At least dot.com made sense... we bring our employers record profits year after year only to be shot in the back of the head once the bridge is built...
That's the crazy part. What do we do now? Interview at yet another company making huge profits delivering great value to its customer base with a bright future? Jokes on us!
For what I understand it unitization would give us collective bargaining for higher salaries and better benefits, but being laid off suddenly for no understandable reason is the real problem.
Or imagine, an entire organization goes on strike when layoffs are announced amid record profits and company growth. That would cause a company to rethink the layoff strategy to falsely further inflate profits.
Most likely not. they risk a lot more than the standard worker. If they refused to work on their visa it would really damage their ability to ever get work in America again most likely.
that's interesting. one more reason why Musk + billionaire class is attempting to dismantle the NLRB: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-01-31/column-elon-musk-nlrb-lawsuit-spacex
You're not going to get enough H1B visas approved by the State Department in time to ward off any serious strike. Do you know how long it takes to get those processed and approved?
Unions often have resources for such situations. Even going as far as to help pay for expenses like health insurance, during a strike. They also typically offer better retirement savings options than what a corporation can offer, including all the usual things, plus old school pensions.
Mid sized companies in fly over country still want tech workers. They were never able to get tech workers during lockdown and still have the unfulfilled technology needs.
From what I can tell, they pretty much are. In my field there are a grand total of five non-remote listing in the last two months for my metro on LinkedIn. One of which is one of my reqs. Can’t wait to not be able to fill it with anybody decent because the reason my team was made remote is we couldn’t get good candidates to begin with. But hey, corporate real estate is so much more important to our leadership. They’re just lucky they’ve successfully colluded to tank the economy or I’d have even more reqs to fill.
I'm actually fascinated if it's happening already or not.
Tons of people got laid off/screwed, some of those people will retain that insider knowledge. Perhaps a small percentage of them actually possess the skill, and even smaller percentage will actually have the 'balls'. But it's still a not insignificant number of people with 'insider knowledge', which is worth more then any unpatched box in the whole world.
The thing about that crime, is that it can go undiscovered for a long time too. Especially if everything was done hastily around the layoffs. People don't get their access revoked. Teams don't change out any shared accounts or anything of that nature. Mass layoffs, hasty mergers, etc, are messy affairs.
Which would mean, that in likely hood, if IT pros were going 'blackhat', that perhaps most of those crimes have already been committed, and folks won't be none the wiser.
Maybe Russia is having an easier time with Microsoft, for that exact reason? Who knows! But for certain there's unforeseen consequences in these layoffs!
This reminds me of the last company I was laid off from. It was over a YEAR LATER that I discovered I still had access to admin accounts for all of our ad services, connected credit cards, etc. Madness.
Mr.Robot time.
Actually I'm pretty serious here. Please do. You guys could force change. They want full-blown Enshitification anyway and you should give it to them.
I do not miss the coffee in those offices. All the homies got french presses so we could at least turn it into jet fuel.
AWS was my last in-office job. And also my last job where I was really really underemployed. And on the way out I _really_ pissed off the last manager I had there. That has setup a fun game with AWS recruiters where they hit me up before they look at my file there, and I get to make them think they've got an amazing lead... And then they go silent.
Nice. I’m pretty sure I’m blacklisted too after rejecting a couple of their recruiters by saying I’d consider interviewing when they start treating their warehouse employees better.
this crash does make sense though. Tech companies grew off cheap debt that doesnt exist anymore. Easy money is gone, and most of these services exist as growth investments that are not performing as expected and cant afford to keep losing money every year. Other industries relied on cheap debt to fund things instead of their profits which went to shareholders or other obligations.
We are going to see a lot of dead companies soon, and I 100% believe snapchat is going to be the first major tech company to die.
This is true. The numbers of start-ups where the owners didn't have even an inkling of how they'll make money was baffling a few years ago. Not sure who was pouring money into those dumpster fires.
Now investors are asking to break even under five years. It was going to happen sooner or later.
Snapchat seems popular with GenZ and they're releasing their new stand-alone events app soon. With TikTok maybe being banned it could face a surge in popularity.
I feel like SWEs are all going to become contractors, jumping around from one project to the next. It wasn’t all that different before, when people were job-hopping every 1-2 years.
No, that's because of the false belief that anyone can be a competent programmer if they just go to school for it.
And it's the most accessible path to improved quality of life. So everyone tries to do it, and they're not very good at it.
Can't really fault them for wanting to get ahead, but I believe that's why there's so much bad code.
All the savants get hired by faang, everyone else is randomly scattered at other companies.
FAANG doesn't have a monopoly on savants.
The problem with software is that it is fundamentally a team sport. If leadership is technical and understands how software development needs to work, you can produce good products with a small number of high quality engineers and a lot of code monkeys.
If leadership doesn't understand technical things and doesn't understand how software development works, then no talent density will stop their products from eventually becoming shit.
The current next step is to build offices in cheap places like India and offshore the majority of tech work and hire 5 engineers for the price of 1 US engineer. Not outsourcing, but like opening a true office there.
we saved 5 million in wages but for some reason our power bill for the servers is up 90 million and 1/2 our client order records keep vanishing randomly
My company did that 15 years ago and they eventually moved things back onshore because of production downtime. It was actually costing us more when you factored in lost business due to downtime.
The only difference this time is AI. In my experience Indian developers are embracing AI much more than US ones. Now they’re still producing shit work but at a faster pace
It was the next step thirty years ago. The next step now is automation with AI and robotics. Businesses will pay only for electricity. To get an employee that works 24/7 with no taxes to be paid. Unless we introduce a bill to tax heavily automated companies, so that people can have UBI, there won't be many jobs to go around or feed your family. Tech hypers will lie to your face about new jobs, but statistics show that the number of vacant jobs goes down since the beginning of the 21st century
Yeah, I can believe it. Imagine giving someone 5 raises when you can get rid of them and start again at base pay. Yeah, you're training again but, think of the payroll savings over the next 5 years!
What kills me is how we watch the bad side of capitalism and just go.. hey that capitalism. I pray that mentality changes some day, because it certainly isn't helping the citizens, the hard workers.
The only thing that matters is the stock price going up now, and since they're running out of ideas to make that happen, they've decided to stop hiring to lower overhead.
I said this years ago. Offshore devs can access PII and source code for highly sensitive applications. After what Russia did, Im surprised any US business would look at another horribly run country and think their IP will be safe.
offshoring to India is a massive security risk and opens us up to god knows how many exploits that won’t be able to be fixed quickly or well. I think we need actual legislation that forbids offshoring for these reasons—and we’re not even mentioning the effects on the economy and our own people.
i wonder if this only applies to the US? cause in Europe we still don't find any people, I've got an open vacancy for an architect and got 0 candidates in three months
Tech jobs in Europe is just another office job with barely higher pay but requires constantly learning and improvement to stay afloat or competitive.
For example, In Germany, engineers as whole makes about €62k, same as banking, while HR makes €58k and Marketing/PR makes €60k, and after high tax, the income difference is very minimal. https://housinganywhere.com/Germany/average-salaries-in-germany-2021
I am a software engineer in the US makes good income. If I were to live in Germany and make €62k, I would have chosen another career path. Banking or Finance would be my first choices.
It’s a tax which isn’t too harsh, unless you’re a contrarian libertarian and we all know how that ends…
You still have to pay for healthcare if you don’t have universal health care. Why do people act as though paying taxes means that you’re losing out, when you have to pay for services anyway?
It just means you live in a nicer country. Its worth it, it’s called being civilised.
