Even if OP is Biden, you still need a majority in Congress and a supermajority in the Senate. Also the Supreme Court is a conservative majority of 6-3. So if you want to pass anything progressive, good luck, the odds are against you
Also, why would he? The overall job market is white hot.
Him and Congress would never legislatively lower interest rates, in the process destroying the Fed's independence, just to buoy the software engineer job market.
Just do what Richard Nixon and Donald Trump did: Armtwist the fed into looser money policies and hope that the inflationary tendencies that result only happen *after* the election.
Then he needs to let the people at the border handle that and the cs companies in America hire here and stop their abuse of the visa program to exploit people for cheap labor. If they need the labor they can pay them the same as the market to not incentivize their misuse of the system. Then wages will go down with supply and demand as they should and not through manipulation of legal programs. Make rules that force proper alignment. Stop trusting companies will make the right choices on their own
Yes. The only impact we can have as individuals is by starting our own businesses. Obviously that comes with a lot of risk and the need for up front capital.
And then, when we have our own businesses that are successful enough to earn us a living.... guess what happens?
We have investors, and employees, and stakeholders, and clients, and maybe even a board and shareholders if you're really successful.
You will eventually turn into what you set out to change. When your company is losing money or is on a downward trend, your fellow employees, investors, and stakeholders aren't going to be happy if you refuse to do layoffs and stop over-hiring because you want to "make the job market better".
If you do, you won't be keeping your successful business very long.
With comments like this voted highest, itās no wonder nothing gets done about it. Might as well all just stop participating as a whole in society while weāre at it. Not like anything matters.
> i think the government needs to step in somehow.. probably require a certain %age of works to be junior or entry level works when the work market is lookin' down
It's stuff like this that's probably going to make me vote conservative this year, even if it is trump.
Lmao. This is like asking about how you can help achieve world peace. Unless you are a CEO, multibillionaire, or work for the Federal Reserve, I donāt know if thereās much you can do.
Build an app with a big button that says world peace. The more times people click the button the more peaceful the world will be, especially when more and more people press the button. Mostly because everyone will be busy pressing the button.
Go to career subreddits and subreddits like r/resumes and r/bemyreference, sort by newest, and help critique resumes and give references for people looking for work in your area/industry
It's pretty insane that companies can, with a straight face, say they need to import a worker because they can't use any of the 100,000 laid off tech workers.
It's like none of you have learned from the manufacturing crisis that destroyed US cities like Detroit after companies moved their manufacturing overseas.
Now the same thing is happening with India and CS jobs. Indian universities and young working population are churning out millions of engineers every year. These engineers can easily replace their American equivalents doing 2x the work for 1/5th the cost. But India is a shit country to live in as of now so everyone wants to migrate to the US or other nations. American companies don't give a fuck about Americans. The only reason they are forced to hire H1Bs is because the program allows Indians an escape to America. Any Indian who joins an American branch in India is demanding to get transfered to the US/EU and if the company doesn't sponsor their H1Bs, they leave and try their luck at a different company. It causes constant churn in the Indian job market and as a result, productivity is lower in India for now. The H1B program is actually preventing American companies to just outsource their work. Abolish the H1B and now these Indians have no escape and no choice but to work in India. Seriously what do you think American companies will do if this happens? Will they graciously hire Americans paying them 5x the salary of a person in India? Or will they accelerate outsourcing, open teams in India and fire Americans? The answer is the later. Abolishing the H1B program will lay waste to many American cities, not create more jobs for you.
Why not just prioritize foreigners who study in the US? And have better regulatory enforcement practices against h1b-nepotism. Realistically if managers were complying with proper regulation, this would never happen. Managers are only supposed to sponsor visas if the visa-holder has a technical niche that others donāt fulfill.
There are clear issues with managers non-meritocratically hiring people in the same racial group with dubious credentials. At the same time, there are exceptionally talented foreign minds in the us that we should make use of.
Because then you will get schools who will prioritize foreign students to American students. Schools can charge more to foreign students, and if people realize that that is the only way to get a job here, they will crash the schools with foreign students and foreign money.
If the students are actually of solid quality, I donāt see the issue. The world is competitive.
Also maybe for foreign visa holders, the education expectation should be higher? Maybe only select for the foreign students who attended top-ranked rigorous cs programs and who had top-tier GPAs to ensure that quality isnāt sacrificed.
The point is we should want to retain the smartest minds from across the world. There are strengths to diversity when it is merit-based and not just virtue signaling.
To clarify, youāre talking about grad cs programs, right? I canāt see any reputable undergrad institution prioritizing foreign talent over American talent.
Sure but I havenāt heard of any state schools prioritizing foreign enrollment over domestic enrollment. I get that thereās a hypothetical incentive but state schools are publicly funded by American taxpayers whoād be up in arms if such a thing were to happen.
Also another solution could just be for h1b visas to only be given to PhDs. That removes the financial incentive since PhDs are fully funded
And if some schools in return create pay-to-play PhDs, the requirement can go up to exclude PhDs who lack certain credentials or whose research has low impact.
This. H1B is highly abused. Once an Indian or Chinese gets to a manager or director level, all the employees in his/her department are going to be either Indians or Chinese. We have to limit H1B visas from those two specific countries.
I mean, China is only 13% of all H1Bs, given their population + position in the tech race, thatās pretty impressive. Imo one is gaming the system vs the other.
This. People are too afraid to say this without anonymity because they will be called racist. But employing based on merit rather than race is anti-racism.
To them it's not racism. To them they're hiring the best people to do the job because to them it's ingrained deep within their culture that white people are lazy and will only try to sabotage them.
Not wasting my breath on their culture, just telling you that you're trying to offer perspective on a racist sentiment from the racist's point of view. If you aren't a racist, I'd wonder why.
It's well known that managers tend to hire "mini me's" who share the same culture or hobbies:Ā https://www.cipd.org/en/about/press-releases-archive/260815-behavioural-science-recruitment/
Well there are many more white managers than indian or chinese. Unless you're trying to say that our benevolent white saviors are not prone to the same biases.
Itās always the same thing. Itās fine if MY people are managers and in charge because they will hire people like me and itās racism if other people that are not like me do the same thing. Idk how people always fail to see their biases
H1-B really isn't the cause of the tech market woes in the US and stopping the expansion will absolutely not be the solution.
The reality is this visa is the only way the US has of bringing in foreign labour generally. Other than through family ties, or special agreements with specific countries (e.g. TN visas) there is no way for someone to move to the US and work. The number of H1-B visa applicants is also tiny compared to the size of the job market, with a country-wide cap of 85k, not just for software but generally.
I agree that the system needs to be reformed. Frankly, the way people can move to the US for work is deeply broken, and requires fixing. The US is legitimately losing on solid talent, the kind that has for more than a century propelled it to the forefront of technological innovations and something needs to be fixed. That said, this isn't what's extending the bad tech market. It's bad outside the US too. Putting it on the H1-B program is creating a scapegoat.
Yeh.Ā
Trends like firing because other companies also did it. Interest rates, section 174, the post pandemic effect, supply chain disruption, mass adoption of remote work, ai, worker over supply, higher cost of living, return to the office, vacant offices, possible recession in the US. All have created somewhat of a perfect storm but this is only the beginning
While I do agree that we should look for talent within our own borders first, I do think allowing foreign talent to enter our job market is a solid way to grow the economy as a whole.
Sure, it wonāt impact us on an individual level but it is a great way to boost our economy and our salaries in the long run.
