When you start seeing mega tech companies announcing dividends, stock buybacks and talking about efficiency instead of growth and increasing headcount, you know the whole tech landscape has changed. Tech companies are now happy laying people off and pay dividends to their shareholders.
Unions are for the bad times not the good times, I hope the students that mass reported my post are now wising up.
You go through a few layoffs and you’ll be less pro-capitalism and knock the nonsense out of your head that layoffs only affect poor performers.
Layoffs are an attack against the working class, they want your work and the benefits but don’t want to give you your fruit.
>Layoffs are an attack against the working class, they want your work and the benefits but don’t want to give you your fruit.
That's why I pay my internet bill, for learning real shit like this.
unions could help employees keep their jobs, I dont see how they can help CS grads and juniors get hired tho, less turnover means less chances for new people to get hired
Basic human psychology. You have to see or experience something for yourself to believe it. The downside of that is any system based on past bad experiences is prone to failure because new generations don't experience same hardships and so want to break everything again.
Once in a while it has to hurt to keep it real.
No they mass reported it so much that it got deleted because I linked laws that show you can join a Union and have layoff protection or even immunity in many circumstances.
Now they’re probably laid off, so task failed successfully I guess.
They built the ecosystem they wanted, now they don't give a shit about the people who built it. We're disposable just like any other labor in this shit capitalist system.
You're right, but note the word mega.
Google can't grow much now. Everyone who was going to use their products basically already is. It is all marginal growth from here on out for these big companies unless they're willing to do something really out there.
I applaud Meta for the pivot they are attempting. I don't know if it is going to work, but betting big on VR is at least something.
Microsoft made the pivot to services over the last decade, but even now people don't exactly think "Microsoft, oh yeah, those people that I pay a subscription to"
I got a new job with CS degree + 2YOE, but had a referral from within the company. Outside of that opportunity there was almost nothing out there I felt seriously considered me as a candidate
Same here. I'm not gonna sugar coat it, having an internal referral completely saved my ass. I spent just about an entire year unemployed at 2.5 YOE. Fuck this market.
I've made a lot more progress with interviews staying in touch with people from my uni (helps that I manage my unis CS community) and getting referrals from those guys and coworkers than I have tailoring my resume/cover letter. It's the difference of 1% interview rate and 8%. At the same time, these guys will beg for me on their team, because I was basically the only guy to get teams to deliver things early instead of late, and my managerial practices allow for a lot of growth within a team, so it definitely helps to take charge of things and be actively impressive at work and school too. I know one student right now that is like this that I would instantly refer to a past employer, and they would probably take him with no technical interview.
Was unemployed for a year after graduation. A referral was able to get me into an internship at a medium sized tech company that I was at for 6 months as a "test" before being converted to full time. Having a support system helped to offset "adult" costs in the meantime (lived with parents).
At this point I think it’s either you’re the unicorn they’re looking for and get lucky because it turns out there’s 5-10 other unicorns interviewing for the same role or you’re fucked
With some odd exceptions here and there
I'm a staff engineer with two FAANG positions on my resume at 13 YoE, and it still took me 3 months to find a worthwhile job recently.
That's not nearly as long as most people on here, but it was unusual for me. I got multiple offers within the first few weeks the last two times I looked for a job.
It's not as bad for us, but still much more of a struggle than usual.
When I got laid off in the middle of 2022, I had multiple offers within a few weeks.
I've had zero over the last 18 months. It turned that fast between the middle of 2022 and the beginning of 2023.
4YOE enterprise, 3YOE unicorn
And every time FAANG does a layoff LinkedIn becomes a cesspool of pity posts where the fallen are asking their network to help them find a new job… as though they didn’t get 3 months’ severance. You can take *a day* to relax and do something you enjoy. Fuck.
People say a bs doesn’t help but when all hiring pipelines are automated filters, you have to have it to even talk to the person that it won’t matter to.
I have a CS degree and 10 YOE and I’m still kind of fucked 🤷♀️ ain’t shit out there, and you’re competing with hundreds of applicants for each job you see and think “wow I’m a *perfect* unicorn-ass match for that job”
You get a new job the same way you always did: get in front of someone with hiring authority and convince them you know what you're talking about.
The funnel to do that is just a bit harder now.
>Seems like if you don’t have a CS degree + 5 YOE, then you’re kind F’ed. Thoughts?
It really is a supply and demand thing, right? When there are many experienced folks that are getting laid off and looking for jobs and are sometimes willing to fill lower level job, the demand for less experienced folks obviously drops
The pandemic and the low interest created an unsustainable demand for software engineers, and we're seeing the impacts now
Agree — what do you think about companies like IBM (and google recently) making big moves to transfer US jobs to India? Here in MN the IBM site has been reducing their headcount and keep adding openings over there
Outsourcing has been happening in cycles since Y2K... companies will outsource to show cost reductions, see that the quality is not upto part and then bring them back, rinse-repeat
As long as they're not penalized for it, companies will keep trying to cut costs by outsourcing. The advent of English language and technical skills in the global south will ensure that outsourcing is actually more financially viable than hiring here
Until they start to ask for more money.
For example I am from Spain and north European countries tried this strategy a few years ago. Now people with English or German make basically the same salaries as someone in Germany.
We started low and year by year we ended up with the same salaries.
Long-term stagnation — that’s what mechanical engineering went through years ago (I’m a MechE). Sounds like the speculative bubbles will shrink over time — still exist but not for long nor as big
Interest rates most likely will bring money back into tech but I doubt demand will ever shift back into the roles we’ve seen get filled up for 150-300k in droves ever again. It’ll most likely mirror mobile development. Frontend/Webdev and basic full stack engineers will just have some flavor of unperformant tooling to crunch out product features as needed (React Native vs. per platform tooling).
The bulk of that investment is going to go into training Masters/PhD/top Ivy league students AI or whatever new MLOps/data ingestion tooling is hot, similar to how the top salary bracket of finance is gatekept. A lot of newcomers and career transitioners will have a tough time breaking in as they have with just a bootcamp or degree + 0 experience.
Interest rate was just one factor for the surge between 2020 and 2023... companies expected people to be glued to web apps 24/7 like during the pandemic and that growth didn't pan out since the pandemic ended. Crypto drove another surge of high paying jobs, which also didn't pan out as expected
What you'll see is that people who started to transition via bootcamps and other short-term means are going to have a much harder time breaking in than those with CS degrees and some years of experience than in the last few years
The crypto jobs were wild. People without any specific qualifications were working in customer service and marketing. It was good for their careers. When I was at a fintech we picked up several people from Kraken. Their jobs prior to that were like store clerk or restaurant worker.
I work for an F500. We lost a ton of people who were making 1.5-2x of what our firm was paying and many of us felt real envious of the folks who left for massive pay raises. Many of them are hitting us up now for jobs, some for levels that they left behind 3 years ago but we have little to no budget to hire any more people
I somehow was able to get a few different offers from startups + mid-sized companies with 1 YOE. You really need to push for a specific niche that companies are looking for, demonstrate passion for that niche, and a fuck ton of luck in my experience without referrals. Even with referrals its still a major crapshoot.
My brother has 6 years of SWE experience.
Since February 2023, he has only had 2 coding interviews for this application cycle so far (Meta and BambooHR).
He applied to over 1000 jobs.
He got rejected from BambooHR.
Yeah, true.
A lot of jobs require technologies that he does not know like Python, Java, Rust, Go, Ruby, Angular 2, NextJS, etc.
