10 ms·

What the The end of 0% interest rates means for software engineers

128 points by oumua_don17 3y ago

oldpersonintx 3y ago
The end of ZIRP is the tip of the iceberg 1. Consolidation. There will be fewer and more powerful tech companies in the future and they will grow and profit as they shrink their headcount. The belief that profits and growth = jobs will soon be recognized as twentieth century thinking. 2. Automation. Spiffy tools, reuse, AI...no matter how you slice it, your skills are getting pushed into the shared stack every day. 3. Internationalization. You might be surprised to find out that there are React coders in South America that have all the right tats and piercings, read HN and Blind, bang on leetcode...and will work for 1/5 what you will. The only question is how many people leaving tech presently will never be able to get back in, or maybe they just realize driving a Fedex truck for the same money is less stressful. Also don't be too spooked by layoffs so far, its just beginning in tech and finance and this wave still hasn't hit the huge cohort of permanently cashflow-negative startups somehow still clinging to life...they will ALL be gone.
- AnotherGoodName 3y ago
  To balance this, particularly your last paragraph I have the opposite viewpoint. The US government had ppp loans that were forgiven completely that effectively paid companies per employee. There was no reason not to over hire for a long period of time. We have a correction but that seems to be it. Even now the quarterly earnings statements have lines that they expect headcount to grow in future quarters (meta for example stated this bluntly in their Q3 report). So while cash flow negative startups with no future will close that's it. The market is starting to come back and this was really an understandable blip.
  - w4 3y ago
    > To balance this, particularly your last paragraph I have the opposite viewpoint. The US government had ppp loans that were forgiven completely that effectively paid companies per employee. There was no reason not to over hire for a long period of time. PPP loans were based on 2019's average monthly payroll[1]. They did not have an effect on hiring decisions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program#Loan_amount https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program#Lo...
  - oldpersonintx 3y ago
    [dead]
  - pphysch 3y ago
    > The US government had ppp loans that were forgiven completely that effectively paid companies per employee. The US government also has federal prosecutors actively investigating fraudulent PPP loans, so don't expect this gravy train to come round again.
- paulpauper 3y ago
  1. Consolidation. There will be fewer and more powerful tech companies in the future There is no evidence or reason to expect this to be true. The evidence points to the opposite, such as https://www.axios.com/2023/06/01/sp500-tech-companies-stock-price https://www.axios.com/2023/06/01/sp500-tech-companies-stock-...
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Yeah exactly if anything we're seeing the beginning of the disintegration of the big monoliths (Google at least) who hoovered up everything in their path. VC investment has ebbed, that's true. But maybe it will encourage businesses with a more solid path to revenue --even self-bootstrapped -- less hype, and more practical product oriented engineering. We can hope. I do think a lot of us may end up out of work. Myself included, maybe.
  - danjac 3y ago
    What evidence is this?
- joshuamcginnis 3y ago
  I'd like to see more brilliant minds from tech explore other industries, especially the trades. It is incredibly difficult to find competent and trustworthy tradespeople at a reasonable price today. There is so much that a former SWE could bring to the table that doesn't necessarily mean being the tradesperson themselves (though that would be great). The trades desperately need manpower on all fronts.
  - matrix87 3y ago
    Why don't you set an example for everyone and go into a trade then?
    - NeverFade 3y ago
      Actually doing it is of course only for other people.
  - jwells89 3y ago
    Sounds great if there’s some way to raise compensation for tradespeople to the level it should be at, considering how critical they are to modern society.
  - dw_arthur 3y ago
    The trades are underpaid. If you have other options why would you tear your body up so people can get services "at a resonable price"? Think about how people in the trades feel seeing people who work from home make multiples of their pay.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    I'm not sure what you're advocating for here. There are many brilliant people doing trades work. Just as there are many brilliant people teaching, or digging ditches, or tending bar, or working as security guards, or... Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.
  - lkdfjlkdfjlg 3y ago
    > I'd like to see more brilliant minds from tech explore other industries, especially the trades. It is incredibly difficult to find competent and trustworthy tradespeople at a reasonable price today. Ok so your pitch is that other people (not you) should go into "the trades" and charge less than the people who are there now? Wanna give us an example of what a "trade" is, what you're being charged for it, and how much you'd like to pay?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jwells89 3y ago
  Something that may help defend against #2, if perhaps only temporarily, is to move to niches of software engineering that are more difficult to automate and have higher bars to entry. Things like kernel code, GPU drivers, embedded work, etc are much less LLM-friendly than say Wordpress plugins.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
    Actually, I've had ChatGPT write some simple embedded code and it did a pretty good job.
- squigglydonut 3y ago
  companies are finding out that people who are paid 1/5 tend to do much less work and draw out contracts. I have seen many projects grind to a halt working with international 3rd party vendors.
- dogman144 3y ago
  Yes, I think South/Central America technology is coming in big. Personally I am learning Spanish finally. It comes with a fraction of the confusion from offshoring to APAC wrt timezones, business culture, language barriers, and so on.
paulpauper 3y ago
I don't think it means much at all. Software jobs boomed in the 80s and 90s despite high interest rates. Tech tends to do well in almost every econ environment. And already, interest rate forecasts falling.
- cableshaft 3y ago
  In the long term I think you're pretty much right, but in the short term, all these businesses that were structured around the assumption of easy massive funding rounds from low interest rates have to figure out how to operate in high interest rates again, and will likely shed a lot of employees in the process.
  - hello_moto 3y ago
    All businesses are used to certain range of interest-rate for the last 20 years.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      Sure, but most businesses at least try to be profitable, whereas many in tech were fundamentally untenable without a constant injection of external capital to prop up a venture aiming only to grow rather than to actually be sustainable.
      - cableshaft 3y ago
        Still blows my mind that Uber's first reported quarterly earnings that showed a profit in its entire history was Q2 2023[1]. And the company was founded in 2009. They've been losing money for well over a decade and yet still getting wave after wave of cash from investors. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/01/uber-reports-first-quarterly-operating-profit/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/01/uber-reports-first-quarter...
        lotsofpulp 3y ago
        https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/company_financi... >Their latest funding was raised on Sep 14, 2020 from a Post-IPO Debt round. I would not even count that since "getting wave after wave of cash from investors" usually means receiving cash in exchange for equity, not borrowing money. It seems the most recent cash they received from investors was at IPO in May 2019, and before that, Softbank in Jan 2018: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/111015/story-uber.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/11101...
nine_zeros 3y ago
