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Tech workers demand high salaries despite hiring slowdown
- azimmm 3y ago[dead]
- antonettemolly 3y ago[dead]
- MaxLindelof 3y ago[flagged]
- accrual 3y ago> Their demands come even as wage inflation appears to have hit a peaked, the report said. Does this reference a tech sector-specific wage inflation?
- webel0 3y agoYoY price inflation (cpi) was 3.7% in August. The fed does not think price inflation is under control by any means. Wage inflation will only peak if workers roll over and let employers take advantage of them.
- kevinventullo 3y agoIt’s literally propaganda.
- whatshisface 3y agoYou can tell it's propaganda because it's describing market forces as "demands." ;-) Technically workers are the supply, anyway.
- pizzalife 3y agoIt's also grammatically incorrect.. "appears to have hit a peaked"?
- esotericimpl 3y agoI've found the issue isnt high performing engineers, they're gonna get paid. The issue is middling engineers and junior engineers where before they would expect a 130k-150k salary in a tier 1 city, those offers are gone.
- candiddevmike 3y agoI don't know how the folks just starting out are finding jobs. Seems like no one wants to hire juniors anymore unless it's for pennies and they can work you to the bone.
- yieldcrv 3y agoBy never saying you are a junior. Some people figure it out. Contract, make an LLC for more contracting, call that LLC experience, interview as senior engineer.
- swader999 3y agoIt's easier to do this nowadays. If you are smart, hard working, after a year and with AI in your pocket it should be easier than ever to work like someone with 3 years in a given space.
- gedy 3y agoand they are expecting RTO in high cost of living areas!
- akmarinov 3y agoDon’t identify as a junior. Just say you’re a “software engineer” and don’t put qualifiers that would turn off employers
- imacomputertoo 3y agoI think that makes sense. so many experienced employees have been laid off that companies don't need to hire newbies any more. Six years I started working for a company that hired 3 senior devs and boatloads of bootcamp grads. for a new project. I doubt that would happen now.
- mullingitover 3y agoMeanwhile: "In November, Jay Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, said the labour force was 3.5mn workers shy of pre-pandemic forecasts. He said 2mn of the shortfall could be due to more people retiring early." and "Long-term demand for tech talent is not expected to abate. Based on its digital ambitions the EU alone wants 20mn technology specialists, which compares with the 9mn it had in 2021."[1] Seems like the layoffs have been mostly a short-term reaction to the shock of the pandemic era coming to a close. Long-term, we'll soon be back to the steady drumbeat of tech worker shortages. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/b1b710a1-6d12-43e5-8508-ae4584a7289a https://www.ft.com/content/b1b710a1-6d12-43e5-8508-ae4584a72...
- mempko 3y agoWe had more than 1 million, mostly older experienced workers die from covid. Why is anyone surprised we have a labor shortage?
- bugglebeetle 3y agoBecause pretending that happened and is still happening would be contrary to the narrative that labor (vs. Capital) needs to be reigned in to make the economy broadly functional again. Inflation is being driven by corporate price gouging and labor shortages (outside of those resulting from the pandemic) are being driven by the wildly unequal distribution of returns to owners vs workers. COVID’s on track to kill another 200K people in the US this year, plus cause serious health problems for who knows how many more, so I don’t expect any of this to abate. They’ll just keep jacking up interest rates and screaming “NOBODY WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE” until the whole thing implodes.
- mempko 3y agoThis ^, exactly this ^
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- etchalon 3y agoThe number of two-years-of-experience engineers with middling React skills who are demanding a six figure salary, plus additional comp, continues to astound me. I stopped making reasonable offers to them. It was always a waste of time. We just move on now.
- ryanianian 3y agoAnd you'll possibly even get talent that is willing to work for your intended price. Good luck.
- etchalon 3y agoWe haven't had a problem hiring talented people yet. If we had, that would indicate their price was reasonable and that we needed to change our salary ranges.
