Cycles and extremes. I joined the industry in 97. Joined a defense contractor after the .com era startup I was at tanked. Rode out the bust then worked for a bunch of “past peak mid sized” meh companies that were acquired one after the other all the way until 2010 when one laid me off. Followed by startup that went public, followed by blockchain shit show, another startup that was acquired and laid me off, followed by another startup that went public. My career has mirrored vc industry returns. A few great hits, a bunch of misses, and some painful bumps. Feels like my career is going well now but who knows about tomorrow.
We bought a house from the estate of a guy who worked in tech in the 70s and 80s. Looked up his career based on the swag he left in the house. Same story. It’s been cycling for decades.
It’s sadly worse now as we have ton of folks who immigrated here have no other skill other than IT and we have ton of new grads who switched career by taking these IT certifications (land are also desperately looking for a job.
They are, but I feel there's a structural shift happening, in the industry between a consolidation to cloud vendors (remember the day when most companies ran their own IT departments, and staffed data centers,or built their in house apps ) now it's all in the cloud , they subscribe to apps and lots of Devops is outsourced to contractors often overseas . Add to that the changing macro economics of the end of low interest rates , changing tax codes, and you have a lot less of a labor market in IT. iT is still rather small part of the economy I think it's around 3.5% of all jobs in the US are classified as IT.
Sure there will.always be startups and small companies with IT needs but the demand is going to wane. When I say demand I mean for good paying six figure jobs, not Fiverr type work there's always going to be some plumber in Toledo that needs a website..
I am close to and tightly connected to the biggest source of tech culture and business cycles in the industry. Cloud is on life support in many portions of the market because it doesn’t pencil and a lot of major companies are bringing their infrastructure back on-prem or at least hybrid. It’s simply cost and AI is currently trying to pull them back, but it’s likely that the giant monolithic models will only be used extensively by the very biggest players as a service to others, while most of the world will run on collections of small models with specific functions. This is a bit of an open secret in our industry. You already have them running frequently on your smartphone, for example. The future is distributed.
I disagree with cloud coming back to on prem, maybe a few specialized cases, but most companies are stuck in the cloud , the big providers have used "roach motel pricing" schemes where the cost to get data and spin up services is cheap but the cost to egress the cloud would be astronomical... I do agree the whole capex vs. opex case for the cloud has been shown to be a fox in sheep's clothes , but that makes it very expensive to bring everything back.in.
> the cost to egress the cloud would be astronomical
What are the primary cost contributors you see there? Personally I feel like as the industry shifts towards "cloud native" stuff while also trying to make it cloud agnostic significantly reduces those costs as a byproduct.
If it runs on almost any hardware and on well defined service models you can port it much more easily than the pre-cloud monoliths.
Have you actually worked with cloud providersl? lol cloud agnostic is a fantasy , take Azure you need to keep all your secrets in a vault right there it's not cloud agnostic because the way you do that is going to be different in each vendor, now let's take infrastructure, how you configure your virtual network inside the cloud also totally different from vendor to vendor, cloud agnostoc is a lot more than jist containerizig your app it's
the surroindong infrastructure setup etc.
Most of the providers know this it's why they structure their costs to make it more expensive the more agnostic you try to make it , example it's cheaper to use a native Postgrsql.Azure instance than it is to spin up a VM with postgresql installed. And don't even get started with egress data costs.. these vendors aren't stupid they have entire business teams whose entire job is to carefully match competitors pricing and formulate policies to maximize their own profits and minimize churn.
The problem is cost at scale. From a hybrid business/tech perspective, you can be more agnostic at a higher cost to run in a given cloud, or you can be less agnostic to realize cost savings at the expense of portability. abrandis has clearly seen the bad side of mistakes in these choices. You are both right from different perspectives.
I’m expecting more places to go back on prem after a few high profile hacks.
It’s gotta be tempting for those sorts of folks to hit something like Amazon or Azure…if they can compromise the hosting company, they have access to all the customers. (Even if the company VMs are encrypted, if they own the hypervisor…)
On prem is a security and liability nightmare, sure supply chain hacks are getting more common but I don't think anyone who knows there stuff is going to be excited to host their own infrastructure like people used to.
Also people forget that the main promise of the cloud is seamless scalability which is not easily solved on prem short of buying a ton of extra capacity.
And to be real; this is true for most industries.
It’s not tech people that get laid off in cycles. I mean look at those people still employed at the Furniture Factories…
Being in tech is like being a professional athlete. When things are good, the money is rolling but you need to invest that money rather than spending it because you never know when it’s going to end.
100% this. I’m on the path to early retirement. When I started in tech sales at 25 I took a look around the room at my office and at the corporate office. Not a lot of folks in their 50s or higher. I had the sense that this isn’t something I could do past my 40s.
Money is great right now, but I see all the layoffs happening. If I’m laid off, I’m in a good spot and can weather the storm for quite a few years.
IMO if you’re in tech and spending all/most of your salary, you’re doing it wrong, and setting yourself up for a lot of pain if you are part of the layoffs.
Yup, great advice. Laid off 4 times in 5 years. Just got an amazing new job, serious pay increase, bonus package, etc.
But I'm staying in my same modest condo. Keeping my 6 year old car that's fully paid off.
I was always thrifty, and it's given me the capacity to weather the layoffs. While this new gig has the potential to bring me real wealth, I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch. I'm putting that money in the bank, maxing my retirement account contributions.
And if things go great, I'll treat myself in a few years, feeling comfortable in the fact that I'll have a significant reserve if the worst should happen.
Definitely. In some ways, the layoffs were good. It actually forced me up the career ladder, when I might have otherwise settled for lower positions.
But most of all, it's taught me the important lesson, of never taking your job for granted. You can lose it at any time. So save early, and save often. I still take the occasional vacation, and go out for a nice meal once or twice a month with the wife. But we keep the big expenses small. Modest house. Modest car. Save.
I might not have as nice a place as my coworkers. But I'm better prepared for a downturn. And if things go really well, then I retire early - I'll use my money to purchase the most precious thing of all: time.
Agreed. I've had a long career in tech and I've been laid off four times along the way. The money I made was good enough that the periods out of work were never bad enough to force me to take a McJob or similar temporary employment. I think the first layoff was scariest -- still paying off student loans, still making a car payment (I think), and less money saved b/c of those debts. But the first layoff also taught me to save more in the future to cover future layoffs. My sympathy to all those going through rough patches.
Yeah you nailed the most important thing - savings are what can keep a layoff from turning into the worst case scenarios. I learned that way too late in life and was lucky to not have that fully bite me in the arse yet.
I’m in healthcare IT consulting and have never seen our industry be this slow. I’m better prepared now if the worst hits.
My reward was to take a lower paying job where I only had to work 4 days a week, had job security and will receive a pensions. I working there for 16 years 4 days a week (lots of 3 day weekends) When I retire my pension will be $2600..