The biggest thing that companies need to optimize on - which they don't seem to have caught on to yet - are management processes which create unprofitable overhead. While "overhead" is an overloaded term, in practice it looks like: 1. Too much documentation, blog posts, spreadsheets (designed for management optics). Every one of these artifacts takes dev time. 2. Excessive stages in CI pipelines, internal tools, saas tools usage (designed for engineering promos). Every one of these takes dev time. 3. Excessive features (designed for IC and management promos) 4. Excessive amount of time spent in promotions, stack ranking, and performance reviews (designed to make management useful) 5. Excessive time on making agile work such as time on Jira story points, backlog grooming, retros, meeting minutes, agendas, scrums (designed to again, make management appear like they are doing something). 6. Excessive number of management layers (manager, sr manager, director, sr director, sr sr director, associate vp, vp, svp). Every person on this ladder is overhead*365 days a year. All of these are entirely a problem of management layer overhead. The only and only thing that works in a tough environment is few "skilled" managers who are still very technical and can align people and teams work towards specific goals.
- aorona 3y ago
  agile "agile" is an oxymoron
  - bdcravens 3y ago
    Agile is a philosophy, not a system. What we most know as agile is the result of systemizing it.
    - drewcon 3y ago
      “The purpose of a system is what it does”
    - jillesvangurp 3y ago
      Agile is an adjective, not a noun. The opposite of agile are words like clumsy, apathetic, depressed, dispirited, down, dull, ignorant, inactive, lazy, lethargic, lifeless, rigid, slow, sluggish, stiff, stupid, brittle, etc. That's why being agile caught on because none of the opposites sound like a good thing to admit to. That's why agile is a bit vague and waffly as well. Because world+dog now calls themselves agile. And then you get all these pedantic types telling others they are doing it wrong, aren't pure enough, etc. They are the priests of agile. And they get hired by big companies for lots of money to help them become agile. Of course that requires some compromise and they adapt their definitions and standards until it's all agile and wonderful. Because the alternative would be admitting failure, which isn't mutually beneficial. You are kind of doing waterfall in an agile way For example, you plan 20 scrum sprints ahead and then act surprised reality has different plans. It's still as dumb as waterfall ever was. Most of these companies of course deliver software just fine. They don't do it particularly fast. Or well. Also they aren't that flexible. Or particularly quick to adapt to changing circumstances. I.e. all of the things one would associate with being agile (in the adjective sense). But it's good enough to call themselves agile and still feel good about it. People were doing awesome software long before agile development became a thing. That was never conditional on being agile (whatever that means). I've been around long enough to have seen the before and after the post-it shufflers came in and made our walls all colorful. And I can tell you that the average software project is just about the same level of a disgraceful mess as it was thirty years ago. We do a bit more of it and a bit differently. And we got some nice tools that remove some bottlenecks from our process (like automated tests and CI) and make us more productive That's not agile, it's using better tools and it helps. The tools definitely improved massively in thirty years.
sunshine-o 3y ago
There is probably a lot of consulting money to be made in cleaning up the mess of the last decade exuberance. Similar to what we saw in banks after 2008.
- efields 3y ago
  Yep. Consulting is where you want to be rn.
  - danjac 3y ago
    Everyone laid off will be hanging their consulting nail. Whether there are enough gigs for them is another matter.
  - jjackson5324 3y ago
    Do you mean consulting as a developer? Or management consulting?
    - efields 3y ago
      Network. Figure out what your network wants. I’ll still consult on dev stuff but there’s a lot of aging SMBs and retired execs who need a smart person on retainer to help them figure out… everything. Squarespace costs $300/year. Sell it for $3000/year with 4 seasonal updates or something. Adapt.
  - nunez 3y ago
    I hope you like travel!
- ejb999 3y ago
  Absolutely - I did my best business during and after the big 2008 meltdown -companies threw out the good with the bad in order to save money (on payroll) and then realized they still needed stuff done - but many departments in many companies weren't (yet) allowed to start hiring back FT employees - it was a golden opp. for consultants, especially if you didn't charge obscene rates (good rates, just not obscene), i.e. rates high enough to make real money, but not so high they needed special approval by several layers of management.
JadeNB 3y ago
The title mangler somehow got from "The end of 0% interest rates: what the new normal means for software engineers" to the incomprehensible "What the The end of 0% interest rates means for software engineers". EDIT: Not complaining about downvotes, just checking site norms. My understanding was that it used to be appropriate to point out failures of the title mangler, so that dang could fix them by hand. (Thanks, dang!) Is that no longer appropriate, or is there some better way to do it?
OrvalWintermute 3y ago
> It is notable, however, how both the smartphone and cloud computing revolutions of the 2010s coincided with the start of this long ZIRP period: Nope. ZIRP really had nothing to do with the start of the cloud computing revolutions, since the industry was already moving in that direction with outsourced IT, and outsourced SaaS-like stuff (Application Service Providers was the old term for it). I think the reason why IT & Software engineering benefit in most types of rates has to do with efficiencies and profitability.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  That's what the word "coincided" means!
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
The ZIRP thing makes no sense, very few tech companies were funded by loans besides a bit of convertible notes here and there. Funding for small to medium companies was from VC and acquisitions, bigger tech was funded by stock appreciation and massive profits.
- fizx 3y ago
  Interest rates have many 2nd order effects, including VCs getting more funding from their LPs, and future-looking stocks becoming a more appealing investment class. Its not just about loans.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  Many VCs get money from LPs who play different kinds of leverage games with various time horizons.
- dventimihasura 3y ago
  1. Where did VCs get the capital to fund those small to medium companies? 2. What does ZIRP do to stock appreciation? Does it tend to suppress it or enhance it? 3. What massive profits?
- jemmyw 3y ago
  I believe the idea is not that companies were being funded by loans. It's that investors couldn't get a return on savings, so all the money they would normally have in saving like deposits was invested elsewhere, into the VCs for example.
lifeisstillgood 3y ago
Roughly, we poured ungodly amounts of capital into building out internet infrastructure for nearly fifteen years (fibre optics, data centres, and yes smartphones count as infrastructure). Just like railway boom and others before, there is a ton of railways going to wrong place, or too much to same place. Businesses will pay good money to a. Find out what they actually have running where b. Move the core in house where it’s cheaper c. Have sensible ways to scale up if needed (that month end report run etc) The work is still there. But demonstrating how much is currently spent on what and how that can be better spent is the real win here.
paulcole 3y ago
> while bootstrapping becomes more fashionable The idea that bringing in revenue and bringing in more revenue than you spend was something that fell out of fashion cracks me up and shows the fantasy land we've been living in
dventimihasura 3y ago
What the end of 0% interest rates means for people who are not software engineers: - less income inequality - less competition in the housing market - less homelessness
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  I see you have not visited the great state of California.
  - dventimihasura 3y ago
    I have lived in San Francisco for 25 years. Try again.
- in3d 3y ago
  Go ahead and explain how it leads to these supposed outcomes.
  - dventimihasura 3y ago
    Sure. Personally, I believe San Francisco restaurants (for example) had less ability to bid up salaries in a highly-competitive labor market while using generous endowments from VCs flush with cash in a ZIRP climate in order to weather many unprofitable quarters the way that San Francisco tech unicorns like Uber and Twitter did. I believe that San Francisco restaurants, like restaurants anywhere else, cannot survive more than a few unprofitable quarters. Besides restaurant workers, I believe this applies to education workers, retail workers, and many healthcare workers who nevertheless have to compete in the same city as tech workers for: housing, food, services, etc. I believe that contributed to the income inequality which we already know grew in San Francisco over this period. Moreover, I believe when housing prices tilt upward dramatically in the way they did in San Francisco over this period, people at the bottom margin predictably will fall off of that margin. Some of them will become homeless, and homelessness tends to intersect with substance abuse. That's what I believe tends to happen when one group of people (let's say, "tech workers") have salaries wildly divergent from everyone else who lives in that place. But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone benefits equally when only a subset of people get very large salaries. I dunno. What do you think?