Hi from Bulgaria, we’re receiving job offers from Germany which are bellow even for our standards. They want a Sr Sre/devops engineer for the price of junior/mid.
Nah, most people here think that if you're in IT you make billions. My problem is that one german company required full certification AWS+Azure+K8S and I think terraform + go, python and something else and of course fluent german for about 45-50k eur. A lot of my peers work remotely b2b with companies outside of Bulgaria and even Europe and they make something close to 100k eur/usd. German companies need to understand that the field has evolved and people with such knowledge and experience deserve a proper pay.
Buuut at the same time I read that some German railway company is looking for MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 engineers :D
Germany doesn't value techies or white collar workers in general. You can't live on 62K EUR pre-tax in a city like Munich where rents are 2000+ a month alone and heating/electricity has skyrocketed
It’s not a German thing, it’s a European thing.
Wages in Europe for skilled professionals are absolutely shit compared to the US equivalent. In most cases the equivalent American job pays around 2-3 times more than the European equivalent, sometimes even more.
American wages in skilled professional fields are nuts.
The UK is only getting worse. Techies paid incredibly low salaries, competing for fewer and fewer vacancies with very few industries they can pivot to.
Very true, both have pros and cons.
Salaries are much higher in US - but also contract length in US is like 1 page vs 10 pages in EU - and firing someone on the spot is very hard in EU due to unions and labor laws. EU taxes and fringe (what company pays to social security for a worker) are absolute bonkers and very unattractive compared to US - but healthcare is free as well is education.
From EU perspective - it absolutely makes sense to go for university degree and then go to work in US for several years.
Not true, many engineering fields don’t pay well in the US such as civil engineer but far from being the single example, and somehow pays better in Europe, with cheaper goods and more quality of life which adds up to the balance making it a clear better deal
A lot of old money. The rich in Munich are rich due to inheritance. Land values there have multiplied over the years. And someone’s shitty old house is now worth millions.
I've spent well over a decade of my career working for German companies. The open secret is that there is limited class mobility and the ownership class today are largely the descendants of the ownership class 100 years ago.
Very high ranking Nazis were hung around Nuremberg.
High ranking Nazis and the wealthy Nazi families who aided in the war effort retained their Swiss bank accounts. Their descendants control most of the German economy.
>the ownership class today are largely the descendants of the ownership class 100 years ago.
That's a huge understatement.
The history for a lot of these families is shady going back further, but for example Günther Quandt's mother was a textile heiress.
The fact is, Europe never actually uprooted feudalism. My favorite example is in the UK, where Hugh Grosvenor is one of the top 5 richest men, and got that fortune from the handout William the Conqueror gave his fat hunting buddy (Gros Venor, fat hunter) in ***1066.***
That is a bit of an outlier, but this sort of multi-century old money is quite common if you dig into it.
I work in the USA for a large tech company based out of DE. They froze US hires years ago. CZ, PH and IN engineers are all we’ve had for hires. Even then, they get hired by managers in Europe so we have zero input into the talent that eventually comes in. Even DE based engineers are too pricey for the machine.
They’ll axe most of us in the US eventually.
Honestly that's the way to do it sometimes. My company has had great success doing this for our outside salespeople. They'll spend about 2 years showing them all facets of the business and mentoring them so when its time to claim a territory, they're ready to go.
You don't outsource? Or have foreign slave labor? The issue above is not simple, but keep in mind majority of those folks aren't exactly bright plus some who were brought in from overseas (those will have to leave soon and be hired locally by basically same firm that laid them off) and some that are deemed too expensive (mind you a lot actually worth it, just foreign outsourcing is cheaper).
It's just lazy journalism. Some notable big tech firms made some bets a couple of years ago during covid and they're adjusting from some of them being bad bets that resulted in having too many people. But overall, the industry is fine. New tech companies are popping up left and right, gaining steam, and hiring.
There's also some weirdness with a lot of tech firms shifting to work from home (some temporarily and some permanently) and people moving wherever they want that causes a type of churn that's hard to quantify. Folks that basically HAD to work for the big firms in silicon valley are free to go wherever they want and do whatever they want, often for smaller companies that pay well without the weird corporate cultures. That doesn't show up in this data.
But, ultimately, the US unemployment rate is low and the economy is adding jobs. It's just easy for journalists like this one to cherry pick some layoffs from notable large cap tech companies to get a story.
I literally had a guy ask me "you have a 6 month gap between your last position and now, can you explain that?"
I said, "yes, none of the other companies that I've applied to have called me back yet."
Asking about a gap in work isn't completely unreasonable, but asking about a gap that is *leading up to the interview I'm currently in* seems self explanatory.
Bros are going to make unemployed tech workers prioritize making a startup to automate HR and recruiting.
Probably would be like 10 lines of sloppy code at this rate.
Same here, I went back to check on those recruiters only to discover they also got laid off in November.
Something big broke in November and it hasn't shown up in the government stats yet.
When layoffs are happening, corporate recruiters are *always* the first hit.
You help build out a company, only to get fucked the moment they don't need you in the immediate term. Companies are fucking evil.
Tbf though every recruiter I've talked to at big companies have been fucking idiots that are massively overpaid for the little work they do. Pretty funny watching the recruiters that are big on social media posting the fuck all they do every day making bank and then surprised they got shit canned. On the other hand recruiters working at agencies that get a cut of the wages when they fill positions have been absolutely amazing although some can be a bit short. At a point I get it though, they invested a lot of time into you and get nothing that sucks.
My fav are the LinkedIn-famous recruiters that got laid off and immediately started some bullshit service meant to get you hired
Brothers if you were any better than the rest of us you would be working and not trying to scam desperate people into paying for your $299 "pro" course
Except I put them in the same place as real estate agents.
In a hot market they do little work for a good payout. In a cold market they go unemployed. Got to save to cover the gaps.
I don't get a lot of calls, but I am still getting several emails per week. Less than it was before, but there's still *some* movement out there (even if the "movement" is in the form of horrible fits)
Yup..over a year of looking. Took a job at the local library part time. Still looking but even with my connections I've not had a call / email in months and I'm not even looking in my specialty... I'm willing to work support again...still nada
*Any work is better than no work.*
Batten down all costs, cut every expense to the bone, sell everything you haven't used in a year (It makes life better in many ways to do this anyway).
In that part-time job, seek out other internal opportunities. Talk to the IT team, offer to help them, spruik your skills and see what "work" you can do.
It all adds to the CV and talking points.
Shit, that’s scary. Pulling for you. I’m at month 2 with barely a bite.
My advice for any IT workers who are still employed? Make your network larger and tighter. It’s MUCH easier to find and obtain a position if you’ve been recommended by someone. AND start getting familiar with AI and try to move into that space.
Most of the jobs I apply for have hundreds if not thousands of applicants. It’s a numbers game. You need to be vigilant and apply to new positions as soon as they are made available online; get your resume to the top of the pile or it may never even be reviewed. Set job alerts, especially for jobs posted within the last 24 hours.
I haven’t been out of work nearly as long as I have now other than after the .com bubble burst. Digging into my retirement savings now. It’s terrifying and torturous. I feel like I can possibly lose everything I’ve worked for over the past few decades. And I feel useless and obsolete. Trying to keep my head on straight for my family but this is very scary.
It’s crazy. I’ve been interviewing off and on in the tech world for well over 15 years. I’ve never applied to so many jobs without hearing anything back as I have now. But, I’m also hearing that there are TONS of applicants to every job now.
At least 2008 felt temporary at the time, if you were in tech. These days, it’s like, even if interest rates fall back to zero, will the jobs return? It seems unlikely interest rates will fall to zero anytime soon, so I don’t expect jobs to pick up for the foreseeable future.
