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You studied computer science but Big Tech no longer wants you
- maerF0x0 3y agoThis should have been known from the beginning. 1) The dotcom crash (and to a lesser extent 2008) showed us how transient these jobs are 2) You're going to age out at about 45ish unless you can secure a less common role at a less common company that values tenured folks. You're paid well partially as an advance on your unemployability later. One option is to move into management before such a time, or on to wood working or another profession. These are never explicitly said, but if you're observant you'll realize it's the case.
- jleyank 3y agoIf you start at 22-ish, I thought the risk of aging out started around 30-ish? Older people have external lives, cost more in salary, cost more in health care, ... They also have been known to push back re: overwork and to not get swept up in current fads.
- maerF0x0 3y agoperhaps the gradual ageism begins at 30, but look around and try to see how many >40yr engineers are around you. Every year there is a dice roll to remove folks, and an extremely low intake of new "older" folks. (ie, 5% of 40yr old engineers might leave per year, and only 1% of 40yr old engineers are entering as their first year due to starting a new career)
- rabuse 3y agoTypically the older you get, and the more knowledgable you become, you step into different positions that tend to pay more (PM, Leadership). The more experienced individuals are just more beneficial in those roles, rather than strictly coding.
- NegativeK 3y agoExcept expecting everyone to want to go toward managerial roles is a nasty (and very common) antipattern.
- throwway120385 3y agoHaving to work with toxic people or completely give up an interpersonal leadership role as a condition of being a staff engineer is another. I'm in a weird spot career wise because I turned down 3 management roles to oversee multiple teams and now have to signal my non-interest in stepping out of team leadership and into a staff engineering role. I just really like managing ICs in the day to day and everything that would make me good at those other roles is incidental to me liking managing ICs.
- sokoloff 3y agoSpeaking as someone whose age starts with a 5, I don't expect/agree older people should earn more based on being older. If they earn more by bringing more value to the company, that's welcome and fair on both sides, but if you're 53 and you don't bring more value in than someone who is 35, you shouldn't expect to take more home either.
- JohnFen 3y agoAs a fiftysomething, I agree entirely. As near as I can see, very few people get paid more based on simple longevity. They get paid more because their increased experienced and larger skillset provides more value to the company.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoI agree, with the caveat that many employers don’t see it that way. They will think you are too expensive for the value you can provide, without even giving you an offer. It is just expected that the 53 year old has more ability than the 35 year old, making it hard for career changers or late bloomers.
- cbm-vic-20 3y agoThis is an example of ageism. I'm pushing 50, let's see how I stack up: > cost more in salary If the salaries that show up in HN posts are true, this is a no. > cost more in health care My only health care needs in the past 30 years have been a couple of dental cleanings per year. > have been known to push back [...] and to not get swept up in current fads. Ok, you've got me on this one. I do keep up with new languages, libraries, etc. I've also lived through enough hype cycles to separate the good stuff from the fluff.
- regentbowerbird 3y ago> My only health care needs in the past 30 years have been a couple of dental cleanings per year. I hate to be disagreeable but that might be an example of past observations not necessarily predicting future ones.
- nobodyandproud 3y ago> cost more in health care My only health care needs in the past 30 years have been a couple of dental cleanings per year. The answer here, I feel, is to slowly phase recipients to medicare to offset some of the costs. Even better if medicare were for all; or outright remove the private sector and the employer from paying for our health insurance.
- Swizec 3y agoIf you're an experienced professional competing for the same jobs as fresh graduates, something has gone awfully wrong with your career. At some point you gotta start bringing more to the table than pure grind.
- dukeyukey 3y agoGood lord, what kind of brutal hellscape do you work at that ages people out at 30?
- sharemywin 3y agoI think in other industries they're called sweat shops. maybe mental sweat shops. since it's not physical labor but mental.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y agoSweat shops usually don't have a six figure entry level salary.
- sharemywin 3y agodo you prefer mental gerbil mill instead?
- IshKebab 3y ago> age out at about 45 Maybe it's different in America but that just hasn't been my experience in the UK. Loads of people over 50 still working in tech. Obviously most in management but that's to be expected. There are plenty still doing "actual work". I'm not really worried about ageism. Of course you have to keep learning. Nobody is going to hire a 60 year old who only knows Pascal or whatever (sorry Pascal programmers).
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago> Nobody is going to hire a 60 year old who only knows Pascal or whatever Lots of legacy code is still out there. But that's probably a pretty thankless job.
