- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
Thousands of Software Engineers Say the Job Market Is Getting Much Worse::9,388 engineers polled by Motherboard and Blind said AI will lead to less hiring. Only 6% were confident they’d get another job with the same pay.
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I’ve met a lot of people who were boot camp developers. Did a month long class and came out during a period where everyone was hiring anyone with a pulse. Got in the job, barely produced anything, and didn’t really learn much past that. Obviously they were the first to get cut when things got sour. Now, they’re wondering why they can’t get past the tech part of the interview. I feel this might account for a lot of those numbers.
Although this surely does not completely explain the situation, I also have a feeling these sorts of hires surely account for a substantial number of layoffs.
Yeah for sure. Especially with wfh. It’s easy to fire a remote worker. It’s harder to fire them in person. A good attitude in the office does go a long way. (I’m not arguing against wfh)
I was laid off last year. Got a job after a while and just survived another layoff today. I agree with this assessment.
It’s all post-pandemic stuff. Executives thought growth would continue, and it didn’t. Then they had to take account for their decisions and make others suffer for them.
That’s the funny thing. Common sense says things go back to a sense of normal. Executives lack common sense or foresight.
I’ve spent the last 18 months learning how to program so I could get a job that doesn’t make me want to kill myself, not being ironic, and now this bullshit. Am I just forever doomed to be miserable and just not enjoy anything or have a single break in life?
Downturns happen. They don’t last forever. There is a lot of pressure from businesses to depress wages and get more work out of software engineers and IT and etc., since we’re one of the few classes of workers who actually get paid. But thinking that developers will be replaced by AI anytime soon is wishful thinking on the part of the bosses. 20 years ago it was how we’d all get replaced by dirt cheap engineers overseas. Well, I’m still waiting on that to happen. If the MBAs could clearly and unambiguously articulate exactly what needs to be implemented, then maybe it would work. But if they can’t do that when we’re all in a conference room together then they’re sure as shit not doing it over email with a 12 hour time difference.
Keep your head up and keep trying to get an entry level gig somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Google or some hotshot startup or even a tech company. Doing IT or websites for an insurance company is still good experience.
Not if you unionize
The 2017 tax bill that the Republicans rammed through had a time bomb in it for software developers. Starting in 2022, companies could no longer expense R&D costs, and instead had to amortize them over 5 years. This has led to massive tax bills in 2023 for companies. I have no doubt that this is another major factor in the recent tech layoffs.
Take an imaginary bootstrapped software business called “Acme Corp.” This company generates $1,000,000 of revenue per year running a SaaS service. It employs five engineers, and pays each $200,000. That is $1,000,000 paid in labor costs. For simplicity, we omit other costs like servers and hosting, even though those costs can also fall under the new R&D rules, and have to be amortized. So, how much taxable profit does this company make?
In 2021, the answer would be zero profit. In 2022, the answer was $900,000 in profits(!!)
https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-will-us-companies-hire
This article isn’t really saying anything. It’s just saying that a lot of people feel like the job market has gotten tougher, but we don’t have any solid evidence to prove that.
Personally, I recently got a new software development job, and it was offered to me from the very first company I interviewed for. (This is out of the ordinary for me, as during past job searches it took me several interviews before I got an offer.) Did I get a job quickly this time because the job market is better, because I’ve become a better candidate, or because I got lucky? It’s impossible to say. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t really mean anything when it comes to market competitiveness IMO.
Exactly. I see an insane amount of job postings for my particular field in IT and people are changing jobs left and right in my circle. Which is also anecdotal, so there is that.
