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From my experience, it's grim at the moment for software developer jobs. I got laid off in August and it's been rough. I'm in my early 30s so I can't compare it
by rhinoceraptor 10mo ago
From my experience, it's grim at the moment for software developer jobs. I got laid off in August and it's been rough. I'm in my early 30s so I can't compare it to 2008, but I've been laid off before and I've never seen it this bad.
- jdiff 10mo agoIt's grim everywhere, for everything, all at once. I haven't been able to find work as a graphic designer, motion designer, web designer, web developer, software developer, and a large variety of retail jobs. Been on the job hunt since May, all I've been able to find is a part time position at The Home Depot.
- venturecruelty 10mo agoI wonder if it has anything to do with all of the 10-200% taxes we've levied on random things.
- csomar 10mo agoThis started before the tariffs, so no direct link. Interest rates are more to blame.
- bequanna 10mo agoOffshoring (India + LATAM) with a side of h1b. Offshoring is by far the biggest culprit. Plenty of Jr/Mid roles hiring…but not US based.
- jdlshore 10mo agoOffshoring has been a thing for decades. Seriously, Yourdon wrote a doom-and-gloom book about it in the 90s. It was called “Decline and Fall of the American Programmer,” published 1992. Then in 1996, he wrote “Rise and Resurrection of the American Programmer.” The software industry is extremely fad-driven. During the pandemic, the fad was to hire programmers. That created a lot of busywork and coordination jobs that didn’t contribute to the bottom line. Then Musk bought Twitter, laid off a bunch of folks, and things kept running. So the trend became “cut the fat.” In fairness, there actually was fat to cut. Now boards are in cost-cutting mode and fantasizing about AI, so the pendulum has swung back towards offshoring. But that cost-cutting focus is going to lead to stagnation and self-cannibalization. Somebody’s going to buck the trend, have a splashy success, and the herd will trample back in the other direction.
- WalterBright 10mo agoAs always, free markets are a chaotic system of creative destruction.
- yadaeno 10mo agoIt’s been a thing, but Covid and remote work took away any possible argument to no offshore everything ASAP.
- lesuorac 10mo ago> Then Musk bought Twitter, laid off a bunch of folks, and things kept running. I'm not sure you can give credit to Musk here. Buying a company and cutting all R&D to "juice" profits isn't his invention. Twitter is really around still in spite of his efforts as opposed to because of them; other CEOs might be doing layoffs but they're also not going out doing sieg heils. As well as he really fired them for fealty reasons and not economic ones. It should be very telling that Grok came out of X.ai and not X. Ultimately, Musk did have to reverse some of the layoffs although with a bit of slight of hand so that Twitter could release any sort of new products.
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoIt's not "his" thing, but he and a few early layoffs certainly made it trendy to do so. It's a small club, so seeing any "members" take any action is a sign they should follow suit.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago>But that cost-cutting focus is going to lead to stagnation and self-cannibalization. Somebody’s going to buck the trend, have a splashy success, and the herd will trample back in the other direction. Yes. But sadly, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. And I feel there's going to be a huge storm to survive first. I imagine many may not even make it to the next shift.
- mc32 10mo agoOffshoring affects the pipeline. That means once people leave the workforce or get promoted there are no locals who’ve the acumen to take over as those roles are overseas. Now you have to hire them H1Bs because you don’t have locals with the requisite experience. Of course managers wonder why there aren’t Americans with experience to fill those roles …
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- nicbou 10mo agoI don't know if it's as bad, but it's bad in Canada and Germany too. The whole world is doing pretty bad, it seems.
- potato3732842 10mo agoBy "200% tax" surely you're talking about the fact that my boss just paid (as he was compelled by law to) a licensed plumber a 3-digit sum to tee the coffee machine into the water line for the fridge ice maker...
- SoftTalker 10mo agoConstruction, trades, and basically physical-world stuff that AI cannot do are still hiring.
- AstroNutt 10mo agoBelieve it or not, I've been in construction/remodeling for 35 years. We currently have 3 home remodels going on at the moment with more down the road. I've never experienced a slow down. Even during COVID. I'm not your typical HN member I don't think. I've been a computer nerd since I was 14 years old. I come here to stimulate my inner nerd.
- cyanmagenta 10mo ago> I've never experienced a slow down You didn’t experience a slowdown at the height of the recession circa 2008?
- AstroNutt 10mo agoNope. Things still break and need repaired no matter how the housing market is.
- johnnyanmac 10mo agobeing in construction for 35 years must mean they're already in the place that does the layoffs (instead of being laid off) by the time things get bad. You can easily say things don't slow down when you're divorced from the increasingly strained workers with less hours and benefits doing the construction.
- jerlam 10mo agoHomeowners are often rich and older and isolated from recessions.
- mgh95 10mo agoHow did you get into construction/remodeling, and how would someone best reach out to this community? I have been thinking about some construction related ideas (mostly around prefab automation and sales) and haven't the slightest idea how to reach these types of people. I am always curious about people who are strongly oriented towards one thing (computing) but somehow wind up in another area, such as construction.