- zapataband1 3y agoWell if the market ever bounces back I think people will be a lot less loyal about leaving places with subpar salaries esp after all the layoffs
- etchalon 3y agoMy experience has been that salary alone isn't much of a determinate for employee loyalty for the vast majority of people. If the only reason someone worked for me was because I was willing to pay them the most, I think I'd re-think my entire company culture.
- moregrist 3y agoBeing paid tip-dollar isn’t the biggest motivating factor for most people. Feeling like you’re undervalued or being taken advantage of? That’s a huge factor in someone leaving. Being paid substantially under market? I would feel both undervalued and taken advantage of.
- andix 3y agoAt least in Europe the companies have huge issues finding enough suitable junior engineers, because there are less and less young people. At some point more engineers will retire per year than young ones entering the job market. It looks like the traditionally low salaries for SW engineers in Europe are finally growing a bit.
- dicriseg 3y agoI imagine there would be plenty of folks willing to come over if the wages at least got into the ballpark of the US. My impression is that the visa/residency process isn’t too onerous if you’re coming over with a job. Close the gap enough and it’s worth it for many, with quality of life stuff taking up the slack. But it can’t be too large, because tech workers can afford quality of life in the US too - it’s just purchased a la carte with the higher salary.
- devmor 3y agoWhat slowdown is this? First I’m hearing of it. Author might need to separate imagination from reality.
- tines 3y agoIt's not imagination, you're probably just insulated. Many people I know have been looking for entry-level positions for months (the city I/they live in is a tech hub) and are lucky to even hear a "no."
- devmor 3y agoFor entry-level? That’s been going on for a few years. No one wants to train up juniors anymore - they want to outsource offshore. Then they wonder why they have to pay so much for mid level to seniors.
- Madmallard 3y agotech workers deserve higher salaries. companies just don't want to pay it. they want you to make as little as possible
- ryanianian 3y ago> tech workers deserve higher salaries. That's a loaded statement. Salaries are set based on market conditions.
- dicriseg 3y agoThese statements are not mutually exclusive. Tech workers deserve higher salaries for the value they provide. And the market is to some extent manipulated, or we wouldn’t see massive layoffs and massive (and growing) profits. The difference is, tech workers don’t have an analog of layoffs at their disposal. Workers control labor supply of 1, when most companies individually control large multiples of the demand side. That doesn’t mean that workers deserve less.
- grumple 3y agoAnd sometimes market conditions are "people refuse to work for us for less than 150k". And sometimes you're in a time a place where laborers are expected to take a greater share of the benefits of their labor. Actually, the word deserve is probably stronger. I think workers deserve to reap almost all of the benefits of their labor, as opposed to capital or leadership benefitting.
- barryrandall 3y agoThey're set based on negotiations between employers and job seekers/their representatives. The market influences rates, but once negotiations start, every human foible, bias, and shortcoming has a role to play.
- mullingitover 3y ago> Salaries are set based on market conditions. This is true, but the long-term market condition has been "There are not enough tech workers to meet the demand." Honestly, I hate how extortionate the higher education system is in the US, but I benefit from it because it does an amazing job of choking off the supply of labor and keeping wages high. I'd still vote to provide free universal higher education, but the lack of it is what's keeping everyone in the tech sector afloat. Look at what the scourge of affordable tuition has done to European tech workers.
- photonbeam 3y agoWhy accept something low now when it will obviously revert back soon
- willio58 3y agoWhat’s the evidence saying pay will revert back? I doubt it personally.
- geuis 3y agoI've lived through 3 of these times so far. The early 2000's when the stock market tanked. 2008, and now the last year. The demand for people who can write software slows down, but we aren't anywhere near a peak plateau where software engineering jobs aren't needed. Silicon Valley isn't going to turn into the rust belt anytime soon. What's changing are the types of skills needed, and engineers are imminently poised to do that. Unlike factory workers our skills are malleable and constantly changing.
