5 ms·

How come most people say software devs are in demand and then there is this comment saying he receives 4000+ applications on a job and nobody in Europe should c

How come most people say software devs are in demand and then there is this comment saying he receives 4000+ applications on a job and nobody in Europe should consider this career? Can perspectives on reality be this far apart, or is he trolling?

bitexploder 4y ago
They almost always mean “talented/experienced” people are in demand. Not some random who did a bootcamp and watched a few YT videos and can barely copy and paste from stack overflow.
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  Issue is that many jobs are getting 100s of applicants, and even if you're "talented" you can easily still get lost in the system. That's without considering the related huge levels of gatekeeping now happening in hiring. Some experienced people are just too jaded to deal with it.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    I is frustrating from our side too. My boss just sent me a half dozen resumes: they all look the same to me: someone fresh out of a CS degree looking for a job (this is an entry level position so that is what we want). I really don't want to interview 6 people for one position, so who do we call in?
    - joebob42 4y ago
      The "fair" and probably also reasonable imo thing to do is just pick randomly if you have a bunch of equally good people and can't interview them all. Or make them do leetcode stuff, I think this situation is basically what that whole part of the process is for.
  - bin_bash 4y ago
    If you actually are talented, and reasonably right for the role: figure out who the hiring manager is and message them on LinkedIn. You don't have to make sure it's the right HM, as long as you're close they'll point you in the right direction. I've done this many times (before working in big tech) and I have always received a response. There is only 1 company that I've failed to get through for at least some kind of a screen: MSFT. They seem to want nothing to do with me.
habibur 4y ago
Guess developers are in high demand in US/UK. And not at all in rest of the world. Reading the comments on the original post, I assume this picture.
lmc 4y ago
> Behind your “software development job” are 100 Chinese and Indian applicants lined up and they are willed to do your job it for a handful of rice. A troll, or very isolated individual (perhaps both).
- tluyben2 4y ago
  > handful of rice Maybe 20 years ago.
armitron 4y ago
Skilled developers are in demand, but the market is _flooded_ not only with low-barrier-to-entry applicants that can't even do the basics but also beginner programmers with constructed work histories that can masquerade a lot better and as a result require more time to see through and filter. This state of affairs is also rapidly getting worse.. If someone entering the field now has nothing (e.g. CS degree from a good university, high-quality projects), to help him raise above this noise, it's a fool's gamble.
- Peach_blue 4y ago
  Thanks for that nuanced insight. I'm currently trying out whether frontend development could be for me in my mid thirties. I knew that bootcamp marketing and YouTubers were exaggerating when it came to the jobs and their requirements. But I didn't think there would be so much 'noise' indeed. I guess that means to only go through with it if you are really, really good and actually enjoy doing it. Not because it promises money and job stability.
  - armitron 4y ago
    I'm in my early 50s with a career spanning three decades, worked in fintech, worked in various FAANGs, lived in SV for close to 10 years, lived in NYC for half as long, now semi-retired. For someone young (early to mid 20s), I agree with what you wrote. Being really, really good and actually enjoying doing it, should be a must. For someone of your age or older, I see a lot more risk. If you start from zero, it will take you at least 5 years to build up ammunition (a degree from a good university and some demonstrable experience) that's going to open the doors that you need open and give you a shot at passing the entrance tests. And then the "being really, really good" part comes in except you're now 5 years older facing fierce competition and there's no guarantee that you will succeed (who knows what the market will be in 5-10 years, the trajectory doesn't look promising). Personally, I wouldn't do it. The skills needed to offset the risk are hard to acquire in the timespans we're talking about, unless you're truly exceptional. But offseting the risk for me means living in the US and working at one of the FAANGs (job security and very high total compensation). Others see it differently.
ldayley 4y ago
This comment proves the author’s thesis, which is “The culture is ageist so you probably won’t stand out using the same skills as the newer devs or companies. Find an obscure, unsexy, perhaps almost obsolete niche and specialize because the kids or mid-career engineers don’t even bother with those jobs.” Now if only there was a way to monetize a COBOL or ABAP channel on Youtube, hmmm… *Edited for clarity
py_or_dy 4y ago
Stuff is screwed up. I applied at over 80 companies last year, got interviews with about 60 of them, did about 110 individual phone screens/interviews. Got no offers. It seems the management paradigm right now for small shops or startups is to dedicate $350k or so per year for developer salaries. A single principle or staff engineer is hired. Takes $150k per year. And they in turn try to shove 4 juniors into the remaining $200k. I'm 40 years old with no lead experience and I'm not a junior. So I fit none of these roles.
