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What SWE job hunting is like right now

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Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#51

Post by lokar »

gustavus wrote: post #31
garlandkey wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4 years experience at 140k is an insult IMHO. You claim you can easily find ppl w 5+ years experience, but I find that claim dubious. What you're willing to pay and what value we add seem to be vastly different.

Wow that's quite the high and mighty response. I have about 10 years experience across multiple domains and can program across a dozen languages. You know what my salary sits around 150k. You're attitude reflects part of the problem. There are a bunch of still relatively new people or especially boot camp grads that were sold on the always unrealistic expectation of making $150k right out of the gate. That was always…

These discussions are always the same, two sides of a bi-modal distribution talking past each other.

There is not just one “tech” industry that hire software engineers.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#52

Post by CoastalCoder »

garlandkey wrote: post #23
cj wrote: post #16

As a hiring manager for a relatively small company, a major problem is misaligned salary expectations. Real world example: I recently interviewed an engineer hit by layoffs at Shopify/UPS. The candidate had 4 years of total work experience, and was making $175k in the role that she was let go from, and they won’t accept anything less when looking for a new role. With 4 years of total experience in the workforce. I wo…

4 years experience at 140k is an insult IMHO. You claim you can easily find ppl w 5+ years experience, but I find that claim dubious. What you're willing to pay and what value we add seem to be vastly different.

I think sometimes when people call a salary offer "insulting", they really mean the offer is disappointing, worrying, and/or a threat to their sense of value vs. other professionals.

So I think there's value in reflecting why some job offer felt insulting. It may help the person recognize some thoughts or worries that were lurking in his mind.

On a less touchy-feely level, getting an "insulting" job offer can be a useful data point regarding the state of the job market, and/or that particular employer.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#53

Post by lylejantzi3rd »

cjk wrote: post #18

The last time I switched jobs was in October of 2020, so I haven’t experienced this personally, but I have a lot of friends in the same boat. Lots of said friends were affected by layoffs at various tech companies over the last couple years, but I also have some junior dev friends that are finding it basically impossible to even get callbacks. Everyone seems to only want senior devs at the moment.

I'm a senior dev and I'm also finding it hard to get callbacks. I've come to the conclusion that cold applying to positions is no longer viable. You won't even get a callback if you don't have a referral.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#54

Post by and0 »

zmgsabst wrote: post #48
gustavus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that's quite the high and mighty response. I have about 10 years experience across multiple domains and can program across a dozen languages. You know what my salary sits around 150k. You're attitude reflects part of the problem. There are a bunch of still relatively new people or especially boot camp grads that were sold on the always unrealistic expectation of making $150k right out of the gate. That was always…

[dead]

Making less money isn't a "loser mentality", for an SWE or anyone else. I'd happily take something that paid less for good non-profit work etc (but those orgs have always been really rough for other reasons).

Also, 150k for 10 years is great if you're working in government or somewhere local in the midwest, you're still living like a king and probably super stable.

What I don't love about the OP is the crab bucket mentality, not that they don't make enough money themselves.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#55

Post by scarface_74 »

I’m going to say something that at first is going to sound really insulting. But please hear me out.

If you’re just another enterprise CRUD developer like most of the 2.7 million developers in the US, there are literally thousands who can do the job good enough.

When I worked and lived in Atlanta pre-Covid, I could throw my resume in the air and reach out to local recruiters I had worked with for years and have multiple offers within less than a month. This was for your standard Enterprise CRUD jobs.

This was my life from 1996-2018.

A remote job at AWS working in the Professional Services department (full time) consulting fell into my lap in 2020.

I got Amazoned a couple of months ago.

As a backup plan, I started spamming my resume on LinkedIn Easy Apply for bog standard C# CRUD jobs. I never do this. But I had time on my hands this time so why not? I applied for 70 jobs this way and most of my applications weren’t even looked at and my resume was only downloaded twice. LinkedIn shows you this. I heard crickets from doing this.

I had 15 years of C# experience including 7 leading projects and 3 leading projects at AWS in the consulting department. Every job I applied to had 100s of applications.

Before when I was looking I was only competing in the local market. Now I’m competing nationwide.

From my prior network, most companies wanted hybrid or in office.

Don’t cry for me. I had three interviews and two offers within the two weeks for full time consulting jobs that paid around 20% less than I was making in all at Amazon. But one was because of a referral for a mid size company as a “staff architect” and the other two interviews were interested because I was the third highest contributor to a popular complex open source “AWS Solution”.