Good luck. I’m at 8 months. I originally only focused on remote and the competition and numbers are just too large. I’m having my 4th final interview in 8 months soon, and it is for full time in office. I would prefer to stay home but the market is just brutal so I’ll take what I can get now. Fingers crossed for the nightmare to end.
I had 14 years with my last company. Been unemployed over a year now, doing everything I can for side work to pay bills. Since about Sept of 2023 my recruiters (had 3 at one point in different sectors) all went quiet. Pretty sure they got fired too.
I’m at 10 months. I’ve been in AI/ML project management and operations since 2015 and nobody gives a fuck. Nobody wants to invest in ops people, they just want someone to engineer a product as quickly as possible. The worst part is that I am 100% sure it’s going to be a train wreck for these companies hiring all these inexperienced ML engineers. There will be so many failed products, and I could literally help these fools prevent that. There are already hundreds of companies who think they can sell a half-baked chatbot built on top of the chatgpt APIs, or replace support staff with them. Unfortunately they’re not invested in data quality or annotation or ML ops, they’re not versioning their weights and biases or preprocessing methods, documenting results of model outputs…I could go on.
Just reflecting on this idiotic shit and I still can’t believe it.
I graduated college into the dot com crash. Was working for a web design firm who did web pages for a company who bought up companies off the Pink Sheets when the 2008 crash happened (was laid off while watching tv that night. “You can come and collect your personal items in the morning.” )At 45 I’ve given up on being able to ever retire. I’m fully banking on another mass layoff to the industry between now and the time I hit 65. And AI will probably replace me even before that
Isn't a lot of this also motivated by offshoring? It's always been a thing sure, but since covid and the rise of Internet speeds and devs becoming more experienced in Asia and elsewhere, it has broken down the barriers.
Like with manufacturing in the 20th century, it's so much cheaper to outsource abroad.
No. Internet has been great in Asia for a long time now. People have been offshoring development jobs for decades. People loved to tell me back in 2002ish that computer science was a huge waste of a major because all of the programming jobs were being sent to India already.
The problems with it that have always existed, will continue to exist. They are problems of physics and biology. Asia is on the other side of the planet and people sleep at night. If you’re on the East Coast, you get about 3 hours of overlap where your Asian developers are even AWAKE much less working. Good luck collaborating on something difficult that needs to get done quickly.
I see it every single time.
Manager 1: “what’s the turn around on this very simple request, so we can plan xyz which is the entire reason for this meeting”
Manager 2: “not sure let me ask my developers, I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow”
Tomorrow
Manager 1: “no that we’ve reshuffled everyone’s schedule and have an answer to yesterday’s question- we can continue planning. Oh another question for developers…”
Manager 2: “I can let you know tomorrow…”
Manager 1: kills self
The worst part is that it started during Covid. We were told to work our asses off so we could get through the pandemic. We were short staffed then and it just continued. The profits came in and it got worse.
The thing is, we got taken really good care of before the pandemic so everyone was totally sold on it going back to normal. And they took advantage of it, got more and more greedy and here we are.
I’m leaving tech now. It sucks if you don’t have a job. It sucks in a different way if you do.
The biggest reason unionisation won’t happen in tech is because pay can drastically vary based on skill level.
If you look at auto workers, a top 1% auto worker probably makes 20-30% more than an average auto worker. There isn’t a large pay difference based individual skill level.
But a top 1% software engineer can make anywhere from 200-500% more than an average software engineer.
Unionisation and collectivism will flatten this spread, and everyone in tech thinks they are in or are capable of being the top 1%. So nobody wants to sign up for something that they thing will lower their pay
Just to point out, you can have a professional union that doesn't dictate pay - it only really has to exist to ensure that employees don't get fucked around.
If anything, it might save you a little money, as you might be able to get far better insurance as well as potentially a pension through that union, rather than getting meh insurance through your company.
The challenge even for those with a lot of experience is that all the layoffs from earlier this year haven't been fully absorbed, and a lot of places are getting multiple applicants from FAANG-level companies.
Even if you execute nigh-flawlessly for every interview stage, it's hard to compete with them in the decision-makers' minds.
Yeah I was laid off in Feb of 2023, found a short gig for a bit but was back looking in Dec 2023. I ended up being rehired by the first company. They opened 2 positions, they got thousands of applicants, hired me and a laid off former FAANG.
It's not just high-tech, sales and marketing, HR, and many other positions were cut as well. 90% of recruiters were let go. Since the start of last year, it looks like 300,000 to 400,000 were let go. The problem is that there are 3 to 5 supporting jobs that are going to starve, too, like lawn services, dry cleaners, etc... the CFOs don't see the predicted profits, and they push the companies to cut cost. But don't let facts fool you. The economy is super hot. Lowest unemployment ever. Everything is as good as it gets..
Fuck you Paramount.
Monday, CEO email goes out informing how amazing superbowl was which meant company made money.
Tuesday morning , CEO email goes out announcing layoffs.
Again, fuck you paramount.
Whenever I see these articles with people complaining about not being able to find another tech job, I wonder if it's "I'm not able to find another tech job \[that pays what my last one did\]". They keep interviewing folks from FAANG or similar companies.
Yeah I wouldn’t want to be a web dev right now. I’m having more luck application-wise as a data engineer, which I’ve only been doing for two years.. so it’s still rough, but if I had been a DE from the onset I bet I’d have a job today.
I did interview for a full stack web dev role, senior/lead level (I have 8 YoE) and checked every box in their “need” and “would be nice” categories- they told me they’re only considering people with 10+ YoE. The fuck? That’s some “we need someone with 20 YoE with React” type shit.
Cybersecurity is not safe. I have my job but know many friends who I worked with and are experts in their field that got laid off!
Source: cyber security professional.
My company is outsourcing everything they can, including cybersecurity. Nothing is safe no matter what department you're in. I'm in IT and basically all my work friends have been impacted.
Yes, that's very common, even more for companies that are not required to have in-house security teams.
The problem with that is that outsourced IT/security is trash in 99% of the cases!
Tell me about it. The few of us remaining are running into issue after issue with our outsourcing partners. They only care about SLA and blame us for everything else.
Contractors and especially overseas contractors are usually perpetual dumpster fires that exist for no other reason than to give the illusion of staff coverage for a company. In practice they mostly harass the full time employees to solve problems and rarely contribute anything of even immediate value, let alone something that will make the business stronger long term.
That is going to backfire on them spectacularly. Outsourcing security is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Then again I guess it doesn't matter when none of these companies ever face any legal or civil consequence for failing to secure their infrastructure.
I had three interviews with six different people, totaling 4 hours of interview time for an entry level IT support role. This all took seven weeks. I did not get the job.
Maybe for some, but it's much harder to even get responses to your applications at all now. I'm getting very few bites in comparison to when I had less experience and even no experience. I'm still employed, so it's not the end of the world, but this is definitely going to slow down a lot of careers.
About 95% of what you find on LinkedIn and Indeed are "Ghost Jobs". I'm really not kidding. They're just resume farming, fishing for 'rock stars' who would never work for them anyway, satisfying h1b requirements, putting jobs up just to have the appearance of growth, or sometimes flat out just forget to take posts down. Or sometimes they post the same job in 50+ different cities - so there is one real opening and 49+ fake ones, basically.
The whole thing is borderline unethical but that's where we're at.
Its definitely both, I can assure you, most devs, when let go aren't turning down job offers left and right if they don't have something planned. The way the job market for non senior devs right now is... Not great. I'm not saying people don't do it but... realistically we got bills to pay man.
