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I think a similar effect is seen in the US. Perusing the (notably fewer) recruiter emails I’ve gotten lately, they’re almost all below my current pay. Contraste

I think a similar effect is seen in the US. Perusing the (notably fewer) recruiter emails I’ve gotten lately, they’re almost all below my current pay. Contrasted with a year ago, probably 30-40% of cold recruiter outreach were for higher paying gigs than my current job. I’m also seeing developers with killer resumes complaining in community slack channels about not even getting called back for follow-up interviews. These are people that I would’ve cleaned up in referral fees back when the market was hot. Times have definitely changed. It’s clear that the tech industry and engineering pay flourished under low interest rates and free flowing VC money. Those days are clearly behind us, at least for now.

RachelF 3y ago
Australia also relies on migration to keep wages down. This was paused during Covid, so there is more supply of people now.
- pj_mukh 3y ago
  This person will never be convinced, but for anyone else reading, Australia (and Canada, and America) uses migration to ward off a population time bomb [1] not to “keep wages low”. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/birth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/birth-ra... EDIT: sorry didn’t meant to be dismissive of the person above, but usually this topic hits way too personal for people to change minds online (see: comments below). For any passers by genuinely curious exhaustive data reviews are available [2]. Tl;dr: Immigration does not depress wages. [2] https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...
  - okaram 3y ago
    They are the same thing ... wages are lower than they would be without migration. Whether you count them as low or high, they are lower
  - psychlops 3y ago
    I don't get it, what's the bomb?
    - lathiat 3y ago
      Population decline. Which in itself may not be a problem but has all sorts of interesting economical consequences. You get an aging population requiring care, with less people to both physically and financially/economically fund them. You also move from always having to build new houses and infrastructure to suddenly having excess housing and infrastructure that isn't needed. Not only does that eliminate a whole bunch of jobs and related economic activity but also drives prices down, etc. I am sure this is an absolutely terrible summary but you can google population bomb, population decline, etc, for much more informed takes. But basically for the last 100 years the entire world and economy has run on an ever-inflating path and that could change at both a country and world level.
    - 2143 3y ago
      After a period of decline, it'll eventually fall off a cliff and weird economic after effects happen. Try reading https://longnow.org/ideas/the-heresy-of-decline/ https://longnow.org/ideas/the-heresy-of-decline/
      - psychlops 3y ago
        Fascinating website, thanks for the link.
  - ralph84 3y ago
    So in response to people being unable to afford kids, we depress wages to make it even harder to afford kids. Got it.
    - afavour 3y ago
      I assume Australia is not courting five year olds to apply for visas and are instead trying to plug a gap in a population older than that. Even if everyone started having kids tomorrow that gap would still exist.
  - Slava_Propanei 3y ago
    [dead]
  - analognoise 3y ago
    Isn't this confusing cause and effect? Fewer people are having children because it is harder than ever to afford a family, not because the locals have decided passively not to continue on. Immigration absolutely depresses wages - if you import more supply, what happens to the price? That doesn't require advanced economics to understand.
automatistauto 3y ago
A lot of work can be done by no-code and low-code tools so there is less need for software engineers in general. Linus at some point predicted that most of the web developer jobs would be going away because AI can do a lot of it. I think this trend will continue and the AI tools will continue moving down the stack until LLMs can be applied in basically every coding context with very little software engineering training. People were saying AI tools will create more jobs but it's pretty clear that this time is different and what used to require 2 engineers can now be accomplished by 1 engineer + AI copilots in the relevant domains. I think this trend will continue and the expected outcome is going to be lower demand and lower salaries for software engineers in basically all domains except maybe for very low level work like firmware, kernel drivers, and compilers.
- smeej 3y ago
  I'm trying to fight the schadenfreude, but after years as an operations person in tech companies, being told "just learn to code!" in the most condescending way possible, by people who couldn't fathom that I was actually contentedly living on a third of their annual salary, there's something about this that feels like karma. The computers can learn to do your job too, as it turns out, which kinda makes a funny sort of sense if you think about it. After all, what should computers be more familiar with than computer code?
  - unforeseen9991 3y ago
    The true end game always has been being an overseer of the technology. Sysadmins and sysops are one area that will never go away as there will always be another system to manage. It doesn't matter if that system is human, computer, or both.
    - m0llusk 3y ago
      One of my friends works as an admin. His group is shrinking fast as people retire and are not replaced. They are forced to automate everything they can as quickly as they can just to keep things going. Seems like pressure to reduce overhead is combining with sophisticate tools to put a squeeze on admins.