- dbcurtis 3y agoYes, exactly. I just turned 66, and have a technical lead role at an autonomous vehicle company. The technologies and languages that I use on a daily basis did not exist when I was an undergrad. Keeping up is essential if you want to remain technical. (I have done 3 or 4 stints as a manager, but always managed to reach escape velocity. The worst day on the bench is better than the best day driving a spreadsheet.) Why am I often the one trying to sell the 20-somethings on trying out the latest language features? Not all luddites are 40+.
- skippyboxedhero 3y agoI have seen this in the UK definitely. I think it is more a question of whether the company actually understands technology. Lots of companies, particularly in the UK, have ended up in the tech business so they are always one step from outsourcing everything to India (or elsewhere, India is getting expensive now). In that environment, it is very hard to understand what an older person brings to the table beyond costing more. The stuff about "you have to keep learning" is also something you hear a lot in the UK. Yes mate, I know React but haven't used styled-components...your company uses it, but there is no way I will be able to learn it. When you are in a job, you are continually learning and no company fires everyone when they move a system to a new language or whatever. Part of the reason why the UK has a "skills shortage" is because, as explained above, most companies have no idea what they are hiring for. Oh, you last worked on Java 8...sorry, you will never be able to catch up to Java 1X. This is part of the ageism situation because younger people view older people as unable to learn in almost every context. But the reality is that many companies are unwilling to learn about the things people can do if you give them an opportunity. Some companies aren't like this but the small size of the startup market/the use of the UK as an outsourcing hub/the dominance of large non-tech companies in tech hiring means that this is the case in most of the UK.
- xwdv 3y agoIt can be fairly trivial to hide your age and if you’re doing remote work using filters will make you look deceptively young. By the time the company ever finds out your actual age it’s too late. You should also avoid revealing your age to coworkers or other clues that may hint your age.
- sneak 3y agoThis is the grim cyberpunk future we were promised in Gattaca, finally here!
- bee_rider 3y agoNow I’m imagining a whole company full of 40 year olds unsuccessfully impersonating 20 year olds, but nobody can tell because we’re all using the same outdated slang. “You really yeeted that code review,” the term leader says, a slight waver in his voice as he wonders if this will be the one that gets him caught. “Yes it was yolo,” nods the coder. They quickly break up the meeting, happy to have survived the interaction. Actually I think I have to update my slang too…
- nobodyandproud 3y agoPoggers. Anecdote: I was asked a cultural/generational question when bronies were the rage to settle an argument. (will the old guy get it). I didn’t like it; I should’ve used the culture card and dodged the question.
- bee_rider 3y agoAre brownies still a thing? I’m hoping “what’s a bronie” becomes a completely information free response ASAP.
- maerF0x0 3y ago> or other clues that may hint your age. So do not reveal you have 20 years experience and graduated in the previous century?
- mycentstoo 3y agoWhen you say move into management, is that something that an individual can really control? I'm an IC and I've performed well but I've never thought of management as something I could actually go into. Instead, I've always seen management as something a company decides to open the door for.
- kevinventullo 3y agoIt can start by telling your manager you’re interested in management.
- theGnuMe 3y agoIf you have really good EQ and want to increase your EQ then management or sales is a good path to pursue.
- thr-nrg 3y agoAging out is one of those myths that sound true until you think about them. The number of developers doubles every 7 years or so. Which means there are twice as many 20 year olds as 30, 30 as 40 and 40 as 50. So if you're at the average shop then for every 50 year old you see there should be 8 20 year olds. Which is pretty close to what you get. And that's before we even start talking about the fact that js was just invented when the average 50 year old was entering the workforce.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JohnFen 3y ago> You're going to age out at about 45ish This isn't actually very true outside of SV and FAANG.
- jurassic 3y agoIt’s not true anywhere I have ever worked.
- maerF0x0 3y agoPerhaps, but unfortunately that's where much of the money is. So unless an engineer is ok with their income getting cut in half or so...
- JohnFen 3y agoWell, a smart engineer would look at their income adjusted according to their CoL. Those amazing-sounding salaries in SV are offset by how expensive everything is. If I can live with a higher standard of living at half the nominal salary, am I really making less?
- pb7 3y agoIs it really a higher standard of living if you lack the amenities that make those places popular and as a result expensive?
- JohnFen 3y agoWell, it depends on what you value. If you consider being in a specific area critical for your standard of living, then the computation changes accordingly, of course. But not everyone considers living there to have a positive impact on their standard of living. They live there to get a high-paying job. Of the dozen or so people I personally know who live in that area, half of them would prefer to live somewhere else.
- drivebycomment 3y agoThat isn't true in SV and FAANG either.