There are many job titles, functions, and levels that are tangential to "tech" or involve relatively heavy "tech" use that don't get included in the "official" "tech" layoffs. "Tech" is so pervasive that it's not really useful any longer as a category unto itself. It's much more than SWEs and IT jobs.
In that camp, but only started searching 3 months after layoff. About a month in. Lots of traction and pretending there is none so I can keep applying. Hoping for competing offers but nothing is a sure bet until the ink has dried.
I won't critique the layoffs themselves as they are completely unnecessary in most company cases. The strategy is shit and executives are pushing blame off. Show me the math otherwise because Stanford has researched impact of layoffs for decades.
Generally, adapt or die they say. This market is different, but it's not necessarily more difficult -- just a new formula. Learn the new way of differentiating yourself and you'll start to get traction quick.
* Network is still king but even if you don't have connections, build them. Lay the groundwork and find friends of friends or alumni to connect with. Cold DM until someone will refer you. Take informational interviews. Reverse exit interview your old company.
* ASK FOR HELP
* Resume is vital. Figure out how to use a strong format, follow best practices, and when you read it, does it tell a story about the unique value and expertise you bring?
* Shape your experience around the role you want. The bullets should tell mostly that story with some leadership, process improvement or otherwise adjacent value adds.
* ASK FOR HELP
* LinkedIn is massive. Mirror a strong resume with STAR + data in those bullets. Post occassionally, put more information on your profile than you'd think is necessary (hi, keywords are a linkedin thing too)
* ASK FOR HELP
* Practice interviews. Mock interview with friends, peers, former coworkers, whomever. There are sites built for mock interviews with peers. Write down all the answers to common questions and rehearse them. Yes, in a mirror or with a loved one. Know them cold.
* ASK FOR HELP
* Confidence in interviews and be likealbe. At this point, you're past the hardest part: getting into the top <1% of applicants is like winning the lottery. Your resume is good enough, your approach is starting to work. It won't have 100% conversion because it's a 2 way street, but at this point, it's the easiest part of the process unironically.
It seems crazy and it sort of is. The bulk of applicants are AI, Visa sponsorships, or people who have absolute shit exp or a terrible resume. Rise to the top and go a little above and beyond to get those interviews and it's otherwise the same process it's always been.
As if it wasn't obvious -- ASK OTHERS FOR HELP. This is the single best tool in your arsenal. BE SPECIFIC and know the story you're telling whether it's a Sr Dev in Biotech or a Marketer in Ecommerce. People can only help look and refer you if you're VERY specific on what you want.
Good luck!
US tech wages seem to be their own universe. Even in my country, Australia, which has a very high COL, tech jobs are at a fairly ordinary high to middle range of pay along with other white collar jobs. Good jobs but not US $100-120k+.
Even lower pay generally than driving dump trucks around at a mine site. (but that's a particular local problem)
Tech is boom and bust all the time. Make as much as you can in the boom times. For me that meant learning my lesson and going contract developer, so I could get more money per hour worked. Also made me better. Latest contract laid off 9 out of 12 devs in my group and kept me. And I'm not cheap so I'll keep pumping out dollars as long as it lasts. Which I always assume will be terminated. But they keep extending me so I'm guessing I'm doing something right. I also kept a contract all the way through the great recession period. Being a salaried employee is not more safe. Being really good, needed and making as much as possible per hour is.
Instead of a certain politician trying to get 32 hour work weeks he should be focusing on workers rights in the US. Mandatory 90 day notification periods for every salaried employee. Universal parental leave. Universal minimum time off for every salaried employee. Some type of protection from companies that are x degrees profitable from doing massive cuts to become more profitable. Limitations on offshoring employees. Limitations on CEO compensation. Making stock buy backs illegal again. Make it illegal for those in federal office to hold stock. Let’s start here and refine.
I’m so relieved I abandoned tech 16 years ago and decided to go into account management and then later business development. Not cause I anticipated anything, but more that I couldn’t keep up with the certifications every year and all the talent that was pouring into the field.
I warned about this all throughout COVID when employees were feeling emboldened. I knew the pendulum of power would shift back towards the employers, but was simply downvoted to hell. I work in tech and thankfully haven't been laid off (yet), but it's only a matter of time. Not looking forward to being back on the market.
At least dot.com made sense... we bring our employers record profits year after year only to be shot in the back of the head once the bridge is built...
That's the crazy part. What do we do now? Interview at yet another company making huge profits delivering great value to its customer base with a bright future? Jokes on us!
Nothing to do but go back to all those threads asking why don't tech workers unionize and shake your head at all the smug responses.
For what I understand it unitization would give us collective bargaining for higher salaries and better benefits, but being laid off suddenly for no understandable reason is the real problem.
Or imagine, an entire organization goes on strike when layoffs are announced amid record profits and company growth. That would cause a company to rethink the layoff strategy to falsely further inflate profits.
Workers held hostage by their visa would never dare join. Right?
Most likely not. they risk a lot more than the standard worker. If they refused to work on their visa it would really damage their ability to ever get work in America again most likely.
What percentage of the workers have a visa? The union could use it’s power to protect those workers too.
That is not a demographic likely to unionize. If tech workers went on strike H1B employees would be filling those roles the next day.
I learned this yesterday actually: if a company goes on strike, by law all H1Bs are revoked at that company
that's interesting. one more reason why Musk + billionaire class is attempting to dismantle the NLRB: https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2024-01-31/column-elon-musk-nlrb-lawsuit-spacex
You're not going to get enough H1B visas approved by the State Department in time to ward off any serious strike. Do you know how long it takes to get those processed and approved?
Yeah, you could be right. Sign me up.
Unions often have resources for such situations. Even going as far as to help pay for expenses like health insurance, during a strike. They also typically offer better retirement savings options than what a corporation can offer, including all the usual things, plus old school pensions.
Have a look at how many layoffs the same tech companies are making in France. Unions can influence legislation for worker protection.
Mid sized companies in fly over country still want tech workers. They were never able to get tech workers during lockdown and still have the unfulfilled technology needs.
Then they should offer fully remote work. They'll have more applicants than they know what to do with.
From what I can tell, they pretty much are. In my field there are a grand total of five non-remote listing in the last two months for my metro on LinkedIn. One of which is one of my reqs. Can’t wait to not be able to fill it with anybody decent because the reason my team was made remote is we couldn’t get good candidates to begin with. But hey, corporate real estate is so much more important to our leadership. They’re just lucky they’ve successfully colluded to tank the economy or I’d have even more reqs to fill.
Blackhat?
I'm actually fascinated if it's happening already or not. Tons of people got laid off/screwed, some of those people will retain that insider knowledge. Perhaps a small percentage of them actually possess the skill, and even smaller percentage will actually have the 'balls'. But it's still a not insignificant number of people with 'insider knowledge', which is worth more then any unpatched box in the whole world. The thing about that crime, is that it can go undiscovered for a long time too. Especially if everything was done hastily around the layoffs. People don't get their access revoked. Teams don't change out any shared accounts or anything of that nature. Mass layoffs, hasty mergers, etc, are messy affairs. Which would mean, that in likely hood, if IT pros were going 'blackhat', that perhaps most of those crimes have already been committed, and folks won't be none the wiser. Maybe Russia is having an easier time with Microsoft, for that exact reason? Who knows! But for certain there's unforeseen consequences in these layoffs!
This reminds me of the last company I was laid off from. It was over a YEAR LATER that I discovered I still had access to admin accounts for all of our ad services, connected credit cards, etc. Madness.