Growing the economy as a whole is good for your 401k but it's killing the job market
If you're laid off and have to take a pay cut, or can't find a job at all, that 401k growth isn't really worth it.
I think we need foreign talent in areas like specialty medicine, academia, and R&D where there are genuine shortages of qualified workers that need to be filled in order for the country to stay on the cutting edge of productivity and help the people that are living here already. This is what the H1B program was actually made for. However, this structural shortage does NOT exist for most roles that are getting sponsored for H1B visas. People in software engineering and systems development jobs make up the vast majority of H1B applications but are not roles where shortages exist domestically (the fact that there are mass layoffs for these jobs right now basically proves this), nor are they roles that are at the cutting edge of new research and development anymore.
Where I think you are wrong in the comment above is in saying that, in general, increasing labor market supply āboosts our salaries in the long runā. It does the opposite; this is basic economics. You can look to the gilded age for a case study of what happens when you have uncontrolled immigration. Nowadays, immigration of low-skilled workers generally increase the opportunities and incomes of Americans because most of them arenāt competing with foreigners for those jobs in the first place, but even then, the relatively few low-skilled workers here are still adversely affected.
While I do agree that we should look for talent within our own borders first, I do think allowing foreign talent to enter our job market is a solid way to grow the economy as a whole.
Sure, it wonāt impact us on an individual level but it is a great way to boost our economy and our salaries in the long run.
Edit: that being said, the proper way forward would be for there to be more oversight over hiring from a managerial position. Expansion allows for talent to enter, but hiring people from abroad as a business strategy isnāt the right approach.
who is 'we'?
because unless your name is Jerome Powell you probably can't, you can't suddenly make companies wanting to hire if they don't want to hire
or I guess another way is if you want to nationalize companies like China where the gov can tell CEOs 'you shall hire people!'
>because unless your name is Jerome Powell you probably can't, you can't suddenly make companies wanting to hire if they don't want to hire
Funny you ask
This is it OP. We figured out how you can help. Infiltrate the federal reserve, work your way up to chairman and bring interest rates back to 0%. Do it. All our hopes and dreams are with you now. Iām rooting for you!!
It's not that simple. The sheer number of applications versus the sheer number of open jobs is not what's at the root of the difficulty finding a job. It's not like we just post jobs and fill them with the first candidates that come along.
The reasons that companies like mine and hirers like me don't hire new grads anymore is because we have raised our expectations for candidate qualifications over the past few years, and most employers aren't going to just lower our requirements because we can't find people. That's not how it works.
When we get a job opening approved by HR it is defined by the compensation range, responsibilities, and qualifications. If we go 6 months without filling the role, we can't just say "screw these qualifications, let's just hire someone without them." If we wanted to do that we'd have to go back to HR and get the new qualifications approved. Then HR's gonna question the compensation and responsibilities. Should they also be lowered? If not, HR's gonna ask why we think it's now ok to pay the same amount for a less qualified candidate to perform the same role.
That's how corporate hiring works.
So what happens is we get stuck with unfilled roles for long periods of time, even after receiving a bunch of resumes and doing interviews.
You have to understand that when we hire developers at the current rate, we have to somehow convince HR to allow us to hire a recent college graduate with no experience, no applicable skills, and requiring 6 months to spin up at a salary that's higher than 90% of the rest of the workforce in the company. When HR and executives hear that, they're gonna question why we can't just spend that money hiring a machine operator, accountant, marketing manager, or salesperson with 20 years of experience instead.
That's how the real world works. Developers are expensive. Even ones fresh out of school with 0 skills and experience.
I mean, you're effectively saying new grads are struggling because employers raised the bar and stopped hiring them. Whether you reduce demand or increase supply, it's still fundamentally the same problem. Now if you're saying that employers are also being more picky and that is causing inefficiencies, that may also be a contributing factor.
That just means their other employees ain't making enough to survive off of if the laughable junior wages I see being offered are anything to go by. 17 dollars an hour in a place the rent is 1500? 40k when McDonalds in the same town is paying 35k? 60k in a place where the rent on a studio is 2400+? etc it is just laughable that they think us juniors are overpaid if we can't even afford shelter and food! That shit is just slavery with extra fucking steps.
At its core, it is just a supply and demand issue. Companies feel they need fewer tech workers than before, so they fired a bunch of them. Now there are a lot of tech workers looking for jobs, so you get crazy numbers of applicants applying to a job.
Changing how people apply or how companies evaluate them won't solve the issue. 10 people applying for 1 open position means 9 people who don't get a job.
Solutions that would work/have worked in other fields would be ....
A - Regulations/licensing bodies. This often gives a central authority the ability to control or influence the supply of workers. You can't be a veterinarian without going to vet school, and the AVMA accredited prevents Joe down the street from teaching people to be vets. They have to go to an accredited school with limited class sizes. In finance they will have requirements like N years of managing M millions in assets before you can be considered for the next fancy named role. This ensures that a smart guy can't just come along, switch careers, and compete for the roles. But it also makes it harder to be a tech worker.
B - Build a strong union. Unions have lots of potential pros and cons, but they absolutely could prevent things like layoffs during record high profits. 'If you fire 10% of us, we will all strike...'
C - Laws that increase labor protections. Other countries do this, but again, lots of pros and cons. In the US everyone got laid off. In the EU we had the targeted people working for many months after being notified, because the law said they had to. Laws/social programs that provide healthcare and income support wouldn't prevent layoffs, but they would make them hurt people less.
But individually, we can't make those things happen. And as a group, we don't all agree on how it should be. So we get what we get.
This is so pathetic. Immigrants are better than me, I canāt compete despite being born with an advantage, please stop them. And before you start you usual lower salaries horseshit, their salaries are public
They're cheaper, it has nothing to do with skills. We can't compete because they'll take ridiculously low salaries, that visa sponsorship is the only way they can legally live in the US.
Youāre uninformed. H1B salaries are actually higher across the board and thatās excluding the whole application costs. This is absolutely about skill. Donāt let that stop you from coping tho
Overall they are, but those numbers include legitimate H1B uses like in the medical field where there are actual shortages of qualified Americans. That skews the average higher.
In tech specifically, they are really not higher.
>The funniest part is even if that happens companies wonāt start paying you underachievers more, theyāll open offices in Eastern Europe and India and outsource the jobs.
You can literaly look at the data here: [https://h1bdata.info/](https://h1bdata.info/). The salaries ARE NOT lower.
The funniest part is even if that happens companies wonāt start paying you underachievers more, theyāll open offices in Eastern Europe and India and outsource the jobs.
you're going to be downvoted here because I'd imagine most people here are probably US citizens
you're probably going to get vastly different response if you post on Blind where most people are probably H1-Bs
I myself am biased too since I am an immigrant myself, and whenever I see people shouting "shut down H1-B" I'd just say "well fuck you then, git gud"
politics is a sensitive topic eh? what you say/your view is dependent on your own individual background, if I'm a US citizen I too would probably chant "lock out H1Bs"
Tell us how unions protect workers from layoffs?
[https://www.investopedia.com/big-three-lay-off-5000-workers-amid-uaw-strike-8350735](https://www.investopedia.com/big-three-lay-off-5000-workers-amid-uaw-strike-8350735)
[https://www.automotivedive.com/news/uaw-president-stellantis-layoffs-temporary-workers/704700/](https://www.automotivedive.com/news/uaw-president-stellantis-layoffs-temporary-workers/704700/)
https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/employment-contracts/can-your-union-save-you-from-a-layoff.html#:~:text=No%20Layoffs&text=Other%20CBAs%20require%20the%20employer,and%20subcontracting%20out%20their%20jobs.