- nanumbat 3y agoI'm 60 in a few days. I slid into Verilog (now SystemVerilog) about 12 years ago, mostly on FPGAs. These days I've got more work than I know what to do with. I'm planning on retiring in December. There's something to be said for a less common role, even if it does give me a splitting headache every now and then.
- analognoise 3y agoIts really rare to get a Verilog related job with stock options/good pay though. You can do an infinite amount of it making terrible money working in defense; doubly so if you want to live somewhere awful.
- nanumbat 3y agoI guess I've been lucky.
- papertrail-work 3y agoConsulting is always a way to go? Having a track record of success over a long period of time makes it easier for businesses to hire you. To be fair, around the 45 ish age, I would expect most folks to have evolved to a senior+ where it should be more about architecting systems and figuring out how to solve business problems then just executing on code. I saw plenty of those folks 50+ at FANG-ish companies whilst working in the Bay but ofc that's just an anecdote.
- refulgentis 3y agoI'm heading toward that trail, put my time in at FAANG and it's time to move on. Any tips on how to get started? I'm as unclear on how to build a serious consulting shop, as I was when I was 22, a waiter with some self-taught iPhone OS experience. Which I guess makes sense, I wasn't building business relationships from deep within a FAANG org chart as a SWE.
- mooreds 3y agoI wrote up some tips here: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3552 https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3552 (based on over a decade of consulting)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- booleandilemma 3y agoThere are, thankfully, more companies in the world than FAANG.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JohnFen 3y agoA lot more. You literally couldn't pay me enough to work for a FAANG company, but I have a wonderful and profitable career nonetheless.
- dijit 3y agoI considered it once, because of piper, blaze and a bunch of interesting sounding engineer culture. Not really the salary or perks. But it sounded like a massive bureaucracy, and a little like a cult, so I avoided it, and I’m glad I did.
- giantg2 3y ago"it sounded like a massive bureaucracy" Thats pretty much any large, or even medium companies, right?
- JohnFen 3y agoHonestly, while some bureaucracy is inevitable, how oppressive it is can vary a lot. The last large multinational corp I worked for had a fairly horrific amount of it. The one I work for now (roughly the same size) has a tolerable amount of it.
- giantg2 3y agoIt varies a lot from team to team in my company.
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- tester756 3y agoI didn't read the article cuz I don't have accesss but, so what? you go to any other computer-related job, maybe even for minimal wage and put effort into learning and gettings skills and then you try to get into these high comp jobs. Is it privilege or delusion that grads want to start with top tech companies?
- usrusr 3y agoWhat if you are that kind of person who only studies to get into a position of wealth and power? You can never go back to the day you foolishly picked CS over law school!
- satvikpendem 3y agoPerhaps people shouldn't have made their educational decisions on the promise of wealth alone.
- arroz 3y agoI know a lot of lawyers who don’t have wealth and power so…
- awesome_dude 3y agoCrikey - Law is even more fraught with risk on there being a positive outcome (Weirdly, there's an excess of Lawyers and Accountants in most jurisdictions, and a hang of a lot of graduates end up on minimum wage, if they get to practice at all) The thing about CS, and ENG in general, is that it's less about who you know and more about what you know, which is a real leveller. Right now, though, there's a pull back from the FAANGs and other big tech, which IMO is a measure of the cost of/appetite for risk at the moment (read: interest rates) as well as a well publicised miss or two (Twitter, Facebook's Metaverse). Is it all over for Big Tech? Really hard to say, dot com bubble didn't end it. Outsourcing never eventuated (despite what recruiters are saying about remote workers having to reduce their salary expectations, because of the competition from overseas, the truth is that companies that take their ENG over seas end up paying twice as much to clean it back up when they eventually have to bring it back in house)
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- jdkee 3y agohttps://archive.is/YoxD3 https://archive.is/YoxD3
- jamesgill 3y agoIt's as if there were never ups and downs in tech before 2022. As someone who was working in the dotcom era (and before), I've seen so many booms/busts/layoffs and gluts/shortages that I've lost count. TL;DR: This is nothing new. At all. And it's certainly not limited to the 'tech' industry.
- JohnFen 3y agoI been really fascinated watching people who have never been through the full cycle before coming to terms with the reality that there are cycles to these things. I have a great amount of sympathy for them, really. It has to be a huge shock. But on the other hand, did everyone think that the world had stopped working in the way it always has?
- Josh613 3y ago[dead]
- jamestimmins 3y agoCan I give some feedback on your jobs page? There's so little information about the roles that I'd never personally bother applying. I don't want to go through the process of writing a cover letter when I don't even know what languages you work in or what skillsets you're looking for.
