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Any kind of JavaScript, iOS or Android engineer getting laid of will get a job within a month if they want. Competent backend developers, devops, ML engineers a

• meddlepal 11y ago
  A sudden flood of engineering talent on the market has other problems. Salaries could go down and given how expensive The Bay Area is then that could be problematic.
  • VeilEm 11y ago
    Given how hard hiring has been, I doubt it. The current talent shortage could absorb a huge number of engineers. A lot of startups are well funded for many years anyway. People are predicting doom and gloom but I really don't see it. Home prices falling is also probably not a terrible thing, even on an engineer's salary homes are hard to come by, and rents are extreme. A small correction is probably a good thing. I bought my house at the bottom of the housing market in 2011 and its value has nearly doubled since then which is ridiculous to me. I also have enough savings to last me years. Lots of companies are also doing just fine. This really isn't the earth shattering dot com bust some of you want it to be.
    • meddlepal 11y ago
      Why do you think home prices will fall? There is plenty of foreign investment money out there to shove into the real estate market. We have this problem in Boston right now. We're building and it's doing nothing to the rents because it's being snapped up by foreigners.
      • nostrademons 11y ago
        The Chinese stock market hasn't exactly been doing great lately either...
        • encoderer 11y ago
          Which is why Chinese money needs to chase returns elsewhere?
          • nostrademons 11y ago
            In the short run, sure. In the long run, what happens when many of the Chinese business owners who have been parking their wealth on the coasts of America face a liquidity crunch and suddenly need that money to keep their companies going? We've been here before: back in the 80s, Japan was buying up most of the real, tangible assets in the U.S. http://www.businessinsider.com/japans-eighties-america-buying-spree-2013-1?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/japans-eighties-america-buyin... The cause was the same: strong export products, an undervalued currency, and easy-money policies. The first signs of trouble were the same: high inflation, crony capitalism, and poor transparency in the market. Let's see if the rest of history plays out the same way.
            • gjkood 11y ago
              This. I was reminded of the Japanese and Middle East based investors who were on a real estate buying rampage in the 80s.
            • encoderer 11y ago
              They get bailed out by the communist gov't?
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        • DrScump 11y ago
          Which is why wealthy Chinese will be seeking a safer place to put their money.
    • gonyea 11y ago
      Housing here is just limited supply and high demand. I don't see prices falling, given how strict getting a $1m+ loan is in the first place. Prices won't really go down unless people are forced to sell. That said, I have sympathy for the LinkedIn engineers who were holding all their stock for a down payment. That's gotta hurt.
      • crdoconnor 11y ago
        The out-sized "demand" is largely coming from yield hungry investors and Chinese investors looking for a bolthole. Both kinds of demand could easily be clamped down upon by raising property taxes - the victims of which would be wealthy foreign investors and people who have sat on one of the largest increase in property values in history. Likewise, supply could be increased if local government were at all interested in doing so just by building 10,000-20,000 low income apartments. If the government announced both, the cost of San Francisco housing would plummet within days.
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• eva1984 11y ago
  When the supply is affluent, the salary goes down, period.
  • dominotw 11y ago
    why do we need minimum wage laws then?
    • rosser 11y ago
      Seriously? You're going to use the impact on Silly Valley tech salaries that a glut of engineering talent would cause as an argument against minimum wage laws? If technology professionals ever find themselves in a position where minimum wage regulations are relevant to their incomes, we'll have been through something far worse than a few layoffs. The myopia of tech people is really mind-blowing sometimes... EDIT: phrasing.
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      • dominotw 11y ago
        i am merely pointing out that there are many factors involved not just supply and demand.
        • rosser 11y ago
          Like, for example, corporations preying on people who have no choice but to take any job that's available, and offering wages that are below a starvation level?
    • eva1984 11y ago
      Is this sarcastic? If you think 100k is the minimum wage law should go at, what a wonderful world we are living. No. Engineers are spoiled during up time because the market, so we have to bear the correction during down turn which is also from the market.
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• Bahamut 11y ago
  I'm not seeing a great hiring market right now for engineers in the Bay Area, at least as a high demand JS engineer. I took a look at testing the waters within the past month, I found the offers/opportunities a little wanting, and I am now debating whether to stick around at my job for a while even with some of its faults. The market looked a lot better a half year ago. Getting hired is not a problem - getting a really nice job though is much more difficult, especially due to all of the companies that like to talk a nice game but are disguising weak aspects of the company such as leadership/management, quality engineering, work-life balance, etc. An aside, that popup iframe with video on the top as you scrolled down is one of the most annoying dark UX patterns I've encountered in a news site. It is one of a handful times where I used Chrome's element inspector to set display: none.