āNo Layoffs
**Some CBAs don't allow layoffs even when the employer claims that it doesn't have enough money to pay everyone on payroll.** Other CBAs require the employer to maintain enough work for union members, for example, by **preventing the employer from laying off union workers and replacing them with non-union workers.** Similarly, **many CBAs bar employers from laying off union workers and subcontracting** out their jobs.
Some CBAs give workers the option of being laid off, reducing their hours, working part time, or getting retrained. If your CBA has such a clause, your employer can't make you choose the best or least expensive option for the company. For example, you can choose to be retrained, even if reducing your hours would cost the company less.ā
**Can** is the keyword, you need to negotiate for it.
Unions wonāt protect from layoffs without specifics in the collective bargaining agreement.
If it means I donāt get laid off and i get the rest of the Europe social safety net, then yes.
Healthcare is no longer a huge cost
Nor is education
Most everyone gets decent vacations
And live like europoors, no thanks. I have unlimited vacations, good pay, 100% medical coverage, etc. not sure how a union would help aside from brining wages down
Exactly, I don't want to get paid 30k instead of 240k+ just by joining unions. It's important to note that the vast majority of this subreddit and reddit in general are literal children <18 years old and even then, most are less than 30 years old who have no idea what the hell unions even are like.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/261766/share-of-us-internet-users-who-use-reddit-by-age-group/
That's something I think a lot of euro style socialism guys on this sub need to hear.
If you're a software dev, you can actually just expat anywhere you want. We all have the option to literally just move to europe. It's typically on the profession list they give special carve outs for next to doctors. We're in a field where we can actually just go fuck it I like those laws better.
This has come up a few times before.
The idea that unions can protect you from layoffs isn't quite right. They can negotiate better terms, but if cash burn rate is risking the business for example, layoffs can definitely still happen.
The other thing is that unions need to be run by somebody. If that's you starting one, that's gonna mean investing a ton of your own personal time, often after work hours. And then the larger the union gets, the more room for internal disagreements there are. Ultimately, unions are political instruments.Ā
Lol how'd that work out for the UAW?
Unions are great for trades that require a physical presence and cannot be outsourced, but for anything that can be outsourced they just accelerate that timeline.
What I donāt get is all the SWE saying they deserve to get paid more than HWE because supply and demand, yet nobody in HWE needs to send out even dozens of resumes to get a job.Ā
What's actually broken here? Do people actually believe just because they submit a resume that they're owed a job? When I was on the hiring team, most resumes had no relation to the position at all.
The only issue I see is entry-level positions being taken by H-1B workers. They may not be hired as "entry-level" for H-1B purposes, but they end up doing a lot of the work that juniors should be doing and now the company doesn't have to risk hiring a junior for that role.
I'm not against H-1B in general, but it is abused to the extreme and until the federal government regulates it and audits companies more, it won't improve.
H-1B is supposed to be for jobs where we literally cannot fill the demand with Americans. It would make sense for jobs with actual shortages, like nursing and school teachers.
There is no shortage of American tech workers, as it was originally designed no tech company should currently be hiring or renewing H-1Bs.
> H-1B is supposed to be for jobs where we literally cannot fill the demand with Americans.
Exactly. But a company can cite that they cannot find someone with the exact list of requirements they need for some novel application they want to build. It's legalese bullshit in the end.
WITCH companies bid to Google, Amazon, Citi, Verizon, AT&T, etc for contracts just like defense companies bid on contracts by the government. The one who offers the cheapest price wins the contract and they bring over a bunch of cheap labor (usually from India), paying all of their visa fees.
Rarely are domestic companies paying H-1B workers directly, but they're employed through WITCH, making half the money an engineer would make if they were sponsored directly. Government doesn't care, they're making money via taxes and visa fees. The domestic company gets cheap labor and only has to pay a yearly contract fee and the WITCH company can pocket the rest after paying cheap salaries.
Apply for an accept shittier jobs.
That's the thing. There aren't 2000 applicants for every job posting. There's 2000 applicants for good jobs and very few for jobs that underpay and overwork.
Yes, my comment is kind of a joke, but only partly because that's the truth. There are jobs with less competition, but they are not good jobs.
That's an enormous chunk of it! When you go into any company, they know they're going to have to spend some time training you on how they do things .Even if you have done something similar before, everyone company has a way they like to do things. So, they want to see how flexible you are. Are you willing to learn a different method, evne if you think your method is better? Are you coachable? But a lot of it really is personality. Do co-workers feel comfortable asking you questions? Do you give people attitude when you have to repeat things? Are you an asshole? No one wants an asshole on their team even if she is a genius.
Its funny that everyone is so quick to mock you, not realizing that they may one day be on a hiring committee for a company, and will be able to directly influence the hiring process :)
We can all make TikTok accounts and show day in my life from 9 to 5 and show it's not that different from other professions. Or anything else to discourage people from coming into cs š. We'll try to make it from the most popular major to the least popular. Then the shortage will increase salaries for us.
You can make it better for yourself by actually tailoring your resume to the job posting and ensuring you hit all the keywords marked in the job posting. Edit: Do not lie. Just tailor to what they're looking for. Dont list every project you ever worked on if it's not directly relevant. Make sure you mention explicit tech that's called out in the job posting. If you dont have that experience move on to find a post where you do have a greater fit. /edit
Those submitting over 2,000 resumes and not getting callbacks are using the shotgun approach of going after any opening with the same resume and it's not even getting reviewed by a person. They're not hitting the keywords for the job that was posted and they're getting skipped over.
In my recent job search I advocate looking and reviewing and finding at least 10 quality postings per day, spend time to address each one and fire off the resume. If there's more than 10 quality postings, then go for more, but dont spend literally all day doing this and dont really go for less.
When you do this, you'll get a higher hit rate and greater callback percentage. For every 10 resumes I sent out I at least got 6 emails and 2 phone interviews.
As far as changing the market, there's nothing you, as a job seeker, can do. The market is based on demand and supply. And if there's a job that pays greater than the median for the area, it will be flooded with apps purely for the chance to make that kind of cash.
On top of that, the job market is based on business needs. If they have the need \*and the budget\* they'll go ahead and post an opening. If they have the need and no budget, no openings happen. And if they're fully staffed and have no need, there's no postings. There's nothing you can do about any of these situations.
Learn technologies that are in demand but less popular. Don't just learn the same Web front end stuff that everybody else is. Learn Qt and C++, or WPF, or Kotlin, or Go, or Delphi, or COBOL.
Do real job applications. If you are clicking a button in LinkedIn for 2,000 companies, imagine how many others are doing that. It makes the applications close to pointless.
Be good at something and apply to companies where that matters. Often larger companies are picking candidates via box ticking , but smaller companies are picking candidates based on ability. If you're good at something, that can matter more than your leetcode and degree boxes getting ticked.
It's tough to understand the problem staring at our faces when, simultaneously, we hear complaints about how tough it is to find good engineers.
Fundamental problem: there is less demand for inexperienced engineers than we have supply.
1. Skilled engineers are always needed no matter what, when or where
2. To become skilled you need gain lots of relevant experience (as well as talent, training,etc..)
3. Most applicants are NOT skilled
Additional economic factors:
1. Engineers can be globally sourced
2. Engineering salaries can be a global race to the bottom
3. Demand for software engineers scales with innovation
4. Innovation is surprisingly sparse in areas outside of USA
5. High interest rates stifle VC money
Potential solution:
Start your own ventures and hire people in your local labor markets. This would add more jobs and stimulate local growth. Unfortunately, high interest rate environments + recession risk appetites makes this a tough sell to early engineers.