sackfield 3y ago
I'm glad the article posts about visa sponsorship changes, as an immigrant to the US/EU this is the biggest falloff I've seen. Over the years I've seen relocation as a perk slide: 2013: Was flown to EU country for an interview, accepted, they handled the immigration paperwork (mostly) and helped me find a place and get settled. Plane trip was at my discretion. 2015: Immigrated to US with same company, they handled the visa and gave me help to find a place and get settled. Plane trip was at my discretion. 2018: Accepted new job in US, visa was handled however plane trip was 3am in the morning out of Gatwick. 2021: Accepted new job in US (after leaving the US for 3 years), visa was handled but I had to pay for my own plane trip. No help with finding apartments or any relocation expenses. 2022: Accepted new job in US at FAANG, work permit was handled however visa was not, all expenses to get the visa came out of my pocket (plane tickets, hotel accommodation, embassy appointment). No relocation help or expenses. 2023: Accepted new job in US, all work permit/visa issues came out of my pocket including the fee paid to the lawyers for handling the visa application. No relocation help or expenses. Not sure how much further this perk can slide.
- elevatedastalt 3y ago
  2028: Accepted new job in US. Work given by them. Salary paid by me to them for the privilege of having a job.
  - lqet 3y ago
    But you try and tell the young people today that... they won′t believe ya!
  - harveywi 3y ago
    Also known as going to graduate school.
  - hatchoo 3y ago
    not directly related but strikes a similar chord, here in my country a lot of kids take up nursing so they can eventually get a job overseas. Once they graduate they need work experience before they can apply for jobs overseas so they work at local hospitals that give meager pay. Factoring in commute and meal expenses, they earn less than their living expenses. In a way, they are "paying" for this privilege of getting the experience necessary to move on and take a shot at a better life outside the country.
catherinecodes 3y ago
> The job market is brutal for new grads and early-career developers Getting one's foot in the door has always been hard, but it seems there's another trend here: Computer Science is now the most popular major at many schools. All of those students need a place to go. The rest of the article is behind a paywall.
- ramesh31 3y ago
  Indeed, I'm fully convinced that breaking into the industry without a degree at this point is nearly an impossibility. Total 180 from how things were ten years ago.
  - askonomm 3y ago
    As a self-learnt (now senior) developer, I'm very happy I got my start when I did, 12 years ago. It wasn't easy back then either, and lots of places wanted a degree, but a few side projects usually did the trick.
- apwell23 3y ago
  > Computer Science is now the most popular major at many schools. I met lots of my nieces and nephews over christmas break and was surprised to see every single one of them studying comp sci.
  - silisili 3y ago
    I see this as problematic. I'm of the belief people have brains and interests suited for different things - I for example cannot draw to save my life, or even imagine well. I failed hard in engineering school because I seemingly had little ability to do these tasks (sliderules and paper at the time). Most of the -worst- colleagues I've had in the last decade were folks from other walks of life who took a short boot camp, chasing money. Not all, but most, seemed to have zero passion for it, and didn't "get it." This is not to say I blame them - not one bit, but average quality took a huge hit. CS is starting to feel like MBAs of the late 90s early 00's - everyone chasing what they believe is easy money without thinking about it and absolutely flooding the field until it became a 'nice to have'.
pyb 3y ago
The "ZIRP" meme is way overdone by now. ZIRP doesn't explain much. Interest rates had been rock bottom since the 2008 crisis, were already quite low since the 1990s, and are still not very high today. IMO the "vibecession" meme explains what's going on within tech a bit better. Tech CEOs and VCs have decided that the tech industry had to shrink, notwithstanding that the wider economy was and is doing fine.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  Tech CEOs and VPs found that they're out of ideas on how to grow the pie. So to achieve their personal goals (which is always more), they had to increase their share. The fear, uncertainty and doubt over the economy serves to make everybody else fear that the pie could disappear completely. And so they're happy they still get scraps, leaving enough for those CEOs - for now. Lately I keep thinking about Mr Buffett's remark about class warfare...
- rco8786 3y ago
  > Interest rates had been rock bottom since the 2008 crisis Exactly. So we had ~14ish years of effectively 0% interest rates. That's never happened before in history. Now that we're going back to normal rates, we're discovering that some things we did when rates were 0 aren't actually feasible anymore. That's what ZIRP is. It's a decade and a half of 0% coming to an end.
  - laidoffamazon 3y ago
    I think it's absurd to compare the tech sector in 2023/2024 to the tech sector in 2010/2011. Unemployment is lower today, and several capital intensive industries (ML hardware acceleration for one) are significantly hotter than anything we had then.
    - lumost 3y ago
      Having been in both time periods, a distinct difference in 2021 was a sense of unreality - a company/org/large team could survive provided that they had someone important who believed that it would be useful some day. Ultimately, I suspect this is because important people had access to effectively infinite dollars for a time. Provided that they did not have to mark down a loss. This time period is coming to an end, we're once again looking at real metrics and seeing that some sectors of tech had none. In the end, this will probably be good for the industry - but it will be an unpleasant transition.
jmull 3y ago
> Job market realities. It’s tougher than it’s been in a decade, with fewer jobs, and more qualified candidates. This is great if you’re hiring, but harder for applicants. Is this true? Layoffs make the headlines, but the unemployment rate for software engineers seems to be low, at least in the most recent numbers I can find. The rest of the items ("Compensation changes", "Negotiating offers", etc.) just follow from that premise. Of course, everything could tank tomorrow, but it's probably not smart to get into a defensive crouch earlier than you have to.
- onli 3y ago
  My anecdata says it's true. Where before I didn't get a single rejection (so applying was sending out four applications and getting four interviews) in this round suddenly some even did not invite me for interviews, they just declined. Strange experience! And I only applied to more positions this month because a position that seemed a safe bet did not materialize at the end of last year, the project evaporated when the (one would think unrelated) automotive market catered, the linked agency instead scrambled to find projects for their existing devs. So yeah, definitely got harder I'd say.
- rco8786 3y ago
  Anecdotally this seems to be true, if only because companies that aren't actively doing layoffs are at least restricting hiring. Unemployment can be low statistically, but for those 10s of thousands who find themselves unemployed it seems like a rough job market.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- ejb999 3y ago
  It is definitely true in my experience, and for those seeking 100% remote or with only 0-3 years of real experience (not school) it is even worse. I have posted this comment before on HN, but ~8-9 months ago we posted a job for a lead engineer at my company - we got 3 applicants (this was for a fortune 50 company, and comp, while not FAANG, was very respectable with good benefits and decent bonus and stock options to boot). ~5-6 months after that we added another exact same position, and advertised it in the exact same places and got over 300 applicants - many ex-FAANG which we never used to get. So based on my personal experience, there are a lot more people looking and applying for jobs and a lot less jobs to choose from - and like I said, if you are dead-set on being remote, it is even harder - my most recent employer (100k+ employees) will no longer allow hiring managers to interview people who state they are only looking for remote (they don't have to, plenty of people are willing to show up at the office because they have rent/mortgage and bills to pay).