RachelF 3y ago

Australia also relies on migration to keep wages down. This was paused during Covid, so there is more supply of people now.

pj_mukh 3y ago
This person will never be convinced, but for anyone else reading, Australia (and Canada, and America) uses migration to ward off a population time bomb [1] not to “keep wages low”. [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/birth-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/AUS/australia/birth-ra... EDIT: sorry didn’t meant to be dismissive of the person above, but usually this topic hits way too personal for people to change minds online (see: comments below). For any passers by genuinely curious exhaustive data reviews are available [2]. Tl;dr: Immigration does not depress wages. [2] https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-reduce?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/repost-why-immigration-doesnt-...
- okaram 3y ago
  They are the same thing ... wages are lower than they would be without migration. Whether you count them as low or high, they are lower
- psychlops 3y ago
  I don't get it, what's the bomb?
  - lathiat 3y ago
    Population decline. Which in itself may not be a problem but has all sorts of interesting economical consequences. You get an aging population requiring care, with less people to both physically and financially/economically fund them. You also move from always having to build new houses and infrastructure to suddenly having excess housing and infrastructure that isn't needed. Not only does that eliminate a whole bunch of jobs and related economic activity but also drives prices down, etc. I am sure this is an absolutely terrible summary but you can google population bomb, population decline, etc, for much more informed takes. But basically for the last 100 years the entire world and economy has run on an ever-inflating path and that could change at both a country and world level.
  - 2143 3y ago
    After a period of decline, it'll eventually fall off a cliff and weird economic after effects happen. Try reading https://longnow.org/ideas/the-heresy-of-decline/ https://longnow.org/ideas/the-heresy-of-decline/
    - psychlops 3y ago
      Fascinating website, thanks for the link.
- ralph84 3y ago
  So in response to people being unable to afford kids, we depress wages to make it even harder to afford kids. Got it.
  - afavour 3y ago
    I assume Australia is not courting five year olds to apply for visas and are instead trying to plug a gap in a population older than that. Even if everyone started having kids tomorrow that gap would still exist.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago
  [dead]
- analognoise 3y ago
  Isn't this confusing cause and effect? Fewer people are having children because it is harder than ever to afford a family, not because the locals have decided passively not to continue on. Immigration absolutely depresses wages - if you import more supply, what happens to the price? That doesn't require advanced economics to understand.

automatistauto 3y ago

A lot of work can be done by no-code and low-code tools so there is less need for software engineers in general. Linus at some point predicted that most of the web developer jobs would be going away because AI can do a lot of it. I think this trend will continue and the AI tools will continue moving down the stack until LLMs can be applied in basically every coding context with very little software engineering training. People were saying AI tools will create more jobs but it's pretty clear that this time is different and what used to require 2 engineers can now be accomplished by 1 engineer + AI copilots in the relevant domains. I think this trend will continue and the expected outcome is going to be lower demand and lower salaries for software engineers in basically all domains except maybe for very low level work like firmware, kernel drivers, and compilers.

smeej 3y ago
I'm trying to fight the schadenfreude, but after years as an operations person in tech companies, being told "just learn to code!" in the most condescending way possible, by people who couldn't fathom that I was actually contentedly living on a third of their annual salary, there's something about this that feels like karma. The computers can learn to do your job too, as it turns out, which kinda makes a funny sort of sense if you think about it. After all, what should computers be more familiar with than computer code?
- unforeseen9991 3y ago
  The true end game always has been being an overseer of the technology. Sysadmins and sysops are one area that will never go away as there will always be another system to manage. It doesn't matter if that system is human, computer, or both.
  - m0llusk 3y ago
    One of my friends works as an admin. His group is shrinking fast as people retire and are not replaced. They are forced to automate everything they can as quickly as they can just to keep things going. Seems like pressure to reduce overhead is combining with sophisticate tools to put a squeeze on admins.