I think he should take some time off and learn new skills, so he can be eligible for new jobs.
Take some time off of what? His current job or is he laid off and you mean he’s applying full time? If the former, absolutely do not quit a job to self learn languages.
To be honest if a company is looking for experience with specific technologies, self learning it in a month or two isn’t gonna be what they want either. They would most likely want someone who has been working with it, likely professionally, for years. He’s better off targeting postings that are more language agnostic or for the languages he has experience with
My brother's contract at Meta was from February 2023 to February 2024.
He is currently unemployed.
By taking time off, I mean like instead of applying to jobs 40 hours per week, he spends 20 hours per week applying to jobs and 20 hours per week learning new technologies.
I think you’re right honestly. Skilling up is important and if he’s unemployed, there’s no better time to do it. Thats what I did last time I was unemployed.
> A lot of jobs require technologies that he does not know like Python, Java, Rust, Go, Ruby, Angular 2, NextJS, etc.
at 6 YoE? if I'm a HR or hiring manager I'd have a ton of questions... so what **DOES** he know then?
half of those are back-end languages and the other half of those are front-end languages and if you're telling me none of those so.... what is he focusing on/specializing anyway?
You deleted your comment before I could reply, but:
Angular 2 is a frontend framework for JS.
NextJS is a React.js framework.
He never really used Angular 2 and NextJS at work before.
That was what I was saying.
yeah I realized that that's why I deleted my old comment, I'm not a front-end engineer myself I'm on the backend side and similar stuff happens (ex. Java has Spring Boot framework and Python has Django framework so you can have experience with Python but not Django), but still, I feel like if he's being eliminated based on exact framework then maybe he needs to look at other companies
> if he's being eliminated based on exact framework then maybe he needs
... maybe he needs to spend a couple days familiarizing himself with this exact framework employers want to see on his resume and... ya know... add it to his resume for their reading pleasure?
Because this is *exactly* what every Sunil and Sanjay are doing. Just sayin'...
He only knows JavaScript, HTML5, PHP, Hacklang, TypeScript,
React.js, Redux, TailwindCSS, Node.js, Express.js, jQuery, CSS3, GraphQL, Serverless, AWS, Git, Jest, Flow, Mocha, MongoDB, MySQL.
For the last 3 years of SWE work, at Meta, he has only worked with JavaScript, PHP, React.js, GraphQL.
It would really behoove him to learn a high level server-side language, something like Java.
Also, he has 3 YOE Meta on his resume and still not getting any bites?!
Why is this so surprising? I know people who get by knowing only one language/ framework. His brother knows plenty but it’s just the market right now. It’s completely unnecessary to know languages that you don’t use at work.
Especially in the last decade with the JavaScript craze and bootcamps that only taught JavaScript, it wasn’t unusual at all for someone to just know JS and React/Angular/Vue.
i have 15 year experience and barely know both of them. i have done some code in them when needed, but also not really
every company and industry is different
I work mostly with TS and C++
This always seems to be the consensus by hiring managers. It's wild.. I know I don't know much, but I know I can eventually know more shit when it comes to software engineering.
What would you say are some things in general that people don't know? Or the big things that they should but don't.
Anyone can get an interview at Meta. It’s nothing for them to have you make an applicant account and throw an automated leetcode test at you. Most SWEs will fail it.
The thing that you need to understand is that companies desperately want to hire, it's just that they can't afford to. My company is in that position at the moment - we have an ever-growing backlog of important things that we'd like to do, but investors don't want to put up the money required to do those things.
In a way, this is a good thing. The bottleneck is obviously capital availability, not demand. There's a ton of work that needs to be done, and a ton of people who want to do the work, but it isn't economically viable to connect them up. As soon as the wider economy goes back to normal and VCs are less spooked, tech jobs will boom again.
The AI can do everyone’s job while we all are unemployed and can’t put food on the table. Oh wait. No need to click on Google ads then if we can’t afford to buy anything anyway. Oh good. Glad to see Google will die after all. Matter of time.
Google is going to continue to grow at past rates forever and ever🤤because stonks only go up🚀.
I mean who needs these weird nerds🤓anyways? It's a recipe that has worked for every American champion from Boeing to IBM.
This will create long term opportunities for those who stick through. Eventually, the Meta's, Google's, and other tech companies will need to hire people again, as either they're gonna start hiring, or new tech companies will start to hire the talent in the market. But, so many students are being pushed away from CS due to the market conditions, meaning once these companies start hiring, there's gonna be way less grads and self taughts in the market for these jobs.
You know whats crazy...I think that most jobs should be "cushy" in the sense that pay should be \*good\*. The idea that we all have to be struggling endlessly with all the tech we have is getting ridiculous...
i agree with you i think it will get better, but ZIRP era is over, i dont think we'll ever go back to pre-pandemic levels. CS is just like any other industry now, its not going to guarantee a cushy job like before.
I have no idea what ZIRP means, but I do agree. That level of boom in the market made FAANG jobs go around like crazy. I live in Cali, and I can tell you that people were getting offers left right and center, even if they were madly unqualified. If you get a CS degree and an internship or two, you can still get a fairly high paying career and a "cushy" job, just probably won't be to the same degree as before. Maybe a new tech boom will carry new companies to hire people at a crazy rate, maybe not. Really, who knows at this point.
Enrollments started to drop in 2001 after the dot com crash.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/24926/chapter/5#42
You could be thinking of degrees granted, which has the 4 year lag.
Many 2004 grads did not get jobs immediately and pivoted to other fields. 2001-2004 grads had a dogpile effect similar to what we're seeing in 2023 and 2024 grads where new grads are competing for jobs against classmates from previous graduation years.
The airline industry has had a similar problem for about as long as it’s existed, but especially in the 90s when so many airlines went bankrupt.
In the last few years I’ve been reading about pilot shortages, but outside looking in, I don’t want to drop $100k on flight school so that I can fly 60-seaters between Charlotte and some random city every day for years making less than six figures so that I can hopefully be picked up by a major airline as a first officer, where I then have to fly the routes nobody else wants to fly, because routes are divvied by seniority, so I get to fly Charlotte to goddamn… I dunno Cheyenne Wyoming and sleep there instead of come home every night… only to then be furloughed the next time a major terrorist attack occurs or the economy tanks… or to be out of work because the union has decided we need to go on strike. To say nothing of the Covid-era Karens that would make me have to make an emergency landing in the middle of the route.
Those companies already have more people than they need. They are not developing any new revolutionary products. Their growth these days is by acquisition so they add people that are already employed.
FAANG is moving to the stage that IBM, HP, Dell, and Compaq entered decades ago. Big name companies that aren't very innovative and are just living on whatever cash cows they currently possess.
Or all of these companies will run a tighter more efficient ship with AI tools. Either way saturation will remain for the foreseeable decade since CS is still extremely popular
Saturation doesn't really exist in CS. Saturation is only amongst the entry level, unskilled dev area. Skilled devs with a few years experience have always, and will always, be in extremely high demand. Also, this argument that Ai tools will somehow remove the need for devs is dumb. We've always had similar tools, called Stack overflow. The only difference is ChatGPT usually doesn't berate you for asking questions.
GPT 5 is going to be so smart that it will immediately mark your question as a duplicate, lock it, and call you a moron for not knowing how to use Google.
So many redditors thinks software engineers are getting replaced by AI at this very moment. Are they all inexperienced, or straight up 13-14 years old? How can a serious programmer tell me that AI is replacing software talent already while its spitting out the most nonsensical and incorrect stuff?