- swalsh 3y agoIt is not at all obvious it will "revert" back... we had HUGE amounts of people working on bullshit projects that never generated any revenue. Maybe in the previous climate of cheap capital we could afford to do that, but in 2023 capital ain't so cheap anymore. There's very little indication that's going to change.
- riku_iki 3y agoamount/quantity doesn't mean quality. top tier still can see lots of salary increase in growing hot areas, like OpenAI pays 1M to ICs, bottom tiers yes, may be overcrowded.
- swalsh 3y agoSupply and demand, a boat load of extremely talented FAANG engineers were dumped on a smaller market. You might not be willing to compromise on the price of your eggs, but your peer might and he might be almost as good as you, and probably 10x as good as what the company previously had access to.
- gedy 3y agoCost of living (and retirement) is very high. While assets like housing stay inflated, it's hard to take less, it's not greed.
- barryrandall 3y agoThe article summarizes this report: https://www.lorienglobal.com/-/media/lorien/lorien-salary-survey-us-2023_9-7-23_links.pdf https://www.lorienglobal.com/-/media/lorien/lorien-salary-su...
- yieldcrv 3y agoWhere are cybersecurity professionals commanding that salary? Not too long ago that was lesser than SWE? I know plenty of certificate chasing cybersecurity professionals that can barely keep $100,000
- pizzalife 3y ago>Not too long ago that was lesser than SWE? I know plenty of certificate chasing cybersecurity professionals that can barely keep $100,000 The high-end cybersecurity jobs require zero certificates. Qualifications > Certifications. If you have actual expertise in red-teaming, proven track-record with discovering CVEs etc, the money is there.
- yieldcrv 3y agoahhh discovering CVEs, thats often a form of software engineering as opposed to making sure a system is PCI Compliant or whatever. I don't respect IT certificate chasers, because any dev could debilitate those organizations implementing “best practices” and just chooses not to
- swader999 3y agoAnd they deserve it. I'm seeing our productivity almost double with AI creeping into our mix in the last two months.
- pengaru 3y agoI've been casually looking for opportunities on linkedin, and for many of the roles I consider applying to there's >100 applicants according to the linkedin listing. That strikes me as exceptionally high vs. past years when I was shopping around.
- postsantum 3y agoPerhaps it's the same 100 people applying for every listing
- jethro_tell 3y agoLol, look at this, this guy wants to be a principal and a Jr in out company. . .
- eikenberry 3y agoI think it is people laid off still trickling back into jobs.
- Avalaxy 3y agoFrom experience I can tell you that 99 of those are Indians without any sort of relevant resume for the job they're applying for.
- blamazon 3y agoOn that metric, for postings where the apply link goes to an external page, any user that clicks apply (and is redirected) is counted, even if they don't actually follow through. For LinkedIn easy-apply, the metric is more accurate to actual submitted applications, but there seems to be a lot of users (scripts?) indiscriminately easy-applying to every possible job because it's, well, easy.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- theK 3y agoThat doesn't have to mean anything though. I set up a couple of job posts some months ago, in that case we where trying to hire devs roughly in a specific time zone. As linkedin didn't support that we had to leave the location filtering completely off. We immediately got inundated with low quality applications from outside our target timezones. I know that others too have had this "issue"
- 0xDEF 3y agoNot just tech workers. 24 year old non-technical product managers at FAANG companies are demanding $190,000 salaries. As a European I wish more FAANG companies started hiring software engineers remotely. The only American companies that have offered me remote jobs with FAANG tier salaries were cryptobro startups.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- riku_iki 3y agoFAANG have many offices in Europe..
- starttoaster 3y agoDo they pay European salaries in European offices? I imagine the answer to that question is, "yes." The appeal for a European to get an American FAANG position remotely is presumably to soak up some of that dramatically higher American tech salary. I'm not sure that's a reasonable expectation though, as most companies in my experience will adjust pay to scale to the employee's current location for remote roles.
- riku_iki 3y agoYou can try to do research for your location: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-engineer/levels/l5/locations/ireland https://www.levels.fyi/companies/google/salaries/software-en...
