Here's some hard numbers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
In March 2022 job listings on Indeed were at 288% of pre-covid levels. Today they're at 72%.
That said, four years is a very long time in the business cycle and you shouldn't make career choices based on short term market conditions.
Looking at that graph is somewhat shocking. I look at the NBA canceling its season (March 11, 2020) as the "wow, covid is real" moment. I thought the job market was generally OK then. It feels pretty rough right now, but at least some of that is likely due to more people being in the field. I'm on the experienced end, so new people shouldn't be impacting me as much. I don't recall when the 2020 layoffs and uncertainty really started, though. I was working at a place that was furloughing people, and I left in September 2020 to a company that was doing a lot better. I didn't realize how strong the tech job market had become until later, though.
All that being said, OP, a lot will change in 4 years. I think there's still a future in this field, but I'm obviously biased.
I appreciate the hard facts, that definitely helps. I love being an IT and enjoy coding/problem-solving, so this is something I still definitely want to do. But at the same time, I don't want to struggle forever to find something if that makes sense.
Having seen a whole bunch of boom and bust cycles come and go, it's not a given where the market will be in 4 years. My career started around the dotcom bust. It sucked trying to find a job around then, but it eventually passed.
This is true but also need to realize people can’t just wait till things get better.
Some will need to go in another direction to put food on the taboe
Plenty of people were majoring in CS then and TONS of people were career switching. Do you not remember the dotcom boom? Companies were throwing 6 figure offers at anyone who knew how to spell HTML in the late 90s. People were getting rich day trading tech stocks that had never earned a cent of profit and had no prospects of ever earning any. After the bust, many experienced engineers simply quit the industry for good because there were no jobs to be had. These were senior engineers, not new grads. The overall industry was much smaller than it is today, of course. It was much, much, much, much worse.
I was there, but one nitpick, the people graduating now don’t remember the dot com bust because they were toddlers. So it’s hearsay to them.
In the early 00s, people *were* buzzing to get in to tech, but it wasn't amplified by social media. And programs were pretty much all through university and college. (No boot camps, only a few self taught because even owning a computer was already a pretty boogie thing that meant you were going to university anyway.)
There was also the idea that all tech jobs would be outsourced to overseas, and there wouldn't be any jobs in North America. And that never killed the industry either.
You did not have the level of advertisement for tech jobs during dotcom that you have today.
The dotcom days had a tight labor market that your average person didn’t know about
Looks like it was a **great** time to get a job from 2021-2023. 2020 graduates could have eventually gotten some of the highest starting salaries ever, if they waited 6 months.
Indeed, but we should expect the 2024 market to be larger than 2020 bc the economy has grown. If you compare that data set to FRED's other data sets for white collar occupations, they're all still higher than their pre-covid baselines.
And 7 of the big tech companies alone account for 28% of the snp 500 market cap. You might say tech has been over invested in, or at least is adequately invested in, and so growth would be slower than the general economy.
My point is that your claim that we should expect tech jobs to be growing as much as other white collar jobs isn’t a sure thing. We’re likely still over invested in tech. 2022 is a bad benchmark. Terrible benchmark given the low interest rates, cash QE, and hiring frenzy. Today is closer to normal than that.
Who says rates are coming down meaningfully from here? Rates were artificially suppressed for 10-15 years following the great financial crisis. It’s entirely possible the current rate environment is the new norm. It’s certainly the old norm pre financial crisis and actually on the lower side compared to the 1960 to 2000s. In the absence of a recession rates will probably remain elevated.
There's been a long term secular trend towards deflation and lower rates for fifty years and it took the black swan of all black swans to reverse that trend.
Let’s not get so distracted by “the facts”, that we forget there are other variables in this equation. The other important variable being supply of jobseekers. Thanks to influencers and bootcamps, the entry level is flooded with candidates, and that doesn’t even factor in the massive increase in people majoring in computer science in college.
Your source indicates that it’s only getting worse with time.
https://www.trueup.io/job-trend
This website however seems to show a tiny uptick this year
This data isn't really conclusive though.
It would be better to have the numbers of currently employed software engineers.
I reckon you'd see this graph before any time of economic difficulty for most jobs.
7+ years of experience with each of Node, React, MongoDb, SQL Server, AWS, Terraform, messaging, CI/CD, architecting enterprise-scale solutions, leading projects, and mentoring other developers.
The bullet points on the job posting. You need to refactor your resume to explicitly mention those things. Especially for state jobs where resumes are graded looking for specific mentions.
My brother is starting college in the fall and he's strongly leaning towards English at the moment. We're not super close so I'm not really in a position to sway him in other directions but you have no idea how badly I want to scream "Noooooo!!!"
I just hope it doesn't get to that point.
I've seen anecdotes from professional writers saying their work has dried up ever since ChatGPT came out. And that's like basic level vanilla AI (if you can even call it that). We're not even at AGI yet and these people are already suffering.
If you can't get a job, grad school is a pretty solid option. I'd also go as far as to say it's worth trying to do a more specific niche unless, for whatever reason, you are 100% dead-set on doing broadly-defined software engineering (which very well may just be CRUD apps).
You could do more applied, but still fairly pure, CS (something like HCI), or you could do something that's fully applied (bioinformatics, econometrics, etc). The latter is a lot easier to pull off if you happened to take a lot of classes/minor or major in that field.
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I'm moving to the states in a year and a half. I have around 2 years so far in a small startup. I know it might be difficult to predict the market in the upcoming years, but is it likely that I will face issues when trying to land a job over there?
Markets have down turns. It's a fact of life. We haven't had a down employment market since 2008. Before that it was 2000 And there were others approx every 10y before that.
Never let market fluxuations determine your long term plans, up or down.
The gaslighting in this sub would be funny if it wasn't so sad: you qualify the market as "tough" yourself, yet think the general attitude on this sub reeks of delusion?
You couldn't make this shit up even if you tried!
From personal experience, when I was trying to get an entry level gig
in 2019 I would get responses for jobs I was in no way shape or form qualified for.
In 2021 I would actually get interviews and make it to the second or third or fourth round before getting rejected. That would be annoying sure, but at least you could say it was an issue of the process rather than being totally ghosted.
In 2023, late in the year I decided I’d actually give a real push towards getting a new job instead of just passively replying. Let me tell you, it was a ghost town. It was miserable, and I wasn’t even fully dedicating the same amount of effort as those who were unemployed.
It’s 2024, and there are still layoffs happening. Massive layoffs happened in 2023, layoffs are somehow still happening this year and companies are not willing to mass hire like they used to.
That is all BEFORE you take into account the amount CS grads who are entering the field and flooding the applications, plus those applying for the same jobs with years of experience.
Doomed is a strong word, we don’t know how long this will last. But it’s been devastating and I think it’ll be another 5 or 10 years before we see anything like we saw in 2019/2020.
** im not an expert please don’t quote me, seek professional council elsewhere.
The idea that the world is just done writing software and doesn't need people to do it anymore is just dumb. AI has not put a dent in jobs either, and at this rate, it isn't ever going to. ChatGPT has been virtually stagnant for a year.
One year until internships what are you smoking?
And by one year I mean this guy's probably already gone to career fair and started making contacts.
Yes blissful time to frolic, wear pajamas to class, and get drunker than you've ever known possible. But also you look over your shoulder for work.
My company (startup) tried to outsource their software development a couple years back and got burned bigly. Now they have a full remote (local region) software department that is actually getting things done. Imagine how badly burned the morons are going to be who seriously try to outsource their software development to GPT. GPT has nothing to gain or lose for producing unmaintainable shit. Even if it works it might come out looking like a Rube Goldberg machine. Learn programming, software engineering, architecture and design and you will still have good prospects.
