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Have you ever noticed that some developers see the job market as a bleak and desperate place where jobs are scarce and exploitive, while others see this market

Have you ever noticed that some developers see the job market as a bleak and desperate place where jobs are scarce and exploitive, while others see this market and can't believe their amazing luck to have stumbled into such a fantastic career? We all know guys from both those camps, so something must be up. I think a lot of guys get trapped in this cycle between their own lack of confidence and predatory companies that look for that sort of employee to exploit. I mean, what better employee to have than one who's constantly in fear of losing his job in the next round of layoffs and will happily work long hours for "market average" wages in the quest for job security. That developer, when he hits the market, will hit it via a layoff. And he'll have four years of his last employee reinforcing his lack of value, so he won't expect much beyond a desperate search for somebody, anybody who will hire him. That's not the sort of dude who will network his way into coffee with your CTO. He'll pray and spray resumes at HR and endure half a year of being rejected by keyword filters. By the time the next exploitive company finds him and offers him another death march at a "market average" salary, he'll be so grateful that he'll never want to leave. You see that guy here from time to time (though more often at Slashdot and Reddit). I wish there were a way to get through to him to let him know that it's really not like that. Programming computers for money is the single greatest profession in the 21st century. If you're doing it and you're not happy, know that you can fix it.

zeemonkee2 14y ago
Maybe it's great if you live in a tech hub. Take the programmer who happens to live in Nowheresville, Nebraska. He lives there because his wife has a job there, or other family commitments, so he can't just up sticks and move to the Valley. So he's looking at the local job market, which is probably shitty death march or legacy VB projects or whatever. Moving to the Valley is only really practical for young, single people without kids and mortgages. Remote jobs are the answer, but they are still few and far between, even among supposedly "forward looking" startups. So for your programmer in Nowheresville the job market is to all intents and purposes a bleak and desperate place, no matter how experienced or talented he happens to be.
patio11 14y ago
Everything Jason says and then some. (Well, OK, I'd quibble about luck having anything to do with it. Nobody lucks their way into being a doctor - they correctly identify it is a good idea based on the scads of available evidence and then work hard on the obvious pathway to becoming one - and we should similarly avoid trivializing ourselves.) I have a folder in Gmail of comments thanking me for my negotiating advice articles. My running tally is folks are $214k a year wealthier literally just by asking for it.
- winter_blue 14y ago
  > folks are $214k a year wealthier literally just by asking for it. How do you ask for it? (or how do you get there?)
  - jasonkester 14y ago
    With your words. More specifically, when they make you an offer for $x/year, you say "how about $(x + 15)" instead of "holy crap yes yes yes!" You can also try it at your current job if you've been there a while and haven't seen more than "cost of living" adjustments in your salary for a while. Though the sad reality is that it's usually a lot easier to ask another company instead and get your raises by switching jobs.
  - patio11 14y ago
    I've written on this subject extensively. Most in-depth here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ and here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro... You can also HNSearch.com for my comments about it on HN. (I also recommend looking for tptacek's comments on negotiation/rates.)
    - tocomment 14y ago
      Is the site down?
berntb 14y ago
>>Programming computers for money is the single greatest profession in the 21st century. He he, the kids never learn, even when the discussed article covers the crashes of this roller coaster job market... :-) That said, an insightful comment.
- jasonkester 14y ago
  The thing that makes programming such a great thing is that you can do a bunch of it at once, then sit back and make a good living off the result with just a bit of maintenance. That doesn't work with other candidates for "single greatest profession". Doctoring, lawyering, nailing things together, whatever. They don't scale the same way. That is, there's no way for a Dentist to perform a single act of Dentistry that he can sell as a service on the Denternet and maintain his lifestyle indefinitely with just a few hours of work per week. He has to keep Dentisting day in, day out, either by hand or by running a practice, or the money stops rolling in. Software is rather unique in that quality.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - presidentender 14y ago
    Creative works such as music and writing have a similar scalability, but it can be more difficult to demonstrate value and it's nearly impossible to sell subscriptions to a single story or song.
  - jfoutz 14y ago
    Historically, novelists. Even now there are evergreen hits.
xiaoma 14y ago