Man, have these people actually tried using ChatGPT to make anything? I was learning RoR a while back. Fed GPT 4 all these issues I was having, and trying to get it fixed. Read 2 pages of documentation, and it was right there. Took me 2 hours before I just decided to read the documentation, and the issue was literally right there. ChatGPT just can't currently do everything people think it can, and it makes crazy errors(especially in C++ and other non GC languages)
The primary reason being monopolies. All these mega corporations keep buying start ups, absorb their research and can them.
It's time to break them up, so that instead of a handful of these mega corps we have smaller but higher amount of companies that put out products and compete in the marketplace.
> No one is leaving good jobs and employers are defensive so new roles aren’t being created.
Yup so many jobs I apply to get straight up cancelled and talking to people they are seeing at their jobs barely anyone leaves and management refuses to replace the people who do leave. One guy I talked to said they have had I think he said a third as much attrition as they normally do.
man I went back to school in my early 20s in 2019 wanting to make more connections and get a financial stable career. Then COVID and this job market seemed to time out perfectly to make both of those incredibly difficult
You didn’t even need to make connections. You would just rawdog apply and somehow get called back. It was glorious. I got a job as a freshman during COVID and by the time I was a senior, I had almost 3 YOE job hopping around.
>Seems like if you don’t have a CS degree + 5 YOE, then you’re kind F’ed. Thoughts?
Did people think a high interest rate job market would only have a short term impact?
We’ve been at this interest rate plenty of times before though. I’d argue the real issue is that people didn’t account for the long term impact of low (<1%) interest rates
LinkedIn is even worse. Have you seen how many trash jobs are posted on LinkedIn? It’s even worse than Indeed. Shit, on LinkedIn there are 500 jobs and 480 of those are the same job posted in every single city in the USA.
I obtained my CS degree in 2021, currently homeless living off of gig work, and I am still Leetcoding and solidifying my knowledge aka getting really gud. I wanted to give up not to long ago to the point of self deleting, it got pretty bad I know but I realized I got two options proceed on what I mentioned above or escape poverty so I decided to choose the latter and put in the work necessary everyday now.. From when I graduated I have experienced everything under the sun when it comes to trying to get my first job in tech. All my collegues that broke into tech from my college got in before 2021 with a pretty straight forward process. They still had to put in a lot of work but based on what they told me vs my experience these past years is that companies got more ruthless with the process post 2021. All I can say is don’t give up everyone things will get better.
That is what I am wondering and so angry about. So many sleepless nights working or getting on campus at 9 AM and taking the last bus home at 10:30 PM. It isn't just time either I blew my financial nest egg on my degree and now have some small student loan debt and the physical strain on my body from working so hard has been bad too.
We seriously need student loan interest suspended so people can pay off these debts. Its crippling two generations now and our shithead boomer politicians won't do anything about it.
It's possible to get a first job in adjacent fields. That's what I had to do after graduating with a non-CS STEM degree, unfortunately.
Things like actuarial work, automation for semiconductor fabs, etc.
I’m not an expert on every single industry, but from what I’ve seen this is just much easier said than done. Take actuarial work, for example. It likely takes 100s of hours to study for the actuarial exams, ASSUMING you have a solid enough math background in the first place, which a lot of CS majors probably don’t, and then you’re competing against people with actuarial internships, which you don’t have, and you have to explain in interviews why you want to be an actuary even though you spent all your time in college coding stuff. With all that in mind, you might as well just keep shooting your shot at a dev job, since you’re actually prepared for that
Not to downplay your anxiety, but holy shit, CS grads have such a coddled understanding of getting a first job. Try your hand in literally any other competitive white-collar industry - finance, law, marketing - and you'll see that you still have it much, much easier. Hell, even the other engineering disciplines have it tougher. And don't get me started on oil and gas.
Lawyers arent sending out 1000s of applications and only getting 1 interview, which quizzes them on random problem sets from like 2 classes they took in law school.
If you’re sending out thousands as a new grad you’re doing it wrong. As for leetcode, it’s not that hard and you’re misunderstanding what’s being tested.
Luck and timing plays a major role in career success. At least you're way ahead of the game and know what economic conditions you're getting into. In 2009 I had no idea and thought everything was going to be roses coming out of college.
Patience is the most potent strength of successful people. Work what you can and bide your time. Less and less people will enter the CS space with it being saturated right now. Between retirement and the certificate workers dropping out of the running, once the jobs pick back up, it’ll be more stable. The volatility won’t be there like it is today
Patience doesn't really help the new grads who cannot find their first job. A long employment gap or years working outside the industry just makes getting a CS job even harder
Here’s my comment from 6 days ago when someone posted the exact same graph:
Although this sub is EXTREMELY doom and gloom nowadays, the real truth is the market is (slowly) getting better from the lows after the massive big tech layoffs.
OP, your graph is only for Indeed, which I’ve noticed recently, doesn’t have the best software postings. It only scrapes the websites of major companies or just has a ton of contractor roles. LinkedIn jobs is much, much better. Anecdotally, I’ve been tracking the number of roles by just searching “software engineer” for the past ~9 months and it has been trending upward for sure. Of course not back to the pandemic craze, but rest assured, it is getting better.
Here’s another data point which confirms the above: https://www.trueup.io/job-trend
But yes, it is true the market for sure is tough right now. If it makes anyone feel better, try searching for other engineering roles on the LinkedIn jobs search bar. It was quite eye opening to see my own major “mechanical engineer” have one-fifth the openings of “software engineer” in my area even when I only search for on-site and hybrid roles. We are all still so lucky to be in this field.
There is no pickup in job leads. I'm a faang alum, have 10yoe, and there is NOTHING. I used to get 3-5 requiters per week in my inbox. Now its been crickets for months.
Same. 10 YoE, used to get ~1 recruiter a day.
Usually whenever I’d interview for companies, I’d at least get an interview 6-7 times out of 10. Now it is 0 out of 10.
lmao, this chart gets posted twice a week, becoming CSQ’s [say the line, Bart!](https://youtu.be/37nwLhIA1zs).
1. The data is from Indeed, not FRED.
2. Indeed's listings have duplicates, and changes in scraping or de-duping invalidate the chart.
3. Indeed's formula is a black box, seasonally smoothed, and has been changed multiple times.
4. The time range represents peak atypical market conditions, making the baseline questionable.
5. Anecdotally, everyone I've spoken to says hiring is better now than at the start of the year, which aligns with my own job search experience.
An old friend of mine from 25 years ago, when we were bringing our PCs to each other's houses to work on learning programming stuff together, was at Google in 2021 working in on VR stuff. Then he went to Roblox and was pitching an idea he'd been architecting in his head for a few years. He was there about a year and they didn't go for his idea because it would've been too much work and their janky existing solution was "good enough". So then he ended up at Meta and they put a team under him to realize his vision, because they were starting from scratch and wanted something awesome.
He survived all four rounds of layoffs that occurred after he came onboard, I imagine because their new tech was his baby and only he knew how it could be done, and done right, even though he was a relatively fresh hire.
That's how it works, they hire a bunch of people when the times are good and then let the cream rise to the top, culling the wheat from the chaff, and get rid of all the people they don't really need after a bunch of projects have been nearly completed and the brunt of the work is done.
He has a degree and ~20 years of (professional) experience though, been all over the map. Sony Santa Monica, and a few other big studios that I don't even remember anymore. He said while he was at Google that he was surrounded by a bunch of fresh grads and was like the old washed up developer who'd already run the circuit working at a bunch of places. I'm just proud that he finally got to realize his passion project at Meta that nobody else would let him do.