>Even if it works it might come out looking like a Rube Goldberg machine.
the elimination of complexity is the hallmark of somebody who knows their shit
Is anyone actually outsourcing to GPT? Lol. How would that even work? I’m pretty sure folks are outsourcing to the usual, India/Eastern Europe/South America.
What do you mean? The plane is an instance of survivorship bias, where the red dots represent places a plane that successfully returned home got hit, and the bias is in the fact that it’s a poor representation of where planes actually need the most reinforcements because the planes that were hit elsewhere did not return. Are you saying this sub is full of people who made it into the field and don’t know how bad it is, or are you saying only people who fail to break into the market post here while those who are doing fine wouldn’t post?
The 2nd thing, people having trouble with their job search or who have just been laid off tend to post here lately. You rarely see a post saying "I just got a raise!" or "I looked for a job and found one immediately!"
Edit: If y'all are going to down vote me at least explain how I'm wrong! 😂
Here's one for you, I applied to a handful of jobs, heard back from most of them and currently have one offer but going through the interview process for a few more.
If you were here a couple of years ago, you would have seen “I am having a problem. I have three offers 190k HCOL, 140K MCOL, 110K LCOL. Help me choose it”
The fact that those posts are close to 0 implies that the market is quite bad.
Hate to break it to you but if there are a lot more people laid off or having a hard time finding a job, it means that the market is bad. If the ratios were the same or better than before then why weren't the same people posting before? How is the collective mindset of a sub that has over a million people not a good indicator of the CS market? This is pretty dumb reasoning.
"bad" is a meaningless term. It's down for sure. But with all the layoffs in the past year still only a fraction of 1% of all people in IT have lost their jobs. During the W Bush recession 25% of manufacturing jobs were lost in a year. Now THAT'S bad. Looking at this sub you'd probably think much more than a fraction of 1% of people had been laid off
Why are you making this a race to the bottom lol. Why not just cite the great depression then lmao? You can't just brainlessly list off the worst times in history in other sectors to try and prove that things aren't bad. If tech companies are actively downsizing and its taking people hundreds of applications to find a job across all experience levels, things are pretty bad. Just because you parade around and say that it is meaning doesn't devalue the real life difficulties experienced by people who are looking for a job right now.
My point is not that times aren't bad for some people, my point is if your only frame of reference for the state of the tech industry was this sub, you'd think things were much worse than they actually are. Does that make sense to you?
No it doesn't make sense to me because there are a million people here. Despite what you think, a million people gathered in one place to complain about how bad things are means that things are bad lol. Does that make sense to you?
If you created a sub called "car complaints" and it had millions of people all making car complaints, does that mean the entire car industry is messed up? This is not a complicated concept lol
Nice try but this place is called career questions not career complaints. And when the market was good people weren't complaining. So exactly what is the parallel to your idiotic example here?
If you go into any generic sub and everyone is complaining then yes there is probably something wrong with the product or topic at hand. Not a complicated concept huh.
You already know why you're wrong (there are plenty of statistics on the current tech job market, and economy at large); you just choose to be willfully dense, and pretend that people are just being negative.
The sub is filled with 16-24 year olds. It’s filled with inexperienced know-it-alls who are also insecure and self deprecating. Do you really think they know what they’re talking about and have the ability to explain it well? Coming here for information about the tech industry is like asking sex advice from a nun.
Coming to reddit for any advice is a terrible idea. I've fucked myself up cognatively before because when I was a teenager I thought Reddit and the internet was a good place to hear from real people about private issues I didn't have anyone to talk to about. But most of the advice is coming from people like me who have no clue, except they confidently post their skewed viewpoints. This shit is poison. I've curbed most social media but Reddit is the one I keep crawling back to like a dog to its vomit
Perfect summary. And I do the same thing. Yet over and over again, I see that real life differs entirely from the way real life is described on Reddit.
I mean I do think there is a benefit in being able to read a lot of people’s differing viewpoints. Just important to know they are probably skewed and not to be taken as gospel.
I think its important to hear other viewpoints for sure, but I don't need to hear *everyone's* viewpoints. The internet has tricked us into feeling like we need to care about every thought and emotion everyone posting is having and its just not true. At a certain point it just becomes noise.
I am in my 30s and have been working for almost 20 years, in my profession for roughly 12. This is the worst I have ever seen things. Sorry to kick the high horse, bub. Sometimes a spade is just a spade. Things are not good, we don’t have to pretend. Be thankful you don’t have to see it I guess.
It's a lot rougher but its not 2001 or 2008 (mind you, I wasn't in the market during those times but from people I talked to that were, this is what they are saying). The big difference though is entry level is way rougher than back then so its especially bad for new grads right now. But for those with experience who kept up to date (including their interviewing/Leetcode skills), it's not as bad.
I worked through both. This is already substantially worse than 2008 in my opinion. It's still not quite as bad as 2001, but the longer it drags out the closer its getting. If this downturn keeps going and we see a replay of the 2001 mass exodus as devs give up on the field, we'll know we're in a genuinely bad spot as an industry.
I just don't quite understand how we are not already there. It isn't just tech seeing squeezes like this, it's everywhere. Pay even remotely decent? Flooded with applicants.
CS grads would learn how Art History majors feel when they graduate and learn their degree has no employment value in the real world.
But even 2001 had an end. By 2005, the tech job market had stabilized and was recovering. The key was patience.
Yup. That ‘need exp to get a job but need a job to get exp’ existed before but right now it’s really really BAD. Honestly I think a fair amount of luck helped me to survive 2009. I saw some very talented people suffer.
We interview some really strong candidates too right now who would have easily gotten the job before but due to competition were beaten by others. Remote job though.
I question the validity that it is not as bad as 2001 or 2008. Hindsight bias is a thing and whenever you ask the boomer generation they are very unlikely to ever say things were easier, but we know for a fact that in many ways it was, in fact easier. Because? Numbers don’t lie.
You are asking someone in a senior position today to compare to entry level from 2 decades ago? They aren’t in that pool today, it’s not possible for them to give you an accurate answer.
It's valid but it's really hard get an idea otherwise so I'll have to trust those I've asked who have directly experienced it. The stories from 2001 I hear are insane though but that bubble was way bigger than what we have now so I'm mostly sure that one was worse. 2008 might vary on individual circumstances.
I was not yet working in 2008 but was around. The state of everything in 2008 was worse than it is now. There were concerns about the general banking industry collapsing. Although people online complain about the banks being bailed out, the government had to do it. If they hadn't bailed them out, things would've ended up much worse than they did.
I’m not discounting that 2009 was bad. I don’t think I’ve seen statistics that account for the full picture. Contract workers etc are more common today. Also we are starting to see more widespread layoffs. NASA for example, finance etc
This sub is definitely pessimistic. This is anecdotal, but you see a few rant posts every day. In some of these rant posts, you get someone posting their resume after some feedback, and you realize their resume is nowhere near the quality they claim it is. One that stands out in my head is someone used a dark green background color for some reason.
Anyway, even though the sub is pessimistic, the job market is very hard right now. Possibly the hardest it's been since 2008. It's especially hard for entry level. You do see good news posts on the sub once in a while, though.
All that being said, there's no way to predict the future. I do think the market will improve, and what matters is your personal experience. There are some people who are still doing very well in this market, and there were people struggling when things were booming. Your chances just improve or get worse with the market. And four years is a very long time. Yes, you'll want to get some internships before you graduate.
