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Silicon Valley braces for the good times to end
- Victerius 4y agoBig tech has become the new oil and gas industry. Boom and bust cycles that leave a trail of destroyed companies in their wake, eye-popping salaries for junior workers without any experience, long hours. With two big differences: oil is a finite resource. Software is inexhaustible. You can always make more of it. And you can work remotely.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoIt's not though. The big money in SW is in hyper growth industries that get a cut every time consumers earn/spend money on your platform or click on ads. The more consumers you onboard and the more they make/spend, the more you can make. I have developed SW for cars, trains, elevators and security access systems and those gigs pay significantly less than those web gigs targeting consumers, despite being indispensable to modern society, since they're sunk cost products and vendors don't get a cut every time someone takes the elevator, enters the building, starts their car or takes the train.
- rr808 4y agoThe other difference is O&G has to be where the oil is. Software doesn't have to be in SV.
- fullshark 4y agoFlipside is this means as a laborer you are competing potentially with laborers over the entire planet for jobs instead of people physically in key locations.
- blackhaz 4y agoWe were about to look for a sales manager in the US. For fuck's sake, people are asking $160K with just two years of experience on angel.co.
- p1esk 4y ago160k in SV is basically the poverty line. Middle class starts somewhere at 300k.
- brokensegue 4y agoFor a family of 4 maybe. You can live just fine on 160k individually
- p1esk 4y agoWhat kind of a place can you buy in, say, Mountain View while making 160k?
- brokensegue 4y agoI only know the rental market. Definitely one bedroom places to rent at 3-4k/mo which easily fits into that salary.
- p1esk 4y agoIf you cannot afford to own even a modest 2br apartment you’re definitely poor. Middle class starts where you can afford an average house.
- brokensegue 4y agoYou could also afford a 2 bedroom on that salary. But you aren't in "poverty" if you can't afford an extra room. You would have lots of extra money to save or eat out in this scenario.
- Zerverus 4y agoSure you can but why should you settle for it? Who decided that it’s ok?
- 4y ago
- adamisom 4y agoExcept software isn't long hours. Or at least there's plenty of good-WLB jobs where 40h/week avg is an upper limit, not lower.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoThen why are burn-out so common in the SW industry?
- zthrowaway 4y agoIt’s called a recession. This party isn’t over, these people who have been experiencing FOMO are just hoping for that. Tech will continue to be extremely profitable and innovating industries. That’s not going anywhere. These doom and gloom pieces are comical cringe.
- Grimburger 4y agoAnd here I was hoping that companies pulling in $20m revenue could continue their multi-billion dollar valuations. An end to absurdly cheap money and all the market distortions it brings will be a good thing in the long run.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago> Tech will continue to be extremely profitable I wonder if that's what people in 1999 though?
- johnisom2001 4y agoAnd it was true. Your poin?
- shazami 4y agoThey would have been right
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoLong term yes. But short term....
- decebalus1 4y agoergo a recession, like OP said. As long as you don't need to retire or to liquidate during the recession, you should be fine.
- lmarcos 4y agoFor those who didn't experience the dot com bubble: how long did it last? I remember that I was studying computer science in university back in 2005, and everyone agreed in that time that that was a career with future. I knew some software engineers back then who were making good money and jobs (although not as much demanded as nowadays) weren't scarce precisely.
- leet_thow 4y agoHow do you all feel about you and your employer making it out unscathed? In my case, I'm 2 years into being an indispensable engineer at a publicly traded midsized company. Unless they decide to shut down our business unit, I should be in good shape.
- hotpotamus 4y agoWe are all replaceable.
- nicolas_ 4y agoDuring one of my internships, a guy talked about his career and specifically one job he had in the IT department of a big French TV channel. His team had a lot of turnover to the point that only him knew everything about the projects and how to make them work. In this context, he asked his boss for a raise and he said: "Cemeteries are filled with indispensable people".
- cudgy 4y agoNot if you own your own company. You’ll always be the founder/president and own your ip even if you have no customers.
- trentthethief 4y agoI am my own employer. I often hate myself but I have never considered firing myself.
- ssiddharth 4y ago12 years at a billion dollar company. I was indispensable to the business unit, but the unit itself wasn't. Entire lot got made redundant.
- effingwewt 4y agoThis is the truth OP is burying their head in the sand to avoid. Everyone is indispensable until they aren't. Every business is profitable until they aren't. And these days, with the insane expenses and revolving credit businesses all rely on, damn near any business can end up insolvent in the blink of an eye.
- teeray 4y agoThe past six months, I’ve been getting recruiter spam every week from companies that sound increasingly like outright scams. Low base pay, but you’re compensated mostly in their wildly overvalued scrip… I mean crypto. Those emails have (thankfully) stopped… I imagine their crypto platforms imploded. I see this correction as dollars getting directed towards things people actually need.
- cudgy 4y ago"No one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don't look good" Is this the type of advice people are getting from VC’s? The precision of the statement is overwhelming. Of course, it is a CNN article.