Has it got better at all where you are?
PS I know there's the monthly hiring HN threads here tomorrow.
Finding work is harder than 2008 and even harder than 2001. It's as bad as tech has ever seen.
For EMs, middle management is always the first to get culled. That was me. And there are about 10% or less EM roles to engineer roles.
No one has said it but my management years away from daily coding likely count against me.
What more, I'm seeing far fewer Staff+ roles now than in the past several years. Anecdotally, from a recent employer, I had the impression that company was attempting to hire fewer staff+ to (1) outsource more and (2) hire more people at lower levels and (3) both 1 and 2 together.
The net effect in the US is seeing many more "senior" roles (we love our title inflation in Tech where "senior" tends to mean "has more than 2 years experience") or extremely specialized roles where exceptionally few people would have the skill set at the required experience level.
The VCs and the bigger firms evidently were heavily leveraged in low interest rate loans. Raising rates meant less money to play with and lower profits. Employees are the biggest cost center so that's where companies cut.
Without significantly lower interest rates, I suspect Tech is going to experience something of a depression in terms of unemployed/under-employed software developers.
I bet they do, but when you get engaged again in SWE, I bet it haunts you still. I am thankfully employed and hoping to stay that way and ride out my final career years in my current org. Similarly I have been in tech nearing four decades but over the last 10 years made a conscious effort to exit technology management (was tired of managing people and all the BS that means) and moved into product management which I personally enjoy more.
I am often asked why I don’t show more ambition to lead people because of my past experience. Well, it’s because of my past experience.
I want to be responsible for services and code and mentoring people and not peoples' employment status.
As for the sluggishness, I listened to an interesting podcast called Marketplace[0] last night that said, at least according to the latest jobs numbers, we’re now in what you’d call a “normal” pre-pandemic market. The thing is, the market has been crazy the last few years, and that makes the current state of things feel worse than it really is for some. I can’t decide if I agree or not. I’m seeing postings at my LOE, at least.
However, I think all of this is also heavily dependent on YOE and skill level. AI is a compounding factor that, in combination with the outsourcing, means that people with less work experience are probably having a harder time catching a break.
[0] https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace/wheres-the-ai-...
In 2022 on Linkedin I got messages from recruiters at Google, Amazon, Uber, and many other companies, large and small.
I haven't gotten a message from any recruiter on Linkedin for over a year. Luckily I am working.
One data point, but it fits with what I've been seeing and hearing from others.
Last month around day 10 I made [this](https://i.imgur.com/uWoGaM3.png) taking note of reach outs. My personal anecdata, ofc...
Of course outsourcing existed before the pandemic, but the pandemic really made everyone get used to working remotely, so now there is hardly any difference working between devs in the same city vs thousands of miles away, as long as there is considerable time zone overlap. I've seen an explosion of outsourcing to LatAm and Eastern Europe (vs the Asian outsourcing of the early-to-mid 00s), and have worked with some fantastic devs in those locations. It makes it hard to justify hiring a fresh college grad in the US if you can get a great senior dev from Argentina for less money.
Just as a sidenote: I've been job searching up until July and always took a look at the Who is hiring threads and saw that most of remote jobs are still for Europe only if company is EU based and USA/Canada if they're USA based. Though don't know how representative are people hiring from this platform.
And this caught my attention as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/1edipfw/... considering it may be one of the most pessimistic communities out there. Haven't seen an optimistic post there for a while.
Here’s hoping he was right. Best of luck to all looking.
Specifically the last month of the quarter, except for June, is the best moment to start looking.
Financing decisions are made quarterly so projects normally start at the beginning of the quarter. The last month in the previous quarter is when recruitment KPIs begin to face deadlines.
This def makes sense in my experience. Fall was usually the most active period, with earl in the year (Jan + Feb) and mid summer (June + July) being the slowest.
We see the frustration on the part of candidates but hiring managers are pulling their hair out too. In many cases, they actually have a strong candidate they've worked with before that is fully qualified, but everyone now must go through the HR/Recruiter obstacle course without exception. Good matches between position and candidate are tossed aside by those in the wedge and there's nothing those at either end of the pipeline can do about it.
And yeah, it's due to government protection and monopoly power. Some country will eventually decide to work for its people and will become a hugely prosperous place out of nowhere, taking everyone by surprise. But everyone else will keep hearing that "it can't work that way here".
About 15 years ago, I went into tech to pay for kids in the city.
To some extent most of the jobs I find in tech seem to me to be societal busy work. And the people that make those jobs seem to take themselves a bit too seriously.