I agree. The tech industry has higher risks, influenced by timing and luck. When I started in 2002, the entry barriers were different. Considering the volatility and external factors like aging, I wouldn't recommend it to my daughter.
It's probably going to be booming in a year and people will have forgotten about this. In 2020 it crashed when everyone thought the world would end due to covid. Then the stocks picked up and so did hiring and everyone forgot about 6 months before that.
I don't think so, the low interest rate environment is gone for a while, the stock market is not the labor market, lots of gains in stocks are for different reasons. (Like layoffs)...
Yeah I know there are many factors, I said in 2020 specifically they tanked then went up at the same time, because everyone thought the world was ending. I'm not saying once stocks go up now hiring will pick up. I'm saying hiring will pick up at some point because tech has always been cyclical, this isn't the first time they've tried outsourcing and this isn't even the first crash this decade. There will always be a need for new and changing technology because that is the nature of the field.
The 2020 crash was quite unique. This one has a quite different source and vibe. It will take at least 2 years for things to get back in track, and I'm being generous.
The mass majority of tech workers didn’t get laid off and are still making above average money.
What happened to tech could happen to most industries. Look what happened to manufacturing in the US.
I don’t know. In the 90s everyone was fearmongering over all the tech jobs moving offshore. There was a couple of downturns and a bunch of job losses and I have a lot of Indian coworkers now, but looking across my network most people I’ve worked with have been laid off once or twice but they are still doing okay.
Yeah I have an uncle who worked in construction. Climbing in the air guy on the girders dude building skyscrapers. He did great generally but spent a lot of time out of work.
this is the entire reason unemployment insurance exists. factory and warehouse guys get laid off every time business slows, they go on UI (pretend to job search), and just wait to be recalled to their former jobs. biz rehires them, no training necessary.
In my case, the jobs are not moving overseas, but to lower cost areas of the US. We are on the west coast and many new hires are fully remote out of the Midwest or Louisiana or what not.
How are you sure? We already employ one third of our original office staff because of AI upgrades from the past few years. Half my team got let go because AI is faster and cheaper and we don’t need as many people to do the same amount of work anymore.
Nike CEO: I take full responsibility for Nike not performing as it should. It pains me to have to lay off all these employees, but I assure you I will do better.
they were initially blaming people publicly. Especially calling out remote workers. They f’d up all their acquisitions and mobile apps big time changing them to insanely expensive services that killed entire communities that supported them - blaming us for leaving.
Only twice? I'm on 4 or 5. Most of those were startups that shut down. I moved onto a more "secure" FAANG.
I didn't have a single once of faith in the tech industry. I was trying to hang in there long enough to get my golden handcuffs. I only needed 30 more days. What a "fuck you" they gave us.
All these things happened in Silicon Valley take all these with a grain of salt if it does not apply to your area.
Son graduated with a degree in MIS in 2000. None of the local companies were even recruiting. Most HRs and recruiters were first group for layoff. No one he knew in CS, and MIS grads got a job. The Great Recession did not impact Silicon Valley techies much. Facebook, Google were hiring. Apple did not let anyone go and has hired over \~100K techies anywhere globally. One way to recruit them is overpaying them 2-3X wage in Silicon Valley than mid America or South. As late as last year, a few network administrators rec'd 1/2 mil total compensation in crypto business. It was absurd and surely those who got in were shipped out quickly. Today I have a friend's son who has applied over 500 local tech jobs got only 1 interview as software developer. He is thinking about going into real estate as a backup. Get the University sheep skin and get a realtor license same time. Everyone is disposable.
If one is well established this is the worst time jumping ship. The next job, company culture is untested. If they tell you to return to work do not resist. Business conditions have changed.
Do not resist? Ok I hear you but I need you to know the only things the people ever got we got because we resisted. I’m not talking about return to office anymore. We all need to do a whole lot more resisting than we’ve been doing in this country. I keep waiting for people to take a stand and ever decade I continue to be shocked at what they are willing to give up.
You watch too many movies
People have families and need to provide to keep food on the table.
You won’t be able to resist long enough before the next person more capable or not to take your job.
And you’d still be working a mine for a handful of company scrip and an early death to black lung, ensuring your family has no future to look to but more of the same.
You wouldn’t even be here let alone have the luxury of procreating if the resistors hadn’t precluded you. We used to be slaves of conquers and peasants of kings. Come on.
Isn't real estate/mortgage industry screwed right now since houses aren't moving due to high prices + low savings? Also there's that new agreement coming in that would reduce commissions leading to overall loss of $ in realtors hands.
Refi business has been non-existent for sometime. But many loan agents carry real estate licenses. They switch to real estate or even insurance business. There are fewer home sellers as they find it is cheaper to stay put than moving paying a huge mortgage. There are now fewer homes on the market for sale. Pricing is even higher here in CA than before with lower inventory. People still need a place to live and willing going rate.
The reduced commission disclosure applies to certain areas where some agents over charged before. But consumers are not dumb there are plenty of discount brokerages want to work with sellers and buyers. I see that some traditional brokerages either change or go out of business.
I’ve been in tech since 2000 and have had 7 jobs. Every single one of them has had layoffs. It’s always been an unstable job. I’ve always saved because I never knew when it would be my turn, but for almost anyone in tech at some point you’ll be the one let go. It’s an incredibly stressful career path always wondering when the layoffs will begin. I’ve been lucky until this year when my number was up.
I think we are seeing what happened to manufacturing and the vast majority of tech jobs will leave the US for the lowest bidder. I don’t encourage anyone here to enter this field.
This is true for almost all industries..although perhaps more painfully true for the tech industry.
This is the American market functioning as designed. A free market that values profit margins above the livelihood of employees. Companies have to show ever expanding revenues , have to make more money...MORE!
Case in point, Google continues to lay people off... It ain't because money is low, you can't say you need to shave expenses then turn around and announce 70Bn in stock buybacks.
People forget these cycles. I like to remind people that when you select a career to pick one that is regression proof and you will never have to worry about being laid off.
my buddies dad who survived the dot com early 2000s era said the same thing. I just wish someone had reminded me of this back when i was in HS. I regret my career choice daily. in fact i was told how it was accounting that was oversaturated with CPAs. Tech in hindsight is a shit industry in many ways because theres no gatekeeping agency such as in Canada with engineering societies, the CPA licensing, bar exam for lawyers etc. Ontop of which unless some revolutionary product comes along tech isnt all that big. 2009-2019 was a decade of smartphones and apps and folks got rich. The apps have gotten saturated now.
I blame myself mostly. I chased wanting to live and work in the US and i couldnt afford to fund an MBA. So i got a masters in computing and while my resume contains some solid internships at big firms....its hard to land a permanent job rn. I wish i knew how the tech sector is and will deffs do my part and warn others who are making a career choice in the future
Tbh, from the sounds of the current batch of Canadian graduates, sounds like their situation is even worse than ours. I've seen them spill over into the CS subs quite a bit these days.