But, if you take away my AWS account, I turn back into your bog standard “enterprise dev” with above average soft skills

Edit: I see the comment is dead now. But when I was “carrying Amazon’s water” I guess they were referring to a month ago - I had already been Amazoned then.

Amazon was my 8th company in 27 years I’m now on my ninth. It was just another method to exchange labor for money.

I’ve been consistent in my distrust of government power whether it was targeting Amazon, Apple or Google.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#56

Post by lolinder »

lokar wrote: post #51
gustavus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that's quite the high and mighty response. I have about 10 years experience across multiple domains and can program across a dozen languages. You know what my salary sits around 150k. You're attitude reflects part of the problem. There are a bunch of still relatively new people or especially boot camp grads that were sold on the always unrealistic expectation of making $150k right out of the gate. That was always…

These discussions are always the same, two sides of a bi-modal distribution talking past each other. There is not just one “tech” industry that hire software engineers.

Right, and the point of this whole thread is that one end of that bimodal distribution just got a lot smaller than it was 3 years ago, while the other end sits where it always has. There are a lot of people who the FAANG end of the spectrum doesn't have room for anymore who are disappointed to find themselves back on the more sustainable modality.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#57

Post by CoastalCoder »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #28
cj wrote: post #16

As a hiring manager for a relatively small company, a major problem is misaligned salary expectations. Real world example: I recently interviewed an engineer hit by layoffs at Shopify/UPS. The candidate had 4 years of total work experience, and was making $175k in the role that she was let go from, and they won’t accept anything less when looking for a new role. With 4 years of total experience in the workforce. I wo…

> I would have loved to hire them at $120-140k, but for $175k I can easily find people with 5x more years of experience. Where are you easily finding someone with 20 years experience for 175k?

> Where are you easily finding someone with 20 years experience for 175k?

This actually matches my recent job-search experience.

More specifically: The number of job postings advertising > $200k seems way down from a few years ago. (At least for U.S. remote who's not an expert in distributed systems development.)

Especially after the recent mass layoffs from Google, Meta, etc., there are a lot of very senior devs competing for those sub-$200k positions.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#58

Post by lylejantzi3rd »

and0 wrote: post #44
anonreeeeplor wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is DEI hires are way out of whack with the market. Low skilled / low talent in many cases and lower competence but in a ZIRP environment I saw so many situations where women and minorities were hired and given leadership roles, with massively streamlined hiring processes. When the bottom line doesn’t matter these kinds of hires really proliferated. I wonder if we will see a hard reset back to competence as…

$180k within four years is more than reasonable if you get into FAANG. I've had plenty of kids right out of college asking for $140k and getting it from other companies, and this was 5 years ago, so within four years of typical ZIRP job hoping I'd say that's relatively normal. Please don't assume anyone is hired for diversity reasons. That's really awful.

> this was 5 years ago

That was then. This is now. Salaries fluctuate, both up AND down. Just ask anybody who was around in 2001 or 2008.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#59

Post by zmgsabst »

and0 wrote: post #54
zmgsabst wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Making less money isn't a "loser mentality", for an SWE or anyone else. I'd happily take something that paid less for good non-profit work etc (but those orgs have always been really rough for other reasons). Also, 150k for 10 years is great if you're working in government or somewhere local in the midwest, you're still living like a king and probably super stable. What I don't love about the OP is the crab bucket me…

Sure — good points.

OP is of course free to live whatever life they think is best — and I wish them all the success at it.

Calling other people “whiny” because you choose to live a life where you’re underpaid (as you put it, “crab bucket mentality”) is unhealthy and what I should have focused my criticism on.

Re: What SWE job hunting is like right now

#60

Post by CoastalCoder »

greatpostman wrote: post #26
cj wrote: post #16

As a hiring manager for a relatively small company, a major problem is misaligned salary expectations. Real world example: I recently interviewed an engineer hit by layoffs at Shopify/UPS. The candidate had 4 years of total work experience, and was making $175k in the role that she was let go from, and they won’t accept anything less when looking for a new role. With 4 years of total experience in the workforce. I wo…

120k is bottom of the barrel wages.

Yeah, you'd think. I've seen a handful of job advertisements via Google Jobs or LinkedIn that are closer to $60-80k, in the U.S.

I have no idea if they're real positions, or if / when / by whom they'll get filled.

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