I’m considering moving back to trades work instead of finding another infra job.
I’ve had time to get my stuff sorted and looking at journey man level salaries I’m not making too much more in tech any more.
I’m not really sure I want to keep going in tech at this point.
I’m not sure if this is what you’re talking about, but people outside of the technical roles in this industry rarely seem to have the same curiosity and passion developers do. Is it easy to name other industries where this is true? CS is vast and young, and I’ve always found that exciting. The potential for new frontiers, even at lowly engineering applications like ours, made me want to do this work. Yet lots of managers lack even basic curiosity and sometimes make silly, bad decisions as a result. It can be hard to work alongside that.
Thanks. You're putting in words something that was bothering me but didn't manage to name.
Yes, lots of busy work at various levels, from switching to the latest framework to redecorating the website because we can, to actually many companies selling nothing meaningful.
And the more vacuous the work is, the more it starts to feel like a cult. You MUST use framework X or pattern Y or clean/agile/... practice du jour, otherwise you're not one of us.
Of course lots of office jobs are busywork by comparison to carpentry and farming.
I'd guess farmers also aren't playing politics, and gaming metrics, for promotions.
Farmers also reap what they sow, to so speak. And don't plan to job hop before the chickens come home to roost, on resume-driven-farming technology choices.
LinkedIn and Indeed's job boards are filled with much more spam and seem to have much less reliable search tools.
LinkedIn has restricted the ability to browse who works for a company so I'm having trouble finding recruiters to contact directly.
AngelList no longer appears to be a way for job seekers to connect with startups. I have no idea what's going on with this one.
Is anyone else noticing this? Has anyone found better alternatives?
I noticed people who were getting offers + interviews had work exp in big tech.
Also, could you elaborate on your back grounds + years of exp? Would be helpful info.
Almost 20 years startup experience.
Sorry don’t want to give more detail than that.
My personal observation is that there is a saturation of devs and companies are focused on saving cash so work will be tough to get for a bit. Eventually the market will sort itself and work will be more available.
Sucks for those that are unemployed - i was unemployed for 2 years so i know what it feels like. Best of luck.. things will eventually turn for the better, you just gotta ride it out
1) There is a strong Cargo Cult ideation in our industry. Hence every startup is looking for a React developer who also have experience with Kafka and BigQuery.. and .. and... . And when the followed cults like Tesla, Netflix, .... began to layoff, guess what? our little cargo cult followers began to layoff, because that is the way to become the next Uber,Tesla,Netflix,whatever....
2) Lot of MBA C-Suite admins have arrived to our industry. And this is bad. We are not more an isolated island where code reigns, defines our position inside the hierarchy and so on. Now, politics, friends, nice looking people rule our dens. We are the operatives, the Storm Z cannon fodder. For every one of us, there are 300 waiting in line to "do the job".
I would love to switch career path too. I’ve spent 6 years doing software development and vulnerability research in a heavily customer facing role, and would now like to look at something like solutions engineering. The reality is that all these companies likely have 100+ better qualified applicants, and there aren’t many companies who would like to take a gamble given the more attractive alternatives.
Don’t give up, I’m sure the right thing will come along! You’re not alone, if that’s any consolation at all.
I've mostly worked in/around web based applications from front end, to back end, to orchestration and security infrastructure. I've worked in eLearning (mostly Aerospace) and Banking more than other industries.
Edit: I have no formal education beyond high school.. I'm self taught and have spent 10-20 hours a week on average reading, learning, experimenting and generally honing my knowledge and craft for my entire career. This has likely held me back in a lot of the companies I've applied to over the years. I also suspect that ageism is working against me now more than ever.
I have started to put feelers out for a change of scenery, but nothing is landing yet. It feels like the first dotcom bust all over again.
Curious to know what others are doing... esp. if anyone actually replied to see what these folks' "angle" is.
I should block those old addresses, and that was the implicit threat on my CV coversheet, but I haven't bothered to do it yet.
It seems most of the recruiters bought my Email from dice.com, since that corresponds to when I used the earliest email addy. I'd say I'm boycotting Dice in response (and I sorta am), but I don't think dice has been relevant in an age, so it's sort of a toothless oath. :D
The SMS are pernicious and awful. I usually drop a rude remark to them before reporting them as spam. Phone interruptions are 100x more focus-destroying than emails, and I have been forced to put my phone on do-not-disturb during the workday, and I hate it. I feel victimized by these shops.