lgleason 3y ago
We are in a downward cycle for Software right now. Are higher interest rates a precipitating factor at the moment? Sure, but there are others as well including the COVID bubble etc.. Our industry was bound for a correction. That said, interest rates alone do not predict a tough market for software engineers since the majority of the .com bubble in the 90's saw 5% percent interest rates.
- ejb999 3y ago
  The difference is, the 5% interest rates in the 90's seemed low, because we had been on a steady slide for 10-15 years from rates much higher, so they seemed low at the time. Now a 5% interest rate seems high, since people were used to the ZIRP.
coolThingsFirst 3y ago
It’s just no longer a good career. The time investment is too much.
sublinear 3y ago
I don't know. From an employee's perspective there's such a long tail of incompetence in tech. I also have doubts about a large chunk of new CS grads who were born with a smartphone in their hands. Software engineering is only continuing to diverge from CS and the lack of startups will impact their ability to get up to speed compared to older millennials who are now mid-career. If you're used to being the smartest person in the room, or at least the one with the most guts and speaks their mind, nothing is changing for you. Your career is fine as long as you don't work for a startup (anymore) and have at least 5 years under your belt. From a business cost perspective running one is now more expensive. Though it's important to remember how cheap it's always been for tech and how cheap it still is. What's more difficult now is that "hockey stick growth", but that was never easy either. I just gotta shrug here idk.
- eddd-ddde 3y ago
  Can you explain about the new grads born with smartphones? I'm not sure what's the implication. I'm soon to graduate and constantly worry about the future of my career. I was lucky to get some experience while studying, and I also have something to work on right after graduating, but the future just sounds scary to me.
  - sublinear 3y ago
    Oh no sorry didn't mean to worry you so much. The market will have to adjust to take in this new wave of entry level people. There's still way too much demand for devs for it to be any other way. I meant that in the 2010s we had a ton of tech startups even in the most random places. Every business was wondering if they needed an app or big data service. I didn't even bother with an internship because everyone was hustling to make the next smartphone app or SaaS/IoT product and get that sweet recurring revenue. That meant it was easy to get experience wearing many hats. You'd get exposed to absolutely everything from meetings with the client, web dev, database, embedded, kernel patches, etc. I still had a couple years of school left and had all that on my resume as a fresh grad. This generation is going to take longer to get up to speed with all the crap you end up having to learn in the "real world". To be honest it may not even matter. As things have matured less deep knowledge may be required. It was a different kind of stress back then. Everyone was terrified they weren't good enough and competition was crazy. We thought our jobs were going to be taken by someone from abroad as the gig economy and remote work ramped up. We weren't entirely wrong, but the threat was overblown as communication barriers and time zone issues were realized. I'm in a more senior role now and have accepted my more corporate fate. I can't speak for everyone from my era, but I have no issues building up new hires and I think most of us are grateful and proud to be in our roles. As long as you find a boss who keeps you from slipping into that "long tail of incompetence" it'll be okay. I'd try to not work somewhere that specializes their employees too much when you're still new. That's how they lock you in, pay you jack shit, and ruin your prospects. Every career even outside of tech has that problem of getting pigeonholed because of your resume. Things have just slowed a bit and I will have to remember to not be a cranky old man who constantly whines "back in my day..."
commandlinefan 3y ago
> companies sponsored visas and paid for engineers to relocate from abroad ... where the pay is too low for local candidates. Doesn't that violate the "prevailing wage" requirement of the H1B visa?
kypro 3y ago
I think people are overly attributing the end of low interest rates to the current job market in tech. The truth is over last 10-20 years we've gone through a huge technological boom which has driven the job market in tech. In the mid 2000s almost no one knew how to code. Software engineering was more a hobby than a career choice back then. Yet, from 2005-2015 we had innovation after innovation which demanded people with coding skills. This article mentions things like the launch of the iPhone and AWS, but there was so much more than just that. The switch from dial-up to broadband meant people were more frequently using the internet, and using it for more than just web browsing – now they were downloading music, watching videos and chatting to their friends. Then the launch of the iPhone and 3G shortly after meant suddenly the internet was now everywhere all the time, and this spawned businesses like Facebook and Uber who enabled companies like Twilio. And now that everyone was online eCommerce started to boom too which enable companies like Saleforce, Shopify and Stripe. And I could go on here, but our lives are so different today and this shift fundamentally required a large number of software engineers during a time when software engineers were in very short supply. While progress will continue, it seems unlikely we're going to see a repeat what we've seen over the last ~20 years. AI might change our lives significantly, but it's hard to see how AI would make software engineers more valuable given they fundamentally make knowledge and intelligence more accessible. Additionally, today software engineering is a career kids actively pursue, and even if they don't pursue it most kids will still end up doing some basic coding at school. Meanwhile things are getting easier to build all the time. When I was learning to code building anything was a technical challenge. For one, Youtube and Stack Overflow didn't exist. There was no cloud hosting, and no free tier hosting. Programming languages themselves sucked – if you think Java sucks today then try using it 15 years ago. But the biggest changes have been in SaaS where today literally anyone can start an eCommerce store or take payments online in minutes. The things I do as a software engineer today are becoming increasingly niche and a lot of it is just plumbing services together which doesn't take much intellect. And even this can increasingly be done with AI tools. I think tech as an industry is going to do great over the next decade, but they won't need as many software engineers.
- MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  Agree with a lot of what you say except that software engineering was most definitely not a "hobby" in the mid 2000s! We were already past the dot com crash. There were lots of professional software engineers.
NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago
Fantastic compilation of data that really gives good insights into what is going on.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
If an "employee" is getting paid with borrowed money, for years, and the money will never be repaid, because the "employer" has no profits, because the "business" is a farce, is that really a "job". Perhaps clients and customers will not pay for whatever it is these "employees" do, but investors will pay, so yes, it's a "job" burning someone else's money. However this only lasts for as long as there are no other, more attractive short-term investment options.
mathattack 3y ago
There will always be a shortage of engaged talented people. FAANG no longer big deals to everyone under the sun doesn’t change this. The big change will be to folks in the middle. There won’t be huge offers for them any more.
alecco 3y ago
> To begin a software startup before AWS launched in 2006, a founder needed to purchase and set up servers, then operate them. This required thousands of dollars, and weeks to launch a website. But with a cloud provider, all that was needed was a credit card, and a founder could have a website up and running in minutes, for only a few dollars. Nonsense. colo was very cheap and fast, took minutes or an hour tops to set up. And most startups needed something like webhosting or Ruby/Python hosting, both available. AWS added speed to scale and being lazy with performance.