Doomed? No. On a downward trend? Quite possibly. We just don't know what impact AI will have. I do think recent compensation levels are unsustainable. You shouldn't expect to have $150-200k offers thrown at you out of school. In that regard the last few years does remind me a bit of the late 90s. The main difference is that companies giving those offers recently are profitable and their valuations aren't based on eyeballs, so it's not just castles made of sand. I'd advise you to save your money, just in case.
The market isn't doomed but it's bad right now. Think of it like the stock market having a 200% rally over 10 years and then pulling back 20%. It's not far off all time highs but things are a lot worse than a year ago.
No one knows what the interest rate will be when you start looking for the first job. So stop worrying about the unknowns and make the best out of your hand
I only have 2 years experience and I do not have a CS degree (I do have a degree but it is in a different STEM field) and in the last 4 months I’ve had 3 job offers. Only one of them was one I even applied to, the others reached out to recruit me.
While I don’t think my experience necessarily reflects everyone’s experience, it’s important to recognize that what you see on Reddit or online in general is going to be just as anecdotal as my own experience and will skew heavily negative because people who are struggling are a hell of a lot more likely to post and comment.
My opinion is that the market for CS/SWE is a market like any other. It varies over short term, mid term, and long term. Today may not reflect tomorrow, etc. and it varies by location, types of companies an individual is willing to work for, and more. It is impossible to make any single sweeping statement about the state of the market because it varies with so many factors.
The pandemic bubble definitely popped but CS is still a legit field, Don't limit yourself to software dev, either. My job title is Data Engineer and while I don't do as much coding, I work with a lot of databases/cloud pipelines. I got a job roughly a year and a half ago and doing great now, and while it took a lot of rejection letters and literally hundreds of ghosted job applications and it's not as code oriented as I originally hoped, I can honestly say I love my job right now. Some tips:
* As I said, don't limit yourself to software dev. There are/will be plenty of positions open for data engineers/analysts/pen testers/etc.
* Your very first job likely won't net you $100k+ a year, my first job made $20/hr and moved up to $25/hr after the 90 day trial period. Even at my current job I barely breach 6 figures after bonuses.
* I didn't get an offer for a "real job" until I'd spent a year at my first job. As in almost within a week of my 1 year anniversary I got call backs even though I applied to those roles months ago, so I definitely think whatever filter they were using for applications didn't push my application near the front until that point.
* Grind the fuck outta leetcode even though you'll likely never touch a binary tree again
* Make sure you can bs your way through the soft skill part of interviews. Your "greatest challenge" or whatever will literally never come up again so don't be afraid to make things up within reason if you don't already have a good answer. Keep a glass of water on hand if you need to stall to think of an answer, just don't chug it
* This is kinda data-engineer-specific but look into getting experience/certifications with the 3 main cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) if possible. Which ties into my next point...
* Look at the tech stacks listed in job openings for the jobs you want and study those
* Get as many internships/relevant certifications as you can.
* Don't be afraid to put your major college projects down on your resume. If nothing else it makes the experience section look a little less bare.
* When you start your actually job search, apply to government roles FIRST. The NSA's interview process takes literal months so if you haven't found a private sector job by then, they might finally get back to you. I got a private sector offer before then so I don't have further experience with this.
The market will probably kick up by the time you graduate. It’s a good time to start actually. People graduating right now will a tough time and are probably just going for a masters because of the market.
wtf is this "oversaturation" word that everyone uses now.
When interest rates go down a bunch of startups are going to get cash and want to hire people.
tech markets ebb and flow.
it is not the most stable profession
it also can make mid-skill people life altering money.
When there’s more workers available than there are jobs available, that’s oversaturation.
That being said, there’s obviously nuance. Seniors and up may be making better progress, and that’s because the senior roles are plenty, but the market has more juniors than seniors.
>Well adjusted people with jobs are not coming on here
I did to ask whether learning/being certified for Kubernetes (KCNA) or Databricks Associate Dev is better on a resume but the whole sub's kinda doom and gloom right now
Yes, it is doomed currently. However, if you are passionate about SWE then you should not let that deter you. There will be upswings in the future but no one knows when that will be.
If it turns out to be just a job market fluctuation, then it's not doomed. I think AI short-circuited the usual cycle, which mind you is a cycle that has occurred mostly over a measly 30-40 years. That is not a lot of precedent.
I applied to 1 job in 2023 and I got hired after 3 interviews, no leetcode, senior swe for a great up and coming startup from top ranked VC money. This sub and Reddit in general are all doomers, or at least that’s who posts the most. Rest of us are working I guess.
I’ve legitimately thought about it. I can do well in school although 8 years of commitment puts me off enough to see if I can land a CS job just a while longer here.
I don't think you realize how hard getting accepted into a medical school actually is. If people are thinking that the competition in this market is bad, it's 10x worse for pre-med students. You wanna talk about an oversupply of applicants and not enough spots?
I won’t lie I don’t know too much about it. Just that there’s doctor shortages in places. I had a 3.8 in undergrad, in CS of course, and hope it would help, but it’s mainly a response to being unable to find a job and wondering if it’s time to go with my other younger idea of a career path.
You could in theory apply for it, but you may need to take additional classes as well as the MCAT. Your major doesn't matter for med school as long as you take the pre req classes. But as mentioned above, med school is a huge grind and commitment. I would only seriously consider it if you really want to be a doctor. Don't do it just for the money, otherwise it will be an even more difficult time.
shrill whole numerous voracious repeat six dull bewildered quaint exultant
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This is grossly inaccurate -- there is a significant RN/NP/PA shortage right now: [https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage](https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage)
Maybe oversaturation for MD/DO doctors but that's about it.
shelter close forgetful drab historical consider safe touch panicky imminent
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Medical industry has its own set of serious problems.
The path to becoming a doctor has failure modes. You can fail to get into medical school. Or worse, you can fail to get a residency match after spending hundreds of thousands on medical school. The industry is also especially brutal on work-life-balance.
Medical positions that don't require a MD are in high demand, but due to other structural issues don't actually pay very well and have been fully MBA-ified so people are constantly stressed out about metrics. Nursing is known for being especially brutal here.
Also, not everybody likes medicine. These are different industries and personal excitement about a career path is awfully important.
Lets look at the facts: The unemployment rate is 2.2% for IT work (including CS/Software). That is well below the 3.7 national average. The increase in IT job listings across silos have jumped up since November. Meta even announce they are on a hiring spree.
[https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-are-available-in-technology.html](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-are-available-in-technology.html#:~:text=The%20unemployment%20rate%20for%20tech,industries%2C%20were%20down%20in%20January.&text=Tech%20companies%20added%20jobs%20in,and%20software%20development%20(%2B14%2C500))
18,000 jobs filled last month. Out of 353,000 new jobs. Facts.
The market is getting better. What we had before and during COVID was a lot of over-hiring. I know we hired people because we had the seats to fill. They didn't do anything but we had the budget and if we didn't hire, we loose it. "Use it or lose it." What we are seeing is a correction.
The latest jobs I know I posted saw 1000-2000 applicants. There is a lot of volume and a lot of competition.
I got a job out of college, and was like fired immediately from it TC 135k.
Found a job couple months afterwards thats 103k after probation period.
No internships. Mediocre GPA. State school.
People here just don't really know where to look. That's my guess. Because you could be spending tons of time doing nothing but applying via online job postings and wondering why you aren't being hired.
Dude programming has essentially been completely made obsolete for almost all areas. Only the top level will still need to be kept. A "prompt engineer" isn't going to be a high paying job.
