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Low pay offers. In Montreal there are plenty of offers paying ~90k CAD/year ( 62k USD/year ) for 15+ years of experience. There are lot of job listings in Mon

by betaby 2y ago

Low pay offers. In Montreal there are plenty of offers paying ~90k CAD/year ( 62k USD/year ) for 15+ years of experience. There are lot of job listings in Montreal, and those positions are real. Problem is that the pay makes those positions undesirable. The second problem is that no one hires junior developers. My friend's kid finishing CS studies in May 2025 and prospect for jobs are not good.

quaffapint 2y ago
In the last couple of weeks we posted a job for a junior .NET dev and got over 800 resumes within days. The automation is killing both the employer having to sift through it all and the employee possibly getting lost in the mix.
microtonal 2y ago
I think this is an important factor. Developer salaries have been bimodal or trimodal [1]. I have really good former colleagues who have difficulty finding jobs, but they are looking for 120k+ USD/Euro jobs (remote, outside SV). I also have friends owning companies, having difficulty filling positions, but they are in the 50k-70k USD/Euro range. It seems like the difficulty of finding a job is in the second mode. But the people who had jobs in that mode are hesitant to apply in jobs corresponding to the first mode, not only because the pay gap is substantial, but it can also be bad for one's resume and perhaps less satisfying intellectually. [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...
- betaby 2y ago
  That kind of makes sense, but doesn't. I'm aware of the fact of the bi-modal / tri-modal distribution of the software dev. salaries. However, in the case of my friend, software is not the only option for him. My friend refuses to get lower paying software eng. position ... because he can make the same lower money by doing the thing he likes, in his case - working as a luthier. Another friend also were refusing to get lower paying software jobs and instead were working 1+ year as secretary for a wealthy person. My point is that some lower paying jobs won't be filed ever, even if there are plenty software developers without jobs. It's more wise for some people to leave field temporarily or permanently.
  - cactusplant7374 2y ago
    Your friends are lucky. But I don't have anything like that and I don't want to drive Uber because I think that would be torture.
nickff 2y ago
One problem with hiring juniors (from an employer perspective) is that they take a while to get trained up, then leave after 1-3 years, meaning that they require investment which never gets paid back. You can argue that the company should give them raises to keep them, but it goes against the zeitgeist (so it’s tough), and also means that there’s no advantage to hiring juniors. This seems like a stable (though undesirable) equilibrium, and I do not have a solution.
- layer8 2y ago
  It’s not just the zeitgeist. It’s problematic when relatively junior employees start to overtake more senior employees on salary (because word will go around). And raising everyone’s salaries often isn’t an option either, obviously.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  It's short sighted. Eventually the seniors will retire and die off. It very much feels like 'we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas'.
  - nickff 2y ago
    Most companies are trying to hire people with more than 2-4 years of experience, but not 0-2 years of experience. They are far from losing all candidates to death or retirement.
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      If no one hires 0-2 how many 2-4 will there be?
      - nickff 2y ago
        That’s definitely a problem right now, but it’s still not worth hiring people just to train them and have them leave. I think this one of the reasons for the popularity of H1B, as this new normal isn’t worldwide yet.

by betaby 2y ago

quaffapint 2y ago

In the last couple of weeks we posted a job for a junior .NET dev and got over 800 resumes within days. The automation is killing both the employer having to sift through it all and the employee possibly getting lost in the mix.

microtonal 2y ago

I think this is an important factor. Developer salaries have been bimodal or trimodal [1]. I have really good former colleagues who have difficulty finding jobs, but they are looking for 120k+ USD/Euro jobs (remote, outside SV). I also have friends owning companies, having difficulty filling positions, but they are in the 50k-70k USD/Euro range. It seems like the difficulty of finding a job is in the second mode. But the people who had jobs in that mode are hesitant to apply in jobs corresponding to the first mode, not only because the pay gap is substantial, but it can also be bad for one's resume and perhaps less satisfying intellectually. [1] https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-salaries-in-the-netherlands-and-europe/ https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/software-engineering-sala...

betaby 2y ago
That kind of makes sense, but doesn't. I'm aware of the fact of the bi-modal / tri-modal distribution of the software dev. salaries. However, in the case of my friend, software is not the only option for him. My friend refuses to get lower paying software eng. position ... because he can make the same lower money by doing the thing he likes, in his case - working as a luthier. Another friend also were refusing to get lower paying software jobs and instead were working 1+ year as secretary for a wealthy person. My point is that some lower paying jobs won't be filed ever, even if there are plenty software developers without jobs. It's more wise for some people to leave field temporarily or permanently.
- cactusplant7374 2y ago
  Your friends are lucky. But I don't have anything like that and I don't want to drive Uber because I think that would be torture.

nickff 2y ago

One problem with hiring juniors (from an employer perspective) is that they take a while to get trained up, then leave after 1-3 years, meaning that they require investment which never gets paid back. You can argue that the company should give them raises to keep them, but it goes against the zeitgeist (so it’s tough), and also means that there’s no advantage to hiring juniors. This seems like a stable (though undesirable) equilibrium, and I do not have a solution.

layer8 2y ago
It’s not just the zeitgeist. It’s problematic when relatively junior employees start to overtake more senior employees on salary (because word will go around). And raising everyone’s salaries often isn’t an option either, obviously.
throwaway48476 2y ago
It's short sighted. Eventually the seniors will retire and die off. It very much feels like 'we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas'.
- nickff 2y ago
  Most companies are trying to hire people with more than 2-4 years of experience, but not 0-2 years of experience. They are far from losing all candidates to death or retirement.
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    If no one hires 0-2 how many 2-4 will there be?
    - nickff 2y ago
      That’s definitely a problem right now, but it’s still not worth hiring people just to train them and have them leave. I think this one of the reasons for the popularity of H1B, as this new normal isn’t worldwide yet.