable of typing prompts into AI, but what they don't have is good judgement of what good work/code looks like, so what's the point of asking a junior engineer to do something vs asking the LLM directly?

The junior engineer will become a senior. An llm wont. For now, anyway.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#313

Post by jghn »

lowkey_ wrote: post #268
jghn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that what you're describing is the required skillset now. But two things I've been unsure of are what that looks like in terms of hiring to test for it, and for how long this remains a moat at all. So much of tech hiring cargo culting has been built up around leetcode and other coding problems, puzzles, and more. We all pay lip service to systems thinking and architecture, but I question if even those are tes…

I've put a lot of thought into hiring in this era, and what I've personally found works the best is: Let them use their preferred setup and AI to the full extent they want, and evaluate their output and their methodology. Ask questions of "why did you choose X over Y", especially if you're skeptical, and see their reasoning. Ask what they'd do next with more time. It's clear when a candidate can build an entire worki…

I don't disagree per se, but these are more or less the same tropes that we've seen over the last couple of decades, no? Especially the "hiring them on a trial basis is the absolute best if possible." part which has been an ongoing debate here on HN since at least the early teens.

I do feel like there's something *different* about the required skillset now, and it's not something that all engineers have even experienced ones. But I can't put my finger on what exactly it is. If I'm right though, classic interview techniques won't select for it because they never were intended to do so.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#314

Post by ge96 »

overfeed wrote: post #105
crystal_revenge wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally tend to interview every year to see what's out there in the world (sometimes I find something worth switching for, other times not). I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. Personally I think it's a bit more nuanced than senior vs junior (though it is very hard for juniors right now). What I've seen a lot of hunger for is people with a track record of getting their hand…

> I'm not even looking very hard but have had 4 interviews in the last month. How many offers did you receive? Companies have also adopted your strategy: interviewing candidates "to see what's out there" - there's a job I interviewed for that's still open after 10 months.

I recently did an interview and a complaint I hear from the interviewer and our own company, people (your competition) reading from AI output.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#315

Post by tcgv »

lowkey_ wrote: post #55
mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

Agreed on the bimodal, but I don't think this is junior vs. senior - I think it's just competence being rooted out. The majority of engineers, in my hiring experience, failed very simple tests pre-AI. In a world where anyone can code, they're no better than previously non-technical people. The CS degree is no longer protection. The gap between average and the best engineers now, though, is even higher. The best engin…

Makes sense. You just reminded me of the article "Why Can’t Programmers... Program?" [1].

Before gen AI, I used to give candidates at my company a quick one-hour remote screening test with a couple of random "FizzBuzz"-style questions. I would usually paraphrase the question so a simple Google search would not immediately surface the answer, and 80% of candidates failed at coding a working solution, which was very much in line with the article. Post gen AI, that test effectively dropped to a 0% failure rate, so we changed our selection process.

[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-cant-programmers-program/

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#316

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #305
gtowey wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. You learn the most valuable information from watching how things break and then fixing them. It's kind of like when the FAA does crash investigation -- a stunning amount of engineering and process insights have been generated by such work to the benefit of all of us.

“What kind of role are you looking for?” “Technologist flavor of NTSB investigator.”

Sounds amazing.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#317

Post by alienbaby »

mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

Juniors really aren't just as capable with AI as anyone. Knowing how to unambiguously describe correctly what you want isn't something a junior can do, nor is understanding if what the ai produces is good or bad.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#318

Post by cucumber3732842 »

Eridrus wrote: post #59
mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

> they're just as capable as using AI as anyone They're just as capable of typing prompts into AI, but what they don't have is good judgement of what good work/code looks like, so what's the point of asking a junior engineer to do something vs asking the LLM directly?

Because a lot of stuff doesn't need to be good it needs to be done.

Nobody is gonna lose money because some script that generates yaml for the build process every hour nested three loops instead of two. Intern, AI, junior dev, junior dev telling an intern how to use AI, doesn't matter. If it works for the week it'll work for the decade. If someone needs to pick it apart and fix something in a year it'll either take no time because they know enough to do it easily or it'll be a good low stakes learning exercise for a junior.

Everyone wants to think their stuff is important but 99.9% of code is low stakes support code either in applications or in infrastructure around them.

Re: Tech employment now significantly worse than the 2008 or 2020 recessions

#320

Post by girvo »

kseniamorph wrote: post #224
mjr00 wrote: post #15

In my experience, tech employment is incredibly bimodal right now. Top candidates are commanding higher salaries than ever, but an "average" developer is going to have an extremely hard time finding a position. Contrary to what many say, I don't think it's simple as seniors are getting hired and juniors aren't. Juniors are still getting hired because they're still way cheaper and they're just as capable as using AI a…

This matches what I've seen too. Though I'd add another dimension: soft skills. In my experience, job searching has always been easier for people who communicate well regardless of their technical level. And soft skills might be what's making some people more resilient to this market shift specifically

That has always been true (not that I’m saying you don’t know that, I’m using your comment as a jumping off point) in this industry. I am a good developer, but I’m a very good teacher and leader, and soft skills are why I’ve had the career I’ve had over the past two decades.
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