Same. I have a low paying white collar job that I don’t enjoy. I thought I would start learning development just in time or AI and then layoffs. It makes me feel really sick and scared for the future.

A lot of posts and videos have been put up about how it will be fine. That AI won’t take jobs and even with the layoffs, they say head counts are still up, but it feels pretty hopeless to me.

I don’t know what else to do, so I’m just going to keep trying and keep pushing myself to be a better dev. Maybe I’ll get there someday.

Same. I’m literally bad luck Brian reincarnated.

Bouncing between high paid tech work and driving forklifts and lifting boxes every few years is not fun

I remember seeing articles on habr about unionization and that it is better done now when it is eazy.

Always will be

Is this a joke? Software development regularly comes out on top as one of the best jobs. Good pay, relatively low stress, and good work life balance.

Hmmm. I’ve seen threads on social media from experienced devs having been unemployed for a year now and rather devastated by it.

Interest rates were low, which made banks lend money very cheaply. It also led to a lot of money being put in the stock market, which made it go up.

Companies used that money to, in part, hire people. A lot of people. The stock market doing well also means businesses try to grow, because everyone is spending more money.

Interest rates are starting to come back up. This means loans are more expensive, which means there’s less cash available. It also means there’s less money in the stock market.

Less cash on hand and lower stock value makes businesses want to cut costs, and people are very expensive, particularly in the tech sector.

Additionally, commercial real estate is running into major problems: people don’t want or need to work in offices.
This means the contracts are being allowed to expire, and less money for the large companies that own the properties.

A lot of money is invested in these companies. Anticipation of them doing badly makes companies fear an economic downturn.

So with less money available, less tolerance for risk in the stock market, and a fear of a significant economic upset, companies are looking to cut expenses, and people hired because cash was cheap and risk was okay are easy to justify cutting.

They ideally would like to let go of people they can do without, keep their stock price high, and when the market bottoms out spend the cash they can justify with their high price to buy viable companies at a discount.

The industry is experiencing historic shrinkage post COVID due to unsustainable growth during COVID.

Because the big tech companies are laying off, all the tech companies have decided they too need to layoff people to lower costs, improve profits, report better earnings, etc.

Fast forward to next year when they’re up shit creek because their skeleton crews can’t possibly do All The Things. Executives retire, take huge bonuses; repeat.

The Silicon Valley companies massively over hired.

Using twitter as an example, they used to publicly disclose every site and their entire tech stack.

I have to write proposals and estimates and when Elon decided to axe half the company of 8000 I was curious…

I assigned the biggest functional team I could (e.g. just create units of 10 and plan for 2 teams to compete on everything). I assumed a full 20 person IT department at every site, etc… Then I added 20% to my total and then 20% again for management.

I came up with an organisation of ~1200, Twitter was at 8000.

I had excluded content moderators and ad sellers because I had no experience in estimating that but it gives a idea of the problem.

I think the idea was to deny competition people but in reality that kind of staff bloat will hurt the big companies

Startups need a lot of capital flowing in because they don’t turn a profit early on. Traditional smaller businesses usually don’t have this sort of funding because the reward is lower. With tech, there’s a strong chance that company could become public or could get bought out. Or it could stay private and eventually become profitable. Regardless, they need investments made so they can continue to operate to eventually deliver a valuable product that will possibly offer significant returns to the investors.

The pandemic happened, which led to several outcomes. For one, a lot of boomers retired. Boomers were earning a lot of money. Then they stopped earning money and started dipping into their savings. This had a strong reaction. Capital became more scarce. Don’t believe me? Look at what banks are paying for 12-month CDs and the interest rates in savings accounts. It’s insanely high compared to two or three years ago.

This trend likely won’t last forever. Gen Xers and millennials have been moving into vacated roles by the boomers and are now earning more than before. They’re able to generate excess capital that investors can use to fund startups. There’s no shortage of innovative ideas in the western world, but there is a shortage of capital.