- placesalt 3y agoOr what the pay is
- purpleblue 3y agoRecessions happen. It's a part of life. People need to understand that they aren't owed a job.
- bee_rider 3y agoI think people understand this in general, it but they are understandably worried and upset because those jobs put food on the table and roofs over our heads. And in the current economy we’re pretty heavily incentivized to over-specialize, so your job vanishing is a pretty big problem.
- bulbosaur123 3y ago[flagged]
- bobobob420 3y agoagreed. it is a weird situation no? They have a right to charge people to read their articles. We have a right to find a way to read it for free? Always confuses me but I will always downvote non paywalled articles.
- lightfield1002 3y agoThen how are those words supposed to come into existence? Something needs to pay for them. I rather pay than have my privacy violated and sold to every ad company on this planet. What could be improved is how to pay. I don't want 50+ different subscriptions.
- thenerdhead 3y agoThat's a lot of words to say very little with. The great resignation = We want you! The big stay = We don't want you! The good times may be over for now, but there will be more good times... We just witnessed both in less than a couple years.
- coldtea 3y ago>We just witnessed both in less than a couple years. If by "witnessed both" you mean "the tail end of the first period that had lasted for 3+ decades, and the beginning of the second which, who knows how long it will last", then yes. But this kind of "both" is hardly reassuring for witnessing another round of good times anytime soon.
- tornato7 3y agoWhy do you assume that we've just seen the end of a multi-decade era in CS careers? It could easily be just a small recession.
- coldtea 3y agoBecause I see a bigger recession as the world changes and the US doesn't have as much a hold on the top spot, plus there's AI that will impact a lot of tech jobs, and basically the most numerous ones (which are not FAANG or star developers, but corporate coding drones that could be changed to 1/5th the manpower + AI in a 5-10 years).
- thenerdhead 3y agoThree recessions happened in that three decade period you’re talking about where new economies were born and mass tech layoffs happened. Also nobody can predict the future, but it doesn’t change the point that prosperous periods will return.
- coldtea 3y ago"Three recessions happened in that three decade period" three recessions that barely affected coding jobs and coding job demand, so there's that. The impact of layoffs at those cases lasted hardly a year or so. Developers found jobs very soon after the dot-com boom or 2008 just fine.
- pelasaco 3y agoAs computer scientist, I have no issue finding a job. I can work in automation field, as teacher (elementary school, high school), as security engineer, infrastructure, devops, banking, accounting, etc.. I'm sure, maybe some point of time I won't be writing code as I do today, but without job, no way Worse are those that just finished a "full dev stack bootcamp" and now are trying to find a job as software developers.
- ptero 3y agoGraduating engineers who studied computer science in a decent school (not necessarily at Stanford; any school that covered languages and algorithms and made students use those in context of practical problems) will do just fine. They will not have a 7-digit bank account 5 years after graduation, but they can still find good tech jobs that, averaged over several years, pay more than enough for a good quality of life. On age, as a single data point from someone whose age starts with "5", I have not seen particular difficulties in job hunting. To maintain long-term employability I recommend broadening experience beyond the pure computer science to domains that leverage computers to build new things: medical devices, signal processing, sensors, computational biotech, satellites, audio; whatever looks fun. My 2c.
- superchroma 3y agowhat has worked for me is picking a career theme. Working at companies that thematically align. You build up a host of knowledge that is not computer related but instead is domain related and this offers value too.
- throwaway33381 3y agoNo. That just isn't true. Only 8% of students end up with jobs 10 years after. There's an IEE Report on this specific issue. It's much worse for minorities where job placement is nearly guaranteed to not occur. It's across almost all universities. https://spectrum.ieee.org/stem-education-in-the-us-is-more-or-less-needed https://spectrum.ieee.org/stem-education-in-the-us-is-more-o...
- HEmanZ 3y agoThe article you linked is about ALL STEM majors taken combined. Computer Science degrees have a much much better placement. Also the above commenter mentioned that it needs to be a “real” comp sci degree, not one that calls itself comp sci but never makes you learn classes like Data structures, algorithms, etc. There are “fake” CS degrees out there, and big employers know they are no good. My university CS department has a 100% placement every. single. year. Including the last 3 years, and it’s like not even a top 100 school in the US.
