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The "white males" bit is not useful/helpful. But US resident vs non is probably a bit. There are several layers to this. Layer one is that SW Eng work has alw
by Glyptodon 2y ago
The "white males" bit is not useful/helpful. But US resident vs non is probably a bit.
There are several layers to this.
Layer one is that SW Eng work has always been both multi modal and that it's never been easy to get out of the trash distributions (e.g. $40-$60k "analyst" or "programmer" gigs, etc.) if you end up there. And it's also never been easy for someone to get a degree and find a job w/o having internships, years of part time work or other experience, or connections.
Anecdata, but a solid number of my CS graduating class more than a decade ago who were more than good enough to work in CS struggled to figure out how to find a first position if they didn't happen to have gotten internships, worked in the field before graduation, etc. While the best off got Google or MS internships that the majority of my class didn't even apply for. And even then, the majority of the jobs were for 4+ years of experience.
Add to this over the past decade many outfits have started to hire substantial numbers of overseas remote workers. For the most part, I think many companies fill their junior and slightly up roles with outside of the US remote workers. This has mixed results, but it's usually cheaper to hire several foreign remote workers over one domestic worker, and particularly in cases where time consuming grunt work is needed it can work reasonably. In some ways the H1-B doesn't matter because you can always hire remote foreign workers. The main issues I've seen relate to there being a substantial management load to deal with the amount of stuff lost in translation. I've personally had a better experience w/ South American contractors than Russian/Ukrainian/Slavic or Indian, I think because the timezones match better, English/Spanish/Portuguese seems to be easier to navigate linguistically, and the workers have seemed to better understand what we've needed and been better at showing initiative for some reason.
Then layer AI on top of this and relatively reduced hiring.
I do not think it's a good time to be looking for work, and with every year that's gone by over the least decade it's been worse for junior/early career roles especially.
I haven't seen white males being let go in favor of foreigners, but I have seen a lot of limiting hiring to a few seniors and filling the rest with overseas to save money. AI is only exacerbating. As is the fact that nobody really seems to have money for hiring. So is the desire to hire people who are magically already perfect and spun up for a role, no matter how niche.
In general, I think "white male" is a red herring.
- speakfreely 2y agoAgree with everything you wrote, with one small caveat: the "white male" thing is really only a notable disadvantage with large companies. Every startup I've interacted with has always prioritized hiring the person who is most capable of doing the job... the extra race/gender variable really only comes into play when there's a substantial HR layer involved. But to your other point, I think any perceived layoffs of white males at tech companies is just correlation with their overrepresentation in the software engineer population.
- like_any_other 2y ago> any perceived layoffs of white males at tech companies is just correlation with their overrepresentation in the software engineer population Whites are 41% of software engineers [1], but 57% of the US population [2], so they are under-, not over-, represented. [1] https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/software-engineer/demographics/ https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/software-engineer/dem... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Race https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
- e40 2y ago> But to your other point, I think any perceived layoffs of white males at tech companies is just correlation with their overrepresentation in the software engineer population. Agreed. A friend interviewed at Stripe in 2019 (ish, but before the pandemic) and he said every single person he saw at their SF office was 25-30 and white male. And it wasn't a small building and he was given a tour of a good bit of it.
- returnInfinity 2y agoAll the CEOs are investing money in AI and that budget has to come from somewhere. So we have reduced hiring. The CEOs are scared that if AI ends up working, then they will be left behind by competitors who invested in AI. So every CEO must invest in AI according to game theory.
- Yoric 2y ago