128 points by oumua_don17 3y ago

The end of ZIRP is the tip of the iceberg 1. Consolidation. There will be fewer and more powerful tech companies in the future and they will grow and profit as they shrink their headcount. The belief that profits and growth = jobs will soon be recognized as twentieth century thinking. 2. Automation. Spiffy tools, reuse, AI...no matter how you slice it, your skills are getting pushed into the shared stack every day. 3. Internationalization. You might be surprised to find out that there are React coders in South America that have all the right tats and piercings, read HN and Blind, bang on leetcode...and will work for 1/5 what you will. The only question is how many people leaving tech presently will never be able to get back in, or maybe they just realize driving a Fedex truck for the same money is less stressful. Also don't be too spooked by layoffs so far, its just beginning in tech and finance and this wave still hasn't hit the huge cohort of permanently cashflow-negative startups somehow still clinging to life...they will ALL be gone.

AnotherGoodName 3y ago
To balance this, particularly your last paragraph I have the opposite viewpoint. The US government had ppp loans that were forgiven completely that effectively paid companies per employee. There was no reason not to over hire for a long period of time. We have a correction but that seems to be it. Even now the quarterly earnings statements have lines that they expect headcount to grow in future quarters (meta for example stated this bluntly in their Q3 report). So while cash flow negative startups with no future will close that's it. The market is starting to come back and this was really an understandable blip.
- w4 3y ago
  > To balance this, particularly your last paragraph I have the opposite viewpoint. The US government had ppp loans that were forgiven completely that effectively paid companies per employee. There was no reason not to over hire for a long period of time. PPP loans were based on 2019's average monthly payroll[1]. They did not have an effect on hiring decisions. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program#Loan_amount https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paycheck_Protection_Program#Lo...
- oldpersonintx 3y ago
  [dead]
- pphysch 3y ago
  > The US government had ppp loans that were forgiven completely that effectively paid companies per employee. The US government also has federal prosecutors actively investigating fraudulent PPP loans, so don't expect this gravy train to come round again.
paulpauper 3y ago
1. Consolidation. There will be fewer and more powerful tech companies in the future There is no evidence or reason to expect this to be true. The evidence points to the opposite, such as https://www.axios.com/2023/06/01/sp500-tech-companies-stock-price https://www.axios.com/2023/06/01/sp500-tech-companies-stock-...
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Yeah exactly if anything we're seeing the beginning of the disintegration of the big monoliths (Google at least) who hoovered up everything in their path. VC investment has ebbed, that's true. But maybe it will encourage businesses with a more solid path to revenue --even self-bootstrapped -- less hype, and more practical product oriented engineering. We can hope. I do think a lot of us may end up out of work. Myself included, maybe.
- danjac 3y ago
  What evidence is this?
joshuamcginnis 3y ago
I'd like to see more brilliant minds from tech explore other industries, especially the trades. It is incredibly difficult to find competent and trustworthy tradespeople at a reasonable price today. There is so much that a former SWE could bring to the table that doesn't necessarily mean being the tradesperson themselves (though that would be great). The trades desperately need manpower on all fronts.
- matrix87 3y ago
  Why don't you set an example for everyone and go into a trade then?
  - NeverFade 3y ago
    Actually doing it is of course only for other people.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Sounds great if there’s some way to raise compensation for tradespeople to the level it should be at, considering how critical they are to modern society.
- dw_arthur 3y ago
  The trades are underpaid. If you have other options why would you tear your body up so people can get services "at a resonable price"? Think about how people in the trades feel seeing people who work from home make multiples of their pay.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you're advocating for here. There are many brilliant people doing trades work. Just as there are many brilliant people teaching, or digging ditches, or tending bar, or working as security guards, or... Talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.
- lkdfjlkdfjlg 3y ago
  > I'd like to see more brilliant minds from tech explore other industries, especially the trades. It is incredibly difficult to find competent and trustworthy tradespeople at a reasonable price today. Ok so your pitch is that other people (not you) should go into "the trades" and charge less than the people who are there now? Wanna give us an example of what a "trade" is, what you're being charged for it, and how much you'd like to pay?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jwells89 3y ago
Something that may help defend against #2, if perhaps only temporarily, is to move to niches of software engineering that are more difficult to automate and have higher bars to entry. Things like kernel code, GPU drivers, embedded work, etc are much less LLM-friendly than say Wordpress plugins.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  Actually, I've had ChatGPT write some simple embedded code and it did a pretty good job.
squigglydonut 3y ago
companies are finding out that people who are paid 1/5 tend to do much less work and draw out contracts. I have seen many projects grind to a halt working with international 3rd party vendors.
dogman144 3y ago
Yes, I think South/Central America technology is coming in big. Personally I am learning Spanish finally. It comes with a fraction of the confusion from offshoring to APAC wrt timezones, business culture, language barriers, and so on.

paulpauper 3y ago

I don't think it means much at all. Software jobs boomed in the 80s and 90s despite high interest rates. Tech tends to do well in almost every econ environment. And already, interest rate forecasts falling.

cableshaft 3y ago
In the long term I think you're pretty much right, but in the short term, all these businesses that were structured around the assumption of easy massive funding rounds from low interest rates have to figure out how to operate in high interest rates again, and will likely shed a lot of employees in the process.
- hello_moto 3y ago
  All businesses are used to certain range of interest-rate for the last 20 years.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Sure, but most businesses at least try to be profitable, whereas many in tech were fundamentally untenable without a constant injection of external capital to prop up a venture aiming only to grow rather than to actually be sustainable.
    - cableshaft 3y ago
      Still blows my mind that Uber's first reported quarterly earnings that showed a profit in its entire history was Q2 2023[1]. And the company was founded in 2009. They've been losing money for well over a decade and yet still getting wave after wave of cash from investors. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/01/uber-reports-first-quarterly-operating-profit/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/01/uber-reports-first-quarter...
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/company_financials https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/uber/company_financi... >Their latest funding was raised on Sep 14, 2020 from a Post-IPO Debt round. I would not even count that since "getting wave after wave of cash from investors" usually means receiving cash in exchange for equity, not borrowing money. It seems the most recent cash they received from investors was at IPO in May 2019, and before that, Softbank in Jan 2018: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/111015/story-uber.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/11101...

nine_zeros 3y ago

The biggest thing that companies need to optimize on - which they don't seem to have caught on to yet - are management processes which create unprofitable overhead. While "overhead" is an overloaded term, in practice it looks like: 1. Too much documentation, blog posts, spreadsheets (designed for management optics). Every one of these artifacts takes dev time. 2. Excessive stages in CI pipelines, internal tools, saas tools usage (designed for engineering promos). Every one of these takes dev time. 3. Excessive features (designed for IC and management promos) 4. Excessive amount of time spent in promotions, stack ranking, and performance reviews (designed to make management useful) 5. Excessive time on making agile work such as time on Jira story points, backlog grooming, retros, meeting minutes, agendas, scrums (designed to again, make management appear like they are doing something). 6. Excessive number of management layers (manager, sr manager, director, sr director, sr sr director, associate vp, vp, svp). Every person on this ladder is overhead*365 days a year. All of these are entirely a problem of management layer overhead. The only and only thing that works in a tough environment is few "skilled" managers who are still very technical and can align people and teams work towards specific goals.