- usui 3y agoFrom someone who intimately knows UC Berkeley's Computer Science undergraduate program for the entire past decade, this can only be a good thing. Lots of Berkeley smarts have gone to waste by doing nothing in FAANG and chasing the coveted golden handcuffs. Not every case obviously (not sure why this needs to be said), but a vast majority of undergraduates just expect to be handed top compensation for knowing jack shit apart from knowing how to study for an interview, and I always found that odd. Now they might actually need to prove their value in ways that make sense or at least aligns more closely to baseline reasonable. I'm not saying this out of spite due to being rejected either—I played the same game and came out with top internships and placements at the same set of Big Tech that everyone else wanted. I feel awful about being compelled to participate in that meat grinder.
- samspenc 3y agoMy guess is the allure of FAANG is the same as that of Ivy Leagues - people who haven't gone to either think there's something special about those institutions or the people who went there. Part of it is certainly media coverage and status in their peer group and general society as well. But once you've gone to one of those, you realize that they are really no different from any other college or work experience. There are some things they do a lot better due to scale and ranking, but day-to-day is much the same.
- PragmaticPulp 3y agoA lot of the “so what?” comments are missing the point. For years, putting in the effort to get into top CS universities and then putting in the effort to graduate with good marks and an internship or two was understood as the path to a high paying CS career. Many of these students have put in incredible effort to get to this point with the expectation that they’ll have a good chance of landing a FAANG job from which to launch their career. Now that they’ve arrived at graduation, the opportunities available to their older peers for the past decade are suddenly unavailable. Many of those students have spent the last 4-8 years of their lives focused on this goal, only to see the nature of the game change completely right before the finish line. Those of us who have been around for a while know that this is only temporary and that a great CS education still opens doors to many good companies. However, it’s a shock to the system to be focused on a goal (and a specific paycheck) for years and then to discover it’s not available to you right at the end. Try to have some empathy for this turn of events. I mentor in a program for college students and grads. A disproportionate number of our rather talented students are struggling to get any interviews at all, despite our resume reviews and coaching. They’ve gone from hoping to get a FAANG job to hoping they can get any interviews at all. It’s tough out there.
- usui 3y agoYes I would love to be empathetic, but I also can't also help feel some amount of bitter sweetness because I've seen some HORRIFIC behavior resulting from the way the major has been gamed and milked as students from top universities saturated the game with min-maxing (moreso at Berkeley than Stanford just because of population and economics involved). Yes I know this existed before and this is nothing new, and arguably as a microcosm it accurately reflects the industry experience itself. But gosh darn it, this is computer science we're talking about, in college no less! Where hath the passion gone?! I apologize for the soapbox.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoI have a feeling the average student who studies hard isn't going to have a tough time getting any job after graduation. Not everyone needs to be a 200k+ FAANG SE right out of college. Those who can't get any interviews, what are their grades like? Do they have open source contributions, a website, online presence? Internships?
- giantg2 3y agoInteresting. I thought most places would normally only take juniors or seniors for interns anyways. "'Yeah,' she said tentatively, in the voice of somebody who had never considered pursuing a career as unglamorous – as unsparkly! – as security." Hahaha I'm our team's security champion (so the worst of both worlds). This made me laugh.
- green_man_lives 3y agoI worked at a FAANG as a new grad because I thought it was the logical next step in the career of a software developer (money). I really don't understand the appeal. Was it once actually worth it? Even with the money and "prestige" it felt like a huge step back career-wise. It was obvious once I got there that the sheer scale meant that more energy had to go into menial tasks than into actual creative work. It seemed like a trap where people who had gotten a Masters or PhD in something actually hard ended up working on things that wouldn't even be challenging to someone with a Bachelors. As for the "culture", well, you're surrounded by people who have been grinding to get up the ladder. I think my FAANG coworkers were the least interesting people I have worked with. I don't mean that to be rude I think it's just selection bias (I consider myself to be boring). Conversely, the people in the boring industries like Government and Aerospace have been some of the most interesting people. They're also tackling much more intellectually stimulating problems than most people are going to at FAANG, without advanced degrees. It felt like a misallocation of human potential. I think the contraction of FAANG and "big tech" in general is probably better for the progress of technology and also maybe the personal growth of developers, or at least it is for me. Or not, maybe I am just biased. My $0.02
- forshadowing_ 3y ago[dead]
- fxtentacle 3y agoNow with s/facebook/meta/, we should rename FAANG to MANGA :)
- zappchance 3y agoIs this what MANGA stands for? I saw it before in the context of FAANG/MANGA companies but never realized it's just because Facebook is now Meta. I tried Bing Search which told me it might mean Microsoft, Alibaba, Nvidia, Google and Amazon for "some of the leading companies in cloud computing and artifical intelligence." But the "source" it gave me was the Wikipedia article for Japanese comics.
- timetraveller26 3y agoPoor rich kids, they have to work for a non-famous company like the rest of us.