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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

#631

Post by reactordev »

layer8 wrote: post #214
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 very much a "builder" type dev that has more fun going from 0-v1 than maintaining and expanding scalable, large systems. Maintaining and expanding is more challenging, which is why I’ve grown to prefer that. Greenfield and then leaving is too easy, you don’t learn the actually valuable lessons. As experience shows that projects won’t stay in the nice greenfield world, building them can feel like doing illusory…

Incorrect and not even close.

Maintaining and expanding is optimizing for throughput or reducing headroom so you can pack more compute.

Developing a greenfield solution requires innovation beyond a simple scaling issue. Often times, once a project like this is done, it lives in maintenance mode for the rest of its life and my skills would be better applied elsewhere.

Don’t get it twisted, I’ve scaled 0-1 to 10M and maintaining and expanding is a different skill set than innovating and invention.

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

#633

Post by AbstractH24 »

windowshopping wrote: post #567
ipnon wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience anyone who went to Ivy+ or worked at Big N never has any problem getting a job.

I did not go to an Ivy, but I did go to a recognizable engineering school in the northeast (not MIT.)

So, NYU?

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

#634

Post by uncivilized »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #542
uncivilized wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senior level is doing the heavy lifting here.

Isn’t the person with 14 years experience at least senior? Or are you saying senior is low level enough to get interviews?

Yes, I’m not speaking about the person with 14 years of experience.

I’m saying that looking for senior level roles is much easier than roles that aren’t quite senior yet.

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

#635

Post by davidmurdoch »

reactordev wrote: post #631
layer8 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm very much a "builder" type dev that has more fun going from 0-v1 than maintaining and expanding scalable, large systems. Maintaining and expanding is more challenging, which is why I’ve grown to prefer that. Greenfield and then leaving is too easy, you don’t learn the actually valuable lessons. As experience shows that projects won’t stay in the nice greenfield world, building them can feel like doing illusory…

Incorrect and not even close. Maintaining and expanding is optimizing for throughput or reducing headroom so you can pack more compute. Developing a greenfield solution requires innovation beyond a simple scaling issue. Often times, once a project like this is done, it lives in maintenance mode for the rest of its life and my skills would be better applied elsewhere. Don’t get it twisted, I’ve scaled 0-1 to 10M and m…

Incorrect and not even close.

Greenfield is easy because nothing matters yet.

No legacy data. No backwards compatibility. No users depending on uptime. If the architecture is wrong you just rewrite it, rename a few services, and move on.

Maintaining and expanding a real system means every change has consequences. You’re migrating live data, preserving behavior people rely on, and evolving the architecture while the plane is already in the air.

0→1 lets you be bold because you can break things. 1→10M is harder because you can’t.

(I'm just kidding, your dismissal just needed a dismissal to make things balanced again)

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

#636

Post by password54321 »

The field more than likely has peaked out for software developers. Jevons paradox means there probably will not be enough agents anytime soon as ambition grows but that doesn't mean the number of developers will grow with it. You will probably need less "real" pilots behind these agents as tools improve around them and so do the agents themselves before they can essentially fully pilot themselves and work in parallel. Work may even increase for the developers that remain where they are expected to do the work of >10 developers as a single dev but to expect the number of developers to increase with the number of agents seems unlikely as having more people will actually end up being a bottleneck then a lean team that can orchestrate a growing force of agents.

AI companies have set themselves up for this scenario. They won't solve themselves out of the equation, they will only solve you.

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

#637

Post by kdheiwns »

darth_avocado wrote: post #241
teagee wrote: post #10

The chart in the tweet represents year-on-year growth. Based on these figures alone the actual number of people employed in tech is still really high, and the numbers can't just go up forever. Also this only captures 6 industries, which is a narrow view of what would define "tech" these days. Not to say that the job market isn't tough but this graph is a very narrow view

> The chart in the tweet represents year-on-year growth. Can’t believe how many people are commenting without looking at what the chart means. We’ve lost 50k jobs last two years after decades of adding 100k+ every year including the pandemic highs of 300k+ per year. Total employment remains way above 2000s, 2008 and 2020 unlike the title suggests.

Tech has also changed to become an all encompassing thing. In 2000, loads of people didn't have computers or cell phones. Maybe they owned a CD player and watched TV. Tech was avoidable then. But now everyone has a phone in their pocket, a computer, does all their banking through apps instead of visiting the bank, orders food online, orders taxis through apps, and so on. Everything is lumped under tech now and unavoidably so.

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

#638

Post by abustamam »

lambertsimnel wrote: post #594
abustamam wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside, I remember some time ago that Tesla stock went down because the growth of the Model 3 sales went down... After years of being one of the best selling cars on the planet. If number don't go up fast I guess people get scared.

It could have been that so much future growth was priced in that a reduction in the growth rate could have justified a reduction in the share price

I didn't think of that! That's certainly possible.

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

#639

Post by reactordev »

davidmurdoch wrote: post #635
reactordev wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect and not even close. Maintaining and expanding is optimizing for throughput or reducing headroom so you can pack more compute. Developing a greenfield solution requires innovation beyond a simple scaling issue. Often times, once a project like this is done, it lives in maintenance mode for the rest of its life and my skills would be better applied elsewhere. Don’t get it twisted, I’ve scaled 0-1 to 10M and m…

Incorrect and not even close. Greenfield is easy because nothing matters yet. No legacy data. No backwards compatibility. No users depending on uptime. If the architecture is wrong you just rewrite it, rename a few services, and move on. Maintaining and expanding a real system means every change has consequences. You’re migrating live data, preserving behavior people rely on, and evolving the architecture while the p…

Yeah, you just described why doing green right is hard. It has to account for future state. It needs to be accommodating to change. I know we all had that experience where we come in and some slop is running in production and we are tasked to rewrite it. This isn’t that. Those suck. They deserve their own bin of humiliation. The great designs allow future development to add to the ecosystem. The argument “You never stay so you never built anything that lasts” is untrue when you build a platform that is extensible and has been running that way for 30 years. I haven’t been needed in 29.

But yes, as everything in life, YMMV and all jobs are a double edged sword. Some greenfield is shit because shitty decisions were made. Some enterprise is shit because some shitty decisions were made. In either case, whether it’s a new project or fixing an old one, take your time and not make shitty decisions.

(Spider-Man Point Meme)

(I don’t make products, I create legacies, in C++)

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

#640

Post by duskdozer »

gzoo wrote: post #585
hackmack10 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software will become cheaper to write and more software will be written. A senior will always outcompete a junior when it comes to logical thinking and a true understanding of IT. A programmer will always outcompete a non-programmer when it comes to using AI tools. Bottom line, if programmers are fucked, so is just about anyone else.

"Universal Basic Income" is what they are telling us. What do you think

That that's naive. If you want to guess what may happen, look to the rhetoric and language about people now: the homeless, disabled, unemployed, elderly
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