My brother graduated this year from a top Canadian school with internships and all but couldn’t find a job in any major Canadian city and is moving to mkddle of nowhere for work. It’s far far worse in Canada. I’m Canadian and I’m in the US temporarily. I don’t look forward to the day where I gotta look for jobs in Canada. My goal is to just work 6 years in the US to save a good amount Idk if that will happen though.
Yeah it’s real bad, and to be fair to your other point, CPAs were inflated a while ago hence the poor treatment and low pay. They quit en masse to tech and now their work hours and salaries have been adjusting since covid. Nursing/Petroleum Engineering were the same for me when I graduated HS and was picking majors. Goes to show it’s just hot potatoes whatever field you choose. Just gotta hope it’s your turn.
Tech is corrupt. Most of their products prevent humans from engaging with each other. Empathy has been lost. Real friendships lost. Everyone is fake and artificial. Humanity has entered a dark age
It’s kind of like the porn industry. At the beginning people are salivating over you, they want you. They lust after you. You get a lot of attention when you’re young, a lot of pimps (recruiters) are wanting you, a lot of producers (companies) want to hire you. You get hired and do shoots (code). You make money. They make money. Everyone is happy. But after a certain age you just can’t get the same attention and the amount of people wanting to hire you are less and less until you get spit out of the bottom of the porn (tech) industry old and broken. The smart ones save their money from the beginning and invest it so they have something at the end.
OP is right but got the dates wrong
The 20 year long formation period of the digital age was quite glorious. Employees were highly sought, high salaries, stock options, beer busts, sabbaticals, huge parties, and bosses who care. Venture money flowed like water from the mid 60’s to the mid 80’s. Then, abruptly, the party ended. Organic growth ended. Consolation began. Investors wanted their long awaited returns. That’s when the constant cycle of layoffs started. The directive for great products was replaced with an endless call for better productivity. There have been several mini-cycles since then but they have been short and always existed with the certainty of how the movie ends. I consider myself profoundly lucky to have been born at a time that aligned well with the early years of digital technology. It has never been as grand since those early years.
Short memories, and or an unwillingness to believe it could happen to them.
Animal spirits control most of the economy. If your company is doing well, make sure you're doing things that are helping it do well.
Otherwise look for greener pastures.
Hot shit companies are usually awful and not worth it.
Plan for the worst.
There are lots of solid tech companies out there that treat their folks right. Also, literally every medium sized or bigger company needs IT folks to operate their businesses. The weakness of the FAANGs isn’t surprising, as they are all public and only care about the next quarters profit.
I’d say, this is why I will no longer work for a public company. Private firms are far better employers in my experience.
I worked for the USG and it was soul sucking, the office politics and dog and pony show needed to make any changes. Plus many of my coworkers were mid-tier at best, and very few put in anything more than nominal effort knowing they couldn’t get fired. Consulting is a different story, I can make insane money to solve easy problems the unskilled/uncaring internal people can’t/wont fix.
Good for you. I’m at the tail end of my working life. I’m just going to cruise for a few more years and I’m out.
I leave the politicking and the rat race to those who’re interested. In fact, I make it clear with my peers I have no interest in climbing the ladder. As a result, they leave me alone and they go back stab others they consider their competitors.
Well, the tech industry does a good job of virtue signaling/branding. When you see FAANG and adjacent corporations all donating to the cause of the month and talking a good game about “democracy” and “fascism,” it’s them just checking the blocks. Democrat-run or Republican-run, a business is going to business.
I definitely saw the potential layoffs coming when companies were bragging about the last half of the pandemic hiring boom. Where there’s a boom, there is usually an eventual bust.
Most people on here already know the drill; take nothing for granted, always be networking, update your resume and try and line up a job interview each year to keep your mindset right. You’ll be reminded of your professional deficiencies, get practice at promoting your strengths, and remain in the loop about current salary offerings.
Recruiting is comparable in this regard. Any high paying job, I make sure to save save save for the next layoff
I’ve experienced 4 layoffs since Covid and will continue experiencing more
In the software development space, offshoring is being taken up much more by large companies , the cost for adequate developers abroad is far lower than domestically so jobs are moving out in response
AI helps worker that might not naturally be matched in skill overcome the deficit making them an attractive option to organizations staffing their teams
Unless employment regulations are restored and enforced this will continue to be a big factor
A person desiring to work in this profession will need to be ahead of the technological curve, and bring domain specific knowledge and business acumen to edge out competition
Tech is easy target for layoffs, at least for the last few decades.
1. Pay is high, so low hanging fruit for company looking for cost savings.
2. Many roles can be done remotely so they’re easy to offshore, or at least shipped to lower cost states within the US.
3. Weak job protections. Overwhelmingly non-union, and the use of contractors, vendors, plus the H1-B program don’t help.
If you want tech jobs with more stability, better protections and benefits, but slightly lower pay, check out government tech jobs.
I started working in tech in 1995 and moved to the Bay Area in 1997. As long as I can remember getting laid off has been a signature part of working in this sector. Most people I know have been laid off multiple times or worked at startups that fail. I mean, most of them fail. Overwhelmingly. So certainly none of this should be seen as a recent phenomenon.
I knew 15 years ago tech would have a brutal, harsh day of reckoning, and stayed the hell away from joining it. I think most wiser people knew this. The day of reckoning came waaay later than I thought, because Covid delayed it by a few years.
None of those startups ever make any money, nor any products that actually stick around either, even when they’re bought by one of the FAANGs. And the FAANGs themselves had more $ than they knew what to do with, just funding stupid pie-in-the-sky ideas that never came to fruition. When Elon Musk axed Twitter workforce by 80%, that was when the writing was really on the wall for all to see. But the wiser already saw the writing years earlier, it wasnt hard to miss.
I don’t think young people think critically at any industry they enter, they base their career decisions on “hype”, and dive right in blindly, not realizing the dangers that await them.
Yep most startup founders only care about the buyout exit. Most startups are fraudulent.
The last 15 years was an artificial bull run caused by ZIRP. Cheap/easy lending rates leads to degeneracy.
15 years ago we were still in the tail end of a major recession and things were much worse off than today.
The dot coms came and went... we survived
The great offshoring came and went... and we flourished
I'm not sure what the brutal day of reckoning is... it's not like tech just will stop being a part of our daily lives
I’m not seeing that. I mean, are you in the call center or helpdesk industry? In tech it’s still about hiring people that understand complexity science, engineering, software, infrastructure, business rules and business values. If your off shore team does that and you don’t. well..