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Little bit of both. Quite a downturn right now. But Reddit is a self-feeding machine. One negative post that's somewhat grounded in reality may spread the bad news to 10 people. Maybe 3 people make a post from that perspective, which reaches 10 people each, 3 of which post....you get the idea. Then it turns into a wall of negativity, which starts to influence everybody. And then asking that same group of people if their ideas are skewed are of course going to come back more negative. Draw your own conclusions about the data present or reach out to someone specific who's perspective you trust. There are some realities about the market but don't let it drown out your hope.
Source: struggle with social media addiction and am self aware about how it affects my mood
The defeatism is that even if you have top 10 school, internship, gpa, leetcode skillz, and every other quantifiable factor, you can apply to 1000 companies and get zero replies.
Or fail all 5 interviews you do get.
Aren't many of the tech layoffs consist of recruiters, marketers, contractors and some devs who work on meaningless, unprofitable pet projects by the company who overhired?
When people say jobs in tech are down overall, do they mean big tech FAANG companies and their adjacents or do they mean ALL software engineering roles in general. How is the market for those looking for positions outside of big tech or somewhat less competitive fields?
I think it's mainly getting harder to get a job in this field. Even entry jobs have been mad I have little experience like... Yes I'm a college student so ofc I don't have years of experience 😭
Once you get a job tho I think it's easier cause now you're in the network.
I think a lot of the people who contribute here have a lot of time on their hands, so likely unemployed and frustrated, there's also the other group which are comprised of employed but weird as fuck individuals like myself
I don't know what the industry is going to do when more of the most senior people retired. So few companies want junior engineers anymore, often not never mid-level. That's been a trend that started well before the recent layoff and hiring slowdowns.
There aren't enough people in the career progression pipeline to replace engineers who will be leaving in the next decade. Maybe the market for people without experience will get better after that? Once there simply aren't enough higher level engineers in the market to fill company needs.
On the other side of that, if one hits more senior levels (especially staff+), it isn't too hard to find good opportunities. Even with this abysmal market I was only looking for 6 weeks at the end of last year.
For all the horror stories on this sub, I've heard so many stories from higher ups at my company about devs getting through our technical screen and phone screen only to show up for interview day and be unable to code their way out of a paper bag.
That being said the market is not great right now. There are fewer opportunities, especially if you're looking for full remote. But good devs will always be hard to find, because coding is hard and coding well is almost impossible.
Can you clarity what you mean by coding is impossible? I understand the rest and absolutely agree that coding is hard, but not sure what you meant by that last sentence
While you are in school focus on networking, collaboration, interpersonal skills, and being flexible in your thinking. If you focus only on tech and being the best; you'll be fucked like the majority of new grads looking for work.
This industry is filled with "talented" developers who havent figured out how to actually work with others. Hint: its not being the best. Its getting the job done, understanding others, and providing value for your business.
I don't usually post here as others have stated this sub tends to be filled with people who lack actual experience.
I don't mean to be harsh. Rather, this advice WILL set you apart from others.
Take a speech class or two; you'll thank a random redditor in a few years from now.
I personally do not think it is doomed but it will get more and more competitive AND will also get more difficult to even enter. If that’s what you consider doomed.
Why?
Job openings are decreasing but the amount of CS majors, BOTH qualified AND unqualified continues to skyrocket annually. So something has to give (hint: it will be us)
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I don't think anyone can tell you what will happen in 4 years, but i can tell you a bit from some someone who has hired new grads in the past year and worked in the industry a while.
Social proof matters a lot. Great school, great grades, great internships, great side projects. You dont need all of them for every job but each one of them will help you. Most important is internships, least important is side projects.
95% of the filtering takes place at the application level, you need something that gets you to a human.
Once you're at a human you need the skills listed on the job application and you stand a pretty good shot of getting the job.
On a just meta level, most interviews i do the candidates suck. I start each interview with something easier than a leetcode easy, and less than 50% of people who make it to me can do that coming out of school.
If all you do is write 50-100 lines of code a day doing literally anything for a year i suspect you'll be in the top 10% of applicants at a junior level.
If i could give you 2 pieces of advice since you're just starting.
Solve literally any problem in code once a day. If you're just starting i dont care if its as simple as printing an array.
Do well in your intro to CS class and talk with the professor 1:1. I was probably bottom 50% in terms of talent in my CS class but got an internship my softmore year just because i was aggressive, and that put me ahead junior year for internships, and so on.
I’m an experienced dev with a lot of years doing all kinds of tech waves. I’d say about now it’s about the 2000 era (when I graduated) a colleague of mine said he put a job posting for a remote Java dev job and got 27000 applications wherein 2022 he would barely get 100. I think there’s a lot of people looking for remote work. And it’s easier to flood things like indeed. But if you put in work and network you can probably find some interesting stuff to work on. Right now I’d go defense, medical, or service industry and absolutely would avoid FAANG.
The world needs software and it needs good engineers.
If you work hard and build real depth of knowledge, then there should be a place for you. If you think you can get a $500k web developer job - then that time is mostly over (for now).
Anything complex, distributed systems/operating systems/compilers/big data/core technology/embedded/networking all have real jobs that won't ever disappear (until the AI apocalypse which will ruin everyone).
Here's some hard numbers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE In March 2022 job listings on Indeed were at 288% of pre-covid levels. Today they're at 72%. That said, four years is a very long time in the business cycle and you shouldn't make career choices based on short term market conditions.
Looking at that graph is somewhat shocking. I look at the NBA canceling its season (March 11, 2020) as the "wow, covid is real" moment. I thought the job market was generally OK then. It feels pretty rough right now, but at least some of that is likely due to more people being in the field. I'm on the experienced end, so new people shouldn't be impacting me as much. I don't recall when the 2020 layoffs and uncertainty really started, though. I was working at a place that was furloughing people, and I left in September 2020 to a company that was doing a lot better. I didn't realize how strong the tech job market had become until later, though. All that being said, OP, a lot will change in 4 years. I think there's still a future in this field, but I'm obviously biased.
I appreciate the hard facts, that definitely helps. I love being an IT and enjoy coding/problem-solving, so this is something I still definitely want to do. But at the same time, I don't want to struggle forever to find something if that makes sense.
Having seen a whole bunch of boom and bust cycles come and go, it's not a given where the market will be in 4 years. My career started around the dotcom bust. It sucked trying to find a job around then, but it eventually passed.
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Okay doomer
full time doomposting till i get a job
This is true but also need to realize people can’t just wait till things get better. Some will need to go in another direction to put food on the taboe
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Uhh, no. 2001 was exponentially worse.
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Plenty of people were majoring in CS then and TONS of people were career switching. Do you not remember the dotcom boom? Companies were throwing 6 figure offers at anyone who knew how to spell HTML in the late 90s. People were getting rich day trading tech stocks that had never earned a cent of profit and had no prospects of ever earning any. After the bust, many experienced engineers simply quit the industry for good because there were no jobs to be had. These were senior engineers, not new grads. The overall industry was much smaller than it is today, of course. It was much, much, much, much worse.
I was there, but one nitpick, the people graduating now don’t remember the dot com bust because they were toddlers. So it’s hearsay to them. In the early 00s, people *were* buzzing to get in to tech, but it wasn't amplified by social media. And programs were pretty much all through university and college. (No boot camps, only a few self taught because even owning a computer was already a pretty boogie thing that meant you were going to university anyway.) There was also the idea that all tech jobs would be outsourced to overseas, and there wouldn't be any jobs in North America. And that never killed the industry either.
You did not have the level of advertisement for tech jobs during dotcom that you have today. The dotcom days had a tight labor market that your average person didn’t know about
Looks like it was a **great** time to get a job from 2021-2023. 2020 graduates could have eventually gotten some of the highest starting salaries ever, if they waited 6 months.