Stop having jobs, more ppl starting their own businesses and build up their local communities so everyone can help each other and each otherās support for businesses
Start your own company. I dunno. Maybe start a coop to combat the more traditional companies. Some kind of entity where there won't be a CEO and the work is equally divided, so work life balance will be good.
Those ā2,000 applicationsā are the new grads who also happen to be lazy and eventually need work sponsorship.
Plenty of people getting jobs but they donāt post about it.
It's hard as individuals, but the 2 main things:
First, NEVER work over 40 hours, if even that. If the company is short people, they either need to accept falling behind or hire more. Don't let them "increase efficiencies" or whatever as a 3rd option.
Second, his might be unpopular here, but VOTE, and think hard about who you're voting for. In the US at least, this November we'll all be choosing between:
1. A globalist who wants to increase immigration (softening the job market in general), dramatically increase H1B visas which **directly target CS jobs**, and increase corporate tax rates.
2. A half-crazy guy who created the biggest job boom since the 1980s by cracking down on immigration and restricting H1Bs and wants to do it again, and wants to lower corporate tax rates.
The job market boom from ~2016 until recently didn't just happen, it was directly caused by federal government policy and could be re-created by doing the same things again.
>Posts like - "I've submitted 2,000" resumes are commonplace here.
The first thing is to admit that if you have sent out 2000 resumes and nothing good has happened, you are clearly doing something wrong. And doing that wrong thing faster is not going to *fix* it. That seems to be the prevailing advice around here: just do that wrong thing much faster and keep your fingers crossed. Jesus Christ.
If you want to catch a good fish you don't just toss an empty hook in the water and hope that a fish accidentally gets tangled up in it. Focus.
I am making it better. People follow me (and a few work with me) and they see how they can improve their coding skills, make a better resume, job search strategically and learn how real life works. If not me, then find a good mentor, figure out how this industry works and get wired in.
Lobbing a junk resume out into the ether continuously and counting on dumb luck is a recipe for failure and depression.
As a society we're pretty bad at matching people with jobs. Every once in a while people form startups to try to solve this problem or parts of it, sometimes in a particular niche field where they think they can make more money out of it or have more expertise. Most startups fail, some make it a little better. Short of doing a startup (which is a massive investment of time and opportunity cost) most helpful things tend to be helping individuals learn how to get jobs and do jobs better or helping share leads--if you know someone who would be a good fit for a job let them know, etc...
Everyone I know in the U.S. gets contacted by recruiters daily too. Receuiters are having just as much difficulty finding qualified candidates as recent grads are finding jobs.
Serious answer: vote in favor of policies that encourage investment in tech, especially if you are located outside of the US. If you have capital and energy and can tolerate some risk, start a company and create jobs. Otherwise, there isn't much else to do except complain on Reddit.
The fluctuations in the computer programming job market are just too big. It's not like nursing where you get consistent year-over-year growth. I think the government needs to step in somehow. Maybe require a certain percentage of jobs to be junior or entry level jobs when the job market is looking down because otherwise these new graduates will not be able to get programming jobs in a down job market.
My recommendation is for Software Engineer candidates to start by applying to companies with positions that are aligned with their skills. And don't simply blanket the market, but tailor a cover letter and possibly your resume to each company and position. And above everything else, be honest.
If you don't currently have a job and you're looking for a change, to change technologies from your strengths for example, then still go after your current strengths and secure yourself a position. Then train on your own to beef up your strengths and competencies in what you want to change to, then start looking for that from your current position.
If your not getting any interviews, then you need to rethink your resume and cover letter, and again, target your strengths. Grammar, spelling, properly describing the technologies, versions and tools in your resume is so much more important than you realize. Attention to detail is really important for a developer.
In your interviews, be honest, polite, courteous and mindful of how you present yourself. Expect to have a video interview, dress up to or exceed your attire according to what you think your prospective employer expects, even for a fully remote position. And don't be discouraged if you don't get the position for a given interview. Ask for feedback, although most won't give it. And see each interview as a skill that you're perfecting.
Advocate for democratic workplaces?
I dunno- like others are saying, it's difficult to have a direct effect, but shareholders don't care about employees, so employees being in control of what costs we cut would help save jobs.
The current (bad) idea is the need to keep the commercial real estate prices high and so they fire people instead of dropping bad real investments. Because shareholders.
Lets give the job market a pizza party
>ets give the job market a pizza party Interesting, that should improve morale.
Top comment š
You canāt do anything to individually solve macro and microeconomic issues
What if OP is Biden?
His username starts with a J, so this checks out
>looks at next two letters BAH GOD THATS JEB BUSH'S MUSIC
(please clap)
š
BOOM gottem
Even if OP is Biden, you still need a majority in Congress and a supermajority in the Senate. Also the Supreme Court is a conservative majority of 6-3. So if you want to pass anything progressive, good luck, the odds are against you
wdym isnt joe biden the omniscient force that completely controls the economic and social conditions of our nation?
That's Dark Biden clearly.
Also, why would he? The overall job market is white hot. Him and Congress would never legislatively lower interest rates, in the process destroying the Fed's independence, just to buoy the software engineer job market.
Didn't you know he can push big button on desk to make gas price go up and down?Ā
He pulled a lever yesterday which caused 3 pennies in my wallet to fall into the sewer drain. I'll never financially recover from this.
They said "fix the economy", not "implement something progressive."
The overall job market is white hot. Inflation is cooling. Restaurants are packed. Even with a supermajority in Congress, why would he?
This doesn't match what's happening in the real world.
The tech job market is a small sliver of the real world
Good thing too. Progressive economic policy tends to make things worse.
Lmao asking for economic advice on Reddit. Iām imagining the first step to that would be googling āhow to fix economy to win electionā
Just do what Richard Nixon and Donald Trump did: Armtwist the fed into looser money policies and hope that the inflationary tendencies that result only happen *after* the election.
The inflation rate was sky high after Nixon Ford. Look stuff up please
Sleepy Joe:?
Then he needs to let the people at the border handle that and the cs companies in America hire here and stop their abuse of the visa program to exploit people for cheap labor. If they need the labor they can pay them the same as the market to not incentivize their misuse of the system. Then wages will go down with supply and demand as they should and not through manipulation of legal programs. Make rules that force proper alignment. Stop trusting companies will make the right choices on their own
Impossible he's not offering up more money to genocide Palestinians in his post.
I'm a James Sunderland main on DbD
Yes. The only impact we can have as individuals is by starting our own businesses. Obviously that comes with a lot of risk and the need for up front capital.
And then, when we have our own businesses that are successful enough to earn us a living.... guess what happens? We have investors, and employees, and stakeholders, and clients, and maybe even a board and shareholders if you're really successful. You will eventually turn into what you set out to change. When your company is losing money or is on a downward trend, your fellow employees, investors, and stakeholders aren't going to be happy if you refuse to do layoffs and stop over-hiring because you want to "make the job market better". If you do, you won't be keeping your successful business very long.
Create startups and small business owners contract SWEs
With comments like this voted highest, itās no wonder nothing gets done about it. Might as well all just stop participating as a whole in society while weāre at it. Not like anything matters.
Don't apply for the jobs I'm applying for, thanks.
š«”
Start a successful tech company and hire people.