- pc86 4y ago
  Have you been a developer the whole time? ~16-18 YOE with no lead experience could be [incorrectly] taken as a red flag. I will say we've been trying to hire two seniors for the better part of 6 months and most of the people we end up on the phone with either end up going somewhere (presumably for more $ but it's rare to get a reason), or they do so poorly on the technical screen it makes you wonder if they just used someone else's resume. Nothing in between the two - I've been in my current EM role for probably 3 months, have done maybe 20-25 interviews, and we've extended 4 offers. One accepted then took a different job two days before his start date, one accepted, two declined.
  - py_or_dy 4y ago
    I've been doing some form of development since the age of 28. I look young for my age so I could probably pass for 35. I've made sure nothing giving my true age away is online or on my resume. I think the biggest issue is I have mostly been in the Perl ecosystem and most of those companies are self hosted, not using docker, etc. I do have requirements of only being remote, this worked fine in the perl world. But those jobs are mostly non-existent now and plus I was tired of the mindset that perl software stacks seem to harbor (never updating software, why use a framework when you can cowboy code your own, etc). Spent 2 years playing around with Django, figured it would be an easy transition. Hard to say why I don't get hired. I even did 7 interviews with one company. Several occasions I even celebrated early (buying stuff I didn't need with my dwindling savings account, going out to eat at fancy places with the family, etc) because I had 2 or 3 interviews ongoing and they were going so good and I was such a good match that I just knew I'd get an offer from one. But no... Slowly went from asking $130k per year to $120k, $110k, $90k.. That didn't help, the companies got crappier, the interviews just got longer and harder (the opposite of what I was wanting because I was so burned out by this time). Had a couple of perl companies reach out to me, but they are old legacy code and part time 1099. I can barely make myself put in over 15 hours combined per week with them though. Just feels like I am poisoning myself by going with them and want to do more interviewing but then the voice telling me it is pointless comes back so I just end up sitting in my home office for 12+ hours a day staring out the window.
kharak 4y ago
I have a hard time believing that comment. I know people who graduated recently with a software developer degree. Some in their late 20ties and the degree is not from a university. They got instant job offers. If you have a degree and can actually write code, you're in.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Maybe in hot markets like US or UK, but some of EU is pretty bleak.
  - kharak 4y ago
    Parts of the EU maybe, my perspective is mostly limited to Germany and Switzerland.
lordnacho 4y ago
Your inbox can literally have that many applications in it, but by far most of them are junk. A lot of them seem like they're sent to intentionally not get seen, like they're part of some requirement to apply for jobs or something like that, eg people with no appropriate skill listed, or anything at all similar to what was advertised. Then there's also complete dreamers. I hear football clubs often get guys who've played Champ Manager sending in an application on a whim.
michaelbrave 4y ago
It's been my life experience that none of what you hear is "in demand" actually is, what it instead translates to is "not willing to pay or hire or train enough". My friends who work in nursing tell me it's not that there isn't a talent pool, it's that they are short staffed due to hiring limitations more than lack of interest, which then feels like being short staffed because everyone is putting in more time, which makes the environment suck, which does make people quit, especially exaserbated with covid and conspiracy theorists treating them poorly. But until the underlying issues are solved, it's not a real shortage as there are qualified people looking for work but not being hired. Teacher shortage is similar, not willing to pay them enough(even when school funding is high, teacher pay stays low), and the amount of bullshit they have to put up with seems to go up every year, which is unrelated to amount of people with teaching credentials. Programming has a similar problem, every company wants senior roles but very few are willing to train, so it's a bottleneck more than a shortage.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>he receives 4000+ applications on a job and nobody in Europe should consider this career Why would you assume he's trolling? In some EU countries the market is insanely competitive due to great free schools churning out coders like crazy due to the tech hype, plus tons of skilled immigrants from developing nations trying to break into the market, so companies are very picky since they get bombarded with applications, so people with little experience or failing the culture fit or whatever arbitrary metrics are used, can easily fall through the cracks and not find a job despite being talented. The high demand you hear is true, but only for experienced seniors and, since nobody wants to take in juniors and train them this creates a bottleneck of artificial scarcity despite the high supply of less experienced devs.