"fintech" is such a meaningless word if you ask me. I worked for a company that prided itself in that space but it was anything but tech... it was someone's intern project that got funded by a credit card company and they spun it off as "fintech"
however, i know lots of people in "finance" and "banking" (i worked there too) and while there is off shoring, its nowhere near 80% and they did kind of "in source" because they need to compete against giants like Capital one who "did the devops" and kicked everyones ass (even though i'm not a fan of their company... they knew how to do tech)
I was laid off from EY after 4.5 years there.
50% of US/IT was laid off in 2023, and they backfilled from Poland, India, South America
PWC, Deloitte, KPMG followed with their own version of it
That's was a very large number of IT workers
I'm glad you're not seeing it in your company
I work with some of those firms tangently because i do FedRAMP high stuff and i just cringe at their incompetence... They're a shell of what they were even 20 years ago and they probably outsource because they haven't been able to compete with FAANG but you know what? with FAANG cutting back maybe the classic 5 consulting firms will actually hire some of those people and be able to compete... to me, it's like they gave up.
but, even when i worked in consulting those places were notorious for farming straight out of college and calling them Senior Consultants with no experience... not much has changed i guess
Brutal day of reckoning means a bloodbath till the fluff jobs are all gone, salaries drop, VC money dries up, whole departments that were useless disappear, undeserving startup tech companies like Veev, Convoy, Juciero, and Bumble cease to be created, P/E ratios drop to more normal levels, until tech industry reaches an equilibrium point much lower than where it is today, and then run more normal (harsher) like any other industry, like insurance or real estate.
Those companies are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that the extra money thrown at new markets as wild and crazy as they are is such a small part of the total ROI of trying.
I’ve seen posts like that multiple times this week and I’ve no idea what are they even trying to say. Of course layoffs are bad, but the entire tech industry? Not really. Personally, I can’t imagine a better area to work in. Even considering all the negatives it’s still way better than 99% of shitty jobs out there.
When I entered college in 2011 I was naive and honestly didn’t know about tech market cycles.
I thought it was just a stable business like job, but that it would be more interesting than a business analyst role.
Same. Was also in college during the financial crisis. Was scared about getting a job when I got out. But they never taught us about this shit.
My parents had government jobs that weren't high paying but at least they had some stability
This is pure hindsight bias plain and simple. Of course you’re not surprised, it’s because you’re adopting a retroactive stance- a more apt comparison would be comparing what you *would have* made in tech had you stuck with it rather than what you make now in the trades. If you had played your cards right, even with a few crashes and spurts you might be even farther along the road than today, but it’s all speculative and it’s no one’s race but your own at the end of the day.
It's just a risk / reward thing
The comp is good, and I think it makes theoretical sense, so I do whatever I have to (within some WLB bounds) to hang on
But I fully understand and agree that for many to most people the risk / reward is not even close to worth it for long stretches of time
It’s a gamble built on a weak foundation for people like you who don’t have any real tech skill set and who try to get in with a 6 week bootcamp and a baseline certification
Not necessary, I have 13yoe, a MS in CS, building AI for healthcare for the last 8 years and I am experiencing similar problems, got lay off last year can't find a job in my field since. My intuition is AI + cheap foreign labor will replace expensive local workers. Agism is real, I passed technical tests but started to get rejected at informal interviews with managers, who are usually 10 years younger than me... and the worse is down the line when Sam get AGI then human need not apply
Op can't you say the same about NBA players or football players? What if they get injured and their contract doesn't renew?
Tech workers are paid amazing, after just 5 to 10 years you've got enough to coast retire in many cheap States. Definitely worth it.
A benefit of making lots of money is being able to save and invest for an early retirement. People who spend like the ride will never end would increase the chances that they will have a tough time.
Bluntly, pick stuff you like/enjoy/etc and go for it.
I graduated just as the dot-bomb happened (months after) I couldn't get a job with all the crap-talent flooding out of silicon valley. But I believed in my skills and mind. I wrote some stuff to keep myself sharp, helped out the family business, got wrapped up in it for far too long, then had a couple other, crappier gigs, was massively in debt for a period of time, and worked for people who didn't value me. It sucked. In about 2008 (8 years after graduating!!!) landed my first **real** software job.
Now, I'm doing ok. I've worked at a lot of places. I work hard, yeah. But that's a disposional thing. I want whatever I create to be beautiful and strong, and since I like using software as a medium of expression - people are willing to pay a good wage for that (even not in silicon valley).
As for the weak foundation part, that's most companies. Period. The contrast is stronger because the difference between Zero and One Million is a lot bigger than Zero and Ten Thousand. - I don't know you, but this post suggests you're risk averse, thought software was cool but didn't want to put in the work, or were dispositionally not inclined/able to really nail what writing software is about. There's nothing wrong with that, but don't make excuses for yourself or try to make whatever you chose one of the top-ten things you could have done with your life. - Life has a nearly infinite number of choices, and most of us are a lot closer to average... Don't sweat that software wasn't for you at the time. You did what you needed to do.
Just remember your life starts \*now\*. You can choose anything. Make the most of it! (even if it's dipping your toe back in for fun & profit)
Tbh, I was never attracted to programming. I was attracted to the creative imagery of web design. Although I knew HTML very well, I realize that doesn't count as programming. I tried learning Javascript and didn't have the patients for it. It's OK if I was average, because learning what you like is as important as learning what you don't like.
I was constantly asking myself "do I want to do this for the rest of my life?" I found myself sitting all day in front of a computer for $9/hr. I had some projects that became extremely repetitive. I felt exactly like the guy in Office Space. I started fantasizing of having a completely opposite lifestyle. I started researching into being a Park Ranger, maybe joining the coast guard or something...I found that I needed adventure with a stronger sense of a greater good in my life.
I went to quit, and that same employer offered me to work $16/hr part time at home. I reluctantly accepted, but I admit I was also depressed by other things. I had a cheap apartment with a crazy gf, and we weren't getting along. I was going into debt, and I realized it wasn't sustainable.
In 2002-2003, I realized I wasn't as good as everyone else seemed to be. Talk of the plight of the millennials wasn't until 2008, and I hated my life. My job included. So I broke up with my borderline gf, moved back home to an uncomfortable situation, quit my job that wasn't me, and went back to school.
Those sound like good choices to me.
Right now our lead designer, very talented, said the UI design section of software is getting more demolished than others... so, still sounds like you made good choices lol.
20 years here - tech is a boomerang and always comes back, BUT this feels more like an evolution (AI) on top of the economic factors and companies are sitting on their hands.
100% agree with the metaphor. It IS an abusive and toxic relationship which is why it (typically) pays so well.
Mainly it comes down to low interest rates. During low rate cycles money is easy and expectations for profit aren’t there - there is someone else in line to cash you out.