aorona 3y ago
agile "agile" is an oxymoron
- bdcravens 3y ago
  Agile is a philosophy, not a system. What we most know as agile is the result of systemizing it.
  - drewcon 3y ago
    “The purpose of a system is what it does”
  - jillesvangurp 3y ago
    Agile is an adjective, not a noun. The opposite of agile are words like clumsy, apathetic, depressed, dispirited, down, dull, ignorant, inactive, lazy, lethargic, lifeless, rigid, slow, sluggish, stiff, stupid, brittle, etc. That's why being agile caught on because none of the opposites sound like a good thing to admit to. That's why agile is a bit vague and waffly as well. Because world+dog now calls themselves agile. And then you get all these pedantic types telling others they are doing it wrong, aren't pure enough, etc. They are the priests of agile. And they get hired by big companies for lots of money to help them become agile. Of course that requires some compromise and they adapt their definitions and standards until it's all agile and wonderful. Because the alternative would be admitting failure, which isn't mutually beneficial. You are kind of doing waterfall in an agile way For example, you plan 20 scrum sprints ahead and then act surprised reality has different plans. It's still as dumb as waterfall ever was. Most of these companies of course deliver software just fine. They don't do it particularly fast. Or well. Also they aren't that flexible. Or particularly quick to adapt to changing circumstances. I.e. all of the things one would associate with being agile (in the adjective sense). But it's good enough to call themselves agile and still feel good about it. People were doing awesome software long before agile development became a thing. That was never conditional on being agile (whatever that means). I've been around long enough to have seen the before and after the post-it shufflers came in and made our walls all colorful. And I can tell you that the average software project is just about the same level of a disgraceful mess as it was thirty years ago. We do a bit more of it and a bit differently. And we got some nice tools that remove some bottlenecks from our process (like automated tests and CI) and make us more productive That's not agile, it's using better tools and it helps. The tools definitely improved massively in thirty years.

sunshine-o 3y ago

There is probably a lot of consulting money to be made in cleaning up the mess of the last decade exuberance. Similar to what we saw in banks after 2008.

efields 3y ago
Yep. Consulting is where you want to be rn.
- danjac 3y ago
  Everyone laid off will be hanging their consulting nail. Whether there are enough gigs for them is another matter.
- jjackson5324 3y ago
  Do you mean consulting as a developer? Or management consulting?
  - efields 3y ago
    Network. Figure out what your network wants. I’ll still consult on dev stuff but there’s a lot of aging SMBs and retired execs who need a smart person on retainer to help them figure out… everything. Squarespace costs $300/year. Sell it for $3000/year with 4 seasonal updates or something. Adapt.
- nunez 3y ago
  I hope you like travel!
ejb999 3y ago
Absolutely - I did my best business during and after the big 2008 meltdown -companies threw out the good with the bad in order to save money (on payroll) and then realized they still needed stuff done - but many departments in many companies weren't (yet) allowed to start hiring back FT employees - it was a golden opp. for consultants, especially if you didn't charge obscene rates (good rates, just not obscene), i.e. rates high enough to make real money, but not so high they needed special approval by several layers of management.

JadeNB 3y ago

The title mangler somehow got from "The end of 0% interest rates: what the new normal means for software engineers" to the incomprehensible "What the The end of 0% interest rates means for software engineers". EDIT: Not complaining about downvotes, just checking site norms. My understanding was that it used to be appropriate to point out failures of the title mangler, so that dang could fix them by hand. (Thanks, dang!) Is that no longer appropriate, or is there some better way to do it?

OrvalWintermute 3y ago

> It is notable, however, how both the smartphone and cloud computing revolutions of the 2010s coincided with the start of this long ZIRP period: Nope. ZIRP really had nothing to do with the start of the cloud computing revolutions, since the industry was already moving in that direction with outsourced IT, and outsourced SaaS-like stuff (Application Service Providers was the old term for it). I think the reason why IT & Software engineering benefit in most types of rates has to do with efficiencies and profitability.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
That's what the word "coincided" means!

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

The ZIRP thing makes no sense, very few tech companies were funded by loans besides a bit of convertible notes here and there. Funding for small to medium companies was from VC and acquisitions, bigger tech was funded by stock appreciation and massive profits.

fizx 3y ago
Interest rates have many 2nd order effects, including VCs getting more funding from their LPs, and future-looking stocks becoming a more appealing investment class. Its not just about loans.
nine_zeros 3y ago
Many VCs get money from LPs who play different kinds of leverage games with various time horizons.
dventimihasura 3y ago
1. Where did VCs get the capital to fund those small to medium companies? 2. What does ZIRP do to stock appreciation? Does it tend to suppress it or enhance it? 3. What massive profits?
jemmyw 3y ago
I believe the idea is not that companies were being funded by loans. It's that investors couldn't get a return on savings, so all the money they would normally have in saving like deposits was invested elsewhere, into the VCs for example.

lifeisstillgood 3y ago

Roughly, we poured ungodly amounts of capital into building out internet infrastructure for nearly fifteen years (fibre optics, data centres, and yes smartphones count as infrastructure). Just like railway boom and others before, there is a ton of railways going to wrong place, or too much to same place. Businesses will pay good money to a. Find out what they actually have running where b. Move the core in house where it’s cheaper c. Have sensible ways to scale up if needed (that month end report run etc) The work is still there. But demonstrating how much is currently spent on what and how that can be better spent is the real win here.

paulcole 3y ago

> while bootstrapping becomes more fashionable The idea that bringing in revenue and bringing in more revenue than you spend was something that fell out of fashion cracks me up and shows the fantasy land we've been living in

dventimihasura 3y ago

What the end of 0% interest rates means for people who are not software engineers: - less income inequality - less competition in the housing market - less homelessness

bugglebeetle 3y ago
I see you have not visited the great state of California.
- dventimihasura 3y ago
  I have lived in San Francisco for 25 years. Try again.
in3d 3y ago
Go ahead and explain how it leads to these supposed outcomes.
- dventimihasura 3y ago
  Sure. Personally, I believe San Francisco restaurants (for example) had less ability to bid up salaries in a highly-competitive labor market while using generous endowments from VCs flush with cash in a ZIRP climate in order to weather many unprofitable quarters the way that San Francisco tech unicorns like Uber and Twitter did. I believe that San Francisco restaurants, like restaurants anywhere else, cannot survive more than a few unprofitable quarters. Besides restaurant workers, I believe this applies to education workers, retail workers, and many healthcare workers who nevertheless have to compete in the same city as tech workers for: housing, food, services, etc. I believe that contributed to the income inequality which we already know grew in San Francisco over this period. Moreover, I believe when housing prices tilt upward dramatically in the way they did in San Francisco over this period, people at the bottom margin predictably will fall off of that margin. Some of them will become homeless, and homelessness tends to intersect with substance abuse. That's what I believe tends to happen when one group of people (let's say, "tech workers") have salaries wildly divergent from everyone else who lives in that place. But, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe everyone benefits equally when only a subset of people get very large salaries. I dunno. What do you think?