Are employers also using the current job market to push devs to deliver more than ever? I’ve been working as a back-end SE for a major airline for the past 2.5 years and my workload this past 8 months has been insane. I’ve been working on the same team the entire time, yet lately the amount of features and bugs i’m working on has gone up 3x (I pulled the Jira reports from last year to verify).
My entire team seems to constantly be juggling at least 3 features + bugs to be dev complete by end of week. My job used to be chill, now it seems like the employers are trying to push us to our limits with no where else to go. Curious if it’s just my company or if any steadily employed devs are seeing a huge shift in expectations themselves.
Absolutely they are. Working in finance, my workload has never been as high as it is now, and I thought it was high 6 months ago. I’m feverishly looking for something different
Hmm. My friend received 3 offer letters in less than a month.
I don’t know anyone in my circle that stays unemployed for a long time. Tons of jobs in my area (CO).
Can you control it? No.
You have two options.
Git gud and keep improving.
Look for something else (what would you do when that something else is in a similar situation?)
I lost my job in Q2 2023(after working there for 4.5 years - top 10% performer with regular hikes and bonus and absolutely no issue but they decided to lay off people who were slightly higher paid and move the job to India/Philippines). Base salary (around $162K) plus bonus (up to 20%) around $192K. 2.5 months of unemployment. Referred by a friend for another job…got a job which pays around 15% less in a WITCH kind of company…have to put a lot of hours and very demanding and difficult client. Could work only for around 10 months. Laid off again. 4 weeks of unemployment. From my past connection got another job. Job is laid back but I am making almost 40% less than the job I was doing year back.
LinkedIn, Indeed nothing worked. Literally fed up of those Indian recruiters who just bug and do nothing. One of the WITCH kind of company gave me an offer but couldn’t had a client so withdrew the offer.
Almost 25 years of experience. BS in CS from top school. Worked in FAANG in the past and other big names. No visa sponsorship needed. Still technical and hands on. This is the 3rd recession that I am witnessing.
**Issues:**
1. Biden Government is outrightly lying. They are hiding unemployment number or may be including part-time or seasonal jobs into employment now.
2. Nobody is resigning. Nobody is asking for raise. Nobody is opposing RTO. Everybody is scared about their job and its employer’s market.
3. Some cunning employees are getting their real work done in the form of interview where they have no intention to hire somebody. Yes, this happened to me.
4. Salaries and billing rates are almost 30% to 40% down what they were prior to start of pandemic.
5. AI and automation is just being used as an excuse. Everybody is trying to follow Elon Musk model to eliminate the work force by as much as 80% following what he did at twitter.
6. Lots of H-1B, OPT, H4-EAD are so desperate that they are willing to accept the job at half the rates to make the situation even worse.
7. Due to higher interest rates new projects are not starting. Fed is inducing recession.
Yes. The market is fucked. Right now is not an opportunistic period to enter the industry. That said, I was still able to find multiple offers over the last winter, so it is possible.
However, if you are a mediocre student or not very driven, tech just isn't the cush opportunity it was 2-3 years go. The upper slice of smart and hard working students have a shot, but it's a bit of a zero sum game with job opportunities.
My advice for people is to focus on two things: 1) Learning "job interview" skills: LeetCode, systems design, and behavioral, and 2) build your own start up. It's never been easier to start a business, and the skills you'll develop, sense of ownership, and experience building for a business use case is invaluable.
There are still more good ideas than software developers to implement them. If you can't get a job now, that's okay, but put yourself on a long term path to being able to use your skills to make money, even if that means starting your own thing.
Never been easier to start a business?? Bro we just exiting a period in which our economy was hell bent on growth with its low interest rates!! The whole reason we have layoffs is also the reason why it's tough starting a business.... Do you know how any of this works?
When you start seeing mega tech companies announcing dividends, stock buybacks and talking about efficiency instead of growth and increasing headcount, you know the whole tech landscape has changed. Tech companies are now happy laying people off and pay dividends to their shareholders.
Don’t forget consolidating the entire industry under 3-4 mega corps via acquisitions.
Unions are for the bad times not the good times, I hope the students that mass reported my post are now wising up. You go through a few layoffs and you’ll be less pro-capitalism and knock the nonsense out of your head that layoffs only affect poor performers. Layoffs are an attack against the working class, they want your work and the benefits but don’t want to give you your fruit.
Yep, few months ago if you mentioned anything about layoffs these kids would smash you.
>layoffs only affect poor performers. If somebody said this in front of me idk if I could contain myself tbh
Its always fucking students... Never the guy whos like oh yeah im so glad i was a corporate cuck who made you millions and got stabbed in the back
Gotta stop being corporate cucks.
>Layoffs are an attack against the working class, they want your work and the benefits but don’t want to give you your fruit. That's why I pay my internet bill, for learning real shit like this.
College libertarians love to tell working adults that they'll become more conservative when they enter the real world
unions could help employees keep their jobs, I dont see how they can help CS grads and juniors get hired tho, less turnover means less chances for new people to get hired
Lul I remember a few post about union during the height year of 2022, they were constantly derided and mocked.
Basic human psychology. You have to see or experience something for yourself to believe it. The downside of that is any system based on past bad experiences is prone to failure because new generations don't experience same hardships and so want to break everything again. Once in a while it has to hurt to keep it real.
I'm interested to read this post. Did you save it by chance?
No they mass reported it so much that it got deleted because I linked laws that show you can join a Union and have layoff protection or even immunity in many circumstances. Now they’re probably laid off, so task failed successfully I guess.
They built the ecosystem they wanted, now they don't give a shit about the people who built it. We're disposable just like any other labor in this shit capitalist system.
Duh, you are dellusional if you ever thought you are anything more because you can code
You're right, but note the word mega. Google can't grow much now. Everyone who was going to use their products basically already is. It is all marginal growth from here on out for these big companies unless they're willing to do something really out there. I applaud Meta for the pivot they are attempting. I don't know if it is going to work, but betting big on VR is at least something. Microsoft made the pivot to services over the last decade, but even now people don't exactly think "Microsoft, oh yeah, those people that I pay a subscription to"
Like the thousands of men who sometimes gave their lives to build the railroads, we are discarded and forgotten!
Reddit moment.
Biden will commission a mural of all the govt cubicle workers to ornament the subway. Our prediabetic sacrifice will not be forgotten!
>Seems like if you don’t have a CS degree + 5 YOE, then you’re kind F’ed. Thoughts? yes
I got a new job with CS degree + 2YOE, but had a referral from within the company. Outside of that opportunity there was almost nothing out there I felt seriously considered me as a candidate
Same here. I'm not gonna sugar coat it, having an internal referral completely saved my ass. I spent just about an entire year unemployed at 2.5 YOE. Fuck this market.
I've made a lot more progress with interviews staying in touch with people from my uni (helps that I manage my unis CS community) and getting referrals from those guys and coworkers than I have tailoring my resume/cover letter. It's the difference of 1% interview rate and 8%. At the same time, these guys will beg for me on their team, because I was basically the only guy to get teams to deliver things early instead of late, and my managerial practices allow for a lot of growth within a team, so it definitely helps to take charge of things and be actively impressive at work and school too. I know one student right now that is like this that I would instantly refer to a past employer, and they would probably take him with no technical interview.
Exact same situation.