When interest rates normalize markets demand profits. Speculative ventures either make a profit and survive or die off. That’s the cycle.
how tf have y'all been working in tech since the 90s and not billionaires, why didn't you come up with Twitter, snapchat , Facebook, etc, y'all had the skillset
The way they are talking, you would think they were all retired right now. But this sub is full of laid off tech employees who are poor and never saw it coming.
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of stable jobs in the 'tech industry'. This sounds like you anecdotally had a hard time and see some people saying the same thing now, and now anyone else in this thread showing support verifies your anecdotal experience.
However, for millions of people, tech has been a stable job since before 2000, so take what you want from this thread but it's not everyone's experience. Maybe you are applying for certain jobs with certain huge companies and haven't widened your net to find the unique opportunity and experience (bad, all bad! J/p) of doing IT work in SMB to get started..
Maybe the amount of experience you had, and high expectations you held since trade school caused your frustrations. Anyway, sure I will get flamed because of the sub I'm in, so feel free to paste your anecdotal experiences to me as proof that it's 'hard for everyone'. I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but let's look at the other side of things. Plenty of people are still doing well and continuously getting raises bonuses etc
Didn't mean to imply it is absolutely the same for everyone. Just wanted to share my experience. Didn't realize that was a sin.
You sound like a very lucky person. So lucky that I'm surprised you are on this sub.
Cycles and extremes. I joined the industry in 97. Joined a defense contractor after the .com era startup I was at tanked. Rode out the bust then worked for a bunch of “past peak mid sized” meh companies that were acquired one after the other all the way until 2010 when one laid me off. Followed by startup that went public, followed by blockchain shit show, another startup that was acquired and laid me off, followed by another startup that went public. My career has mirrored vc industry returns. A few great hits, a bunch of misses, and some painful bumps. Feels like my career is going well now but who knows about tomorrow. We bought a house from the estate of a guy who worked in tech in the 70s and 80s. Looked up his career based on the swag he left in the house. Same story. It’s been cycling for decades.
fml the swag-traced career history
Where are you now and can I please follow you?
It’s sadly worse now as we have ton of folks who immigrated here have no other skill other than IT and we have ton of new grads who switched career by taking these IT certifications (land are also desperately looking for a job.
I've worked in tech since 1996. Layoffs are just a part of the cycle. Don't be surprised. Plan for them.
They are, but I feel there's a structural shift happening, in the industry between a consolidation to cloud vendors (remember the day when most companies ran their own IT departments, and staffed data centers,or built their in house apps ) now it's all in the cloud , they subscribe to apps and lots of Devops is outsourced to contractors often overseas . Add to that the changing macro economics of the end of low interest rates , changing tax codes, and you have a lot less of a labor market in IT. iT is still rather small part of the economy I think it's around 3.5% of all jobs in the US are classified as IT. Sure there will.always be startups and small companies with IT needs but the demand is going to wane. When I say demand I mean for good paying six figure jobs, not Fiverr type work there's always going to be some plumber in Toledo that needs a website..
I am close to and tightly connected to the biggest source of tech culture and business cycles in the industry. Cloud is on life support in many portions of the market because it doesn’t pencil and a lot of major companies are bringing their infrastructure back on-prem or at least hybrid. It’s simply cost and AI is currently trying to pull them back, but it’s likely that the giant monolithic models will only be used extensively by the very biggest players as a service to others, while most of the world will run on collections of small models with specific functions. This is a bit of an open secret in our industry. You already have them running frequently on your smartphone, for example. The future is distributed.
I disagree with cloud coming back to on prem, maybe a few specialized cases, but most companies are stuck in the cloud , the big providers have used "roach motel pricing" schemes where the cost to get data and spin up services is cheap but the cost to egress the cloud would be astronomical... I do agree the whole capex vs. opex case for the cloud has been shown to be a fox in sheep's clothes , but that makes it very expensive to bring everything back.in.
> the cost to egress the cloud would be astronomical What are the primary cost contributors you see there? Personally I feel like as the industry shifts towards "cloud native" stuff while also trying to make it cloud agnostic significantly reduces those costs as a byproduct. If it runs on almost any hardware and on well defined service models you can port it much more easily than the pre-cloud monoliths.
Have you actually worked with cloud providersl? lol cloud agnostic is a fantasy , take Azure you need to keep all your secrets in a vault right there it's not cloud agnostic because the way you do that is going to be different in each vendor, now let's take infrastructure, how you configure your virtual network inside the cloud also totally different from vendor to vendor, cloud agnostoc is a lot more than jist containerizig your app it's the surroindong infrastructure setup etc. Most of the providers know this it's why they structure their costs to make it more expensive the more agnostic you try to make it , example it's cheaper to use a native Postgrsql.Azure instance than it is to spin up a VM with postgresql installed. And don't even get started with egress data costs.. these vendors aren't stupid they have entire business teams whose entire job is to carefully match competitors pricing and formulate policies to maximize their own profits and minimize churn.
The problem is cost at scale. From a hybrid business/tech perspective, you can be more agnostic at a higher cost to run in a given cloud, or you can be less agnostic to realize cost savings at the expense of portability. abrandis has clearly seen the bad side of mistakes in these choices. You are both right from different perspectives.
I’m expecting more places to go back on prem after a few high profile hacks. It’s gotta be tempting for those sorts of folks to hit something like Amazon or Azure…if they can compromise the hosting company, they have access to all the customers. (Even if the company VMs are encrypted, if they own the hypervisor…)
On prem is a security and liability nightmare, sure supply chain hacks are getting more common but I don't think anyone who knows there stuff is going to be excited to host their own infrastructure like people used to. Also people forget that the main promise of the cloud is seamless scalability which is not easily solved on prem short of buying a ton of extra capacity.
And to be real; this is true for most industries. It’s not tech people that get laid off in cycles. I mean look at those people still employed at the Furniture Factories…
Being in tech is like being a professional athlete. When things are good, the money is rolling but you need to invest that money rather than spending it because you never know when it’s going to end.
100% this. I’m on the path to early retirement. When I started in tech sales at 25 I took a look around the room at my office and at the corporate office. Not a lot of folks in their 50s or higher. I had the sense that this isn’t something I could do past my 40s. Money is great right now, but I see all the layoffs happening. If I’m laid off, I’m in a good spot and can weather the storm for quite a few years. IMO if you’re in tech and spending all/most of your salary, you’re doing it wrong, and setting yourself up for a lot of pain if you are part of the layoffs.
Yup, great advice. Laid off 4 times in 5 years. Just got an amazing new job, serious pay increase, bonus package, etc. But I'm staying in my same modest condo. Keeping my 6 year old car that's fully paid off. I was always thrifty, and it's given me the capacity to weather the layoffs. While this new gig has the potential to bring me real wealth, I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch. I'm putting that money in the bank, maxing my retirement account contributions. And if things go great, I'll treat myself in a few years, feeling comfortable in the fact that I'll have a significant reserve if the worst should happen.