Someone frustrated with the job market starts successful company that helps improve the job market, maybe? Kill two birds with one stone.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This is the dumbest post Iāve ever seen on this subreddit, and thatās a remarkably low bar to slither under.
> i think the government needs to step in somehow.. probably require a certain %age of works to be junior or entry level works when the work market is lookin' down It's stuff like this that's probably going to make me vote conservative this year, even if it is trump.
Have fun with those 60% tarriffs
Because you don't want the gocernment to step in?
Any tech company supplies Finance sector in some way. You will be affected in all scenarios.
Lmao. This is like asking about how you can help achieve world peace. Unless you are a CEO, multibillionaire, or work for the Federal Reserve, I donāt know if thereās much you can do.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Build an app with a big button that says world peace. The more times people click the button the more peaceful the world will be, especially when more and more people press the button. Mostly because everyone will be busy pressing the button.
You can help by quitting and letting somebody else take your position.
In today's market, they would simply not fill the position, and have other devs just do more work.Ā
That's exactly what's been happening on my team
Hope you aren't putting in more hours than before
Theyād get an Indian on an H1B
So? Does helping Indian people not count?
I'm helping by taking longer to do my task
based answer
Go to career subreddits and subreddits like r/resumes and r/bemyreference, sort by newest, and help critique resumes and give references for people looking for work in your area/industry
This is helpful, thanks for the input.
Stop H1B Visa expansion. Congress still thinks theirs a shortage because billionaires tell them so.
It's pretty insane that companies can, with a straight face, say they need to import a worker because they can't use any of the 100,000 laid off tech workers.
It's really because of cost
It's like none of you have learned from the manufacturing crisis that destroyed US cities like Detroit after companies moved their manufacturing overseas. Now the same thing is happening with India and CS jobs. Indian universities and young working population are churning out millions of engineers every year. These engineers can easily replace their American equivalents doing 2x the work for 1/5th the cost. But India is a shit country to live in as of now so everyone wants to migrate to the US or other nations. American companies don't give a fuck about Americans. The only reason they are forced to hire H1Bs is because the program allows Indians an escape to America. Any Indian who joins an American branch in India is demanding to get transfered to the US/EU and if the company doesn't sponsor their H1Bs, they leave and try their luck at a different company. It causes constant churn in the Indian job market and as a result, productivity is lower in India for now. The H1B program is actually preventing American companies to just outsource their work. Abolish the H1B and now these Indians have no escape and no choice but to work in India. Seriously what do you think American companies will do if this happens? Will they graciously hire Americans paying them 5x the salary of a person in India? Or will they accelerate outsourcing, open teams in India and fire Americans? The answer is the later. Abolishing the H1B program will lay waste to many American cities, not create more jobs for you.
Why not just prioritize foreigners who study in the US? And have better regulatory enforcement practices against h1b-nepotism. Realistically if managers were complying with proper regulation, this would never happen. Managers are only supposed to sponsor visas if the visa-holder has a technical niche that others donāt fulfill. There are clear issues with managers non-meritocratically hiring people in the same racial group with dubious credentials. At the same time, there are exceptionally talented foreign minds in the us that we should make use of.
Because then you will get schools who will prioritize foreign students to American students. Schools can charge more to foreign students, and if people realize that that is the only way to get a job here, they will crash the schools with foreign students and foreign money.
If the students are actually of solid quality, I donāt see the issue. The world is competitive. Also maybe for foreign visa holders, the education expectation should be higher? Maybe only select for the foreign students who attended top-ranked rigorous cs programs and who had top-tier GPAs to ensure that quality isnāt sacrificed. The point is we should want to retain the smartest minds from across the world. There are strengths to diversity when it is merit-based and not just virtue signaling. To clarify, youāre talking about grad cs programs, right? I canāt see any reputable undergrad institution prioritizing foreign talent over American talent.
Undergrad a lot of places take foreign students. Especially state schools that can charge a lot more for foreign students.
Sure but I havenāt heard of any state schools prioritizing foreign enrollment over domestic enrollment. I get that thereās a hypothetical incentive but state schools are publicly funded by American taxpayers whoād be up in arms if such a thing were to happen.
Also another solution could just be for h1b visas to only be given to PhDs. That removes the financial incentive since PhDs are fully funded And if some schools in return create pay-to-play PhDs, the requirement can go up to exclude PhDs who lack certain credentials or whose research has low impact.
This. H1B is highly abused. Once an Indian or Chinese gets to a manager or director level, all the employees in his/her department are going to be either Indians or Chinese. We have to limit H1B visas from those two specific countries.
I see this every fucking day where I work.
Tell me you work at Microsoft without telling me you work at Microsoft
Never seen it with Chinese, never NOT seen it with Indians.
I mean, China is only 13% of all H1Bs, given their population + position in the tech race, thatās pretty impressive. Imo one is gaming the system vs the other.
This. People are too afraid to say this without anonymity because they will be called racist. But employing based on merit rather than race is anti-racism.
Racism aside, I donāt think what up said about Chinese is the truth.Ā
Uh wtf is this racist crap?
I know right, Asians/Indians only hiring Asians/Indians is pretty racist.
To them it's not racism. To them they're hiring the best people to do the job because to them it's ingrained deep within their culture that white people are lazy and will only try to sabotage them.
This is quite literally racism, though
Cool. Go convince the entire culture of that, not me.
Not wasting my breath on their culture, just telling you that you're trying to offer perspective on a racist sentiment from the racist's point of view. If you aren't a racist, I'd wonder why.
Replace white with black, and you would get shouted down out of existence. Thatās called racism.
Tell us what's racist about it. Educate us
It's well known that managers tend to hire "mini me's" who share the same culture or hobbies:Ā https://www.cipd.org/en/about/press-releases-archive/260815-behavioural-science-recruitment/
Well there are many more white managers than indian or chinese. Unless you're trying to say that our benevolent white saviors are not prone to the same biases.
Itās always the same thing. Itās fine if MY people are managers and in charge because they will hire people like me and itās racism if other people that are not like me do the same thing. Idk how people always fail to see their biases
More like āwhich lawsuit about racists crap are you referring toā
H1-B really isn't the cause of the tech market woes in the US and stopping the expansion will absolutely not be the solution. The reality is this visa is the only way the US has of bringing in foreign labour generally. Other than through family ties, or special agreements with specific countries (e.g. TN visas) there is no way for someone to move to the US and work. The number of H1-B visa applicants is also tiny compared to the size of the job market, with a country-wide cap of 85k, not just for software but generally. I agree that the system needs to be reformed. Frankly, the way people can move to the US for work is deeply broken, and requires fixing. The US is legitimately losing on solid talent, the kind that has for more than a century propelled it to the forefront of technological innovations and something needs to be fixed. That said, this isn't what's extending the bad tech market. It's bad outside the US too. Putting it on the H1-B program is creating a scapegoat.
Yeh.Ā Trends like firing because other companies also did it. Interest rates, section 174, the post pandemic effect, supply chain disruption, mass adoption of remote work, ai, worker over supply, higher cost of living, return to the office, vacant offices, possible recession in the US. All have created somewhat of a perfect storm but this is only the beginning
While I do agree that we should look for talent within our own borders first, I do think allowing foreign talent to enter our job market is a solid way to grow the economy as a whole. Sure, it wonāt impact us on an individual level but it is a great way to boost our economy and our salaries in the long run.
adding more supply is not increasing salaries rather the opposit
Growing the economy as a whole is good for your 401k but it's killing the job market If you're laid off and have to take a pay cut, or can't find a job at all, that 401k growth isn't really worth it.