I've been having an extremely difficult time finding a job in tech, and I've been in SF looking since late May now. Contrary to your image of the guy who can't find a job, I've been networking heavily and for the first couple of weeks, that's all I did. I explicitly decided not to focus on applying or interviewing until I'd had the chance to chat with multiple people with hiring authority, either over beers or coffee. Interestingly a sizable chunk of people I've met at hackathons have been in a similar situation, minus the networking focus. >We all know guys from both those camps, so something must be up. I think what's up is that nearly everyone is chasing the same few attributes in potential employees, one of which is already having expert skills at X thing they want to do. As mentioned in the article, few companies are willing to train entry level or junior level employees and many even have a policy of rejecting any candidates who don't already have a job! This is almost guaranteed to create a bidding war for a small number of people while passing up many others who could fill their shoes after an adjustment period. I fully agree with you about the importance of networking, but when large numbers of hard-working people with a high percentage of the needed skills can't get in without an inside contact, the overall job market for the sector is not hot. Anyone who claims the job market is 'on fire' is either out of touch, full of BS, or both. What is a red-hot job market right now is teaching English in China as a foreigner. There, horribly incompetent people who lack skills, charisma or even valid working papers are hired quickly! Programmers in the US had a similar situation in the late 90's. In 2000, I was offered multiple jobs despite having no programming experience just because I knew some HTML. Interestingly, the market for really low-brow contract programming work has been much easier to crack. I've been meaning to blog about it, but haven't had the chance to fully organize my thoughts on it. Basically there seems to be a bimodal distribution of supply of programming work vs difficulty of the work.
- yummyfajitas 14y ago
  ...everyone is chasing the same few attributes in potential employees, one of which is already having expert skills at X thing they want to do. I've never worked at a place that did this (unless "X thing they want to do" == "basic computer science"). I've always had difficulties hiring. The fact of the matter is that most people you interview just aren't very good. It's hard to find the good ones. This is a complaint about search costs as much as price.
MrFoof 14y ago
>Have you ever noticed that some developers see the job market as a bleak and desperate place where jobs are scarce and exploitive, while others see this market and can't believe their amazing luck to have stumbled into such a fantastic career? I'd consider myself to be in both camps simultaneously. I find that there are a ridiculous number of opportunities, but they're A) pretty bad ones or B) are unwilling to pay for what the talent they claim they want. I hate to sound so negative, but a lot of opportunities just aren't great. It isn't working for a startup, or working on some new infrastructure in a company that does something interesting. There's a lot of extending spaghetti code for a cost center within Cardboard BoxCo with enterprise software that's EOL'd by its vendor. More so if you live outside one of the big tech hubs. I can have 8 finals in 4 weeks and get 4 offers, but after meeting with the organizations and finding the reality is the opposite of what they advertise, that I don't want any of those jobs. Especially at the levels of compensation they think they can get anyone, nevermind the top 5-10% of the candidate pool. I've resorted to freelancing. Within the first 30-minute phone call we already know where things are going based on their reaction to my hourly rate. Additionally I figure if I hate the assignment, I know when it'll end. It also pays well enough that I only need to bill 7 to 8 months a year and can spend the rest of that time making video games.
- rabidsnail 14y ago
  That sounds like a pretty ideal position assuming you have a consistent stream of new work.
gaius 14y ago
The two groups you refer to are "over 30s" and "under 30s".
- jasonkester 14y ago
  Curious which age group you'd assign to which category. Personally, I was in the "this job is awesome" camp before I turned 30, as well as before I turned 40, and still am.
ncarlson 14y ago
> If you're doing it and you're not happy, know that you can fix it. How?
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
That's because both markets exist at the same time, depending on who you are, who you know and what state their businesses are in. I applied for jobs with well-known BigCo's in senior year of college. I got 2 job offers out of maybe a round dozen firms, though these two offers were from Amazon and Microsoft. I got to a sight interview with Google, but got rejected. Overall, did good but not great. Didn't even get to meet start-up folks, because most start-ups are in San Francisco and what start-ups exist in Boston, even funded ones, fall all over themselves to hire from Harvard and MIT while pretending UMass Amherst doesn't exist. Then, over the summer, when I decided I couldn't move to Seattle, I worked with a boutique recruiter in Boston who catered mostly to funded-stage start-up software companies. Suddenly, firms were falling all over themselves to hire me. I bet it helped that they knew I had a standing offer from a BigCo! Ended up job hunting again this winter. Got lots of interviews, but no offers until my friend recommended me to his boss. Got told by a lot of people that they couldn't take the risk of someone without front-end web development experience, that I didn't have the right background (for entry-level software engineering? Give me a break!), or the most disappointing response, that they thought I belonged in academia and would clearly end up there. End of the story: I ended up contracting, living in my nice town again instead of freaking Boston, and signing up for graduate school somewhere very nice. But through it all, I can say I've seen both sides of the market. To get a job, you need to cast a glamor/enigma spell on yourself, and seem like you're searching for exactly the kind of position the companies are hiring for. It helps if you work with someone like this recruiter I worked with, who (if they're good) maintains a huge Rolodex of companies who're hiring.

