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I think we can all agree that this year is going to be pretty ugly, both in the tech industry and the broader economy. With the Fed planning to hike interest ra

• fratlas 11y ago
  Do you think this will seriously affect job opportunities for devs? I'm an almost-grad who switched from electrical engineering because the jobs were abysmal, and the bad luck seems to be following me :-)
  • w1ntermute 11y ago
    The fact that you know about this problem already puts you far ahead of all the people who are still unaware. The best option (if you're not a senior) is to do a summer internship, which leads to a full-time offer. The next best is to get interviews through personal referrals. If all else fails, whiteboard like crazy and do your homework on the companies you're applying to, which will be a lot (hundreds).
    • fratlas 11y ago
      I just assumed most devs would be worried about the potential affects of the bubble. Currently typing this from my summer intership, so your comment has given me so hope, thank you!
  • tsunamifury 11y ago
    Don't worry about it or listen to the HN doom-sayers, they like to exaggerate and self-aggrandize. Broadly -- software, the web, social products, automation, or advertising aren't going anywhere in the next two years. These are all driven by development and require developers. High competition markets might slow leading to not getting a massive out of school offer. But you'll get offers if you're looking. Honestly you're better off starting your career at a middle point or low point in the market rather than a high point. You'll be better calibrated for the ups and downs and you are far more resilient and flexible. I graduated in 2009, when there were no jobs and it was awful. I slowly climbed my way to Google and on into an exciting future.
    • pfarnsworth 11y ago
      You really have no idea. 2009 was mild for SV. The dotcom bust per-capita was worse than the autoindustry layoffs in the 80s. I lived through it. It was very hard, and some people I know were out of jobs for 2 years. Our company had half a dozen layoffs in 12 months and we shrank by 50%. If 2016 is half of what 2001 was, then most new grads won't get jobs.
      • tsunamifury 11y ago
        No I do have an idea, and I think you'd be better off not making silly assumptions. I was unemployed and living in my car for 18 months in SV, because I wasn't yet tech-trained in 2009. If you were an engineer casting your cold eye on the world, I'm sure you turned your nose up at the millions of us who were't in tech then. Or maybe we just didn't count us as real people.
        • pfarnsworth 11y ago
          Your past experiences are truly irrelevant to the point you made and what I was responding to. And your ad hominem attacks are misplaced as well. You have admitted you didn't go through the 2001 bust, so you, by definition, have no idea what it was like. Dismissing talk of 2016 being a bad year as doom-saying, exaggerating or self-aggrandizing clearly shows you have no idea how bad it can get for the industry as a whole. I don't care if you were unemployed and living in a car for 18 months in 2009/2010, because it's irrelevant to the point. There are plenty of people unemployed and living in cars even during the dotcom boom. But 2009/2010 weren't anything compared to the depths of the dotcom bust.
          • dang 11y ago
            The user you're replying to was too aggressive in their comment, but you're doing that as well. Please just be nice when commenting here.
            • pfarnsworth 11y ago
  • joeax 11y ago
    I'm a software engineer that's lived through the dotcom crash and the great recession. I can tell you the dotcom crash was much more devastating for the tech community since we were at the center of it. There will always be a demand for software engineers, just keep in mind though that this demand is cyclical and during down years you have less leverage in salary negotiations and perks on the job tend to be taken away. If you are a good developer though you'll have little to worry about.
    • IndianAstronaut 11y ago
      Also, hopefully as wel paid devs, people have a good savings buffer and no debt.
      • bgia 11y ago
        except if they bought a $1M house in SV
        • hkmurakami 11y ago
          or worse yet, a $1M condo in SOMA.
    • TwoBit 11y ago
      I worked for Electronic Arts during the dot com crash, and EA's value was even or increasing through that peroid. Why? Because they made an actual product, with their own money.
  • potatolicious 11y ago
    I suppose that depends on your definition of "seriously". There is a general cooling off, not a collapse. There aren't many companies going under entirely, which is distinctly unlike the first dotcom bubble where after the pop the ground was littered with the corpses of companies. IMO what we're likely to see is a slowdown in early-stage startup hiring. Series-A and B funding is already harder to come by, and so execs will be more conservative about burn rate, including on payroll. Unicorns will continue to hire aggressively, but their equity will look worse and worse as their valuations get cut or they get murdered in the aftermath of their own IPO. I think we will continue to see major unicorns have their valuations slashed, and we will continue to see tech stocks struggle in the public markets. But this will impact employee compensation more than it will impact overall demand for new hires. What this probably will mean is that offers from unicorns will be less attractive next to offers from BigTechCo, but ultimately we're still talking about offers in the top 10% of the entire USA, so it's hardly a cause for panic. And of course the juggernauts of AmaGooFaceSoft and co. will continue to hire like crazy. So yeah, the job market will get a bit softer, so you might be facing tougher competition, but it's not exactly doom and gloom. It's certainly still a better outlook than what you were facing in electrical engineering.
    • fratlas 11y ago
      I'm based in Australia, only half considering making the move to the US if I get an offer from the big 5. I guess I'm only worried if this would have an affect on the amount of positions available from mid sized companies (I've filled my quota of startup experience through internships).
  • blackguardx 11y ago
    I'm an electrical engineer and I don't think the job market is that bad. Not as good as software, but better than other engineering disciplines.
  • pkaye 11y ago
    Regarding the ee jobs, I've seen quite a few of them exported overseas over the years to places like Taiwan and China. Usually the software side is considered "the secret sauce" and kept close to HQ. I've seen more than my share of experienced ee folks telling me they wished they chose software as the focus. But it is always hard to predict in the game of musical chairs what the next winner or loser will be. You try to stay a broad focus as a problem solver and learn to adapt.