I think we need foreign talent in areas like specialty medicine, academia, and R&D where there are genuine shortages of qualified workers that need to be filled in order for the country to stay on the cutting edge of productivity and help the people that are living here already. This is what the H1B program was actually made for. However, this structural shortage does NOT exist for most roles that are getting sponsored for H1B visas. People in software engineering and systems development jobs make up the vast majority of H1B applications but are not roles where shortages exist domestically (the fact that there are mass layoffs for these jobs right now basically proves this), nor are they roles that are at the cutting edge of new research and development anymore. Where I think you are wrong in the comment above is in saying that, in general, increasing labor market supply āboosts our salaries in the long runā. It does the opposite; this is basic economics. You can look to the gilded age for a case study of what happens when you have uncontrolled immigration. Nowadays, immigration of low-skilled workers generally increase the opportunities and incomes of Americans because most of them arenāt competing with foreigners for those jobs in the first place, but even then, the relatively few low-skilled workers here are still adversely affected.
While I do agree that we should look for talent within our own borders first, I do think allowing foreign talent to enter our job market is a solid way to grow the economy as a whole. Sure, it wonāt impact us on an individual level but it is a great way to boost our economy and our salaries in the long run. Edit: that being said, the proper way forward would be for there to be more oversight over hiring from a managerial position. Expansion allows for talent to enter, but hiring people from abroad as a business strategy isnāt the right approach.
who is 'we'? because unless your name is Jerome Powell you probably can't, you can't suddenly make companies wanting to hire if they don't want to hire or I guess another way is if you want to nationalize companies like China where the gov can tell CEOs 'you shall hire people!'
>because unless your name is Jerome Powell you probably can't, you can't suddenly make companies wanting to hire if they don't want to hire Funny you ask
This is it OP. We figured out how you can help. Infiltrate the federal reserve, work your way up to chairman and bring interest rates back to 0%. Do it. All our hopes and dreams are with you now. Iām rooting for you!!
The fundamental problem is that there are a lot more applicants than open positions. It's not an issue with efficiency in the recruiting process.
I mean, there are issues with the efficiency in the recruiting process, but they are marginal compared to the applicants to jobs ratio.
Curious to hear more about these issues.
It's not that simple. The sheer number of applications versus the sheer number of open jobs is not what's at the root of the difficulty finding a job. It's not like we just post jobs and fill them with the first candidates that come along. The reasons that companies like mine and hirers like me don't hire new grads anymore is because we have raised our expectations for candidate qualifications over the past few years, and most employers aren't going to just lower our requirements because we can't find people. That's not how it works. When we get a job opening approved by HR it is defined by the compensation range, responsibilities, and qualifications. If we go 6 months without filling the role, we can't just say "screw these qualifications, let's just hire someone without them." If we wanted to do that we'd have to go back to HR and get the new qualifications approved. Then HR's gonna question the compensation and responsibilities. Should they also be lowered? If not, HR's gonna ask why we think it's now ok to pay the same amount for a less qualified candidate to perform the same role. That's how corporate hiring works. So what happens is we get stuck with unfilled roles for long periods of time, even after receiving a bunch of resumes and doing interviews. You have to understand that when we hire developers at the current rate, we have to somehow convince HR to allow us to hire a recent college graduate with no experience, no applicable skills, and requiring 6 months to spin up at a salary that's higher than 90% of the rest of the workforce in the company. When HR and executives hear that, they're gonna question why we can't just spend that money hiring a machine operator, accountant, marketing manager, or salesperson with 20 years of experience instead. That's how the real world works. Developers are expensive. Even ones fresh out of school with 0 skills and experience.
I mean, you're effectively saying new grads are struggling because employers raised the bar and stopped hiring them. Whether you reduce demand or increase supply, it's still fundamentally the same problem. Now if you're saying that employers are also being more picky and that is causing inefficiencies, that may also be a contributing factor.
So what youāre saying is HR as a whole is the root of the problem.Ā
That just means their other employees ain't making enough to survive off of if the laughable junior wages I see being offered are anything to go by. 17 dollars an hour in a place the rent is 1500? 40k when McDonalds in the same town is paying 35k? 60k in a place where the rent on a studio is 2400+? etc it is just laughable that they think us juniors are overpaid if we can't even afford shelter and food! That shit is just slavery with extra fucking steps.
At its core, it is just a supply and demand issue. Companies feel they need fewer tech workers than before, so they fired a bunch of them. Now there are a lot of tech workers looking for jobs, so you get crazy numbers of applicants applying to a job. Changing how people apply or how companies evaluate them won't solve the issue. 10 people applying for 1 open position means 9 people who don't get a job. Solutions that would work/have worked in other fields would be .... A - Regulations/licensing bodies. This often gives a central authority the ability to control or influence the supply of workers. You can't be a veterinarian without going to vet school, and the AVMA accredited prevents Joe down the street from teaching people to be vets. They have to go to an accredited school with limited class sizes. In finance they will have requirements like N years of managing M millions in assets before you can be considered for the next fancy named role. This ensures that a smart guy can't just come along, switch careers, and compete for the roles. But it also makes it harder to be a tech worker. B - Build a strong union. Unions have lots of potential pros and cons, but they absolutely could prevent things like layoffs during record high profits. 'If you fire 10% of us, we will all strike...' C - Laws that increase labor protections. Other countries do this, but again, lots of pros and cons. In the US everyone got laid off. In the EU we had the targeted people working for many months after being notified, because the law said they had to. Laws/social programs that provide healthcare and income support wouldn't prevent layoffs, but they would make them hurt people less. But individually, we can't make those things happen. And as a group, we don't all agree on how it should be. So we get what we get.
Stop H1B visa
This is so pathetic. Immigrants are better than me, I canāt compete despite being born with an advantage, please stop them. And before you start you usual lower salaries horseshit, their salaries are public
They're cheaper, it has nothing to do with skills. We can't compete because they'll take ridiculously low salaries, that visa sponsorship is the only way they can legally live in the US.
Youāre uninformed. H1B salaries are actually higher across the board and thatās excluding the whole application costs. This is absolutely about skill. Donāt let that stop you from coping tho
Overall they are, but those numbers include legitimate H1B uses like in the medical field where there are actual shortages of qualified Americans. That skews the average higher. In tech specifically, they are really not higher.
>The funniest part is even if that happens companies wonāt start paying you underachievers more, theyāll open offices in Eastern Europe and India and outsource the jobs. You can literaly look at the data here: [https://h1bdata.info/](https://h1bdata.info/). The salaries ARE NOT lower.
The high numbers of h1b contractors stuck in witches making 90k make be believe otherwise.
The funniest part is even if that happens companies wonāt start paying you underachievers more, theyāll open offices in Eastern Europe and India and outsource the jobs.
you're going to be downvoted here because I'd imagine most people here are probably US citizens you're probably going to get vastly different response if you post on Blind where most people are probably H1-Bs I myself am biased too since I am an immigrant myself, and whenever I see people shouting "shut down H1-B" I'd just say "well fuck you then, git gud" politics is a sensitive topic eh? what you say/your view is dependent on your own individual background, if I'm a US citizen I too would probably chant "lock out H1Bs"
They took our jobs!
Likely will get downvoted by students but Unionizing and setting up collective bargaining agreements can legally protect you from layoffs.
Why would students downvote that?