It's how I landed my job.
Mostly networking is revolving around making strong long-term connections, I got my job because I was close to my co-founder, then she reached out to some friends, one of whom was a recruiter and I got an interview.
Another was staying in touch with someone who was my boss 16 years ago, we re-connected and I was able to get prep for interviews at his company.
Another was a engineer I worked with, and you guessed it, got a referral to his company and some prep.
The wider the net, the more likely you'll know someone in a different industry. I have contacts now in AI, Video games, SAAS startups, FAANG, etc.
Luckily I landed a great job in late June, but it took 60+ applications and countless interviews.
Maybe it's time to move on from Clojure, though I really love it. I need to specialize in something, find a niche...
Giant ass red flag.
OTOH: I’m getting more attention than I was in 2001-2.
I'd be interested in hard insights (maybe it would have to come from levels.fyi or LinkedIn) like monthly charts of: number of new hires, salary&TC distributions, title or skillset distributions, by company/industry/size per month.
And similar monthly breakdowns for ended employment.
Internal promotion numbers would be great, too (and good incentive for employers to give attention to promotions and retention, rather than the fad of transactionally renting team members for only 18 months), but maybe harder to get.
I’m in Silicon Valley and a software engineer.
Even though June/July/August are dead months.
- ettinger@gmail.com, +14086562473 - Location: Los Gatos, CA USA, US Citizen (Native English speaker)
## Executive Summary
Contractor @ Profullstack: I'm looking for fullstack javascript remote roles or technical co-founder (ISTP-T) with an interest in leading engineering teams.
## Work Experience
#### Tomahawk Edison Sciences Inc. | Remote (Engineering Lead, Commercial Solutions, Apr 2024 - Present)
- Spearheaded the development of a prototype for satellite tracking utilizing NASA's worldwind.js library - Successfully built the initiakl version of Sentinel as a Tauri app in node.js and svelte
#### Primate | Remote (Product Engineer, Jun 2023 - Present)
- Delineation of key functionalities within the open source Primate javascript framework, while reporting directly to the founder and lead developer. - Leveraged expertise in JavaScript, Node.js, Deno, Bun, React, Vue, and Svelte to contribute to the seamless operation and optimization of the framework. - Actively collaborated with cross-functional teams to evaluate and implement innovative solutions, resulting in improved performance and user experience.
#### Skatespot, Inc. | Remote (Chief Technology Officer, Apr 2021 - Present)
- Spearheaded the development of the technology stack and architecture for Skatespot.com and its APIs - Devised and executed strategic plans for the enhancement of overall technological infrastructure and performance using Deno and React Native with MongoDB running on Ubuntu
#### Profullstack, Inc. | Remote (Independent Contractor, Mar 2018 - Present)
- Consulted on JavaScript projects and REST related APIs with a focus on blockchain front-end development. - Co-founded and served as the CTO of avenasea.com, a corporate travel app. - Founded husko.money, an NFT and memecoin project on the Polygon mainnet. - Managed Docker instances with CI/CD for seamless deployment.
#### Prognos Health, Inc. | Remote (Principal Engineer Mar 2021 - Jan 2022)
- Spearheaded the development of a cutting-edge underwriting user interface project, leveraging Svelte Kit and vanilla CSS. - Successfully built and deployed the underwriting user interface, ensuring seamless user experience and efficient functionality. - Utilized JavaScript, Node.js, HTML, CSS, and Svelte to create a robust and intuitive application. - Effectively collaborated with cross-functional teams to gather requirements, identify technical challenges, and deliver innovative solutions.
#### IBM | Remote (Senior Software Engineer Nov 2014 - Mar 2018)
- Developed and implemented features for API Connect Editor, contributing to the advancement of the platform. - Successfully created the base application for the rewrite, paving the way for improved functionality, clean code and a better developer experience. - Conducted thorough UI testing using protractor, karma, and chai, guaranteeing the quality and reliability of the application. - Proficiently utilized the ReactJS library for efficient development and provided seamless i18n and l10n implementation. - Possess expertise in JavaScript, React, Node.js, HTML, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) , effectively applying these skills to deliver exceptional results.
## Projects:
- [FastestEngineer](https://fastest.engineer) - a premium SaaS boilerplate based on svelte and primatejs - [My GitHub](https://github.com/ralyodio) - personal GitHub account - [Profullstack on GitHub](https://github.com/profullstack) - Profullstack GitHub org
## Education
- San Diego State University, Bachelor of Science Business Administration (1993 - 1998)