zeemonkee2 14y ago

Maybe it's great if you live in a tech hub. Take the programmer who happens to live in Nowheresville, Nebraska. He lives there because his wife has a job there, or other family commitments, so he can't just up sticks and move to the Valley. So he's looking at the local job market, which is probably shitty death march or legacy VB projects or whatever. Moving to the Valley is only really practical for young, single people without kids and mortgages. Remote jobs are the answer, but they are still few and far between, even among supposedly "forward looking" startups. So for your programmer in Nowheresville the job market is to all intents and purposes a bleak and desperate place, no matter how experienced or talented he happens to be.

patio11 14y ago

Everything Jason says and then some. (Well, OK, I'd quibble about luck having anything to do with it. Nobody lucks their way into being a doctor - they correctly identify it is a good idea based on the scads of available evidence and then work hard on the obvious pathway to becoming one - and we should similarly avoid trivializing ourselves.) I have a folder in Gmail of comments thanking me for my negotiating advice articles. My running tally is folks are $214k a year wealthier literally just by asking for it.

winter_blue 14y ago
> folks are $214k a year wealthier literally just by asking for it. How do you ask for it? (or how do you get there?)
- jasonkester 14y ago
  With your words. More specifically, when they make you an offer for $x/year, you say "how about $(x + 15)" instead of "holy crap yes yes yes!" You can also try it at your current job if you've been there a while and haven't seen more than "cost of living" adjustments in your salary for a while. Though the sad reality is that it's usually a lot easier to ask another company instead and get your raises by switching jobs.
- patio11 14y ago
  I've written on this subject extensively. Most in-depth here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/ and here: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro... You can also HNSearch.com for my comments about it on HN. (I also recommend looking for tptacek's comments on negotiation/rates.)
  - tocomment 14y ago
    Is the site down?

berntb 14y ago

>>Programming computers for money is the single greatest profession in the 21st century. He he, the kids never learn, even when the discussed article covers the crashes of this roller coaster job market... :-) That said, an insightful comment.

jasonkester 14y ago
The thing that makes programming such a great thing is that you can do a bunch of it at once, then sit back and make a good living off the result with just a bit of maintenance. That doesn't work with other candidates for "single greatest profession". Doctoring, lawyering, nailing things together, whatever. They don't scale the same way. That is, there's no way for a Dentist to perform a single act of Dentistry that he can sell as a service on the Denternet and maintain his lifestyle indefinitely with just a few hours of work per week. He has to keep Dentisting day in, day out, either by hand or by running a practice, or the money stops rolling in. Software is rather unique in that quality.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- presidentender 14y ago
  Creative works such as music and writing have a similar scalability, but it can be more difficult to demonstrate value and it's nearly impossible to sell subscriptions to a single story or song.
- jfoutz 14y ago
  Historically, novelists. Even now there are evergreen hits.

xiaoma 14y ago

I've been having an extremely difficult time finding a job in tech, and I've been in SF looking since late May now. Contrary to your image of the guy who can't find a job, I've been networking heavily and for the first couple of weeks, that's all I did. I explicitly decided not to focus on applying or interviewing until I'd had the chance to chat with multiple people with hiring authority, either over beers or coffee. Interestingly a sizable chunk of people I've met at hackathons have been in a similar situation, minus the networking focus. >We all know guys from both those camps, so something must be up. I think what's up is that nearly everyone is chasing the same few attributes in potential employees, one of which is already having expert skills at X thing they want to do. As mentioned in the article, few companies are willing to train entry level or junior level employees and many even have a policy of rejecting any candidates who don't already have a job! This is almost guaranteed to create a bidding war for a small number of people while passing up many others who could fill their shoes after an adjustment period. I fully agree with you about the importance of networking, but when large numbers of hard-working people with a high percentage of the needed skills can't get in without an inside contact, the overall job market for the sector is not hot. Anyone who claims the job market is 'on fire' is either out of touch, full of BS, or both. What is a red-hot job market right now is teaching English in China as a foreigner. There, horribly incompetent people who lack skills, charisma or even valid working papers are hired quickly! Programmers in the US had a similar situation in the late 90's. In 2000, I was offered multiple jobs despite having no programming experience just because I knew some HTML. Interestingly, the market for really low-brow contract programming work has been much easier to crack. I've been meaning to blog about it, but haven't had the chance to fully organize my thoughts on it. Basically there seems to be a bimodal distribution of supply of programming work vs difficulty of the work.