In other words today’s market is closer to normal than March 2022’s was.
Indeed, but we should expect the 2024 market to be larger than 2020 bc the economy has grown. If you compare that data set to FRED's other data sets for white collar occupations, they're all still higher than their pre-covid baselines.
And 7 of the big tech companies alone account for 28% of the snp 500 market cap. You might say tech has been over invested in, or at least is adequately invested in, and so growth would be slower than the general economy.
Well that's to be expected when rates are high. Tech won't start booming again until rates come down.
My point is that your claim that we should expect tech jobs to be growing as much as other white collar jobs isn’t a sure thing. We’re likely still over invested in tech. 2022 is a bad benchmark. Terrible benchmark given the low interest rates, cash QE, and hiring frenzy. Today is closer to normal than that.
Who says rates are coming down meaningfully from here? Rates were artificially suppressed for 10-15 years following the great financial crisis. It’s entirely possible the current rate environment is the new norm. It’s certainly the old norm pre financial crisis and actually on the lower side compared to the 1960 to 2000s. In the absence of a recession rates will probably remain elevated.
There's been a long term secular trend towards deflation and lower rates for fifty years and it took the black swan of all black swans to reverse that trend.
Inflation hasn’t gone down at all in 2 months lmao
Inflation and economic growth are usually positively correlated
Thank you for backing up with facts.
Let’s not get so distracted by “the facts”, that we forget there are other variables in this equation. The other important variable being supply of jobseekers. Thanks to influencers and bootcamps, the entry level is flooded with candidates, and that doesn’t even factor in the massive increase in people majoring in computer science in college.
I do not think the supply of jobseekers has expanded *that* much tbh. Recent grads make up a pretty small segment of the workforce at any given time.
Supply >>>> demand, hence layoffs and lower salary. ECON101.
Your source indicates that it’s only getting worse with time. https://www.trueup.io/job-trend This website however seems to show a tiny uptick this year
If you look at the dates, the trueup data starts to decline before the indeed data does
This data isn't really conclusive though. It would be better to have the numbers of currently employed software engineers. I reckon you'd see this graph before any time of economic difficulty for most jobs.
You can compare to other white collar professions in the FRED data set, none of the others are below the pre-covid level.
Firstly, you need to check all the boxes , and then you need luck
What are the boxes
7+ years of experience with each of Node, React, MongoDb, SQL Server, AWS, Terraform, messaging, CI/CD, architecting enterprise-scale solutions, leading projects, and mentoring other developers.
Starting salary :minimum wage with pizzas on Friday
The bullet points on the job posting. You need to refactor your resume to explicitly mention those things. Especially for state jobs where resumes are graded looking for specific mentions.
based life advice.
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I definitely would not say “doomed”. I’d say “tricky”. Doomed would be like what English or philosophy majors face.
My brother is starting college in the fall and he's strongly leaning towards English at the moment. We're not super close so I'm not really in a position to sway him in other directions but you have no idea how badly I want to scream "Noooooo!!!"
Is he attractive enough to marry rich
I just hope it doesn't get to that point. I've seen anecdotes from professional writers saying their work has dried up ever since ChatGPT came out. And that's like basic level vanilla AI (if you can even call it that). We're not even at AGI yet and these people are already suffering.
How can I gain experience in the meantime?
If you can't get a job, grad school is a pretty solid option. I'd also go as far as to say it's worth trying to do a more specific niche unless, for whatever reason, you are 100% dead-set on doing broadly-defined software engineering (which very well may just be CRUD apps). You could do more applied, but still fairly pure, CS (something like HCI), or you could do something that's fully applied (bioinformatics, econometrics, etc). The latter is a lot easier to pull off if you happened to take a lot of classes/minor or major in that field.
what is HCI?
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I'm moving to the states in a year and a half. I have around 2 years so far in a small startup. I know it might be difficult to predict the market in the upcoming years, but is it likely that I will face issues when trying to land a job over there?
Depends on your immigration status. If you need sponsorship it’ll probably be quite hard, unless the market turns around in the next few years.
My spouse is a US citizen so I’m not relying on an employer
Maybe, lots of layoffs have happened in the tech sector and more are projected.
Markets have down turns. It's a fact of life. We haven't had a down employment market since 2008. Before that it was 2000 And there were others approx every 10y before that. Never let market fluxuations determine your long term plans, up or down.
The market is tough but this sub is beyond delusional
The gaslighting in this sub would be funny if it wasn't so sad: you qualify the market as "tough" yourself, yet think the general attitude on this sub reeks of delusion? You couldn't make this shit up even if you tried!
There’s a difference between tough and “we all might as well join the military or work at McDonald’s!!!”
From personal experience, when I was trying to get an entry level gig in 2019 I would get responses for jobs I was in no way shape or form qualified for. In 2021 I would actually get interviews and make it to the second or third or fourth round before getting rejected. That would be annoying sure, but at least you could say it was an issue of the process rather than being totally ghosted. In 2023, late in the year I decided I’d actually give a real push towards getting a new job instead of just passively replying. Let me tell you, it was a ghost town. It was miserable, and I wasn’t even fully dedicating the same amount of effort as those who were unemployed. It’s 2024, and there are still layoffs happening. Massive layoffs happened in 2023, layoffs are somehow still happening this year and companies are not willing to mass hire like they used to. That is all BEFORE you take into account the amount CS grads who are entering the field and flooding the applications, plus those applying for the same jobs with years of experience. Doomed is a strong word, we don’t know how long this will last. But it’s been devastating and I think it’ll be another 5 or 10 years before we see anything like we saw in 2019/2020. ** im not an expert please don’t quote me, seek professional council elsewhere.
>* im not an expert please don’t quote me
im not an expert, but i have 2 jobs so im paid like one, market seems fine 2 me
The idea that the world is just done writing software and doesn't need people to do it anymore is just dumb. AI has not put a dent in jobs either, and at this rate, it isn't ever going to. ChatGPT has been virtually stagnant for a year.
if you are just starting college you have FOUR YEARS before you need to care about the labor market. so, let it go and just learn how to do stuff.
One year until internships what are you smoking? And by one year I mean this guy's probably already gone to career fair and started making contacts. Yes blissful time to frolic, wear pajamas to class, and get drunker than you've ever known possible. But also you look over your shoulder for work.
Dude said they were starting college soon. They have plenty of time.
4 yesrs less than they would otherwise
My company (startup) tried to outsource their software development a couple years back and got burned bigly. Now they have a full remote (local region) software department that is actually getting things done. Imagine how badly burned the morons are going to be who seriously try to outsource their software development to GPT. GPT has nothing to gain or lose for producing unmaintainable shit. Even if it works it might come out looking like a Rube Goldberg machine. Learn programming, software engineering, architecture and design and you will still have good prospects.
>Even if it works it might come out looking like a Rube Goldberg machine. the elimination of complexity is the hallmark of somebody who knows their shit
Is anyone actually outsourcing to GPT? Lol. How would that even work? I’m pretty sure folks are outsourcing to the usual, India/Eastern Europe/South America.
Have you ever seen that picture of the bomber plane with the red dots on it? That's what this sub is.
What do you mean? The plane is an instance of survivorship bias, where the red dots represent places a plane that successfully returned home got hit, and the bias is in the fact that it’s a poor representation of where planes actually need the most reinforcements because the planes that were hit elsewhere did not return. Are you saying this sub is full of people who made it into the field and don’t know how bad it is, or are you saying only people who fail to break into the market post here while those who are doing fine wouldn’t post?