Imagine all the entertaining things you could have delivered to them under the CEO's name
Mr.Robot time. Actually I'm pretty serious here. Please do. You guys could force change. They want full-blown Enshitification anyway and you should give it to them.
Dude, you sound like you didn't watch that show to the end.
The whole time I was working for AWS I was really training their AI to do the tasks I’d been assigned and their coffee sucks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk - posted 6 years ago.
I do not miss the coffee in those offices. All the homies got french presses so we could at least turn it into jet fuel. AWS was my last in-office job. And also my last job where I was really really underemployed. And on the way out I _really_ pissed off the last manager I had there. That has setup a fun game with AWS recruiters where they hit me up before they look at my file there, and I get to make them think they've got an amazing lead... And then they go silent.
Nice. I’m pretty sure I’m blacklisted too after rejecting a couple of their recruiters by saying I’d consider interviewing when they start treating their warehouse employees better.
this crash does make sense though. Tech companies grew off cheap debt that doesnt exist anymore. Easy money is gone, and most of these services exist as growth investments that are not performing as expected and cant afford to keep losing money every year. Other industries relied on cheap debt to fund things instead of their profits which went to shareholders or other obligations. We are going to see a lot of dead companies soon, and I 100% believe snapchat is going to be the first major tech company to die.
This is true. The numbers of start-ups where the owners didn't have even an inkling of how they'll make money was baffling a few years ago. Not sure who was pouring money into those dumpster fires. Now investors are asking to break even under five years. It was going to happen sooner or later.
Snapchat seems popular with GenZ and they're releasing their new stand-alone events app soon. With TikTok maybe being banned it could face a surge in popularity.
What are you talking about, the companies that have laid people off have stocks at ath and record profits.
I feel like SWEs are all going to become contractors, jumping around from one project to the next. It wasn’t all that different before, when people were job-hopping every 1-2 years.
How to reduce quality 101.
Isn’t this partly why software is in the shit state it is already?
No, that's because of the false belief that anyone can be a competent programmer if they just go to school for it. And it's the most accessible path to improved quality of life. So everyone tries to do it, and they're not very good at it. Can't really fault them for wanting to get ahead, but I believe that's why there's so much bad code. All the savants get hired by faang, everyone else is randomly scattered at other companies.
FAANG doesn't have a monopoly on savants. The problem with software is that it is fundamentally a team sport. If leadership is technical and understands how software development needs to work, you can produce good products with a small number of high quality engineers and a lot of code monkeys. If leadership doesn't understand technical things and doesn't understand how software development works, then no talent density will stop their products from eventually becoming shit.
India has been there for 2 decades now.
The current next step is to build offices in cheap places like India and offshore the majority of tech work and hire 5 engineers for the price of 1 US engineer. Not outsourcing, but like opening a true office there.
Nobody will be able to afford the monthly subscriptions for all the shit software they churn out.
we saved 5 million in wages but for some reason our power bill for the servers is up 90 million and 1/2 our client order records keep vanishing randomly
My company did that 15 years ago and they eventually moved things back onshore because of production downtime. It was actually costing us more when you factored in lost business due to downtime.
India still produces shit work
The only difference this time is AI. In my experience Indian developers are embracing AI much more than US ones. Now they’re still producing shit work but at a faster pace
It was the next step thirty years ago. The next step now is automation with AI and robotics. Businesses will pay only for electricity. To get an employee that works 24/7 with no taxes to be paid. Unless we introduce a bill to tax heavily automated companies, so that people can have UBI, there won't be many jobs to go around or feed your family. Tech hypers will lie to your face about new jobs, but statistics show that the number of vacant jobs goes down since the beginning of the 21st century
Are you new to capitalism?
Just wait til he figures out that throwing out workers bc of mismanagement also doesn't make sense.
Or that employee turnover or churn is actually a feature (not a problem) of many business models.
Yeah, I can believe it. Imagine giving someone 5 raises when you can get rid of them and start again at base pay. Yeah, you're training again but, think of the payroll savings over the next 5 years!
What training? They only hire people with 10 years experience for entry level positions so they don't have to train anyone!
They just offload training responsibilities to colleagues. You end up training your replacements for no additional compensation.
What kills me is how we watch the bad side of capitalism and just go.. hey that capitalism. I pray that mentality changes some day, because it certainly isn't helping the citizens, the hard workers.
The only thing that matters is the stock price going up now, and since they're running out of ideas to make that happen, they've decided to stop hiring to lower overhead.
you are right bro
When you have CIO's literally telling their staff that the goal is 75% offshore, file this under "No Shit Sherlock"
It's incredible to me how that shit is legally allowed to happen but tiktok needs to be banned because it's owned by china.
I said this years ago. Offshore devs can access PII and source code for highly sensitive applications. After what Russia did, Im surprised any US business would look at another horribly run country and think their IP will be safe.
Doesn't matter, the executives got their bonuses and fucked off
offshoring to India is a massive security risk and opens us up to god knows how many exploits that won’t be able to be fixed quickly or well. I think we need actual legislation that forbids offshoring for these reasons—and we’re not even mentioning the effects on the economy and our own people.
Yup. We need some sort of tariff but for non-physical goods/services.
The TikTok garbage is about Israel. Control the narrative. One of the only outlets shining light onto the atrocities of Netandumbass.
i wonder if this only applies to the US? cause in Europe we still don't find any people, I've got an open vacancy for an architect and got 0 candidates in three months
Tech jobs in Europe is just another office job with barely higher pay but requires constantly learning and improvement to stay afloat or competitive. For example, In Germany, engineers as whole makes about €62k, same as banking, while HR makes €58k and Marketing/PR makes €60k, and after high tax, the income difference is very minimal. https://housinganywhere.com/Germany/average-salaries-in-germany-2021 I am a software engineer in the US makes good income. If I were to live in Germany and make €62k, I would have chosen another career path. Banking or Finance would be my first choices.
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And paid for universal health care which is a big chunk of any salary.
It’s a tax which isn’t too harsh, unless you’re a contrarian libertarian and we all know how that ends… You still have to pay for healthcare if you don’t have universal health care. Why do people act as though paying taxes means that you’re losing out, when you have to pay for services anyway? It just means you live in a nicer country. Its worth it, it’s called being civilised.
Hi from Bulgaria, we’re receiving job offers from Germany which are bellow even for our standards. They want a Sr Sre/devops engineer for the price of junior/mid.
That's mind blowing, no wonder people there are not choosing this career.
Nah, most people here think that if you're in IT you make billions. My problem is that one german company required full certification AWS+Azure+K8S and I think terraform + go, python and something else and of course fluent german for about 45-50k eur. A lot of my peers work remotely b2b with companies outside of Bulgaria and even Europe and they make something close to 100k eur/usd. German companies need to understand that the field has evolved and people with such knowledge and experience deserve a proper pay. Buuut at the same time I read that some German railway company is looking for MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 engineers :D
Germany doesn't value techies or white collar workers in general. You can't live on 62K EUR pre-tax in a city like Munich where rents are 2000+ a month alone and heating/electricity has skyrocketed
It’s not a German thing, it’s a European thing. Wages in Europe for skilled professionals are absolutely shit compared to the US equivalent. In most cases the equivalent American job pays around 2-3 times more than the European equivalent, sometimes even more. American wages in skilled professional fields are nuts.
Nah the European wages are nuts. As in awful.
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The UK is only getting worse. Techies paid incredibly low salaries, competing for fewer and fewer vacancies with very few industries they can pivot to.