bitexploder 4y ago

They almost always mean “talented/experienced” people are in demand. Not some random who did a bootcamp and watched a few YT videos and can barely copy and paste from stack overflow.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
Issue is that many jobs are getting 100s of applicants, and even if you're "talented" you can easily still get lost in the system. That's without considering the related huge levels of gatekeeping now happening in hiring. Some experienced people are just too jaded to deal with it.
- bluGill 4y ago
  I is frustrating from our side too. My boss just sent me a half dozen resumes: they all look the same to me: someone fresh out of a CS degree looking for a job (this is an entry level position so that is what we want). I really don't want to interview 6 people for one position, so who do we call in?
  - joebob42 4y ago
    The "fair" and probably also reasonable imo thing to do is just pick randomly if you have a bunch of equally good people and can't interview them all. Or make them do leetcode stuff, I think this situation is basically what that whole part of the process is for.
- bin_bash 4y ago
  If you actually are talented, and reasonably right for the role: figure out who the hiring manager is and message them on LinkedIn. You don't have to make sure it's the right HM, as long as you're close they'll point you in the right direction. I've done this many times (before working in big tech) and I have always received a response. There is only 1 company that I've failed to get through for at least some kind of a screen: MSFT. They seem to want nothing to do with me.

habibur 4y ago

Guess developers are in high demand in US/UK. And not at all in rest of the world. Reading the comments on the original post, I assume this picture.

lmc 4y ago

> Behind your “software development job” are 100 Chinese and Indian applicants lined up and they are willed to do your job it for a handful of rice. A troll, or very isolated individual (perhaps both).

tluyben2 4y ago
> handful of rice Maybe 20 years ago.

armitron 4y ago

Skilled developers are in demand, but the market is _flooded_ not only with low-barrier-to-entry applicants that can't even do the basics but also beginner programmers with constructed work histories that can masquerade a lot better and as a result require more time to see through and filter. This state of affairs is also rapidly getting worse.. If someone entering the field now has nothing (e.g. CS degree from a good university, high-quality projects), to help him raise above this noise, it's a fool's gamble.

Peach_blue 4y ago
Thanks for that nuanced insight. I'm currently trying out whether frontend development could be for me in my mid thirties. I knew that bootcamp marketing and YouTubers were exaggerating when it came to the jobs and their requirements. But I didn't think there would be so much 'noise' indeed. I guess that means to only go through with it if you are really, really good and actually enjoy doing it. Not because it promises money and job stability.
- armitron 4y ago
  I'm in my early 50s with a career spanning three decades, worked in fintech, worked in various FAANGs, lived in SV for close to 10 years, lived in NYC for half as long, now semi-retired. For someone young (early to mid 20s), I agree with what you wrote. Being really, really good and actually enjoying doing it, should be a must. For someone of your age or older, I see a lot more risk. If you start from zero, it will take you at least 5 years to build up ammunition (a degree from a good university and some demonstrable experience) that's going to open the doors that you need open and give you a shot at passing the entrance tests. And then the "being really, really good" part comes in except you're now 5 years older facing fierce competition and there's no guarantee that you will succeed (who knows what the market will be in 5-10 years, the trajectory doesn't look promising). Personally, I wouldn't do it. The skills needed to offset the risk are hard to acquire in the timespans we're talking about, unless you're truly exceptional. But offseting the risk for me means living in the US and working at one of the FAANGs (job security and very high total compensation). Others see it differently.

ldayley 4y ago

This comment proves the author’s thesis, which is “The culture is ageist so you probably won’t stand out using the same skills as the newer devs or companies. Find an obscure, unsexy, perhaps almost obsolete niche and specialize because the kids or mid-career engineers don’t even bother with those jobs.” Now if only there was a way to monetize a COBOL or ABAP channel on Youtube, hmmm… *Edited for clarity

py_or_dy 4y ago

Stuff is screwed up. I applied at over 80 companies last year, got interviews with about 60 of them, did about 110 individual phone screens/interviews. Got no offers. It seems the management paradigm right now for small shops or startups is to dedicate $350k or so per year for developer salaries. A single principle or staff engineer is hired. Takes $150k per year. And they in turn try to shove 4 juniors into the remaining $200k. I'm 40 years old with no lead experience and I'm not a junior. So I fit none of these roles.