sackfield 3y ago

I'm glad the article posts about visa sponsorship changes, as an immigrant to the US/EU this is the biggest falloff I've seen. Over the years I've seen relocation as a perk slide: 2013: Was flown to EU country for an interview, accepted, they handled the immigration paperwork (mostly) and helped me find a place and get settled. Plane trip was at my discretion. 2015: Immigrated to US with same company, they handled the visa and gave me help to find a place and get settled. Plane trip was at my discretion. 2018: Accepted new job in US, visa was handled however plane trip was 3am in the morning out of Gatwick. 2021: Accepted new job in US (after leaving the US for 3 years), visa was handled but I had to pay for my own plane trip. No help with finding apartments or any relocation expenses. 2022: Accepted new job in US at FAANG, work permit was handled however visa was not, all expenses to get the visa came out of my pocket (plane tickets, hotel accommodation, embassy appointment). No relocation help or expenses. 2023: Accepted new job in US, all work permit/visa issues came out of my pocket including the fee paid to the lawyers for handling the visa application. No relocation help or expenses. Not sure how much further this perk can slide.

elevatedastalt 3y ago
2028: Accepted new job in US. Work given by them. Salary paid by me to them for the privilege of having a job.
- lqet 3y ago
  But you try and tell the young people today that... they won′t believe ya!
- harveywi 3y ago
  Also known as going to graduate school.
- hatchoo 3y ago
  not directly related but strikes a similar chord, here in my country a lot of kids take up nursing so they can eventually get a job overseas. Once they graduate they need work experience before they can apply for jobs overseas so they work at local hospitals that give meager pay. Factoring in commute and meal expenses, they earn less than their living expenses. In a way, they are "paying" for this privilege of getting the experience necessary to move on and take a shot at a better life outside the country.

catherinecodes 3y ago

> The job market is brutal for new grads and early-career developers Getting one's foot in the door has always been hard, but it seems there's another trend here: Computer Science is now the most popular major at many schools. All of those students need a place to go. The rest of the article is behind a paywall.

ramesh31 3y ago
Indeed, I'm fully convinced that breaking into the industry without a degree at this point is nearly an impossibility. Total 180 from how things were ten years ago.
- askonomm 3y ago
  As a self-learnt (now senior) developer, I'm very happy I got my start when I did, 12 years ago. It wasn't easy back then either, and lots of places wanted a degree, but a few side projects usually did the trick.
apwell23 3y ago
> Computer Science is now the most popular major at many schools. I met lots of my nieces and nephews over christmas break and was surprised to see every single one of them studying comp sci.
- silisili 3y ago
  I see this as problematic. I'm of the belief people have brains and interests suited for different things - I for example cannot draw to save my life, or even imagine well. I failed hard in engineering school because I seemingly had little ability to do these tasks (sliderules and paper at the time). Most of the -worst- colleagues I've had in the last decade were folks from other walks of life who took a short boot camp, chasing money. Not all, but most, seemed to have zero passion for it, and didn't "get it." This is not to say I blame them - not one bit, but average quality took a huge hit. CS is starting to feel like MBAs of the late 90s early 00's - everyone chasing what they believe is easy money without thinking about it and absolutely flooding the field until it became a 'nice to have'.

pyb 3y ago

The "ZIRP" meme is way overdone by now. ZIRP doesn't explain much. Interest rates had been rock bottom since the 2008 crisis, were already quite low since the 1990s, and are still not very high today. IMO the "vibecession" meme explains what's going on within tech a bit better. Tech CEOs and VCs have decided that the tech industry had to shrink, notwithstanding that the wider economy was and is doing fine.

pgeorgi 3y ago
Tech CEOs and VPs found that they're out of ideas on how to grow the pie. So to achieve their personal goals (which is always more), they had to increase their share. The fear, uncertainty and doubt over the economy serves to make everybody else fear that the pie could disappear completely. And so they're happy they still get scraps, leaving enough for those CEOs - for now. Lately I keep thinking about Mr Buffett's remark about class warfare...
rco8786 3y ago
> Interest rates had been rock bottom since the 2008 crisis Exactly. So we had ~14ish years of effectively 0% interest rates. That's never happened before in history. Now that we're going back to normal rates, we're discovering that some things we did when rates were 0 aren't actually feasible anymore. That's what ZIRP is. It's a decade and a half of 0% coming to an end.
- laidoffamazon 3y ago
  I think it's absurd to compare the tech sector in 2023/2024 to the tech sector in 2010/2011. Unemployment is lower today, and several capital intensive industries (ML hardware acceleration for one) are significantly hotter than anything we had then.
  - lumost 3y ago
    Having been in both time periods, a distinct difference in 2021 was a sense of unreality - a company/org/large team could survive provided that they had someone important who believed that it would be useful some day. Ultimately, I suspect this is because important people had access to effectively infinite dollars for a time. Provided that they did not have to mark down a loss. This time period is coming to an end, we're once again looking at real metrics and seeing that some sectors of tech had none. In the end, this will probably be good for the industry - but it will be an unpleasant transition.

jmull 3y ago

> Job market realities. It’s tougher than it’s been in a decade, with fewer jobs, and more qualified candidates. This is great if you’re hiring, but harder for applicants. Is this true? Layoffs make the headlines, but the unemployment rate for software engineers seems to be low, at least in the most recent numbers I can find. The rest of the items ("Compensation changes", "Negotiating offers", etc.) just follow from that premise. Of course, everything could tank tomorrow, but it's probably not smart to get into a defensive crouch earlier than you have to.

onli 3y ago
My anecdata says it's true. Where before I didn't get a single rejection (so applying was sending out four applications and getting four interviews) in this round suddenly some even did not invite me for interviews, they just declined. Strange experience! And I only applied to more positions this month because a position that seemed a safe bet did not materialize at the end of last year, the project evaporated when the (one would think unrelated) automotive market catered, the linked agency instead scrambled to find projects for their existing devs. So yeah, definitely got harder I'd say.
rco8786 3y ago
Anecdotally this seems to be true, if only because companies that aren't actively doing layoffs are at least restricting hiring. Unemployment can be low statistically, but for those 10s of thousands who find themselves unemployed it seems like a rough job market.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ejb999 3y ago
It is definitely true in my experience, and for those seeking 100% remote or with only 0-3 years of real experience (not school) it is even worse. I have posted this comment before on HN, but ~8-9 months ago we posted a job for a lead engineer at my company - we got 3 applicants (this was for a fortune 50 company, and comp, while not FAANG, was very respectable with good benefits and decent bonus and stock options to boot). ~5-6 months after that we added another exact same position, and advertised it in the exact same places and got over 300 applicants - many ex-FAANG which we never used to get. So based on my personal experience, there are a lot more people looking and applying for jobs and a lot less jobs to choose from - and like I said, if you are dead-set on being remote, it is even harder - my most recent employer (100k+ employees) will no longer allow hiring managers to interview people who state they are only looking for remote (they don't have to, plenty of people are willing to show up at the office because they have rent/mortgage and bills to pay).