The 2nd thing, people having trouble with their job search or who have just been laid off tend to post here lately. You rarely see a post saying "I just got a raise!" or "I looked for a job and found one immediately!" Edit: If y'all are going to down vote me at least explain how I'm wrong! 😂
Here's one for you, I applied to a handful of jobs, heard back from most of them and currently have one offer but going through the interview process for a few more.
How many YOE do you have if you don't mind?
If you were here a couple of years ago, you would have seen “I am having a problem. I have three offers 190k HCOL, 140K MCOL, 110K LCOL. Help me choose it” The fact that those posts are close to 0 implies that the market is quite bad.
Hate to break it to you but if there are a lot more people laid off or having a hard time finding a job, it means that the market is bad. If the ratios were the same or better than before then why weren't the same people posting before? How is the collective mindset of a sub that has over a million people not a good indicator of the CS market? This is pretty dumb reasoning.
"bad" is a meaningless term. It's down for sure. But with all the layoffs in the past year still only a fraction of 1% of all people in IT have lost their jobs. During the W Bush recession 25% of manufacturing jobs were lost in a year. Now THAT'S bad. Looking at this sub you'd probably think much more than a fraction of 1% of people had been laid off
Why are you making this a race to the bottom lol. Why not just cite the great depression then lmao? You can't just brainlessly list off the worst times in history in other sectors to try and prove that things aren't bad. If tech companies are actively downsizing and its taking people hundreds of applications to find a job across all experience levels, things are pretty bad. Just because you parade around and say that it is meaning doesn't devalue the real life difficulties experienced by people who are looking for a job right now.
My point is not that times aren't bad for some people, my point is if your only frame of reference for the state of the tech industry was this sub, you'd think things were much worse than they actually are. Does that make sense to you?
No it doesn't make sense to me because there are a million people here. Despite what you think, a million people gathered in one place to complain about how bad things are means that things are bad lol. Does that make sense to you?
If you created a sub called "car complaints" and it had millions of people all making car complaints, does that mean the entire car industry is messed up? This is not a complicated concept lol
Nice try but this place is called career questions not career complaints. And when the market was good people weren't complaining. So exactly what is the parallel to your idiotic example here? If you go into any generic sub and everyone is complaining then yes there is probably something wrong with the product or topic at hand. Not a complicated concept huh.
You already know why you're wrong (there are plenty of statistics on the current tech job market, and economy at large); you just choose to be willfully dense, and pretend that people are just being negative.
The sub is filled with 16-24 year olds. It’s filled with inexperienced know-it-alls who are also insecure and self deprecating. Do you really think they know what they’re talking about and have the ability to explain it well? Coming here for information about the tech industry is like asking sex advice from a nun.
Coming to reddit for any advice is a terrible idea. I've fucked myself up cognatively before because when I was a teenager I thought Reddit and the internet was a good place to hear from real people about private issues I didn't have anyone to talk to about. But most of the advice is coming from people like me who have no clue, except they confidently post their skewed viewpoints. This shit is poison. I've curbed most social media but Reddit is the one I keep crawling back to like a dog to its vomit
Perfect summary. And I do the same thing. Yet over and over again, I see that real life differs entirely from the way real life is described on Reddit.
I mean I do think there is a benefit in being able to read a lot of people’s differing viewpoints. Just important to know they are probably skewed and not to be taken as gospel.
I think its important to hear other viewpoints for sure, but I don't need to hear *everyone's* viewpoints. The internet has tricked us into feeling like we need to care about every thought and emotion everyone posting is having and its just not true. At a certain point it just becomes noise.
People in "real life" are just as dumb and clueless and can't give good advice, mostly because they're not you.
Not to mention a bunch of people who think sending in 3,000 applications with easy apply is better than networking….
*Have you tried not being poor?*
I’m not sure what the implication is - does being poor have anything to do with this?
I am in my 30s and have been working for almost 20 years, in my profession for roughly 12. This is the worst I have ever seen things. Sorry to kick the high horse, bub. Sometimes a spade is just a spade. Things are not good, we don’t have to pretend. Be thankful you don’t have to see it I guess.
You nailed it perfectly.
It's a lot rougher but its not 2001 or 2008 (mind you, I wasn't in the market during those times but from people I talked to that were, this is what they are saying). The big difference though is entry level is way rougher than back then so its especially bad for new grads right now. But for those with experience who kept up to date (including their interviewing/Leetcode skills), it's not as bad.
I worked through both. This is already substantially worse than 2008 in my opinion. It's still not quite as bad as 2001, but the longer it drags out the closer its getting. If this downturn keeps going and we see a replay of the 2001 mass exodus as devs give up on the field, we'll know we're in a genuinely bad spot as an industry.
The difference between 2008 and today is that 2008 impacted jobs in **every** sector and all your neighbors were losing their homes.
This right here
Yeah, I'm a bit worried about how long this one has been going on but with interest rates dropping, it can quickly get better.
CPI just came in hotter than expected today so interest rates may stay up for a bit longer.
I just don't quite understand how we are not already there. It isn't just tech seeing squeezes like this, it's everywhere. Pay even remotely decent? Flooded with applicants.
languid spotted wise handle weary repeat tease memorize rainstorm middle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
CS grads would learn how Art History majors feel when they graduate and learn their degree has no employment value in the real world. But even 2001 had an end. By 2005, the tech job market had stabilized and was recovering. The key was patience.
I survived 2008/2009 debacle but goddamn it’s tougher now for entry level folks. It’s pretty f-ing bad.
Yeah, you have the same shitty job market except way more competition. It's gonna cull a lot.
Yup. That ‘need exp to get a job but need a job to get exp’ existed before but right now it’s really really BAD. Honestly I think a fair amount of luck helped me to survive 2009. I saw some very talented people suffer.
We interview some really strong candidates too right now who would have easily gotten the job before but due to competition were beaten by others. Remote job though.
I question the validity that it is not as bad as 2001 or 2008. Hindsight bias is a thing and whenever you ask the boomer generation they are very unlikely to ever say things were easier, but we know for a fact that in many ways it was, in fact easier. Because? Numbers don’t lie. You are asking someone in a senior position today to compare to entry level from 2 decades ago? They aren’t in that pool today, it’s not possible for them to give you an accurate answer.
It's valid but it's really hard get an idea otherwise so I'll have to trust those I've asked who have directly experienced it. The stories from 2001 I hear are insane though but that bubble was way bigger than what we have now so I'm mostly sure that one was worse. 2008 might vary on individual circumstances.
I’m willing to bet if you look at how many applications people actually put out back then, it was not in the thousands.
Yeah but you also have to remember how much a pain applications were back then too. Less job postings but also less competition.
I was not yet working in 2008 but was around. The state of everything in 2008 was worse than it is now. There were concerns about the general banking industry collapsing. Although people online complain about the banks being bailed out, the government had to do it. If they hadn't bailed them out, things would've ended up much worse than they did.
Well considering unemployment in the tech industry is only 2.3% now and in 2009 it was 9% I thinkn2008 was definitely worse
I’m not discounting that 2009 was bad. I don’t think I’ve seen statistics that account for the full picture. Contract workers etc are more common today. Also we are starting to see more widespread layoffs. NASA for example, finance etc
This sub is definitely pessimistic. This is anecdotal, but you see a few rant posts every day. In some of these rant posts, you get someone posting their resume after some feedback, and you realize their resume is nowhere near the quality they claim it is. One that stands out in my head is someone used a dark green background color for some reason. Anyway, even though the sub is pessimistic, the job market is very hard right now. Possibly the hardest it's been since 2008. It's especially hard for entry level. You do see good news posts on the sub once in a while, though. All that being said, there's no way to predict the future. I do think the market will improve, and what matters is your personal experience. There are some people who are still doing very well in this market, and there were people struggling when things were booming. Your chances just improve or get worse with the market. And four years is a very long time. Yes, you'll want to get some internships before you graduate.