  • optimusclimb 11y ago
    > I'm not seeing a great hiring market right now for engineers in the Bay Area, at least as a high demand JS engineer. Can you explain this further? If by "high demand JS engineer" you mean "front end" and not just node (which is not bad or anything btw), and by "high demand" specifically you mean you are: * you understand JS well, doesn't mean we get to grill you on all the weird corner cases - but you understand the language * want to work with a modern stack (i.e. react, flux/redux/whatever, backbone, that sort of thing) * are mature and want to help grow a team, can communicate with PMs and all that effectively we'd kill to hire you (250-300 person company.) Every friend of mine that has started a company asks me every time they see me if I know a good front end person (that isn't busy counting their RSUs at Uber, etc and isn't going anywhere.) Our company (in general) and team has more than one designer focused on bringing a good experience to the table, before it even gets to the code level. To translate, that doesn't mean our reqs go from sales person to "make it do this now, code monkey", but rather we want to make good, long lasting products, in a thoughtful manner. And still, finding someone is tough. So I find it hard to believe the hiring market for what you describe isn't great. Personally, my experience is all back end. I consider myself a good engineer in general, and feel I could ramp up to being a decent front end engineer in 3-12 months time depending on how much depth we're talking, but think that things are specialized enough now that that would be a waste of effort, and plenty of people would still be better than me. However, from what I've seen, being a F.E. eng that understands CSci and what's happening under the hood should make you SUPER in demand right now. I'm not trying to make this a hiring post, but if you'd like a fun job with a decent company trying to expand its front end capacity on this coast, with a relatively green field project (i.e. you get to build new stuff), and at a place making real money, not just selling to other startups, and not in a moon shot social space, PM me. If not, I'd still be curious why you think being a "high demand JS engineer" isn't a good spot to be in in the current market.
• popmystack 11y ago
  >Any kind of JavaScript, iOS or Android engineer Yeah, no. As someone who hires on the east coast, and has a pretty extensive network of professional peers in generally "high" positions -- all these general assumptions about applying the SF market to anywhere else in the country is complete non-sense. And rightly so.
• ryanSrich 11y ago
  That's interesting to hear. I've seen a very sharp drop off in unsolicited emails lately from recruiters (50 per month to ~2). I already have a job so I'm not looking, but the silence has been noticable.
  • dclowd9901 11y ago
    Because they fired all the recruiters? Sorry that was mean. I honestly hope these companies start culling these non essential employees. When I left the valley, they were one of the biggest reasons. They were affecting the local intelligence culture in a very negative way.
    • poof131 11y ago
      I feel like you are being harsh. Recruiting seems like a pretty essential part to a fast growing company. And to say they affect the “local intelligence culture”, well there’s a lot of locals in SF who say that about all of tech and there’s many a way to define intelligence. As a developer, I appreciate the role recruiters play. Reaching out cold to people isn’t easy and the fact someone else spends time on this while I write code is great. And the fact that my LinkedIn has multiple leads from people about job opportunities should I want to move is fantastic. Are we so spoiled to scoff at people offering us jobs when so many people can barely find quality work. Certainly there are some shady players, but not really more than I’ve seen on the Engineering side, and my main issues have been less with recruiters and more with the hiring managers who the recruiters work for. “Oh, your rocket ship hasn’t grown revenue for 6 months straight yet you told me 100% YOY growth.” It was two directors of engineering and not a recruiter that lied to me about growth at a well respected YC startup. I blame the people crafting the message more than the messenger.
      • dclowd9901 11y ago
        I'm not speaking specifically on recruiters, whom I also believe play a valuable role (possibly second most valuable to actual engineers, given their importance on bringing in talent), more on middle managers, marketing and sales orgs. I had a general sense of ennui with the way they shaped self-obsessed materialism in SF, and their insistence on packing 5 at a time in apartments they couldn't afford, driving out families with fewer income earners per head just to be part of something they didn't help make. To me, that brand of person gives Baby Boomers a run for their money.
• dawhizkid 11y ago
  There's a difference between getting any job and getting a "good" job, even in tech. There are tons of startups and other tech companies with enough funding to continue hiring, but I wouldn't personally waste my time in 90%+ bay area companies I see hiring these days.