- RestlessMind 3y agoBased on my personal experience, the answer is yes. Hired a lot of Europeans in London, Dublin, Munich, Zurich, Budapest and Lisbon over the last decade. Only Zurich came close to SV compensation levels.
- jethro_tell 3y agoWell, part of the deal for a lot of these salaries is that you work more hours than the EU allows.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoTech hiring has been broken for a long time and they keep looking to the government to somehow save them from their own incompetence in labor development. The "hiring" pipeline has been highly optimized for finding reasons not to hire a worker instead of finding suitable workers to develop. Each year this optimization gets closer and closer to its final goal of never being able to hire anyone. Meanwhile most companies would prefer to not give raises that keep up with inflation over having talent walk out the doo. They'll happily put themselves at the end of the "hiring" pipeline again where they will once again complain there are no workers despite having let many leave over small amounts of money that inflation adjusted is near zero.
- shagie 3y ago> The "hiring" pipeline has been highly optimized for finding reasons not to hire a worker instead of finding suitable workers to develop. The hiring pipeline has always been and continues to be hiring the least risky developer instead of trying to hire the "best" developer. When the applicants far out number the time it would take to give a more in-depth hiring review for each candidate the approach to hiring the least risky candidate is one of "remove everyone who is risky and then see what you've got left." This can look like "find reasons not to hire" ... but also consider that sometimes when you've got 300 applicants and even a simple test of programing capability rules out 270 of them (not exaggerating here) and the 30 that remain have unrealistic explications of compensation (not every company can match the pay of big tech) or have other red flags that make them a risky hire, well, that's a labor shortage. When the hiring pool is smaller and the stickiness of hiring a candidate is greater (a new hire jumping to big tech after getting 6-12 months of of experience is a common thing), then you can hire for the potential to develop a worker. Developing an employee for half a year and then having them leave means that you now need to switch (again) to a very risk adverse hiring approach.
- hellisothers 3y agoThe inane questions asked during an interview don’t signal to me “risk mitigation”, they say “this what everybody else does and nobody got fired for doing the status quo”. Having done close to a hundred interviews as an IC it definitely seems like we, as an industry, are looking for why not to hire a given person.
- zapataband1 3y agoEveryone always says that tech doesn't need unions because of the ability to negotiate. Doesn't seem to be working out well for the industry as a whole. We have basically the same problem as UPS/Auto industry -> no trickle down. Top 3 auto companies set to make 32 Billion this year. -> 580,000 employees Apple profit is 250 bill -> 164,000 employees
- welder 3y agoSite is unusable from EU. The cookie consent popup has a freaking progress loading bar that reaches 100% after a few minutes only to say it failed to save your cookie preferences.
- mmmBacon 3y agoYou’d think by now we’d have our browsers handle some kind of default cookie setting so we don’t have to deal with these annoying pop ups.
- falcolas 3y agoAd blockers can - some do by default - take care of this.
- totallywrong 3y agoHighly recommend Adblock Browser, a fork of Firefox. I haven't seen a damn cookie popup in a long time.
- welder 3y agohttps://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic
- grumple 3y agoBecause most of us are working at companies that are absolutely drowning in backlogs and there's a ton of work to do. Tech workers can add value to any company. My company had a hiring freeze for most of the year and layoffs. Yet we have critical roles with no-one doing them (instead I'm doing 4 jobs poorly). Thankfully there are plans to hire in our new fiscal year (which starts in October). Devs are also the sort who can and will work for themselves or small companies. There's no leverage by employers - we can leave and work anywhere, or for ourselves, even in the current climate. Another reality workers in all industries are starting to believe: all of us, especially the working class, deserve the fruits of our labor.
- mrbonner 3y agoWe used to have ML engineer and now it’s changed to AI engineer. I need to ask ChatGPT to generate more titles now.
- elcritch 3y agoWhat's interesting to me is that if you adjust the average salary in the 80's for inflation and productivity gains it'd be close to what (non-FAANG) devs make now. As in the "high salaries" of tech workers is just what average folks used to make relatively speaking previous decades.