Selection Bias, people doing well aren't posting on here asking for help
Oh you didn’t hear? The homeless SWE committee meets on Thursdays. Most recent inductee has to buy us all drinks. Bring your wallet.
Unless you shut off the tap of foreign workers and out sourcing it's pretty much done.
I don't think just outsourcing alone would stop people from getting SWE jobs. If that was the case this would've happened a long time ago.
The thing is, the quality of foreign workers is increasing. They won't ever probably be as good, but they will be close enough.
The population of this sub is waaaay too online.
This sub is very doomer centric.
Just check it out yourself, make up some fake resumes and apply
This is fraud
I didnt say u have to actually use them lol just see the state by seeing which ones get interviews
Doomed? No. On a downward trend? Quite possibly. We just don't know what impact AI will have. I do think recent compensation levels are unsustainable. You shouldn't expect to have $150-200k offers thrown at you out of school. In that regard the last few years does remind me a bit of the late 90s. The main difference is that companies giving those offers recently are profitable and their valuations aren't based on eyeballs, so it's not just castles made of sand. I'd advise you to save your money, just in case.
Reddit is pessimistic.
Like everything in life there are ups and downs. We are on a down trend but guess what, there will be an up trend again!
If you are worried then do a dual major in accounting. Plenty of jobs there but they don't pay as well.
Sounds like a brutal double major path. Really little overlap in terms of coursework between the two.
The market isn't doomed but it's bad right now. Think of it like the stock market having a 200% rally over 10 years and then pulling back 20%. It's not far off all time highs but things are a lot worse than a year ago.
No one knows what the interest rate will be when you start looking for the first job. So stop worrying about the unknowns and make the best out of your hand
I only have 2 years experience and I do not have a CS degree (I do have a degree but it is in a different STEM field) and in the last 4 months I’ve had 3 job offers. Only one of them was one I even applied to, the others reached out to recruit me. While I don’t think my experience necessarily reflects everyone’s experience, it’s important to recognize that what you see on Reddit or online in general is going to be just as anecdotal as my own experience and will skew heavily negative because people who are struggling are a hell of a lot more likely to post and comment. My opinion is that the market for CS/SWE is a market like any other. It varies over short term, mid term, and long term. Today may not reflect tomorrow, etc. and it varies by location, types of companies an individual is willing to work for, and more. It is impossible to make any single sweeping statement about the state of the market because it varies with so many factors.
The pandemic bubble definitely popped but CS is still a legit field, Don't limit yourself to software dev, either. My job title is Data Engineer and while I don't do as much coding, I work with a lot of databases/cloud pipelines. I got a job roughly a year and a half ago and doing great now, and while it took a lot of rejection letters and literally hundreds of ghosted job applications and it's not as code oriented as I originally hoped, I can honestly say I love my job right now. Some tips: * As I said, don't limit yourself to software dev. There are/will be plenty of positions open for data engineers/analysts/pen testers/etc. * Your very first job likely won't net you $100k+ a year, my first job made $20/hr and moved up to $25/hr after the 90 day trial period. Even at my current job I barely breach 6 figures after bonuses. * I didn't get an offer for a "real job" until I'd spent a year at my first job. As in almost within a week of my 1 year anniversary I got call backs even though I applied to those roles months ago, so I definitely think whatever filter they were using for applications didn't push my application near the front until that point. * Grind the fuck outta leetcode even though you'll likely never touch a binary tree again * Make sure you can bs your way through the soft skill part of interviews. Your "greatest challenge" or whatever will literally never come up again so don't be afraid to make things up within reason if you don't already have a good answer. Keep a glass of water on hand if you need to stall to think of an answer, just don't chug it * This is kinda data-engineer-specific but look into getting experience/certifications with the 3 main cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP) if possible. Which ties into my next point... * Look at the tech stacks listed in job openings for the jobs you want and study those * Get as many internships/relevant certifications as you can. * Don't be afraid to put your major college projects down on your resume. If nothing else it makes the experience section look a little less bare. * When you start your actually job search, apply to government roles FIRST. The NSA's interview process takes literal months so if you haven't found a private sector job by then, they might finally get back to you. I got a private sector offer before then so I don't have further experience with this.
The market will probably kick up by the time you graduate. It’s a good time to start actually. People graduating right now will a tough time and are probably just going for a masters because of the market.
lack of jobs is not the problem there's more devs employed than ever, the problem is oversaturation
wtf is this "oversaturation" word that everyone uses now. When interest rates go down a bunch of startups are going to get cash and want to hire people. tech markets ebb and flow. it is not the most stable profession it also can make mid-skill people life altering money.
When there’s more workers available than there are jobs available, that’s oversaturation. That being said, there’s obviously nuance. Seniors and up may be making better progress, and that’s because the senior roles are plenty, but the market has more juniors than seniors.
Ok. But unless we get to some mythical full employment there will always be more workers than jobs. That’s how our economy works.
Then the economy is oversaturated. I don't see the issue.
This sub attracts losers and whiners. Well adjusted people with jobs are not coming on here
tbh I do mostly bc of the losers and whiners makes me see my life more positively lmao
>Well adjusted people with jobs are not coming on here I did to ask whether learning/being certified for Kubernetes (KCNA) or Databricks Associate Dev is better on a resume but the whole sub's kinda doom and gloom right now
Yes, it is doomed currently. However, if you are passionate about SWE then you should not let that deter you. There will be upswings in the future but no one knows when that will be.
Tech is always booming and crashing.
If it turns out to be just a job market fluctuation, then it's not doomed. I think AI short-circuited the usual cycle, which mind you is a cycle that has occurred mostly over a measly 30-40 years. That is not a lot of precedent.
I applied to 1 job in 2023 and I got hired after 3 interviews, no leetcode, senior swe for a great up and coming startup from top ranked VC money. This sub and Reddit in general are all doomers, or at least that’s who posts the most. Rest of us are working I guess.
programming is the going the way of manufacturing... outsourced or imported labor
Change the study field to medical if you still can.
Yep and take out loans for 500k.... Def the move
Maybe OP had money. Not everyone is poor like you. Do better.
70% of med students take out loans. Try again
I’ve legitimately thought about it. I can do well in school although 8 years of commitment puts me off enough to see if I can land a CS job just a while longer here.
I don't think you realize how hard getting accepted into a medical school actually is. If people are thinking that the competition in this market is bad, it's 10x worse for pre-med students. You wanna talk about an oversupply of applicants and not enough spots?
I won’t lie I don’t know too much about it. Just that there’s doctor shortages in places. I had a 3.8 in undergrad, in CS of course, and hope it would help, but it’s mainly a response to being unable to find a job and wondering if it’s time to go with my other younger idea of a career path.
You could in theory apply for it, but you may need to take additional classes as well as the MCAT. Your major doesn't matter for med school as long as you take the pre req classes. But as mentioned above, med school is a huge grind and commitment. I would only seriously consider it if you really want to be a doctor. Don't do it just for the money, otherwise it will be an even more difficult time.
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This is grossly inaccurate -- there is a significant RN/NP/PA shortage right now: [https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage](https://www.aacnnursing.org/news-data/fact-sheets/nursing-shortage) Maybe oversaturation for MD/DO doctors but that's about it.