yummyfajitas 14y ago
...everyone is chasing the same few attributes in potential employees, one of which is already having expert skills at X thing they want to do. I've never worked at a place that did this (unless "X thing they want to do" == "basic computer science"). I've always had difficulties hiring. The fact of the matter is that most people you interview just aren't very good. It's hard to find the good ones. This is a complaint about search costs as much as price.

MrFoof 14y ago

>Have you ever noticed that some developers see the job market as a bleak and desperate place where jobs are scarce and exploitive, while others see this market and can't believe their amazing luck to have stumbled into such a fantastic career? I'd consider myself to be in both camps simultaneously. I find that there are a ridiculous number of opportunities, but they're A) pretty bad ones or B) are unwilling to pay for what the talent they claim they want. I hate to sound so negative, but a lot of opportunities just aren't great. It isn't working for a startup, or working on some new infrastructure in a company that does something interesting. There's a lot of extending spaghetti code for a cost center within Cardboard BoxCo with enterprise software that's EOL'd by its vendor. More so if you live outside one of the big tech hubs. I can have 8 finals in 4 weeks and get 4 offers, but after meeting with the organizations and finding the reality is the opposite of what they advertise, that I don't want any of those jobs. Especially at the levels of compensation they think they can get anyone, nevermind the top 5-10% of the candidate pool. I've resorted to freelancing. Within the first 30-minute phone call we already know where things are going based on their reaction to my hourly rate. Additionally I figure if I hate the assignment, I know when it'll end. It also pays well enough that I only need to bill 7 to 8 months a year and can spend the rest of that time making video games.

rabidsnail 14y ago
That sounds like a pretty ideal position assuming you have a consistent stream of new work.

gaius 14y ago

The two groups you refer to are "over 30s" and "under 30s".

jasonkester 14y ago
Curious which age group you'd assign to which category. Personally, I was in the "this job is awesome" camp before I turned 30, as well as before I turned 40, and still am.

ncarlson 14y ago

> If you're doing it and you're not happy, know that you can fix it. How?

eli_gottlieb 14y ago

That's because both markets exist at the same time, depending on who you are, who you know and what state their businesses are in. I applied for jobs with well-known BigCo's in senior year of college. I got 2 job offers out of maybe a round dozen firms, though these two offers were from Amazon and Microsoft. I got to a sight interview with Google, but got rejected. Overall, did good but not great. Didn't even get to meet start-up folks, because most start-ups are in San Francisco and what start-ups exist in Boston, even funded ones, fall all over themselves to hire from Harvard and MIT while pretending UMass Amherst doesn't exist. Then, over the summer, when I decided I couldn't move to Seattle, I worked with a boutique recruiter in Boston who catered mostly to funded-stage start-up software companies. Suddenly, firms were falling all over themselves to hire me. I bet it helped that they knew I had a standing offer from a BigCo! Ended up job hunting again this winter. Got lots of interviews, but no offers until my friend recommended me to his boss. Got told by a lot of people that they couldn't take the risk of someone without front-end web development experience, that I didn't have the right background (for entry-level software engineering? Give me a break!), or the most disappointing response, that they thought I belonged in academia and would clearly end up there. End of the story: I ended up contracting, living in my nice town again instead of freaking Boston, and signing up for graduate school somewhere very nice. But through it all, I can say I've seen both sides of the market. To get a job, you need to cast a glamor/enigma spell on yourself, and seem like you're searching for exactly the kind of position the companies are hiring for. It helps if you work with someone like this recruiter I worked with, who (if they're good) maintains a huge Rolodex of companies who're hiring.