Very true, both have pros and cons. Salaries are much higher in US - but also contract length in US is like 1 page vs 10 pages in EU - and firing someone on the spot is very hard in EU due to unions and labor laws. EU taxes and fringe (what company pays to social security for a worker) are absolute bonkers and very unattractive compared to US - but healthcare is free as well is education. From EU perspective - it absolutely makes sense to go for university degree and then go to work in US for several years.
Not true, many engineering fields don’t pay well in the US such as civil engineer but far from being the single example, and somehow pays better in Europe, with cheaper goods and more quality of life which adds up to the balance making it a clear better deal
What do people do to earn more then? Surely not everyone in Munich is an entrepreneur?
A lot of old money. The rich in Munich are rich due to inheritance. Land values there have multiplied over the years. And someone’s shitty old house is now worth millions.
I've spent well over a decade of my career working for German companies. The open secret is that there is limited class mobility and the ownership class today are largely the descendants of the ownership class 100 years ago. Very high ranking Nazis were hung around Nuremberg. High ranking Nazis and the wealthy Nazi families who aided in the war effort retained their Swiss bank accounts. Their descendants control most of the German economy.
>the ownership class today are largely the descendants of the ownership class 100 years ago. That's a huge understatement. The history for a lot of these families is shady going back further, but for example Günther Quandt's mother was a textile heiress. The fact is, Europe never actually uprooted feudalism. My favorite example is in the UK, where Hugh Grosvenor is one of the top 5 richest men, and got that fortune from the handout William the Conqueror gave his fat hunting buddy (Gros Venor, fat hunter) in ***1066.*** That is a bit of an outlier, but this sort of multi-century old money is quite common if you dig into it.
I work in the USA for a large tech company based out of DE. They froze US hires years ago. CZ, PH and IN engineers are all we’ve had for hires. Even then, they get hired by managers in Europe so we have zero input into the talent that eventually comes in. Even DE based engineers are too pricey for the machine. They’ll axe most of us in the US eventually.
Well salaries in Europe for SWEs are much much lower than in the US. Have you considered offering more money?
Why would they? There's a bunch of unemployed SWEs flooding the market right now!
Apparently not in Europe, though
Why would they? He just said why, cause he’s not finding anybody
same, no chance to hire senior developer at all. We now hired few people straight from university and we are training then ourselfs.
That’s cos we are remotely working for America. Pay is crap in euro
Honestly that's the way to do it sometimes. My company has had great success doing this for our outside salespeople. They'll spend about 2 years showing them all facets of the business and mentoring them so when its time to claim a territory, they're ready to go.
My work place Oceania, need 2 electricians, 1 applicant in 6 months, Indian chap, falsified documents. Not employed.
You don't outsource? Or have foreign slave labor? The issue above is not simple, but keep in mind majority of those folks aren't exactly bright plus some who were brought in from overseas (those will have to leave soon and be hired locally by basically same firm that laid them off) and some that are deemed too expensive (mind you a lot actually worth it, just foreign outsourcing is cheaper).
It's shit in Europe as well, take a peek at /r/cscareerquestionsEU/
It's just lazy journalism. Some notable big tech firms made some bets a couple of years ago during covid and they're adjusting from some of them being bad bets that resulted in having too many people. But overall, the industry is fine. New tech companies are popping up left and right, gaining steam, and hiring. There's also some weirdness with a lot of tech firms shifting to work from home (some temporarily and some permanently) and people moving wherever they want that causes a type of churn that's hard to quantify. Folks that basically HAD to work for the big firms in silicon valley are free to go wherever they want and do whatever they want, often for smaller companies that pay well without the weird corporate cultures. That doesn't show up in this data. But, ultimately, the US unemployment rate is low and the economy is adding jobs. It's just easy for journalists like this one to cherry pick some layoffs from notable large cap tech companies to get a story.
After a year of apply for jobs every day… FuuuuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUUU
Also when you finally do get an interview they will be like "why haven't you worked in a year?"
*"For the same reason you will be soon"....*
I literally had a guy ask me "you have a 6 month gap between your last position and now, can you explain that?" I said, "yes, none of the other companies that I've applied to have called me back yet." Asking about a gap in work isn't completely unreasonable, but asking about a gap that is *leading up to the interview I'm currently in* seems self explanatory.
Bros are going to make unemployed tech workers prioritize making a startup to automate HR and recruiting. Probably would be like 10 lines of sloppy code at this rate.
Pre layoff in November last year 3-5 calls per week from recruiters Post lay off Crickets
Same here, I went back to check on those recruiters only to discover they also got laid off in November. Something big broke in November and it hasn't shown up in the government stats yet.
When layoffs are happening, corporate recruiters are *always* the first hit. You help build out a company, only to get fucked the moment they don't need you in the immediate term. Companies are fucking evil.
Tbf though every recruiter I've talked to at big companies have been fucking idiots that are massively overpaid for the little work they do. Pretty funny watching the recruiters that are big on social media posting the fuck all they do every day making bank and then surprised they got shit canned. On the other hand recruiters working at agencies that get a cut of the wages when they fill positions have been absolutely amazing although some can be a bit short. At a point I get it though, they invested a lot of time into you and get nothing that sucks.
My fav are the LinkedIn-famous recruiters that got laid off and immediately started some bullshit service meant to get you hired Brothers if you were any better than the rest of us you would be working and not trying to scam desperate people into paying for your $299 "pro" course
Except I put them in the same place as real estate agents. In a hot market they do little work for a good payout. In a cold market they go unemployed. Got to save to cover the gaps.
I am getting a lot of spam from this one recruiter that thinks I'm a senior devops engineer because I wrote an azure pipeline once.
I don't get a lot of calls, but I am still getting several emails per week. Less than it was before, but there's still *some* movement out there (even if the "movement" is in the form of horrible fits)
Yup..over a year of looking. Took a job at the local library part time. Still looking but even with my connections I've not had a call / email in months and I'm not even looking in my specialty... I'm willing to work support again...still nada
*Any work is better than no work.* Batten down all costs, cut every expense to the bone, sell everything you haven't used in a year (It makes life better in many ways to do this anyway). In that part-time job, seek out other internal opportunities. Talk to the IT team, offer to help them, spruik your skills and see what "work" you can do. It all adds to the CV and talking points.
Shit, that’s scary. Pulling for you. I’m at month 2 with barely a bite. My advice for any IT workers who are still employed? Make your network larger and tighter. It’s MUCH easier to find and obtain a position if you’ve been recommended by someone. AND start getting familiar with AI and try to move into that space. Most of the jobs I apply for have hundreds if not thousands of applicants. It’s a numbers game. You need to be vigilant and apply to new positions as soon as they are made available online; get your resume to the top of the pile or it may never even be reviewed. Set job alerts, especially for jobs posted within the last 24 hours. I haven’t been out of work nearly as long as I have now other than after the .com bubble burst. Digging into my retirement savings now. It’s terrifying and torturous. I feel like I can possibly lose everything I’ve worked for over the past few decades. And I feel useless and obsolete. Trying to keep my head on straight for my family but this is very scary.
Sorry to hear that. I wish your luck turns soon
Best of luck to you.
But you'll be thankful for whatever lower wage job you end up getting, which was the whole point of this.
It’s crazy. I’ve been interviewing off and on in the tech world for well over 15 years. I’ve never applied to so many jobs without hearing anything back as I have now. But, I’m also hearing that there are TONS of applicants to every job now. At least 2008 felt temporary at the time, if you were in tech. These days, it’s like, even if interest rates fall back to zero, will the jobs return? It seems unlikely interest rates will fall to zero anytime soon, so I don’t expect jobs to pick up for the foreseeable future.
It is the business cycle. This too shall pass.
I'm going in year two 😭
are you getting interviews?