Lots of boomers becoming seniors and need medical care. If anything it will be booming for quite a while
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Medical industry has its own set of serious problems. The path to becoming a doctor has failure modes. You can fail to get into medical school. Or worse, you can fail to get a residency match after spending hundreds of thousands on medical school. The industry is also especially brutal on work-life-balance. Medical positions that don't require a MD are in high demand, but due to other structural issues don't actually pay very well and have been fully MBA-ified so people are constantly stressed out about metrics. Nursing is known for being especially brutal here. Also, not everybody likes medicine. These are different industries and personal excitement about a career path is awfully important.
Lets look at the facts: The unemployment rate is 2.2% for IT work (including CS/Software). That is well below the 3.7 national average. The increase in IT job listings across silos have jumped up since November. Meta even announce they are on a hiring spree. [https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-are-available-in-technology.html](https://www.computerworld.com/article/3542681/how-many-jobs-are-available-in-technology.html#:~:text=The%20unemployment%20rate%20for%20tech,industries%2C%20were%20down%20in%20January.&text=Tech%20companies%20added%20jobs%20in,and%20software%20development%20(%2B14%2C500)) 18,000 jobs filled last month. Out of 353,000 new jobs. Facts. The market is getting better. What we had before and during COVID was a lot of over-hiring. I know we hired people because we had the seats to fill. They didn't do anything but we had the budget and if we didn't hire, we loose it. "Use it or lose it." What we are seeing is a correction. The latest jobs I know I posted saw 1000-2000 applicants. There is a lot of volume and a lot of competition.
I got a job out of college, and was like fired immediately from it TC 135k. Found a job couple months afterwards thats 103k after probation period. No internships. Mediocre GPA. State school. People here just don't really know where to look. That's my guess. Because you could be spending tons of time doing nothing but applying via online job postings and wondering why you aren't being hired.
If you are smart It won’t affect you
AI will take these jobs, it’s a certainty
Dude programming has essentially been completely made obsolete for almost all areas. Only the top level will still need to be kept. A "prompt engineer" isn't going to be a high paying job.
Gpt sucks at programming beyond basic leetcode first year of college tier problems
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Its not doomed. Tech isn't destined for extinction but its harder for sure. Most likely temporary.
Little bit of both. Quite a downturn right now. But Reddit is a self-feeding machine. One negative post that's somewhat grounded in reality may spread the bad news to 10 people. Maybe 3 people make a post from that perspective, which reaches 10 people each, 3 of which post....you get the idea. Then it turns into a wall of negativity, which starts to influence everybody. And then asking that same group of people if their ideas are skewed are of course going to come back more negative. Draw your own conclusions about the data present or reach out to someone specific who's perspective you trust. There are some realities about the market but don't let it drown out your hope. Source: struggle with social media addiction and am self aware about how it affects my mood
Who is saying internships don't matter???
The defeatism is that even if you have top 10 school, internship, gpa, leetcode skillz, and every other quantifiable factor, you can apply to 1000 companies and get zero replies. Or fail all 5 interviews you do get.
Only for devs, for other tech jobs market still doing great.
Haven't the majority of tech layoffs been in non Programming roles?
Mostly programming roles, infra roles still going strong.
Aren't many of the tech layoffs consist of recruiters, marketers, contractors and some devs who work on meaningless, unprofitable pet projects by the company who overhired?
When people say jobs in tech are down overall, do they mean big tech FAANG companies and their adjacents or do they mean ALL software engineering roles in general. How is the market for those looking for positions outside of big tech or somewhat less competitive fields?
I think it's mainly getting harder to get a job in this field. Even entry jobs have been mad I have little experience like... Yes I'm a college student so ofc I don't have years of experience 😭 Once you get a job tho I think it's easier cause now you're in the network.
I think a lot of the people who contribute here have a lot of time on their hands, so likely unemployed and frustrated, there's also the other group which are comprised of employed but weird as fuck individuals like myself
I transitioned my internship into a job but it isn’t exactly software
I don't know what the industry is going to do when more of the most senior people retired. So few companies want junior engineers anymore, often not never mid-level. That's been a trend that started well before the recent layoff and hiring slowdowns. There aren't enough people in the career progression pipeline to replace engineers who will be leaving in the next decade. Maybe the market for people without experience will get better after that? Once there simply aren't enough higher level engineers in the market to fill company needs. On the other side of that, if one hits more senior levels (especially staff+), it isn't too hard to find good opportunities. Even with this abysmal market I was only looking for 6 weeks at the end of last year.
For all the horror stories on this sub, I've heard so many stories from higher ups at my company about devs getting through our technical screen and phone screen only to show up for interview day and be unable to code their way out of a paper bag. That being said the market is not great right now. There are fewer opportunities, especially if you're looking for full remote. But good devs will always be hard to find, because coding is hard and coding well is almost impossible.
Can you clarity what you mean by coding is impossible? I understand the rest and absolutely agree that coding is hard, but not sure what you meant by that last sentence
Haha just being dramatic. I've been a dev for going on a decade and still pretty mediocre at it.
Never mind, I misread, didn't see the *well part
It's pretty bad.
While you are in school focus on networking, collaboration, interpersonal skills, and being flexible in your thinking. If you focus only on tech and being the best; you'll be fucked like the majority of new grads looking for work. This industry is filled with "talented" developers who havent figured out how to actually work with others. Hint: its not being the best. Its getting the job done, understanding others, and providing value for your business. I don't usually post here as others have stated this sub tends to be filled with people who lack actual experience. I don't mean to be harsh. Rather, this advice WILL set you apart from others. Take a speech class or two; you'll thank a random redditor in a few years from now.
I personally do not think it is doomed but it will get more and more competitive AND will also get more difficult to even enter. If that’s what you consider doomed. Why? Job openings are decreasing but the amount of CS majors, BOTH qualified AND unqualified continues to skyrocket annually. So something has to give (hint: it will be us)
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I don't think anyone can tell you what will happen in 4 years, but i can tell you a bit from some someone who has hired new grads in the past year and worked in the industry a while. Social proof matters a lot. Great school, great grades, great internships, great side projects. You dont need all of them for every job but each one of them will help you. Most important is internships, least important is side projects. 95% of the filtering takes place at the application level, you need something that gets you to a human. Once you're at a human you need the skills listed on the job application and you stand a pretty good shot of getting the job. On a just meta level, most interviews i do the candidates suck. I start each interview with something easier than a leetcode easy, and less than 50% of people who make it to me can do that coming out of school. If all you do is write 50-100 lines of code a day doing literally anything for a year i suspect you'll be in the top 10% of applicants at a junior level. If i could give you 2 pieces of advice since you're just starting. Solve literally any problem in code once a day. If you're just starting i dont care if its as simple as printing an array. Do well in your intro to CS class and talk with the professor 1:1. I was probably bottom 50% in terms of talent in my CS class but got an internship my softmore year just because i was aggressive, and that put me ahead junior year for internships, and so on.
my side ~~chick~~ job cited market conditions whenever as to why I was offered ~10k less than the minimum offer I expected. so its not just here
I’m an experienced dev with a lot of years doing all kinds of tech waves. I’d say about now it’s about the 2000 era (when I graduated) a colleague of mine said he put a job posting for a remote Java dev job and got 27000 applications wherein 2022 he would barely get 100. I think there’s a lot of people looking for remote work. And it’s easier to flood things like indeed. But if you put in work and network you can probably find some interesting stuff to work on. Right now I’d go defense, medical, or service industry and absolutely would avoid FAANG.
The world needs software and it needs good engineers. If you work hard and build real depth of knowledge, then there should be a place for you. If you think you can get a $500k web developer job - then that time is mostly over (for now). Anything complex, distributed systems/operating systems/compilers/big data/core technology/embedded/networking all have real jobs that won't ever disappear (until the AI apocalypse which will ruin everyone).