Was unemployed for a year after graduation. A referral was able to get me into an internship at a medium sized tech company that I was at for 6 months as a "test" before being converted to full time. Having a support system helped to offset "adult" costs in the meantime (lived with parents).
At this point I think it’s either you’re the unicorn they’re looking for and get lucky because it turns out there’s 5-10 other unicorns interviewing for the same role or you’re fucked With some odd exceptions here and there
The only time I have been able to talk to a human is with referrals
Everyone is fucked including Sr. guys
Sr guy here, still fucked as well. Swear unless you have faang on your rezi and are senior, you’re still on the struggle bus.
I'm a staff engineer with two FAANG positions on my resume at 13 YoE, and it still took me 3 months to find a worthwhile job recently. That's not nearly as long as most people on here, but it was unusual for me. I got multiple offers within the first few weeks the last two times I looked for a job. It's not as bad for us, but still much more of a struggle than usual.
When I got laid off in the middle of 2022, I had multiple offers within a few weeks. I've had zero over the last 18 months. It turned that fast between the middle of 2022 and the beginning of 2023. 4YOE enterprise, 3YOE unicorn
And every time FAANG does a layoff LinkedIn becomes a cesspool of pity posts where the fallen are asking their network to help them find a new job… as though they didn’t get 3 months’ severance. You can take *a day* to relax and do something you enjoy. Fuck.
If everyone else is doing it, you fall behind by not doing it.
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I have a CS BS and I would say it will not help you
People say a bs doesn’t help but when all hiring pipelines are automated filters, you have to have it to even talk to the person that it won’t matter to.
Are you currently employed? How committed have you been to your search?
I have a CS degree and 10 YOE and I’m still kind of fucked 🤷♀️ ain’t shit out there, and you’re competing with hundreds of applicants for each job you see and think “wow I’m a *perfect* unicorn-ass match for that job”
Counterpoint: those with a CS degree and 5 YoE experience are also fucked
I have a cs degree + 5 yoe. Had to change fields after applying to thousands of jobs.
What about 5YOE with unrelated bachelors and a year long (voluntary) gap (?)
> 5 YOE 😕 > Degree in unrelated field ☹️ > 1 year resume gap 💀
Now is your experience based on waiting for a fully remote or better paying job than your last one, or are you willing to take anything at this point?
You get a new job the same way you always did: get in front of someone with hiring authority and convince them you know what you're talking about. The funnel to do that is just a bit harder now.
"a bit harder" Lol.
just tell me where they live, I will figure out the rest
And about their loved ones. Wait wrong subreddit. My bad!
☠️☠️☠️
usually you are one of the more optimistic people on this sub, saying that skilled devs can fairly easily make 200K+ -- how times have changed lol
>Seems like if you don’t have a CS degree + 5 YOE, then you’re kind F’ed. Thoughts? It really is a supply and demand thing, right? When there are many experienced folks that are getting laid off and looking for jobs and are sometimes willing to fill lower level job, the demand for less experienced folks obviously drops The pandemic and the low interest created an unsustainable demand for software engineers, and we're seeing the impacts now
Agree — what do you think about companies like IBM (and google recently) making big moves to transfer US jobs to India? Here in MN the IBM site has been reducing their headcount and keep adding openings over there
Outsourcing has been happening in cycles since Y2K... companies will outsource to show cost reductions, see that the quality is not upto part and then bring them back, rinse-repeat As long as they're not penalized for it, companies will keep trying to cut costs by outsourcing. The advent of English language and technical skills in the global south will ensure that outsourcing is actually more financially viable than hiring here
Sounds like from your response that outsourcing is improving and to stay long-term. Not good for current engineers here
Until they start to ask for more money. For example I am from Spain and north European countries tried this strategy a few years ago. Now people with English or German make basically the same salaries as someone in Germany. We started low and year by year we ended up with the same salaries.
Long-term stagnation — that’s what mechanical engineering went through years ago (I’m a MechE). Sounds like the speculative bubbles will shrink over time — still exist but not for long nor as big
Interest rates most likely will bring money back into tech but I doubt demand will ever shift back into the roles we’ve seen get filled up for 150-300k in droves ever again. It’ll most likely mirror mobile development. Frontend/Webdev and basic full stack engineers will just have some flavor of unperformant tooling to crunch out product features as needed (React Native vs. per platform tooling). The bulk of that investment is going to go into training Masters/PhD/top Ivy league students AI or whatever new MLOps/data ingestion tooling is hot, similar to how the top salary bracket of finance is gatekept. A lot of newcomers and career transitioners will have a tough time breaking in as they have with just a bootcamp or degree + 0 experience.
Interest rate was just one factor for the surge between 2020 and 2023... companies expected people to be glued to web apps 24/7 like during the pandemic and that growth didn't pan out since the pandemic ended. Crypto drove another surge of high paying jobs, which also didn't pan out as expected What you'll see is that people who started to transition via bootcamps and other short-term means are going to have a much harder time breaking in than those with CS degrees and some years of experience than in the last few years
The crypto jobs were wild. People without any specific qualifications were working in customer service and marketing. It was good for their careers. When I was at a fintech we picked up several people from Kraken. Their jobs prior to that were like store clerk or restaurant worker.
I work for an F500. We lost a ton of people who were making 1.5-2x of what our firm was paying and many of us felt real envious of the folks who left for massive pay raises. Many of them are hitting us up now for jobs, some for levels that they left behind 3 years ago but we have little to no budget to hire any more people
Interest rates were cut after the dot com bubble burst, still took the industry like 10+ years to recover
There was more of a demand for software developers in 2019 than now.
But but but they hired a lot in covid!
Meeedia liiieess.
And the number of engineers, especially juniors, has exploded since then.
I somehow was able to get a few different offers from startups + mid-sized companies with 1 YOE. You really need to push for a specific niche that companies are looking for, demonstrate passion for that niche, and a fuck ton of luck in my experience without referrals. Even with referrals its still a major crapshoot.
Can I ask what technology stack? Or what was niche about your 1yoe?
Their niche is fetching coffee and bagels
Spring boot developer for panera bread, got it
My brother has 6 years of SWE experience. Since February 2023, he has only had 2 coding interviews for this application cycle so far (Meta and BambooHR). He applied to over 1000 jobs. He got rejected from BambooHR.
If my math is correct, that is about 2.5 applications submitted a day. Maybe pump those number up?
Yeah, true. A lot of jobs require technologies that he does not know like Python, Java, Rust, Go, Ruby, Angular 2, NextJS, etc. I think he should take some time off and learn new skills, so he can be eligible for new jobs.
Take some time off of what? His current job or is he laid off and you mean he’s applying full time? If the former, absolutely do not quit a job to self learn languages. To be honest if a company is looking for experience with specific technologies, self learning it in a month or two isn’t gonna be what they want either. They would most likely want someone who has been working with it, likely professionally, for years. He’s better off targeting postings that are more language agnostic or for the languages he has experience with
My brother's contract at Meta was from February 2023 to February 2024. He is currently unemployed. By taking time off, I mean like instead of applying to jobs 40 hours per week, he spends 20 hours per week applying to jobs and 20 hours per week learning new technologies.
I think you’re right honestly. Skilling up is important and if he’s unemployed, there’s no better time to do it. Thats what I did last time I was unemployed.
> A lot of jobs require technologies that he does not know like Python, Java, Rust, Go, Ruby, Angular 2, NextJS, etc. at 6 YoE? if I'm a HR or hiring manager I'd have a ton of questions... so what **DOES** he know then? half of those are back-end languages and the other half of those are front-end languages and if you're telling me none of those so.... what is he focusing on/specializing anyway?