lgleason 3y ago

We are in a downward cycle for Software right now. Are higher interest rates a precipitating factor at the moment? Sure, but there are others as well including the COVID bubble etc.. Our industry was bound for a correction. That said, interest rates alone do not predict a tough market for software engineers since the majority of the .com bubble in the 90's saw 5% percent interest rates.

ejb999 3y ago
The difference is, the 5% interest rates in the 90's seemed low, because we had been on a steady slide for 10-15 years from rates much higher, so they seemed low at the time. Now a 5% interest rate seems high, since people were used to the ZIRP.

coolThingsFirst 3y ago

It’s just no longer a good career. The time investment is too much.

sublinear 3y ago

I don't know. From an employee's perspective there's such a long tail of incompetence in tech. I also have doubts about a large chunk of new CS grads who were born with a smartphone in their hands. Software engineering is only continuing to diverge from CS and the lack of startups will impact their ability to get up to speed compared to older millennials who are now mid-career. If you're used to being the smartest person in the room, or at least the one with the most guts and speaks their mind, nothing is changing for you. Your career is fine as long as you don't work for a startup (anymore) and have at least 5 years under your belt. From a business cost perspective running one is now more expensive. Though it's important to remember how cheap it's always been for tech and how cheap it still is. What's more difficult now is that "hockey stick growth", but that was never easy either. I just gotta shrug here idk.

eddd-ddde 3y ago
Can you explain about the new grads born with smartphones? I'm not sure what's the implication. I'm soon to graduate and constantly worry about the future of my career. I was lucky to get some experience while studying, and I also have something to work on right after graduating, but the future just sounds scary to me.
- sublinear 3y ago
  Oh no sorry didn't mean to worry you so much. The market will have to adjust to take in this new wave of entry level people. There's still way too much demand for devs for it to be any other way. I meant that in the 2010s we had a ton of tech startups even in the most random places. Every business was wondering if they needed an app or big data service. I didn't even bother with an internship because everyone was hustling to make the next smartphone app or SaaS/IoT product and get that sweet recurring revenue. That meant it was easy to get experience wearing many hats. You'd get exposed to absolutely everything from meetings with the client, web dev, database, embedded, kernel patches, etc. I still had a couple years of school left and had all that on my resume as a fresh grad. This generation is going to take longer to get up to speed with all the crap you end up having to learn in the "real world". To be honest it may not even matter. As things have matured less deep knowledge may be required. It was a different kind of stress back then. Everyone was terrified they weren't good enough and competition was crazy. We thought our jobs were going to be taken by someone from abroad as the gig economy and remote work ramped up. We weren't entirely wrong, but the threat was overblown as communication barriers and time zone issues were realized. I'm in a more senior role now and have accepted my more corporate fate. I can't speak for everyone from my era, but I have no issues building up new hires and I think most of us are grateful and proud to be in our roles. As long as you find a boss who keeps you from slipping into that "long tail of incompetence" it'll be okay. I'd try to not work somewhere that specializes their employees too much when you're still new. That's how they lock you in, pay you jack shit, and ruin your prospects. Every career even outside of tech has that problem of getting pigeonholed because of your resume. Things have just slowed a bit and I will have to remember to not be a cranky old man who constantly whines "back in my day..."

commandlinefan 3y ago

> companies sponsored visas and paid for engineers to relocate from abroad ... where the pay is too low for local candidates. Doesn't that violate the "prevailing wage" requirement of the H1B visa?

kypro 3y ago

I think people are overly attributing the end of low interest rates to the current job market in tech. The truth is over last 10-20 years we've gone through a huge technological boom which has driven the job market in tech. In the mid 2000s almost no one knew how to code. Software engineering was more a hobby than a career choice back then. Yet, from 2005-2015 we had innovation after innovation which demanded people with coding skills. This article mentions things like the launch of the iPhone and AWS, but there was so much more than just that. The switch from dial-up to broadband meant people were more frequently using the internet, and using it for more than just web browsing – now they were downloading music, watching videos and chatting to their friends. Then the launch of the iPhone and 3G shortly after meant suddenly the internet was now everywhere all the time, and this spawned businesses like Facebook and Uber who enabled companies like Twilio. And now that everyone was online eCommerce started to boom too which enable companies like Saleforce, Shopify and Stripe. And I could go on here, but our lives are so different today and this shift fundamentally required a large number of software engineers during a time when software engineers were in very short supply. While progress will continue, it seems unlikely we're going to see a repeat what we've seen over the last ~20 years. AI might change our lives significantly, but it's hard to see how AI would make software engineers more valuable given they fundamentally make knowledge and intelligence more accessible. Additionally, today software engineering is a career kids actively pursue, and even if they don't pursue it most kids will still end up doing some basic coding at school. Meanwhile things are getting easier to build all the time. When I was learning to code building anything was a technical challenge. For one, Youtube and Stack Overflow didn't exist. There was no cloud hosting, and no free tier hosting. Programming languages themselves sucked – if you think Java sucks today then try using it 15 years ago. But the biggest changes have been in SaaS where today literally anyone can start an eCommerce store or take payments online in minutes. The things I do as a software engineer today are becoming increasingly niche and a lot of it is just plumbing services together which doesn't take much intellect. And even this can increasingly be done with AI tools. I think tech as an industry is going to do great over the next decade, but they won't need as many software engineers.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago
Agree with a lot of what you say except that software engineering was most definitely not a "hobby" in the mid 2000s! We were already past the dot com crash. There were lots of professional software engineers.

NanoYohaneTSU 3y ago

Fantastic compilation of data that really gives good insights into what is going on.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

If an "employee" is getting paid with borrowed money, for years, and the money will never be repaid, because the "employer" has no profits, because the "business" is a farce, is that really a "job". Perhaps clients and customers will not pay for whatever it is these "employees" do, but investors will pay, so yes, it's a "job" burning someone else's money. However this only lasts for as long as there are no other, more attractive short-term investment options.

mathattack 3y ago

There will always be a shortage of engaged talented people. FAANG no longer big deals to everyone under the sun doesn’t change this. The big change will be to folks in the middle. There won’t be huge offers for them any more.

alecco 3y ago

> To begin a software startup before AWS launched in 2006, a founder needed to purchase and set up servers, then operate them. This required thousands of dollars, and weeks to launch a website. But with a cloud provider, all that was needed was a credit card, and a founder could have a website up and running in minutes, for only a few dollars. Nonsense. colo was very cheap and fast, took minutes or an hour tops to set up. And most startups needed something like webhosting or Ruby/Python hosting, both available. AWS added speed to scale and being lazy with performance.