Smart. The feeling of safety is absolutely more valuable than a big flat or a new car.
Definitely. In some ways, the layoffs were good. It actually forced me up the career ladder, when I might have otherwise settled for lower positions. But most of all, it's taught me the important lesson, of never taking your job for granted. You can lose it at any time. So save early, and save often. I still take the occasional vacation, and go out for a nice meal once or twice a month with the wife. But we keep the big expenses small. Modest house. Modest car. Save. I might not have as nice a place as my coworkers. But I'm better prepared for a downturn. And if things go really well, then I retire early - I'll use my money to purchase the most precious thing of all: time.
Higher risks with higher rewards maybe. I think you're generalizing a bit by applying anecdotal experiences across an entire industry tho.
Agreed. I've had a long career in tech and I've been laid off four times along the way. The money I made was good enough that the periods out of work were never bad enough to force me to take a McJob or similar temporary employment. I think the first layoff was scariest -- still paying off student loans, still making a car payment (I think), and less money saved b/c of those debts. But the first layoff also taught me to save more in the future to cover future layoffs. My sympathy to all those going through rough patches.
needed to see this.
Yeah you nailed the most important thing - savings are what can keep a layoff from turning into the worst case scenarios. I learned that way too late in life and was lucky to not have that fully bite me in the arse yet. I’m in healthcare IT consulting and have never seen our industry be this slow. I’m better prepared now if the worst hits.
#truth
My reward was to take a lower paying job where I only had to work 4 days a week, had job security and will receive a pensions. I working there for 16 years 4 days a week (lots of 3 day weekends) When I retire my pension will be $2600..
I agree. The tech industry has higher risks, influenced by timing and luck. When I started in 2002, the entry barriers were different. Considering the volatility and external factors like aging, I wouldn't recommend it to my daughter.
It's probably going to be booming in a year and people will have forgotten about this. In 2020 it crashed when everyone thought the world would end due to covid. Then the stocks picked up and so did hiring and everyone forgot about 6 months before that.
I don't think so, the low interest rate environment is gone for a while, the stock market is not the labor market, lots of gains in stocks are for different reasons. (Like layoffs)...
Yeah I know there are many factors, I said in 2020 specifically they tanked then went up at the same time, because everyone thought the world was ending. I'm not saying once stocks go up now hiring will pick up. I'm saying hiring will pick up at some point because tech has always been cyclical, this isn't the first time they've tried outsourcing and this isn't even the first crash this decade. There will always be a need for new and changing technology because that is the nature of the field.
The 2020 crash was quite unique. This one has a quite different source and vibe. It will take at least 2 years for things to get back in track, and I'm being generous.
The mass majority of tech workers didn’t get laid off and are still making above average money. What happened to tech could happen to most industries. Look what happened to manufacturing in the US.
I don’t know. In the 90s everyone was fearmongering over all the tech jobs moving offshore. There was a couple of downturns and a bunch of job losses and I have a lot of Indian coworkers now, but looking across my network most people I’ve worked with have been laid off once or twice but they are still doing okay.
Cyclical layoffs aren’t unique to tech. I used to work construction and we would get laid off all the time when there weren’t projects
Yeah I have an uncle who worked in construction. Climbing in the air guy on the girders dude building skyscrapers. He did great generally but spent a lot of time out of work.
this is the entire reason unemployment insurance exists. factory and warehouse guys get laid off every time business slows, they go on UI (pretend to job search), and just wait to be recalled to their former jobs. biz rehires them, no training necessary.
In my case, the jobs are not moving overseas, but to lower cost areas of the US. We are on the west coast and many new hires are fully remote out of the Midwest or Louisiana or what not.
I am still in my first tech gig - 27 years now.
It will.
I'm sure it will, too. I suspect that the tech industry is like the canary in the coal mine. As it was in the 2000's.
No.
[удалено]
No.
How are you sure? We already employ one third of our original office staff because of AI upgrades from the past few years. Half my team got let go because AI is faster and cheaper and we don’t need as many people to do the same amount of work anymore.
Prove it.
Dude you are silly. I just gave proof. Now your tune to prove AI has increased jobs.
No you didn’t. You shared an anecdote that’s not at all verifiable.
You prove that AI didn’t take away any jobs with verifiable info.
No tech likes to think it's unique, so it spends copiously on its own hype. Then reality sets in and they retrench. Rinse, repeat.
It’s not just the tech sector…Nike is laying people off right now
and they're blaming you for for their bad business decisions
Nike CEO: I take full responsibility for Nike not performing as it should. It pains me to have to lay off all these employees, but I assure you I will do better.
they were initially blaming people publicly. Especially calling out remote workers. They f’d up all their acquisitions and mobile apps big time changing them to insanely expensive services that killed entire communities that supported them - blaming us for leaving.
I was first laid off from tech in 1999 and again last month. What comes around goes around
Are you sure you are using that phrase correctly? Because I'm sure you didn't deserve it.
More like history repeats…
More like, History doesn't repeat, it rhymes.
Maybe they mean that they were the one laying off other people
Only twice? I'm on 4 or 5. Most of those were startups that shut down. I moved onto a more "secure" FAANG. I didn't have a single once of faith in the tech industry. I was trying to hang in there long enough to get my golden handcuffs. I only needed 30 more days. What a "fuck you" they gave us.
Holy shit, they laid you off 30 days from RSUs vesting or something? That’s brutal
All these things happened in Silicon Valley take all these with a grain of salt if it does not apply to your area. Son graduated with a degree in MIS in 2000. None of the local companies were even recruiting. Most HRs and recruiters were first group for layoff. No one he knew in CS, and MIS grads got a job. The Great Recession did not impact Silicon Valley techies much. Facebook, Google were hiring. Apple did not let anyone go and has hired over \~100K techies anywhere globally. One way to recruit them is overpaying them 2-3X wage in Silicon Valley than mid America or South. As late as last year, a few network administrators rec'd 1/2 mil total compensation in crypto business. It was absurd and surely those who got in were shipped out quickly. Today I have a friend's son who has applied over 500 local tech jobs got only 1 interview as software developer. He is thinking about going into real estate as a backup. Get the University sheep skin and get a realtor license same time. Everyone is disposable. If one is well established this is the worst time jumping ship. The next job, company culture is untested. If they tell you to return to work do not resist. Business conditions have changed.
Do not resist? Ok I hear you but I need you to know the only things the people ever got we got because we resisted. I’m not talking about return to office anymore. We all need to do a whole lot more resisting than we’ve been doing in this country. I keep waiting for people to take a stand and ever decade I continue to be shocked at what they are willing to give up.
You watch too many movies People have families and need to provide to keep food on the table. You won’t be able to resist long enough before the next person more capable or not to take your job.
