71–80 of 592 posts
The analysis referenced by the article: https://e-janco.com/career/employmentdata.html#p7TP3c2_3
The table "Change In IT Job Market Size - December 2023" seems to indicate that 5.5k jobs were added to the 'job market' in 2023, contradicting what's being said. (Which isn't even representative of total employment in the sector, only the open job postings for the sector).
Honestly, I could feel it. In 2023, I practiced ~200 leetcode problems and learned how to create an LLM but I felt like I was the least employable I'd ever been. It was very difficult to get interviews, and even though I managed to get multiple offers, many of these were at companies I'd not normally have accepted offers from. It took a long time to find a job offer I wanted to accept. I do feel that there are signs…
You did two superficial things and are surprised you didn't feel more qualified? Practicing / memorizing leetcode and having a rudimentary understanding of LLMs (if I were hiring, we're targeting advanced degrees with a focus in the space) -- yeah, probably not sufficient. This is a feature and not a bug as the employment market moves back to sanity.
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It's also true that you have now 20+ years of experience. The higher you go, the harder it gets - you might want a different role, etc etc. If on the other hand you're competing with senior sw devs with 5+ years of experience, there could also be other factors to keep in mind (age, ability in very specific tech stacks, etc). I think companies are still hiring, but more focused, unlike in 2021-2022 when they over-hire…
> 20+ years of experience Welcome to my world. In-company recruiters are often quite helpful and accommodating, but, as soon as one single tech person gets involved, the temperature drops 30 degrees. Standalone recruiters send me these breathless emails, extolling my qualifications, but, as soon as they find out my age, they ghost me. I have actually had recruiters hang up on me, as soon as I told them my age. I lear…
It's probably not even legal to ask in some jurisdictions.
Everyone is talking about layoffs and lack of hiring, but I've found the problem to be that companies are cutting costs by silently increasing workload on existing employees. Everyone is getting burnt out trying to keep a 300-person engineering team running on only 100 head count. That leads to more incidents, slower delivery, less innovation, longer hours. Even those who are still employed are seeing working conditi…
To me it looks like tech is just falling more in line with other industries pay/workload. I think there are many who joined the tech workforce during the pandemic thinking the norm was to make $135k while doing 10 hours of real work a week from home, twiddling a few lines of bootcamp level javascript to appease your largely absent boss. Many may forget, or not have been there, but 10-15 years ago tech jobs were notor…
Exactly. Look at industries that also recruit smart college grads and pay well: consulting, finance, law. These jobs have very demanding schedules.
Not saying that's good, just that it is.
Elon showed with Twitter how you don't need hordes of engineers to run a company. He laid off 90% of the staff and still the website is doing alright (at least engineering wise). More engineers lead to more useless bullshit being created(like at Google). A lean mean team seems the way to go.
This is debatable.
Twitter hasn't added any meaningful functionality in recent years, which is fine if you think your product can survive stagnation for the foreseeable future. I wouldn't think so, but who knows.
Also, random Twitter functionality seems to be broken once a month, more or less. Last time I checked, new signups were having trouble following accounts and posting, which is as essential as it could be for Twitter to work.
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“there’s a power in the union..”
IT is one of the easiest to off-shore; how would a union help?
https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2017/03/03/wi...
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> 20+ years of experience Welcome to my world. In-company recruiters are often quite helpful and accommodating, but, as soon as one single tech person gets involved, the temperature drops 30 degrees. Standalone recruiters send me these breathless emails, extolling my qualifications, but, as soon as they find out my age, they ghost me. I have actually had recruiters hang up on me, as soon as I told them my age. I lear…
Isn't age discrimination literally illegal pretty much everywhere? Proving it is always hard, but "they hang up on me as soon as I tell them my age" seems pretty clear-cut. It's probably not even legal to ask in some jurisdictions.
They just start saying "Hello?, Hello?, Are you there?," etc. It's a convenient way to hang up on people.
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> I would have gladly accepted less money than I had made before. I don't really need it. The work is what interests me. We need an acceptable way to express this, without desperately extolling you'll take less money. I think a lot of us "old guys" are in the same boat; I don't need 150k, I'll take 100k if the work is interesting, and I'm more likely to be loyal to boot.
> I'm more likely to be loyal The funny thing, is that I've been told that "Old people are just cruising to retirement," but it's OK to establish your entire business infrastructure on the idea that your young, energetic, engineers will not remain at the company for more than 18 months.
That is just BS. In my company we have quite a few 50+ and it's nice to work with them. They add exactly what younger people can't.
Reality is: They need to squeeze every dollar as much as they can. If they could, they would never hire:
1. People with kids
2. Older than 33-35 (more often than not also 1)
3. Disabled
4. Often sick People (give me your history of sick leave, that kind of stuff)
5. Anything else I am missing?
Just freaking replaceable robots.
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Twitter is facing mounting debt, large quarterly loses, and lost tens of billions of dollars in valuation. I wouldn't use that as a success story. From the WSJ, so no complaining about liberal bias. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-elon-musks-twitter-faces-mo...
These issues are caused by (1) the buy-out by Elon Musk involving a large amount of debt, and (2) Elon Musk annoying "woke" advertisers who have subsequently deserted the platform. The actual engineering hasn't been as affected or rather while it has been affected it hasn't been affected to the magnitude that you might expect given the size of the lay-offs.
Are new features being added? Honest question -- I don't use the product.
Keeping the lights on for a product with 10% of the workforce isn't shocking or new. We do it in this industry all the time. Can you iterate and ship with 10% of the workforce? That's much more impressive.
In other parts of the world IT employment is still at good levels.
It’s probably a sign that IT skills are no longer only relevant in the most powerful economies.