- aorloff 10mo agoI gotta tell you man, if you can find someone in charge at the backend of the Home Depot and let them hire you as a systems uptime troubleshooter you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold. I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week and let me tell you, they have a major systems problem that is making their operations look like a joke
- jdiff 10mo agoFunny you mention, I'm actually working on that, too. There's an internal career portal with a large variety of backend jobs. No interviews, follow-ups, or anything yet.
- krackers 10mo ago>you would easily make any salary you could name for them tenfold. >I at at a Home Depot like 10 times a week And yet you still go to Home Depot, so from their perspective it's not an existential issue. Probably the biggest thing companies have learned recently is that they don't need 99.99% uptime, people will accept degraded performance because "that's just how technology works".
- aorloff 10mo agoI am at 10 different supply stores too, Lowes, Ashby, Truitt and I get a shit ton of stuff delivered. Everyone competes on price, so when I see everyone at Home Depot with their thumbs up their asses because the computers are down, I know that Ashby is eating their lunch on the margin. I'm sure Home Depot has enormous economies of scale that make up for it, but this is a current issue.
- ux266478 10mo agoI don't think that's an appropriate conclusion to draw from a single point of data.
- array_key_first 10mo agoI think it's still a mostly correct conclusion. Pretty much everywhere you look across services, they've been cooked to their bones. Have you noticed that supermarkets seem to have, like, 1/5th the employees they did before? Since when is 1 open lane on a Saturday night and a 30 minute wait acceptable? Well, since we've accepted it. Everything kind of sucks and barely works, but it doesn't matter, because we ultimately put up with it.
- mollusc-engine 10mo agoI became a USPS mail carrier instead. Certainly less pay but I love being outside and walking. And no Jira, changing the color of that button, or steeping myself in Frank’s eldritch horror code.
- clumsysmurf 10mo agoI would definitely try this if the vehicles in Phoenix ran cleaner. The old ones have such bad smelling exhaust and you are always breathing it because of the semi-open cab.
- fragmede 10mo agoelectric vehicles are on the way! no clue when Phoenix will get them though
- protocolture 10mo ago>No Jira If I was trying to attract intelligent applicants looking for work outside of software engineering, that would be in the headline.
- ta12653421 10mo agoTried that here in EU - no chance so far: Even things I could do easily like office administration/management or whatever projectmanagement - no luck.
- wmeredith 10mo agoGenuinely curious: How else would you coordinate a large software project? We have 7 teams of 5 working on the same platform and Jira is fine for what we're doing, but I've been at this almost two decades and I haven't used any of the alternatives.
- BergAndCo 10mo agoBesides like trello asana redmine or the millions of less-complicated competitors? You literally have developers work on their own modules directly from the spec or work directly with the product owner. You track their work by looking at their commits. You check their progress by looking at how the preview build / staging looks. No overhead of having developers flesh out an entire issue/story (plus sub-issues) and then move it column-to-column across the entire Kanban board. Tracking sub-issues is like counting half-pennies instead of rounding up.
- cute_boi 10mo agoIt is all due to outsourcing. AI/H1B isn't taking that much job. Unless government put penalties on outsourcing market isn't going to improve.
- itake 10mo agoyep. Trump added tariffs on physical goods, but there are no taxes on service imports.
- brightball 10mo agoThere was talk of it. I believe the H.I.R.E. Act that’s been proposed is supposed to add a 25% fee to outsourcing overseas.
- itake 10mo agoProbably a step in the right direction. But if you can hire someone abroad for 20% of the cost of an American worker, then instead of replacing one American with five workers, you replace them with four.
- brightball 10mo agoThe range difference really depends on where you are too. Unless you're chopping wood, you still need competent people with the right skill set and ability to communicate. When controlling for that I find it's much closer unless you're in SV/Austin/NY.
- ivankra 10mo agoSection 174's 15 years amortization rule on foreign R&D is kind of an indirect tax.
- itake 10mo agoOverseas labor spend their salary overseas and pay no US taxes. still not the samething.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- johnnyanmac 10mo agoSame story here. I work in games so it's always been boom or bust. It's real bad now. - out of college it took 3 months to find work. It sucked, took over 100 apps, but I found a nice project. - after that project ended, 3 more months (but less stressful because I had more than one role I was interviewing with). - Then layoffs, another 3 months in 2022 where it was very competitive (I was in at least 4-5 interview pipelines before my first choice accepted my offer). - Then that studio quickly shuttered and I haven't found anything full time in 2.5 years. Freelancing kept me up until that wasn't enough, and then I found some non-tech part time work. working harder than ever with 2 jobs + more portfolio work to prepare for interviews despite having 9 years of experience now. This feels worse than the horror stories I'd hear when finding my first job.
- throwaway-0001 10mo agoI can hire you if you decent and don’t expect high salary ports-spatial5c@icloud.com
- port11 10mo agoGame dev acquaintances here in Belgium and back in Turkey say it's never been so bad. Studios aren't shutting down but also not hiring over here. Your industry is not having a good time…
- guywithahat 10mo agoI think it's largely industry dependent. Robotics/embedded/etc is actually doing quite well, lots of hiring in space and other fields. More big-data focused fields aren't hiring as much, and it's going to be even harder if you're applying for more senior/VP roles
- BergAndCo 10mo agoI apply to embedded/controls engineer roles and get nothing back.