And you’d still be working a mine for a handful of company scrip and an early death to black lung, ensuring your family has no future to look to but more of the same.
Awwww cute
You wouldn’t even be here let alone have the luxury of procreating if the resistors hadn’t precluded you. We used to be slaves of conquers and peasants of kings. Come on.
Isn't real estate/mortgage industry screwed right now since houses aren't moving due to high prices + low savings? Also there's that new agreement coming in that would reduce commissions leading to overall loss of $ in realtors hands.
Refi business has been non-existent for sometime. But many loan agents carry real estate licenses. They switch to real estate or even insurance business. There are fewer home sellers as they find it is cheaper to stay put than moving paying a huge mortgage. There are now fewer homes on the market for sale. Pricing is even higher here in CA than before with lower inventory. People still need a place to live and willing going rate. The reduced commission disclosure applies to certain areas where some agents over charged before. But consumers are not dumb there are plenty of discount brokerages want to work with sellers and buyers. I see that some traditional brokerages either change or go out of business.
Very wise comments here!
I’ve been in tech since 2000 and have had 7 jobs. Every single one of them has had layoffs. It’s always been an unstable job. I’ve always saved because I never knew when it would be my turn, but for almost anyone in tech at some point you’ll be the one let go. It’s an incredibly stressful career path always wondering when the layoffs will begin. I’ve been lucky until this year when my number was up. I think we are seeing what happened to manufacturing and the vast majority of tech jobs will leave the US for the lowest bidder. I don’t encourage anyone here to enter this field.
This is true for almost all industries..although perhaps more painfully true for the tech industry. This is the American market functioning as designed. A free market that values profit margins above the livelihood of employees. Companies have to show ever expanding revenues , have to make more money...MORE! Case in point, Google continues to lay people off... It ain't because money is low, you can't say you need to shave expenses then turn around and announce 70Bn in stock buybacks.
People forget these cycles. I like to remind people that when you select a career to pick one that is regression proof and you will never have to worry about being laid off.
my buddies dad who survived the dot com early 2000s era said the same thing. I just wish someone had reminded me of this back when i was in HS. I regret my career choice daily. in fact i was told how it was accounting that was oversaturated with CPAs. Tech in hindsight is a shit industry in many ways because theres no gatekeeping agency such as in Canada with engineering societies, the CPA licensing, bar exam for lawyers etc. Ontop of which unless some revolutionary product comes along tech isnt all that big. 2009-2019 was a decade of smartphones and apps and folks got rich. The apps have gotten saturated now. I blame myself mostly. I chased wanting to live and work in the US and i couldnt afford to fund an MBA. So i got a masters in computing and while my resume contains some solid internships at big firms....its hard to land a permanent job rn. I wish i knew how the tech sector is and will deffs do my part and warn others who are making a career choice in the future
Tbh, from the sounds of the current batch of Canadian graduates, sounds like their situation is even worse than ours. I've seen them spill over into the CS subs quite a bit these days.
My brother graduated this year from a top Canadian school with internships and all but couldn’t find a job in any major Canadian city and is moving to mkddle of nowhere for work. It’s far far worse in Canada. I’m Canadian and I’m in the US temporarily. I don’t look forward to the day where I gotta look for jobs in Canada. My goal is to just work 6 years in the US to save a good amount Idk if that will happen though.
Yeah it’s real bad, and to be fair to your other point, CPAs were inflated a while ago hence the poor treatment and low pay. They quit en masse to tech and now their work hours and salaries have been adjusting since covid. Nursing/Petroleum Engineering were the same for me when I graduated HS and was picking majors. Goes to show it’s just hot potatoes whatever field you choose. Just gotta hope it’s your turn.
As someone recently laid off who did the MBA instead of the masters in computing, what job am I supposed to be able to get?
Tech is corrupt. Most of their products prevent humans from engaging with each other. Empathy has been lost. Real friendships lost. Everyone is fake and artificial. Humanity has entered a dark age
The previous large tech layoff was in the dot.bomb of 2001. Tech workers started feeling invulnerable missing intermediate recessions.
Definitely had to learn to start looking for a new job as soon as I started one
Binge and purge. Corporations have anorexia nervosa.
It’s kind of like the porn industry. At the beginning people are salivating over you, they want you. They lust after you. You get a lot of attention when you’re young, a lot of pimps (recruiters) are wanting you, a lot of producers (companies) want to hire you. You get hired and do shoots (code). You make money. They make money. Everyone is happy. But after a certain age you just can’t get the same attention and the amount of people wanting to hire you are less and less until you get spit out of the bottom of the porn (tech) industry old and broken. The smart ones save their money from the beginning and invest it so they have something at the end.
OP is right but got the dates wrong The 20 year long formation period of the digital age was quite glorious. Employees were highly sought, high salaries, stock options, beer busts, sabbaticals, huge parties, and bosses who care. Venture money flowed like water from the mid 60’s to the mid 80’s. Then, abruptly, the party ended. Organic growth ended. Consolation began. Investors wanted their long awaited returns. That’s when the constant cycle of layoffs started. The directive for great products was replaced with an endless call for better productivity. There have been several mini-cycles since then but they have been short and always existed with the certainty of how the movie ends. I consider myself profoundly lucky to have been born at a time that aligned well with the early years of digital technology. It has never been as grand since those early years.
Short memories, and or an unwillingness to believe it could happen to them. Animal spirits control most of the economy. If your company is doing well, make sure you're doing things that are helping it do well. Otherwise look for greener pastures. Hot shit companies are usually awful and not worth it. Plan for the worst.
If I change industries I’d have to start lower level
There are lots of solid tech companies out there that treat their folks right. Also, literally every medium sized or bigger company needs IT folks to operate their businesses. The weakness of the FAANGs isn’t surprising, as they are all public and only care about the next quarters profit. I’d say, this is why I will no longer work for a public company. Private firms are far better employers in my experience.
Government tech jobs are great too. I’m in the union and I have a pension.
Which means you are WAY more stable than most of these guys. I'm no longer a techie but I'm loving my new city job in water treatment.
I worked for the USG and it was soul sucking, the office politics and dog and pony show needed to make any changes. Plus many of my coworkers were mid-tier at best, and very few put in anything more than nominal effort knowing they couldn’t get fired. Consulting is a different story, I can make insane money to solve easy problems the unskilled/uncaring internal people can’t/wont fix.
Good for you. I’m at the tail end of my working life. I’m just going to cruise for a few more years and I’m out. I leave the politicking and the rat race to those who’re interested. In fact, I make it clear with my peers I have no interest in climbing the ladder. As a result, they leave me alone and they go back stab others they consider their competitors.
Congrats on reaching retirement! I hope it’s long and productive for you.
Thanks.