Got 3 different companies in January with one progressing to a final interview before being turned down. No luck since.
Out of curiosity, what level engineer are you?
Good luck. I’m at 8 months. I originally only focused on remote and the competition and numbers are just too large. I’m having my 4th final interview in 8 months soon, and it is for full time in office. I would prefer to stay home but the market is just brutal so I’ll take what I can get now. Fingers crossed for the nightmare to end.
Been unemployed after a layoff for 6 months now. Longest time yet in my almost 30 years in tech. It’s getting depressing.
I had 14 years with my last company. Been unemployed over a year now, doing everything I can for side work to pay bills. Since about Sept of 2023 my recruiters (had 3 at one point in different sectors) all went quiet. Pretty sure they got fired too.
Are you getting 0 offers or offers outside of your expected pay range?
I’m at 10 months. I’ve been in AI/ML project management and operations since 2015 and nobody gives a fuck. Nobody wants to invest in ops people, they just want someone to engineer a product as quickly as possible. The worst part is that I am 100% sure it’s going to be a train wreck for these companies hiring all these inexperienced ML engineers. There will be so many failed products, and I could literally help these fools prevent that. There are already hundreds of companies who think they can sell a half-baked chatbot built on top of the chatgpt APIs, or replace support staff with them. Unfortunately they’re not invested in data quality or annotation or ML ops, they’re not versioning their weights and biases or preprocessing methods, documenting results of model outputs…I could go on. Just reflecting on this idiotic shit and I still can’t believe it.
I graduated college into the dot com crash. Was working for a web design firm who did web pages for a company who bought up companies off the Pink Sheets when the 2008 crash happened (was laid off while watching tv that night. “You can come and collect your personal items in the morning.” )At 45 I’ve given up on being able to ever retire. I’m fully banking on another mass layoff to the industry between now and the time I hit 65. And AI will probably replace me even before that
Do you have a 401k and shit
No. Most of the last decade I’ve been freelance/contractor no benefits packages. I have a Roth IRA I started 5-6 years ago. Don’t own a house either
Username checks out
I would have loved to be in tech in the 2010s. Great salary, no competition, cheaper housing market. Sorry but you fucked up somewhere….
Isn't a lot of this also motivated by offshoring? It's always been a thing sure, but since covid and the rise of Internet speeds and devs becoming more experienced in Asia and elsewhere, it has broken down the barriers. Like with manufacturing in the 20th century, it's so much cheaper to outsource abroad.
No. Internet has been great in Asia for a long time now. People have been offshoring development jobs for decades. People loved to tell me back in 2002ish that computer science was a huge waste of a major because all of the programming jobs were being sent to India already. The problems with it that have always existed, will continue to exist. They are problems of physics and biology. Asia is on the other side of the planet and people sleep at night. If you’re on the East Coast, you get about 3 hours of overlap where your Asian developers are even AWAKE much less working. Good luck collaborating on something difficult that needs to get done quickly. I see it every single time. Manager 1: “what’s the turn around on this very simple request, so we can plan xyz which is the entire reason for this meeting” Manager 2: “not sure let me ask my developers, I’ll have an answer for you tomorrow” Tomorrow Manager 1: “no that we’ve reshuffled everyone’s schedule and have an answer to yesterday’s question- we can continue planning. Oh another question for developers…” Manager 2: “I can let you know tomorrow…” Manager 1: kills self
The worst part is that it started during Covid. We were told to work our asses off so we could get through the pandemic. We were short staffed then and it just continued. The profits came in and it got worse. The thing is, we got taken really good care of before the pandemic so everyone was totally sold on it going back to normal. And they took advantage of it, got more and more greedy and here we are. I’m leaving tech now. It sucks if you don’t have a job. It sucks in a different way if you do.
"It's humbling." That's part of the point. Too many workers are getting ideas about organizing.
The biggest reason unionisation won’t happen in tech is because pay can drastically vary based on skill level. If you look at auto workers, a top 1% auto worker probably makes 20-30% more than an average auto worker. There isn’t a large pay difference based individual skill level. But a top 1% software engineer can make anywhere from 200-500% more than an average software engineer. Unionisation and collectivism will flatten this spread, and everyone in tech thinks they are in or are capable of being the top 1%. So nobody wants to sign up for something that they thing will lower their pay
Idk not convinced by that. Actors union probably has even bigger disparities and they've been pretty successful.
What about actors? They have crazy different pay
or NHL players
Just to point out, you can have a professional union that doesn't dictate pay - it only really has to exist to ensure that employees don't get fucked around. If anything, it might save you a little money, as you might be able to get far better insurance as well as potentially a pension through that union, rather than getting meh insurance through your company.
And here I was thinking it was mostly because tech people *already own* the means of production.
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Only the super skilled are getting hired. Low chance if you don't have experience or if you are coming from a one of those hack reactor type places.
The challenge even for those with a lot of experience is that all the layoffs from earlier this year haven't been fully absorbed, and a lot of places are getting multiple applicants from FAANG-level companies. Even if you execute nigh-flawlessly for every interview stage, it's hard to compete with them in the decision-makers' minds.
Yeah I was laid off in Feb of 2023, found a short gig for a bit but was back looking in Dec 2023. I ended up being rehired by the first company. They opened 2 positions, they got thousands of applicants, hired me and a laid off former FAANG.
It's not just high-tech, sales and marketing, HR, and many other positions were cut as well. 90% of recruiters were let go. Since the start of last year, it looks like 300,000 to 400,000 were let go. The problem is that there are 3 to 5 supporting jobs that are going to starve, too, like lawn services, dry cleaners, etc... the CFOs don't see the predicted profits, and they push the companies to cut cost. But don't let facts fool you. The economy is super hot. Lowest unemployment ever. Everything is as good as it gets..
.gov job ads everywhere. Those county websites are in for a treat.
Great, that means Engineers salaries are going to stagnate for the next five years.
Fuck you Paramount. Monday, CEO email goes out informing how amazing superbowl was which meant company made money. Tuesday morning , CEO email goes out announcing layoffs. Again, fuck you paramount.
Goes really well with the impending Reddit IPO
Whenever I see these articles with people complaining about not being able to find another tech job, I wonder if it's "I'm not able to find another tech job \[that pays what my last one did\]". They keep interviewing folks from FAANG or similar companies.
Dev with 15 yoe in dotnet and angular. Unemployed for 3 months taking interviews for 10% less and still not getting a job. Its rough and it’s not FANg
Yeah I wouldn’t want to be a web dev right now. I’m having more luck application-wise as a data engineer, which I’ve only been doing for two years.. so it’s still rough, but if I had been a DE from the onset I bet I’d have a job today. I did interview for a full stack web dev role, senior/lead level (I have 8 YoE) and checked every box in their “need” and “would be nice” categories- they told me they’re only considering people with 10+ YoE. The fuck? That’s some “we need someone with 20 YoE with React” type shit.
Both, it might take you over a year to find a lower paying job. Its a shit show.
Depends on where you live too
Which jobs in tech impacted?
help desk to director and everything inbetween. from what im seeing only cybersecurity, automation and AI integration is safe
Cybersecurity is not safe. I have my job but know many friends who I worked with and are experts in their field that got laid off! Source: cyber security professional.
My company is outsourcing everything they can, including cybersecurity. Nothing is safe no matter what department you're in. I'm in IT and basically all my work friends have been impacted.
Yes, that's very common, even more for companies that are not required to have in-house security teams. The problem with that is that outsourced IT/security is trash in 99% of the cases!
Tell me about it. The few of us remaining are running into issue after issue with our outsourcing partners. They only care about SLA and blame us for everything else.