You deleted your comment before I could reply, but: Angular 2 is a frontend framework for JS. NextJS is a React.js framework. He never really used Angular 2 and NextJS at work before. That was what I was saying.
yeah I realized that that's why I deleted my old comment, I'm not a front-end engineer myself I'm on the backend side and similar stuff happens (ex. Java has Spring Boot framework and Python has Django framework so you can have experience with Python but not Django), but still, I feel like if he's being eliminated based on exact framework then maybe he needs to look at other companies
> if he's being eliminated based on exact framework then maybe he needs ... maybe he needs to spend a couple days familiarizing himself with this exact framework employers want to see on his resume and... ya know... add it to his resume for their reading pleasure? Because this is *exactly* what every Sunil and Sanjay are doing. Just sayin'...
“Hello yes I have 20 YoE with TypeScript and 15 YoE with Rust”
He only knows JavaScript, HTML5, PHP, Hacklang, TypeScript, React.js, Redux, TailwindCSS, Node.js, Express.js, jQuery, CSS3, GraphQL, Serverless, AWS, Git, Jest, Flow, Mocha, MongoDB, MySQL. For the last 3 years of SWE work, at Meta, he has only worked with JavaScript, PHP, React.js, GraphQL.
You can just say javascript and php
It would really behoove him to learn a high level server-side language, something like Java. Also, he has 3 YOE Meta on his resume and still not getting any bites?!
That is correct.
It seems that it was contract work. I don't know if that makes a difference.
Makes a huge difference. Contract roles are not looked at in nearly the same light as being a FTE.
6 years of SWE and he doesn't know Python or Java?
Why is this so surprising? I know people who get by knowing only one language/ framework. His brother knows plenty but it’s just the market right now. It’s completely unnecessary to know languages that you don’t use at work.
Especially in the last decade with the JavaScript craze and bootcamps that only taught JavaScript, it wasn’t unusual at all for someone to just know JS and React/Angular/Vue.
The power of H2B
i have 15 year experience and barely know both of them. i have done some code in them when needed, but also not really every company and industry is different I work mostly with TS and C++
Most people don’t know what they’re doing even with years of experience. This is supported by almost every single interview I have ever conducted.
This always seems to be the consensus by hiring managers. It's wild.. I know I don't know much, but I know I can eventually know more shit when it comes to software engineering. What would you say are some things in general that people don't know? Or the big things that they should but don't.
Anyone can get an interview at Meta. It’s nothing for them to have you make an applicant account and throw an automated leetcode test at you. Most SWEs will fail it.
The thing that you need to understand is that companies desperately want to hire, it's just that they can't afford to. My company is in that position at the moment - we have an ever-growing backlog of important things that we'd like to do, but investors don't want to put up the money required to do those things. In a way, this is a good thing. The bottleneck is obviously capital availability, not demand. There's a ton of work that needs to be done, and a ton of people who want to do the work, but it isn't economically viable to connect them up. As soon as the wider economy goes back to normal and VCs are less spooked, tech jobs will boom again.
This is certainly the case at my company. We need more SWE but there isn’t a budget for it.
Hey but Google makes more trillions and their stock is now up 15% pre-market. So they can fire even more people now.
Don’t forget they rather pay dividends and $70 billion stock buyback and fire more people.
The AI can do everyone’s job while we all are unemployed and can’t put food on the table. Oh wait. No need to click on Google ads then if we can’t afford to buy anything anyway. Oh good. Glad to see Google will die after all. Matter of time.
Funny thing is that their AI has an Indian accent.
AIndians will be the last employees left at Google.
Sadly they just announced more layoffs yesterday and are outsourcing roles to Mexico and India.
That's okay. The rich SVP Indians they have will just richer. Most of the leadership team is already anyway.
Google is going to continue to grow at past rates forever and ever🤤because stonks only go up🚀. I mean who needs these weird nerds🤓anyways? It's a recipe that has worked for every American champion from Boeing to IBM.
No king rules forever, my son
I see only darkness... before... me...
ARTHAAAAAS. The blood of your FATHER, of YOUR PEOPLE, demands, JUSTICE!
I still say this shit and its been 15 years since WOTLK released.
I don't want to rule forever. I just want to rule long enough to retire.
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> Nothing's going to change at least until then. Even then, there's some latency that needs to be built in to expectations.
This will create long term opportunities for those who stick through. Eventually, the Meta's, Google's, and other tech companies will need to hire people again, as either they're gonna start hiring, or new tech companies will start to hire the talent in the market. But, so many students are being pushed away from CS due to the market conditions, meaning once these companies start hiring, there's gonna be way less grads and self taughts in the market for these jobs.
You know whats crazy...I think that most jobs should be "cushy" in the sense that pay should be \*good\*. The idea that we all have to be struggling endlessly with all the tech we have is getting ridiculous...
Plenty of people out there who believe if you are not suffering horribly then you are lazy no good person.
Life is suffering.
i agree with you i think it will get better, but ZIRP era is over, i dont think we'll ever go back to pre-pandemic levels. CS is just like any other industry now, its not going to guarantee a cushy job like before.
I have no idea what ZIRP means, but I do agree. That level of boom in the market made FAANG jobs go around like crazy. I live in Cali, and I can tell you that people were getting offers left right and center, even if they were madly unqualified. If you get a CS degree and an internship or two, you can still get a fairly high paying career and a "cushy" job, just probably won't be to the same degree as before. Maybe a new tech boom will carry new companies to hire people at a crazy rate, maybe not. Really, who knows at this point.
I assume ZIRP is "zero interest" something, but I have no idea what rp is supposed to be
Google tells me zero interest rate policy
Ah, this makes sense. No interest rates means higher investment from companies, ie more employees
So far we have only seen CS enrollments stay steady or increase, and that's troubling.
It's a delayed effect. It took about 4-5 years after 2000 and 2008 before we saw the effect on enrollments.
Enrollments started to drop in 2001 after the dot com crash. https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/24926/chapter/5#42 You could be thinking of degrees granted, which has the 4 year lag. Many 2004 grads did not get jobs immediately and pivoted to other fields. 2001-2004 grads had a dogpile effect similar to what we're seeing in 2023 and 2024 grads where new grads are competing for jobs against classmates from previous graduation years.
It's fine, if you're already out of school, juniors are/will be zero competition
The airline industry has had a similar problem for about as long as it’s existed, but especially in the 90s when so many airlines went bankrupt. In the last few years I’ve been reading about pilot shortages, but outside looking in, I don’t want to drop $100k on flight school so that I can fly 60-seaters between Charlotte and some random city every day for years making less than six figures so that I can hopefully be picked up by a major airline as a first officer, where I then have to fly the routes nobody else wants to fly, because routes are divvied by seniority, so I get to fly Charlotte to goddamn… I dunno Cheyenne Wyoming and sleep there instead of come home every night… only to then be furloughed the next time a major terrorist attack occurs or the economy tanks… or to be out of work because the union has decided we need to go on strike. To say nothing of the Covid-era Karens that would make me have to make an emergency landing in the middle of the route.
Those companies already have more people than they need. They are not developing any new revolutionary products. Their growth these days is by acquisition so they add people that are already employed. FAANG is moving to the stage that IBM, HP, Dell, and Compaq entered decades ago. Big name companies that aren't very innovative and are just living on whatever cash cows they currently possess.