Not every county in the west is going to recover the same way. The boomer generation is the largest generation in history. Not every country kept having kids at a relatively similar pace. Typically, developing countries have much higher population growth. As countries industrialize, we see certain trends like both men and women joining the workforce and people moving to the cities for work. People generally have fewer kids with these trends as they are more focused on their careers and have less room to raise them. Nobody wants to raise a child in a one-bed apartment!

The United States is one of the rare exceptions. With a trend of consistent domestic population growth and immigration, the U.S. has avoided the fallout from rapid industrialization. Because of that, we’re seeing some interesting trends:

• Under Biden, the post-pandemic POTUS, the U.S. has entered a prolonged period of rapid onshoring of manufacturing jobs. The addition of factories, distribution centers, and more have been increasing exponentially.

• Germany, Italy, South Korea, Japan, and other similar economies have seen the impacts of a shrinking younger population and a ballooning senior population. These nations will likely keep the design of their products onshore, but will send manufacturing offshore. The U.S. and Mexico are the biggest winners here, but Mexico is at a disadvantage compared to the U.S. due to a greater difficultly in maintaining infrastructure.

• Emerging technologies make the production of goods in the U.S. more feasible. Advancements in AI, robotics, and renewable energy will make production in the U.S. more logical despite the higher wages its workers command because less workers will be needed, or other savings in the realm of security, stability, and access to transportation infrastructure offset that factor.

There will not only be excess capital generation in the U.S., but there will also be excess capital flowing into the U.S. It’s also not to say that tech jobs will never recover outside of the U.S., but the reality is that we are in a capital shortage for a specific, acute reason. Less people of working age able to not only fill the vacated roles left by boomers, but also difficultly in paying the pensions and benefits offered to retirees. This will dry up even more capital in those particular nations.

Tech jobs have always been finicky. That won’t change going forward. But if you’re in the U.S., there’s a strong chance you’ll see things bounce back quicker than they will in other countries.

grinding, screeching noises coming from the engine room

To be fair, those are the normal TARDIS sounds.

On the other hand, Dr Who doesn’t have an engineering or SRE staff.

You sure? We don’t always have to poop in the toilet.

One thing I’ve learned in my time of DIY is that plumbing could never be a back up plan. Man I hate it and it stinks and cramped. Not easy work.

Sounds like a shitty job.

…I’ll see myself out.

That’s why I’ll never have kids.

This thread’s version of, “All lives matter” lol.

You think Twitter is the same as before Elon took over? ಠ_ಠ

This sounds like more wishful thinking than reality. Like what SWE roles are there that are union? I graduated right after the dotcom burst, with a Computer Engineering degree, I now work as a SWE, and I don’t know a single one of my peers that has entered a union.

Unions aren’t exactly a saving grace

I’ve never met a dev in a union. What companies have a union?

I left the US for less raw salary but better job security and living somewhere I like more (in most respects; nowhere is perfect). Still make way above average for Japan and have a great standard of living

Because the economy has added more than 300k jobs in 3 single months over the past year. If you go back to the beginning of 22, that number goes up to 9.

While 300k jobs sounds like a big number, represents a small fraction of our economy. It doesn’t even account for 0.2% of total employment. And that’s over a year.

That being said, I’m glad I snagged my job when I did and that I’m being treated like I’m excelling at it.

Unemployment is at record lows. Some sectors are hiring a lot more people than the tech sector is shedding. It’s not really complicated.

Job sectors come and go, grow and shrink. Imagine how silly I would sound if I said: “there is almost no work for horse cart builders but the gov says that unemployment is at record lows, how can this be?”

Just wanted to drop this update in here for anybody going through this now: I finally got a job offer, but it took over 1700 total applications, and 11 months! I hope you have had some luck in finding something since your original comment!

If people randomly drew your name out of a hat, on average you would have to apply to “the average number of applicants for positions you are applying for” number of jobs to get hired. Keep at it, some jobs see thousands of applicants.

700+ applications and multiple recruiting companies later and still only 3 interviews since May. With almost a decade of software development experience. It’s actually a little reassuring that I’m not alone here and it’s not just a problem with me. Best of luck in your search friend!