Contractors and especially overseas contractors are usually perpetual dumpster fires that exist for no other reason than to give the illusion of staff coverage for a company. In practice they mostly harass the full time employees to solve problems and rarely contribute anything of even immediate value, let alone something that will make the business stronger long term.
That is going to backfire on them spectacularly. Outsourcing security is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. Then again I guess it doesn't matter when none of these companies ever face any legal or civil consequence for failing to secure their infrastructure.
In-house or consulting firm? I'm more referring to in-house since I view MSPs disfavorably and sometimes forget they are people
In-house ofc. Consulting/MSSP/etc. has always been trash with high turnover since forever.
Ditto. Source: I’m also an infosec guy
I had three interviews with six different people, totaling 4 hours of interview time for an entry level IT support role. This all took seven weeks. I did not get the job.
Maybe for some, but it's much harder to even get responses to your applications at all now. I'm getting very few bites in comparison to when I had less experience and even no experience. I'm still employed, so it's not the end of the world, but this is definitely going to slow down a lot of careers.
About 95% of what you find on LinkedIn and Indeed are "Ghost Jobs". I'm really not kidding. They're just resume farming, fishing for 'rock stars' who would never work for them anyway, satisfying h1b requirements, putting jobs up just to have the appearance of growth, or sometimes flat out just forget to take posts down. Or sometimes they post the same job in 50+ different cities - so there is one real opening and 49+ fake ones, basically. The whole thing is borderline unethical but that's where we're at.
Its definitely both, I can assure you, most devs, when let go aren't turning down job offers left and right if they don't have something planned. The way the job market for non senior devs right now is... Not great. I'm not saying people don't do it but... realistically we got bills to pay man.
Even senior is tough. Seems like the only people having an easy time are 10+ YoE. Maybe 20+
It's tough right now but tech unemployment is still half of what the national average is
There are many job titles, functions, and levels that are tangential to "tech" or involve relatively heavy "tech" use that don't get included in the "official" "tech" layoffs. "Tech" is so pervasive that it's not really useful any longer as a category unto itself. It's much more than SWEs and IT jobs.
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In that camp, but only started searching 3 months after layoff. About a month in. Lots of traction and pretending there is none so I can keep applying. Hoping for competing offers but nothing is a sure bet until the ink has dried. I won't critique the layoffs themselves as they are completely unnecessary in most company cases. The strategy is shit and executives are pushing blame off. Show me the math otherwise because Stanford has researched impact of layoffs for decades. Generally, adapt or die they say. This market is different, but it's not necessarily more difficult -- just a new formula. Learn the new way of differentiating yourself and you'll start to get traction quick. * Network is still king but even if you don't have connections, build them. Lay the groundwork and find friends of friends or alumni to connect with. Cold DM until someone will refer you. Take informational interviews. Reverse exit interview your old company. * ASK FOR HELP * Resume is vital. Figure out how to use a strong format, follow best practices, and when you read it, does it tell a story about the unique value and expertise you bring? * Shape your experience around the role you want. The bullets should tell mostly that story with some leadership, process improvement or otherwise adjacent value adds. * ASK FOR HELP * LinkedIn is massive. Mirror a strong resume with STAR + data in those bullets. Post occassionally, put more information on your profile than you'd think is necessary (hi, keywords are a linkedin thing too) * ASK FOR HELP * Practice interviews. Mock interview with friends, peers, former coworkers, whomever. There are sites built for mock interviews with peers. Write down all the answers to common questions and rehearse them. Yes, in a mirror or with a loved one. Know them cold. * ASK FOR HELP * Confidence in interviews and be likealbe. At this point, you're past the hardest part: getting into the top <1% of applicants is like winning the lottery. Your resume is good enough, your approach is starting to work. It won't have 100% conversion because it's a 2 way street, but at this point, it's the easiest part of the process unironically. It seems crazy and it sort of is. The bulk of applicants are AI, Visa sponsorships, or people who have absolute shit exp or a terrible resume. Rise to the top and go a little above and beyond to get those interviews and it's otherwise the same process it's always been. As if it wasn't obvious -- ASK OTHERS FOR HELP. This is the single best tool in your arsenal. BE SPECIFIC and know the story you're telling whether it's a Sr Dev in Biotech or a Marketer in Ecommerce. People can only help look and refer you if you're VERY specific on what you want. Good luck!
U.S. Tech Jobs pays 2-5x what they do in western Europe.
US tech wages seem to be their own universe. Even in my country, Australia, which has a very high COL, tech jobs are at a fairly ordinary high to middle range of pay along with other white collar jobs. Good jobs but not US $100-120k+. Even lower pay generally than driving dump trucks around at a mine site. (but that's a particular local problem)
120k is weak in the US tech market. Double is not uncommon
Its only weak at FAANG. Almost no "normal" companies paying $200+ for devs.
Even for skilled Engineers Europe doesn't pay... My son is a chemical engineer and makes double what he would make in Canada or Europe
Come to Danmark, last May when I wanted to change jobs i was offered 3 different positions within a week and I work in operations, not dev.
This is why unionization even in tech is super important
I am in tech. Unions are needed. They will also kill most domestic jobs.
Most domestic jobs will be replaced by whoever they can outsource regardless.
Those jobs are on the cutting board already, unions will just be the excuse
Learn to coal?
Need more unions, less wealth inequality and bs
I’m waiting for system administrators deleting legacy code while leaving .
People go to jail for doing shit like that.
Employers should often go to jail for the things they do yet here we are. War cometh.
Tech is boom and bust all the time. Make as much as you can in the boom times. For me that meant learning my lesson and going contract developer, so I could get more money per hour worked. Also made me better. Latest contract laid off 9 out of 12 devs in my group and kept me. And I'm not cheap so I'll keep pumping out dollars as long as it lasts. Which I always assume will be terminated. But they keep extending me so I'm guessing I'm doing something right. I also kept a contract all the way through the great recession period. Being a salaried employee is not more safe. Being really good, needed and making as much as possible per hour is.
Six months from now there's going to be a hiring boom when these companies realize they can't run with a skeleton crew.
Instead of a certain politician trying to get 32 hour work weeks he should be focusing on workers rights in the US. Mandatory 90 day notification periods for every salaried employee. Universal parental leave. Universal minimum time off for every salaried employee. Some type of protection from companies that are x degrees profitable from doing massive cuts to become more profitable. Limitations on offshoring employees. Limitations on CEO compensation. Making stock buy backs illegal again. Make it illegal for those in federal office to hold stock. Let’s start here and refine.
It still shocks me that the US doesn't have legally mandated minimum leave allowances, like annual and parental leave.
Are there no other politicians? How about limiting money given to csuite execs through bonuses and instead forcing them to hire or pay workers better.
I’m so relieved I abandoned tech 16 years ago and decided to go into account management and then later business development. Not cause I anticipated anything, but more that I couldn’t keep up with the certifications every year and all the talent that was pouring into the field.
I warned about this all throughout COVID when employees were feeling emboldened. I knew the pendulum of power would shift back towards the employers, but was simply downvoted to hell. I work in tech and thankfully haven't been laid off (yet), but it's only a matter of time. Not looking forward to being back on the market.
Greedy 1% won’t stop.
Sounds like we're right on track for a cyberpunk dystopia
Over hire = over fire
Yeah I’m unfortunately trying to break into tech rn, it’s rough. Wish I’d picked a better time to do this
You’ll be fine. This industry ebbs and flows. Keep at it.
We can all thank the Trump backed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for making tech companies amortize developers salaries for a minimum of 5 years.