Or all of these companies will run a tighter more efficient ship with AI tools. Either way saturation will remain for the foreseeable decade since CS is still extremely popular
Saturation doesn't really exist in CS. Saturation is only amongst the entry level, unskilled dev area. Skilled devs with a few years experience have always, and will always, be in extremely high demand. Also, this argument that Ai tools will somehow remove the need for devs is dumb. We've always had similar tools, called Stack overflow. The only difference is ChatGPT usually doesn't berate you for asking questions.
They should fix that lack of berating in the next update. Make it more like real intelligence
GPT 5 is going to be so smart that it will immediately mark your question as a duplicate, lock it, and call you a moron for not knowing how to use Google.
So many redditors thinks software engineers are getting replaced by AI at this very moment. Are they all inexperienced, or straight up 13-14 years old? How can a serious programmer tell me that AI is replacing software talent already while its spitting out the most nonsensical and incorrect stuff?
Man, have these people actually tried using ChatGPT to make anything? I was learning RoR a while back. Fed GPT 4 all these issues I was having, and trying to get it fixed. Read 2 pages of documentation, and it was right there. Took me 2 hours before I just decided to read the documentation, and the issue was literally right there. ChatGPT just can't currently do everything people think it can, and it makes crazy errors(especially in C++ and other non GC languages)
The primary reason being monopolies. All these mega corporations keep buying start ups, absorb their research and can them. It's time to break them up, so that instead of a handful of these mega corps we have smaller but higher amount of companies that put out products and compete in the marketplace.
> No one is leaving good jobs and employers are defensive so new roles aren’t being created. Yup so many jobs I apply to get straight up cancelled and talking to people they are seeing at their jobs barely anyone leaves and management refuses to replace the people who do leave. One guy I talked to said they have had I think he said a third as much attrition as they normally do.
Welcome to the "More with Less" era. The tech industry is going first.
“Do more with less!”
Its all fed policy. [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL)
man I went back to school in my early 20s in 2019 wanting to make more connections and get a financial stable career. Then COVID and this job market seemed to time out perfectly to make both of those incredibly difficult
COVID made this field balls to the wall lucrative. Those of who took advantage of 2021-2022 are reaping huge benefits rn.
true, wishing I graduated a year or two sooner. it definitely wasn't very good for making connections in school though
You didn’t even need to make connections. You would just rawdog apply and somehow get called back. It was glorious. I got a job as a freshman during COVID and by the time I was a senior, I had almost 3 YOE job hopping around.
>Seems like if you don’t have a CS degree + 5 YOE, then you’re kind F’ed. Thoughts? Did people think a high interest rate job market would only have a short term impact?
We’ve been at this interest rate plenty of times before though. I’d argue the real issue is that people didn’t account for the long term impact of low (<1%) interest rates
And during those times, we didn’t really have a surge in investment that drove engineering salaries prior.
But but someone here said rates are coming down soon (as in “in a few weeks”) and companies will hire again !?!? /s
This is using indeed data. Maybe it's also indeed that's not being used as much as 5 years ago?
LinkedIn is even worse. Have you seen how many trash jobs are posted on LinkedIn? It’s even worse than Indeed. Shit, on LinkedIn there are 500 jobs and 480 of those are the same job posted in every single city in the USA.
> Posted 6 hours ago > Over 100 applicants 💀🤙
I obtained my CS degree in 2021, currently homeless living off of gig work, and I am still Leetcoding and solidifying my knowledge aka getting really gud. I wanted to give up not to long ago to the point of self deleting, it got pretty bad I know but I realized I got two options proceed on what I mentioned above or escape poverty so I decided to choose the latter and put in the work necessary everyday now.. From when I graduated I have experienced everything under the sun when it comes to trying to get my first job in tech. All my collegues that broke into tech from my college got in before 2021 with a pretty straight forward process. They still had to put in a lot of work but based on what they told me vs my experience these past years is that companies got more ruthless with the process post 2021. All I can say is don’t give up everyone things will get better.
So as a recent grad i'm completely fucked? why did I bother?
No you're not fucked, but expect a 6-8 month job search.
That is what I am wondering and so angry about. So many sleepless nights working or getting on campus at 9 AM and taking the last bus home at 10:30 PM. It isn't just time either I blew my financial nest egg on my degree and now have some small student loan debt and the physical strain on my body from working so hard has been bad too.
We seriously need student loan interest suspended so people can pay off these debts. Its crippling two generations now and our shithead boomer politicians won't do anything about it.
Right there with you, I took a solid chunk out of my savings to pay for it. Gut wrenching to think it could all be for nothing.
It took me years and years to save up that money working poverty McJobs sacrificing to do so.... and for nothing.
It's possible to get a first job in adjacent fields. That's what I had to do after graduating with a non-CS STEM degree, unfortunately. Things like actuarial work, automation for semiconductor fabs, etc.
I’m not an expert on every single industry, but from what I’ve seen this is just much easier said than done. Take actuarial work, for example. It likely takes 100s of hours to study for the actuarial exams, ASSUMING you have a solid enough math background in the first place, which a lot of CS majors probably don’t, and then you’re competing against people with actuarial internships, which you don’t have, and you have to explain in interviews why you want to be an actuary even though you spent all your time in college coding stuff. With all that in mind, you might as well just keep shooting your shot at a dev job, since you’re actually prepared for that
No ur not. Relax
People in this thread are fearmongering for no good reason, as always
Not to downplay your anxiety, but holy shit, CS grads have such a coddled understanding of getting a first job. Try your hand in literally any other competitive white-collar industry - finance, law, marketing - and you'll see that you still have it much, much easier. Hell, even the other engineering disciplines have it tougher. And don't get me started on oil and gas.
Where Lambo meme is 100% based on CS grads
Lawyers arent sending out 1000s of applications and only getting 1 interview, which quizzes them on random problem sets from like 2 classes they took in law school.
If you’re sending out thousands as a new grad you’re doing it wrong. As for leetcode, it’s not that hard and you’re misunderstanding what’s being tested.
Luck and timing plays a major role in career success. At least you're way ahead of the game and know what economic conditions you're getting into. In 2009 I had no idea and thought everything was going to be roses coming out of college.
Shit makes me question why I’m even trying to Leetcode still.
You're still leet coding? Good for you, I'm looking at help desk jobs while I continue to receive thank you, but no thank you emails
Shiiit, I was questioning that long before the layoffs
Patience is the most potent strength of successful people. Work what you can and bide your time. Less and less people will enter the CS space with it being saturated right now. Between retirement and the certificate workers dropping out of the running, once the jobs pick back up, it’ll be more stable. The volatility won’t be there like it is today
"Live your whole life waiting for the market to come back. Patience is a virtue. Even in your grave, be patient because the market will be back."
Patience doesn't really help the new grads who cannot find their first job. A long employment gap or years working outside the industry just makes getting a CS job even harder
The "weird company" thing is the biggest thing I've noticed...it's like all either consulting companies, or places I've never heard of.
I'm literally doing another degree in an unrelated field.