pc86 4y ago
Have you been a developer the whole time? ~16-18 YOE with no lead experience could be [incorrectly] taken as a red flag. I will say we've been trying to hire two seniors for the better part of 6 months and most of the people we end up on the phone with either end up going somewhere (presumably for more $ but it's rare to get a reason), or they do so poorly on the technical screen it makes you wonder if they just used someone else's resume. Nothing in between the two - I've been in my current EM role for probably 3 months, have done maybe 20-25 interviews, and we've extended 4 offers. One accepted then took a different job two days before his start date, one accepted, two declined.
- py_or_dy 4y ago
  I've been doing some form of development since the age of 28. I look young for my age so I could probably pass for 35. I've made sure nothing giving my true age away is online or on my resume. I think the biggest issue is I have mostly been in the Perl ecosystem and most of those companies are self hosted, not using docker, etc. I do have requirements of only being remote, this worked fine in the perl world. But those jobs are mostly non-existent now and plus I was tired of the mindset that perl software stacks seem to harbor (never updating software, why use a framework when you can cowboy code your own, etc). Spent 2 years playing around with Django, figured it would be an easy transition. Hard to say why I don't get hired. I even did 7 interviews with one company. Several occasions I even celebrated early (buying stuff I didn't need with my dwindling savings account, going out to eat at fancy places with the family, etc) because I had 2 or 3 interviews ongoing and they were going so good and I was such a good match that I just knew I'd get an offer from one. But no... Slowly went from asking $130k per year to $120k, $110k, $90k.. That didn't help, the companies got crappier, the interviews just got longer and harder (the opposite of what I was wanting because I was so burned out by this time). Had a couple of perl companies reach out to me, but they are old legacy code and part time 1099. I can barely make myself put in over 15 hours combined per week with them though. Just feels like I am poisoning myself by going with them and want to do more interviewing but then the voice telling me it is pointless comes back so I just end up sitting in my home office for 12+ hours a day staring out the window.

kharak 4y ago

I have a hard time believing that comment. I know people who graduated recently with a software developer degree. Some in their late 20ties and the degree is not from a university. They got instant job offers. If you have a degree and can actually write code, you're in.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Maybe in hot markets like US or UK, but some of EU is pretty bleak.
- kharak 4y ago
  Parts of the EU maybe, my perspective is mostly limited to Germany and Switzerland.

lordnacho 4y ago

Your inbox can literally have that many applications in it, but by far most of them are junk. A lot of them seem like they're sent to intentionally not get seen, like they're part of some requirement to apply for jobs or something like that, eg people with no appropriate skill listed, or anything at all similar to what was advertised. Then there's also complete dreamers. I hear football clubs often get guys who've played Champ Manager sending in an application on a whim.

michaelbrave 4y ago

It's been my life experience that none of what you hear is "in demand" actually is, what it instead translates to is "not willing to pay or hire or train enough". My friends who work in nursing tell me it's not that there isn't a talent pool, it's that they are short staffed due to hiring limitations more than lack of interest, which then feels like being short staffed because everyone is putting in more time, which makes the environment suck, which does make people quit, especially exaserbated with covid and conspiracy theorists treating them poorly. But until the underlying issues are solved, it's not a real shortage as there are qualified people looking for work but not being hired. Teacher shortage is similar, not willing to pay them enough(even when school funding is high, teacher pay stays low), and the amount of bullshit they have to put up with seems to go up every year, which is unrelated to amount of people with teaching credentials. Programming has a similar problem, every company wants senior roles but very few are willing to train, so it's a bottleneck more than a shortage.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

>he receives 4000+ applications on a job and nobody in Europe should consider this career Why would you assume he's trolling? In some EU countries the market is insanely competitive due to great free schools churning out coders like crazy due to the tech hype, plus tons of skilled immigrants from developing nations trying to break into the market, so companies are very picky since they get bombarded with applications, so people with little experience or failing the culture fit or whatever arbitrary metrics are used, can easily fall through the cracks and not find a job despite being talented. The high demand you hear is true, but only for experienced seniors and, since nobody wants to take in juniors and train them this creates a bottleneck of artificial scarcity despite the high supply of less experienced devs.