- 0xDEF 3y agoAny source for that claim?
- totallywrong 3y agoBy simple observation, average single-income households were able to own a home and raise a family back then.
- meiraleal 3y agoBut they couldn't have a top notch smartphone or a computer that is as fast as server the size of whole buildings. Although most people want to buy a house, given a smartphone and a rent or a house but living with no smartphone or internet, I think most people would choose pay rent and have access to internet and a smartphone.
- giannaT 3y agoThey still can. Just not in luxury areas.
- lelandbatey 3y agoSooooo as the parent said, "no." "Luxury areas" are not somehow "optional" for the people that have to live there to work there, as the term "luxury area" implies.
- DianeS 3y agoThey don’t have to work there. Plenty of jobs in non-luxurious areas.
- gustavus 3y agoSkilled engineers are just in demand as ever, an engineer is different than a technician however. An engineer can take a problem and solve it using various tools, they can weigh the pros and cons of possible solutions and can determine what fits the situation. A skilled engineer understands the value of good coding practices, understands that even if an activity doesn't create value it is still important, such as documentation and testing. A technician was a barista who went to a 3 month boot camp[1] that promised to turn him into a "Full Stack Developer" who got railroaded through the basics of the React-Express-Mongo stack (all of which is largely JS) and a certificate. A technician doesn't waste time understanding why the reports are coming out slightly wrong, they'll just go ahead and add some code that updates all the values that are off by 1. A technician is defined primarily by the tool they have and their ability to use it. A technician will do something like have an entire table returned to the client side and then filter through it in the frontend because it that's what they know how to do.[2] For a while technician's could demand the salaries of skilled engineers by virtue of an enormous shortage, and the fact that VC capital meant there was always another unicorn to sling their code around at. The market is contracting now and the technicians are starting to be unable to demand six figure starting salaries, and get insulted that some of the offers are only 60-70k, which as an aside is still a decent salary for most people in the US, one of my good friends works in construction management and despite his years of experience he just transferred jobs, he was estatic at the prospect of possibly making 80k at his new job, but I digress. My point being I think that part of the problem is there was a bubble in tech salaries for a while that were unsustainable, and now we are seeing a mild corretion. Notes: 1. I have nothing against boot camp grads who can be valuable engineers and contributors, if they either 1) Were already tinkering and interested in programming before and the boot camp was just their way of getting their foot in the door or 2) They understand the bootcamp is the beginning of their journey and not the end and are willing to put the effort into continuing education. 2. I know this comes off hard on technicians, but I have seen many even supposedly "senior" engineers who are overglorified technicians, the difference between a perpetual technician and an engineer is continually learning. Here's a tip, if you want to be a decent engineer you should probably have a decent grasp of at least 3 programming languages, be able to understand networking basics, and follow everything outlined in Norvig's "How to become a programmer in 10 years."
- 3y ago
- darth_avocado 3y agoIt is mostly driven by housing costs. A lot (read most) of the tech companies are located in the most expensive housing real estate markets. If I’m looking for a job, I most definitely will try to make sure I don’t end up having to spend more than half of my “in hand, guaranteed income” is not spent on housing. The companies are pushing RTO in a bone headed way, will then have to pay the premium of having to hire talent in those expensive markets. It’s a fixable problem that companies don’t seem to want to fix.
- foogazi 3y ago> A lot (read most) of the tech companies are located in the most expensive housing real estate markets. The most expensive real estate markets are expensive because of tech
- zerr 3y agoBecause most of us can afford to be funemployed indefinitely.
- zapataband1 3y agonot me
- tennisflyi 3y agoThread is loaded with entitlement/privilege.
- Lenoir233 3y ago[flagged]
- netbioserror 3y agoThe covid money printing, followed by inflation-hedge dumping into stocks, followed by staggeringly high trillion-dollar valuations led to this. Realistic software dev salaries are not what the tech giants were paying.