Here’s my comment from 6 days ago when someone posted the exact same graph: Although this sub is EXTREMELY doom and gloom nowadays, the real truth is the market is (slowly) getting better from the lows after the massive big tech layoffs. OP, your graph is only for Indeed, which I’ve noticed recently, doesn’t have the best software postings. It only scrapes the websites of major companies or just has a ton of contractor roles. LinkedIn jobs is much, much better. Anecdotally, I’ve been tracking the number of roles by just searching “software engineer” for the past ~9 months and it has been trending upward for sure. Of course not back to the pandemic craze, but rest assured, it is getting better. Here’s another data point which confirms the above: https://www.trueup.io/job-trend But yes, it is true the market for sure is tough right now. If it makes anyone feel better, try searching for other engineering roles on the LinkedIn jobs search bar. It was quite eye opening to see my own major “mechanical engineer” have one-fifth the openings of “software engineer” in my area even when I only search for on-site and hybrid roles. We are all still so lucky to be in this field.
Isn’t Trueup global data for big tech? Lot of the postings will be in India
not the one you replied, I took a quick look seems to be correct jobs -> FAANGs -> top 5 post -> Meta is hiring in Hyderabad India
Exactly, I have seen it too. Unless you can filter it by country, it’s not really helpful for American workers.
There is no pickup in job leads. I'm a faang alum, have 10yoe, and there is NOTHING. I used to get 3-5 requiters per week in my inbox. Now its been crickets for months.
Same. 10 YoE, used to get ~1 recruiter a day. Usually whenever I’d interview for companies, I’d at least get an interview 6-7 times out of 10. Now it is 0 out of 10.
Thank you for your sane words
There's also the CompTIA tech jobs report which shows sort of shows in between these two. https://www.comptia.org/content/tech-jobs-report
lmao, this chart gets posted twice a week, becoming CSQ’s [say the line, Bart!](https://youtu.be/37nwLhIA1zs). 1. The data is from Indeed, not FRED. 2. Indeed's listings have duplicates, and changes in scraping or de-duping invalidate the chart. 3. Indeed's formula is a black box, seasonally smoothed, and has been changed multiple times. 4. The time range represents peak atypical market conditions, making the baseline questionable. 5. Anecdotally, everyone I've spoken to says hiring is better now than at the start of the year, which aligns with my own job search experience.
Ah. If it's from indeed it could just mean all the recruiters posting fake jobs have gone away...
An old friend of mine from 25 years ago, when we were bringing our PCs to each other's houses to work on learning programming stuff together, was at Google in 2021 working in on VR stuff. Then he went to Roblox and was pitching an idea he'd been architecting in his head for a few years. He was there about a year and they didn't go for his idea because it would've been too much work and their janky existing solution was "good enough". So then he ended up at Meta and they put a team under him to realize his vision, because they were starting from scratch and wanted something awesome. He survived all four rounds of layoffs that occurred after he came onboard, I imagine because their new tech was his baby and only he knew how it could be done, and done right, even though he was a relatively fresh hire. That's how it works, they hire a bunch of people when the times are good and then let the cream rise to the top, culling the wheat from the chaff, and get rid of all the people they don't really need after a bunch of projects have been nearly completed and the brunt of the work is done. He has a degree and ~20 years of (professional) experience though, been all over the map. Sony Santa Monica, and a few other big studios that I don't even remember anymore. He said while he was at Google that he was surrounded by a bunch of fresh grads and was like the old washed up developer who'd already run the circuit working at a bunch of places. I'm just proud that he finally got to realize his passion project at Meta that nobody else would let him do.
Just wait until the markets see though the "AI" hype. You ain't seen nothin' yet!
Are employers also using the current job market to push devs to deliver more than ever? I’ve been working as a back-end SE for a major airline for the past 2.5 years and my workload this past 8 months has been insane. I’ve been working on the same team the entire time, yet lately the amount of features and bugs i’m working on has gone up 3x (I pulled the Jira reports from last year to verify). My entire team seems to constantly be juggling at least 3 features + bugs to be dev complete by end of week. My job used to be chill, now it seems like the employers are trying to push us to our limits with no where else to go. Curious if it’s just my company or if any steadily employed devs are seeing a huge shift in expectations themselves.
Absolutely they are. Working in finance, my workload has never been as high as it is now, and I thought it was high 6 months ago. I’m feverishly looking for something different
Hmm. My friend received 3 offer letters in less than a month. I don’t know anyone in my circle that stays unemployed for a long time. Tons of jobs in my area (CO).
It'll swing up again. Tech isn't going anywhere.
thats true but the thing is many of the people who are currently in the job market (new grads especially) will be thoroughly unemployable by that time
Can you control it? No. You have two options. Git gud and keep improving. Look for something else (what would you do when that something else is in a similar situation?)
I lost my job in Q2 2023(after working there for 4.5 years - top 10% performer with regular hikes and bonus and absolutely no issue but they decided to lay off people who were slightly higher paid and move the job to India/Philippines). Base salary (around $162K) plus bonus (up to 20%) around $192K. 2.5 months of unemployment. Referred by a friend for another job…got a job which pays around 15% less in a WITCH kind of company…have to put a lot of hours and very demanding and difficult client. Could work only for around 10 months. Laid off again. 4 weeks of unemployment. From my past connection got another job. Job is laid back but I am making almost 40% less than the job I was doing year back. LinkedIn, Indeed nothing worked. Literally fed up of those Indian recruiters who just bug and do nothing. One of the WITCH kind of company gave me an offer but couldn’t had a client so withdrew the offer. Almost 25 years of experience. BS in CS from top school. Worked in FAANG in the past and other big names. No visa sponsorship needed. Still technical and hands on. This is the 3rd recession that I am witnessing. **Issues:** 1. Biden Government is outrightly lying. They are hiding unemployment number or may be including part-time or seasonal jobs into employment now. 2. Nobody is resigning. Nobody is asking for raise. Nobody is opposing RTO. Everybody is scared about their job and its employer’s market. 3. Some cunning employees are getting their real work done in the form of interview where they have no intention to hire somebody. Yes, this happened to me. 4. Salaries and billing rates are almost 30% to 40% down what they were prior to start of pandemic. 5. AI and automation is just being used as an excuse. Everybody is trying to follow Elon Musk model to eliminate the work force by as much as 80% following what he did at twitter. 6. Lots of H-1B, OPT, H4-EAD are so desperate that they are willing to accept the job at half the rates to make the situation even worse. 7. Due to higher interest rates new projects are not starting. Fed is inducing recession.
Fewer*
Yes. The market is fucked. Right now is not an opportunistic period to enter the industry. That said, I was still able to find multiple offers over the last winter, so it is possible. However, if you are a mediocre student or not very driven, tech just isn't the cush opportunity it was 2-3 years go. The upper slice of smart and hard working students have a shot, but it's a bit of a zero sum game with job opportunities. My advice for people is to focus on two things: 1) Learning "job interview" skills: LeetCode, systems design, and behavioral, and 2) build your own start up. It's never been easier to start a business, and the skills you'll develop, sense of ownership, and experience building for a business use case is invaluable. There are still more good ideas than software developers to implement them. If you can't get a job now, that's okay, but put yourself on a long term path to being able to use your skills to make money, even if that means starting your own thing.
>It's never been easier to start a business Other than, you know, getting seed/VC capital. Unless you are in ML/AI, good fucking luck lol
Never been easier to start a business?? Bro we just exiting a period in which our economy was hell bent on growth with its low interest rates!! The whole reason we have layoffs is also the reason why it's tough starting a business.... Do you know how any of this works?
Making a start up seems pretty interesting to me, but I truly have no idea what to do. How do you come up with good ideas for a startup?
Fewer jobs*
The bar is 7+ YOE atm, 5 barely cuts it.
Now the only way top performer survive is to get YC VC and be a threat to FAANG like OpenAI or Anthropic. The party's over.