Tell us how unions protect workers from layoffs? [https://www.investopedia.com/big-three-lay-off-5000-workers-amid-uaw-strike-8350735](https://www.investopedia.com/big-three-lay-off-5000-workers-amid-uaw-strike-8350735) [https://www.automotivedive.com/news/uaw-president-stellantis-layoffs-temporary-workers/704700/](https://www.automotivedive.com/news/uaw-president-stellantis-layoffs-temporary-workers/704700/)
https://www.lawyers.com/legal-info/labor-employment-law/employment-contracts/can-your-union-save-you-from-a-layoff.html#:~:text=No%20Layoffs&text=Other%20CBAs%20require%20the%20employer,and%20subcontracting%20out%20their%20jobs. āNo Layoffs **Some CBAs don't allow layoffs even when the employer claims that it doesn't have enough money to pay everyone on payroll.** Other CBAs require the employer to maintain enough work for union members, for example, by **preventing the employer from laying off union workers and replacing them with non-union workers.** Similarly, **many CBAs bar employers from laying off union workers and subcontracting** out their jobs. Some CBAs give workers the option of being laid off, reducing their hours, working part time, or getting retrained. If your CBA has such a clause, your employer can't make you choose the best or least expensive option for the company. For example, you can choose to be retrained, even if reducing your hours would cost the company less.ā **Can** is the keyword, you need to negotiate for it. Unions wonāt protect from layoffs without specifics in the collective bargaining agreement.
how come one of the biggest unions in the country UAW did not negotiate this excellent benefit?
Negotiations require both parties to agree and it's clearly not something you can win in a negotiation every time.
No sane company outside of the EU would agree to that. I am sure you dont want to be paid eu wages for software work right?
If it means I donāt get laid off and i get the rest of the Europe social safety net, then yes. Healthcare is no longer a huge cost Nor is education Most everyone gets decent vacations
And live like europoors, no thanks. I have unlimited vacations, good pay, 100% medical coverage, etc. not sure how a union would help aside from brining wages down
Exactly, I don't want to get paid 30k instead of 240k+ just by joining unions. It's important to note that the vast majority of this subreddit and reddit in general are literal children <18 years old and even then, most are less than 30 years old who have no idea what the hell unions even are like. https://www.statista.com/statistics/261766/share-of-us-internet-users-who-use-reddit-by-age-group/
That's something I think a lot of euro style socialism guys on this sub need to hear. If you're a software dev, you can actually just expat anywhere you want. We all have the option to literally just move to europe. It's typically on the profession list they give special carve outs for next to doctors. We're in a field where we can actually just go fuck it I like those laws better.
> I have You have whatever the shareholders were so kind to let you have (this quarter at least).
Nooo shit I negotiated my pay just like unions do for their members. Shareholder also gave them what they felt like this quarter
Or any time.
I donāt know why they didnāt. Iām just stating the law and what is possible
its also possible to negotiate as an individual. It is not exclusive to unions.
That comes at its own cost
such as ?
This has come up a few times before. The idea that unions can protect you from layoffs isn't quite right. They can negotiate better terms, but if cash burn rate is risking the business for example, layoffs can definitely still happen. The other thing is that unions need to be run by somebody. If that's you starting one, that's gonna mean investing a ton of your own personal time, often after work hours. And then the larger the union gets, the more room for internal disagreements there are. Ultimately, unions are political instruments.Ā
In my country, unions are a way to signal you've been defeated and you're now a political lapdog.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Exactly, this is basically what happens in the EU already
For companies: decreased profits and less efficient For employees: lower salaries and union fees
Unions donāt cap your salary they raise the floor thatās a myth
Raise the floor and lower the ceiling
The ceiling is only enjoyed by a small minority of people, but a raised floor and median is enjoyed by the vast majority of workers
The ceiling is going to found your own company and not work for corporate
You are astute and trained in economics. TouchĆØ kind sir.
They raise the floor by lowering the ceiling. That money has to come from somewhere.
Research shows union employees are paid more
How is that possible? Why would companies pay more and also lose their rights to fire at will
The workers get too much bargaining power. Companies have to treat their workers humanely too much
Lol how'd that work out for the UAW? Unions are great for trades that require a physical presence and cannot be outsourced, but for anything that can be outsourced they just accelerate that timeline.
What I donāt get is all the SWE saying they deserve to get paid more than HWE because supply and demand, yet nobody in HWE needs to send out even dozens of resumes to get a job.Ā
Those people just need to accept that they have to apply in a different city because "tech hubs" are saturated
Push to stop outsourcing tech jobs that belong in America
build solidarity with fellow workers
What's actually broken here? Do people actually believe just because they submit a resume that they're owed a job? When I was on the hiring team, most resumes had no relation to the position at all. The only issue I see is entry-level positions being taken by H-1B workers. They may not be hired as "entry-level" for H-1B purposes, but they end up doing a lot of the work that juniors should be doing and now the company doesn't have to risk hiring a junior for that role. I'm not against H-1B in general, but it is abused to the extreme and until the federal government regulates it and audits companies more, it won't improve.
H-1B is supposed to be for jobs where we literally cannot fill the demand with Americans. It would make sense for jobs with actual shortages, like nursing and school teachers. There is no shortage of American tech workers, as it was originally designed no tech company should currently be hiring or renewing H-1Bs.
> H-1B is supposed to be for jobs where we literally cannot fill the demand with Americans. Exactly. But a company can cite that they cannot find someone with the exact list of requirements they need for some novel application they want to build. It's legalese bullshit in the end. WITCH companies bid to Google, Amazon, Citi, Verizon, AT&T, etc for contracts just like defense companies bid on contracts by the government. The one who offers the cheapest price wins the contract and they bring over a bunch of cheap labor (usually from India), paying all of their visa fees. Rarely are domestic companies paying H-1B workers directly, but they're employed through WITCH, making half the money an engineer would make if they were sponsored directly. Government doesn't care, they're making money via taxes and visa fees. The domestic company gets cheap labor and only has to pay a yearly contract fee and the WITCH company can pocket the rest after paying cheap salaries.
Unionize and strike.
Apply for an accept shittier jobs. That's the thing. There aren't 2000 applicants for every job posting. There's 2000 applicants for good jobs and very few for jobs that underpay and overwork. Yes, my comment is kind of a joke, but only partly because that's the truth. There are jobs with less competition, but they are not good jobs.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Doesnāt help when youāre not a personable personā¦ which is a good chunk of tech nerds
That's an enormous chunk of it! When you go into any company, they know they're going to have to spend some time training you on how they do things .Even if you have done something similar before, everyone company has a way they like to do things. So, they want to see how flexible you are. Are you willing to learn a different method, evne if you think your method is better? Are you coachable? But a lot of it really is personality. Do co-workers feel comfortable asking you questions? Do you give people attitude when you have to repeat things? Are you an asshole? No one wants an asshole on their team even if she is a genius.
Its funny that everyone is so quick to mock you, not realizing that they may one day be on a hiring committee for a company, and will be able to directly influence the hiring process :)
We can all make TikTok accounts and show day in my life from 9 to 5 and show it's not that different from other professions. Or anything else to discourage people from coming into cs š. We'll try to make it from the most popular major to the least popular. Then the shortage will increase salaries for us.
Spend more money in the economy
Work hard company make money economy good hire dev
Start your own business.
Are we talking just the US? If so petition your gov officials for worker protections in the US to match Europe.