  • jonesb6 11y ago
    I won't play oracle here. But I would like to point out that there are a number of skill sets you yourself can develop over the next year to make you more resilient to hiring trends (and depressions). Networking. Sales. Domain knowledge. As an undergrad myself, I feel most of my peers expect a job to be given to them as soon as they graduate. For some this will be true, for many it will not. I feel that this is a terrible mindset and will cause a lot of pain for people in our age group. So networking, as in know people, know companies, you don't have to be an extreme extrovert but put yourself out their and actively try to meet and build relationships with people in the industry. Sales, as in selling yourself as the product. Practice interviews, enunciation, phone conversations, whatever you have to do. If you come across as an A-player/personality you are much more likely to be hired. Domain knowledge, get a basic understanding of what's in use today, what probably will be in use tomorrow, and build an expertise in it. It requires a lot of time but it will clearly distinguish you from those who don't bother doing so. While many companies prioritize hires that can learn quickly, don't forget the very real business need of someone who can jump in and run with the team immediately. If you have this there will always be a place for you at some company, you would only need to find one with a real immediate need, then, "oh hey I can do that for you"..
    • RobertDeNiro 11y ago
      Networking seems to be the hardest for me and I imagine others as well. I've been out of college for two years now and I have no idea how to meet new people.
      • jedberg 11y ago
        Go to meet ups. Go to conferences. If you're short on cash, go to where a conference is being held and hang out in the halls chatting people up. Maybe security will kick you out, maybe they won't. Maybe they aren't even checking who is going into the BOF sessions at night. Go that one year old's birthday party you were invited to being thrown by that older coworker of yours that you kinda know. Maybe you'll meet an interesting person who turns out to be your boss in ten years. There's lots of ways to meet people, it's just not going to get thrown on your lap anymore. You gotta go out and find it.
  • madengr 11y ago
    Switched from EE since jobs were abysmal; you mean the lack of jobs? But hey, we need more STEM!
    • fratlas 11y ago
      Well going in to university the EE job opportunities were strong, but they've steadily gotten worse over the years in the US, and Australian power companies have had massive layoffs, reducing grad intake.
• tootie 11y ago
  I don't get it. The Fed is raising rates because the economy is recovering.
  • dredmorbius 11y ago
    The Fed has two mandates -- its "dual mandate": 1. Control inflation. 2. Manage unemployment. They are, unfortunately, directly at odds. Fighting inflation tanks the economy (that's what Paul Volker did in the late 1970s, to tackle "stagflation", and Jimmy Carter's 2nd term hopes), and promoting employment tends to hot up inflation. Over the past 8 years, the Fed (and other central bankers) have dumped unholy amounts of liquidity into the global economy. That is, they've been "printing money", except that the Fed doesn't actually print money, it simply wills it into existence. It's done this after reducing its own lending rates (the prime rate) to effectively zero wasn't sufficiently stimulating the economy. It's slightly more complex than that: the Fed distributes that money by buying "assets" from major banks -- it's an auction process, but the goal of the Fed isn't to get valuable assets[1], only to manage how that money's introduced to the economy and keep tabs on its value by way of inflation, as I understand it. For whatever the reasons, inflation hasn't actually been a problem, though the reasons why are elusive, and several alternatives have been suggested: 1. The money's gone into financial instruments, including stocks and real estate. The rise in major stock market indices and the Fed's balance sheet (its money supply injections) pretty much exactly track one another. 2. It's gone into offshore tax havens. Last numbers I've seen are about $7 trillion from the US, and $25-30 trillion globally, from various sources. The ICIJ and The Guardian have run a multi-year expose on off-shore investment havens, and other financial sources have reported on this. 3. Chasing other investments. Silicon Valley VC money comes from somewhere, and much of it chases start-ups whose ultimate valuation is either advertising potential, or buy-it-to-kill-the-threat-to-us (WhatsApp's purchase by Facebook). Advertising's terrifying because a tremendous amount of it is financial services -- about 40% in "FIRE" industries: finance, insurance, and real estate. Pull the plug on easy money, and all three of those tailspin. Which gets us to why fighting inflation is seen as such a bad thing. Usually the argument given is "inflation hurts those with fixed incomes", by which most people think of the elderly on social security or pensions. But we've learned how to fix that: you index those systems to inflation, hence SSI's COLA adjustment -- the cost-of-living factor that boosts Social Security payments. Who really get hurt by inflation are those who are holding dollar-denominated assets. Lenders. That's banks, and holders of bonds (debt), which aren't themselves inflation adjusted. If you've got a home mortgage, inflation is your best friend, because it reduces the amount of your debt (in real terms) while your income increases. Banks, on the other hand, hate that, because their assets (your mortgage) falls in value. So: the Fed is raising rates to stem inflation fears, even though inflation's been fairly much a non-player. Probably because banks and other lenders / bondholders are getting nervous. And to give itself more maneuvering room. There's a whole bunch more in this, such as what money "really" is (in a functional / role sense, not the boring old fiat-vs-gold-backed debate), what, whether, why, and how economic growth is, can be extended, is justified, and is based on, and whether or not inflation is an unavoidable element of a collapsing economic system. On that last, the fate of the (specie-based) Roman denarius is quite interesting. But stay tuned. Things might get interesting. ________________________________ Notes: 1. Told to me directly by a regional Fed branch president in a public Q&A.