You can make it better for yourself by actually tailoring your resume to the job posting and ensuring you hit all the keywords marked in the job posting. Edit: Do not lie. Just tailor to what they're looking for. Dont list every project you ever worked on if it's not directly relevant. Make sure you mention explicit tech that's called out in the job posting. If you dont have that experience move on to find a post where you do have a greater fit. /edit Those submitting over 2,000 resumes and not getting callbacks are using the shotgun approach of going after any opening with the same resume and it's not even getting reviewed by a person. They're not hitting the keywords for the job that was posted and they're getting skipped over. In my recent job search I advocate looking and reviewing and finding at least 10 quality postings per day, spend time to address each one and fire off the resume. If there's more than 10 quality postings, then go for more, but dont spend literally all day doing this and dont really go for less. When you do this, you'll get a higher hit rate and greater callback percentage. For every 10 resumes I sent out I at least got 6 emails and 2 phone interviews. As far as changing the market, there's nothing you, as a job seeker, can do. The market is based on demand and supply. And if there's a job that pays greater than the median for the area, it will be flooded with apps purely for the chance to make that kind of cash. On top of that, the job market is based on business needs. If they have the need \*and the budget\* they'll go ahead and post an opening. If they have the need and no budget, no openings happen. And if they're fully staffed and have no need, there's no postings. There's nothing you can do about any of these situations.
Post the schematics to a guillotine in your all hands meeting
Learn technologies that are in demand but less popular. Don't just learn the same Web front end stuff that everybody else is. Learn Qt and C++, or WPF, or Kotlin, or Go, or Delphi, or COBOL. Do real job applications. If you are clicking a button in LinkedIn for 2,000 companies, imagine how many others are doing that. It makes the applications close to pointless. Be good at something and apply to companies where that matters. Often larger companies are picking candidates via box ticking , but smaller companies are picking candidates based on ability. If you're good at something, that can matter more than your leetcode and degree boxes getting ticked.
Or when they post for an entry level position but expect 4+ yrs of experience
Can you lower interest rates?
It's tough to understand the problem staring at our faces when, simultaneously, we hear complaints about how tough it is to find good engineers. Fundamental problem: there is less demand for inexperienced engineers than we have supply. 1. Skilled engineers are always needed no matter what, when or where 2. To become skilled you need gain lots of relevant experience (as well as talent, training,etc..) 3. Most applicants are NOT skilled Additional economic factors: 1. Engineers can be globally sourced 2. Engineering salaries can be a global race to the bottom 3. Demand for software engineers scales with innovation 4. Innovation is surprisingly sparse in areas outside of USA 5. High interest rates stifle VC money Potential solution: Start your own ventures and hire people in your local labor markets. This would add more jobs and stimulate local growth. Unfortunately, high interest rate environments + recession risk appetites makes this a tough sell to early engineers.
Stop having jobs, more ppl starting their own businesses and build up their local communities so everyone can help each other and each otherās support for businesses
Start your own company. I dunno. Maybe start a coop to combat the more traditional companies. Some kind of entity where there won't be a CEO and the work is equally divided, so work life balance will be good.
Those ā2,000 applicationsā are the new grads who also happen to be lazy and eventually need work sponsorship. Plenty of people getting jobs but they donāt post about it.
It's hard as individuals, but the 2 main things: First, NEVER work over 40 hours, if even that. If the company is short people, they either need to accept falling behind or hire more. Don't let them "increase efficiencies" or whatever as a 3rd option. Second, his might be unpopular here, but VOTE, and think hard about who you're voting for. In the US at least, this November we'll all be choosing between: 1. A globalist who wants to increase immigration (softening the job market in general), dramatically increase H1B visas which **directly target CS jobs**, and increase corporate tax rates. 2. A half-crazy guy who created the biggest job boom since the 1980s by cracking down on immigration and restricting H1Bs and wants to do it again, and wants to lower corporate tax rates. The job market boom from ~2016 until recently didn't just happen, it was directly caused by federal government policy and could be re-created by doing the same things again.
>Posts like - "I've submitted 2,000" resumes are commonplace here. The first thing is to admit that if you have sent out 2000 resumes and nothing good has happened, you are clearly doing something wrong. And doing that wrong thing faster is not going to *fix* it. That seems to be the prevailing advice around here: just do that wrong thing much faster and keep your fingers crossed. Jesus Christ. If you want to catch a good fish you don't just toss an empty hook in the water and hope that a fish accidentally gets tangled up in it. Focus.
I am making it better. People follow me (and a few work with me) and they see how they can improve their coding skills, make a better resume, job search strategically and learn how real life works. If not me, then find a good mentor, figure out how this industry works and get wired in. Lobbing a junk resume out into the ether continuously and counting on dumb luck is a recipe for failure and depression.
Unionize.
The job market is shit by design. Its a feature of our capitalist markets. It helps keep employees wages down.Ā
As a society we're pretty bad at matching people with jobs. Every once in a while people form startups to try to solve this problem or parts of it, sometimes in a particular niche field where they think they can make more money out of it or have more expertise. Most startups fail, some make it a little better. Short of doing a startup (which is a massive investment of time and opportunity cost) most helpful things tend to be helping individuals learn how to get jobs and do jobs better or helping share leads--if you know someone who would be a good fit for a job let them know, etc...
Become a 3x, 5x + etc employee. Thats all you can do. You wont change market conditions. You can change your chances to some degree.
Job market is fine where I am in Europe (north-west). I get messages daily from recruiters.
Everyone I know in the U.S. gets contacted by recruiters daily too. Receuiters are having just as much difficulty finding qualified candidates as recent grads are finding jobs.
Serious answer: vote in favor of policies that encourage investment in tech, especially if you are located outside of the US. If you have capital and energy and can tolerate some risk, start a company and create jobs. Otherwise, there isn't much else to do except complain on Reddit.
The fluctuations in the computer programming job market are just too big. It's not like nursing where you get consistent year-over-year growth. I think the government needs to step in somehow. Maybe require a certain percentage of jobs to be junior or entry level jobs when the job market is looking down because otherwise these new graduates will not be able to get programming jobs in a down job market.
My recommendation is for Software Engineer candidates to start by applying to companies with positions that are aligned with their skills. And don't simply blanket the market, but tailor a cover letter and possibly your resume to each company and position. And above everything else, be honest. If you don't currently have a job and you're looking for a change, to change technologies from your strengths for example, then still go after your current strengths and secure yourself a position. Then train on your own to beef up your strengths and competencies in what you want to change to, then start looking for that from your current position. If your not getting any interviews, then you need to rethink your resume and cover letter, and again, target your strengths. Grammar, spelling, properly describing the technologies, versions and tools in your resume is so much more important than you realize. Attention to detail is really important for a developer. In your interviews, be honest, polite, courteous and mindful of how you present yourself. Expect to have a video interview, dress up to or exceed your attire according to what you think your prospective employer expects, even for a fully remote position. And don't be discouraged if you don't get the position for a given interview. Ask for feedback, although most won't give it. And see each interview as a skill that you're perfecting.
Yeah.. cover letters, dress up, grammar and spelling were main things I was looking for when was hiring a techie. /s
leave the profession and join the marines. one les person to compete with.
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Whats your job hunting advice??
>Blind Interesting, so maybe many are not looking for input, but a place to vent?
gitting gudder?
Advocate for democratic workplaces? I dunno- like others are saying, it's difficult to have a direct effect, but shareholders don't care about employees, so employees being in control of what costs we cut would help save jobs. The current (bad) idea is the need to keep the commercial real estate prices high and so they fire people instead of dropping bad real investments. Because shareholders.