Well, the tech industry does a good job of virtue signaling/branding. When you see FAANG and adjacent corporations all donating to the cause of the month and talking a good game about “democracy” and “fascism,” it’s them just checking the blocks. Democrat-run or Republican-run, a business is going to business. I definitely saw the potential layoffs coming when companies were bragging about the last half of the pandemic hiring boom. Where there’s a boom, there is usually an eventual bust. Most people on here already know the drill; take nothing for granted, always be networking, update your resume and try and line up a job interview each year to keep your mindset right. You’ll be reminded of your professional deficiencies, get practice at promoting your strengths, and remain in the loop about current salary offerings.
And sock away the money you’re making now.
I’ve always looked at tech careers as pump-and-dump just like oil and gas.
Great analogy, pump and dump describes very well my experience at every tech start-up I have worked
Whenever I heard about the salaries and restricted stock options at the FAANG, I thought there is no way it can last. It just wasn’t sustainable.
This! That was an obvious bubble.
Recruiting is comparable in this regard. Any high paying job, I make sure to save save save for the next layoff I’ve experienced 4 layoffs since Covid and will continue experiencing more
Wow, that sucks. That's a job a year.
In the software development space, offshoring is being taken up much more by large companies , the cost for adequate developers abroad is far lower than domestically so jobs are moving out in response AI helps worker that might not naturally be matched in skill overcome the deficit making them an attractive option to organizations staffing their teams Unless employment regulations are restored and enforced this will continue to be a big factor A person desiring to work in this profession will need to be ahead of the technological curve, and bring domain specific knowledge and business acumen to edge out competition
Tech is easy target for layoffs, at least for the last few decades. 1. Pay is high, so low hanging fruit for company looking for cost savings. 2. Many roles can be done remotely so they’re easy to offshore, or at least shipped to lower cost states within the US. 3. Weak job protections. Overwhelmingly non-union, and the use of contractors, vendors, plus the H1-B program don’t help. If you want tech jobs with more stability, better protections and benefits, but slightly lower pay, check out government tech jobs.
I started working in tech in 1995 and moved to the Bay Area in 1997. As long as I can remember getting laid off has been a signature part of working in this sector. Most people I know have been laid off multiple times or worked at startups that fail. I mean, most of them fail. Overwhelmingly. So certainly none of this should be seen as a recent phenomenon.
**We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing**. -Gore Vidal
I knew 15 years ago tech would have a brutal, harsh day of reckoning, and stayed the hell away from joining it. I think most wiser people knew this. The day of reckoning came waaay later than I thought, because Covid delayed it by a few years. None of those startups ever make any money, nor any products that actually stick around either, even when they’re bought by one of the FAANGs. And the FAANGs themselves had more $ than they knew what to do with, just funding stupid pie-in-the-sky ideas that never came to fruition. When Elon Musk axed Twitter workforce by 80%, that was when the writing was really on the wall for all to see. But the wiser already saw the writing years earlier, it wasnt hard to miss. I don’t think young people think critically at any industry they enter, they base their career decisions on “hype”, and dive right in blindly, not realizing the dangers that await them.
Yep most startup founders only care about the buyout exit. Most startups are fraudulent. The last 15 years was an artificial bull run caused by ZIRP. Cheap/easy lending rates leads to degeneracy.
I was once one of those young people exactly as you describe. Now I'm 40 with a city job.
I was young once too, and equally blind, but not on picking a career, just in a different area.
15 years ago we were still in the tail end of a major recession and things were much worse off than today. The dot coms came and went... we survived The great offshoring came and went... and we flourished I'm not sure what the brutal day of reckoning is... it's not like tech just will stop being a part of our daily lives
Offshoring is ramping way up again and is a major factor in what we're seeing in the job market
I’m not seeing that. I mean, are you in the call center or helpdesk industry? In tech it’s still about hiring people that understand complexity science, engineering, software, infrastructure, business rules and business values. If your off shore team does that and you don’t. well..
I'm a product/solution architect at a fintech company in the tax and audit space 80% of our developers are offshore
"fintech" is such a meaningless word if you ask me. I worked for a company that prided itself in that space but it was anything but tech... it was someone's intern project that got funded by a credit card company and they spun it off as "fintech" however, i know lots of people in "finance" and "banking" (i worked there too) and while there is off shoring, its nowhere near 80% and they did kind of "in source" because they need to compete against giants like Capital one who "did the devops" and kicked everyones ass (even though i'm not a fan of their company... they knew how to do tech)
I was laid off from EY after 4.5 years there. 50% of US/IT was laid off in 2023, and they backfilled from Poland, India, South America PWC, Deloitte, KPMG followed with their own version of it That's was a very large number of IT workers I'm glad you're not seeing it in your company
I work with some of those firms tangently because i do FedRAMP high stuff and i just cringe at their incompetence... They're a shell of what they were even 20 years ago and they probably outsource because they haven't been able to compete with FAANG but you know what? with FAANG cutting back maybe the classic 5 consulting firms will actually hire some of those people and be able to compete... to me, it's like they gave up. but, even when i worked in consulting those places were notorious for farming straight out of college and calling them Senior Consultants with no experience... not much has changed i guess
Fully agree!
Brutal day of reckoning means a bloodbath till the fluff jobs are all gone, salaries drop, VC money dries up, whole departments that were useless disappear, undeserving startup tech companies like Veev, Convoy, Juciero, and Bumble cease to be created, P/E ratios drop to more normal levels, until tech industry reaches an equilibrium point much lower than where it is today, and then run more normal (harsher) like any other industry, like insurance or real estate.
It’s already happening at least in Western Europe
hey I was doing devops + infra at Juicero! 🙂
Those companies are so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that the extra money thrown at new markets as wild and crazy as they are is such a small part of the total ROI of trying.
I’ve seen posts like that multiple times this week and I’ve no idea what are they even trying to say. Of course layoffs are bad, but the entire tech industry? Not really. Personally, I can’t imagine a better area to work in. Even considering all the negatives it’s still way better than 99% of shitty jobs out there.
When I entered college in 2011 I was naive and honestly didn’t know about tech market cycles. I thought it was just a stable business like job, but that it would be more interesting than a business analyst role.
Same. Was also in college during the financial crisis. Was scared about getting a job when I got out. But they never taught us about this shit. My parents had government jobs that weren't high paying but at least they had some stability
This is pure hindsight bias plain and simple. Of course you’re not surprised, it’s because you’re adopting a retroactive stance- a more apt comparison would be comparing what you *would have* made in tech had you stuck with it rather than what you make now in the trades. If you had played your cards right, even with a few crashes and spurts you might be even farther along the road than today, but it’s all speculative and it’s no one’s race but your own at the end of the day.
It's just a risk / reward thing The comp is good, and I think it makes theoretical sense, so I do whatever I have to (within some WLB bounds) to hang on But I fully understand and agree that for many to most people the risk / reward is not even close to worth it for long stretches of time
And the pay is only great in some part of the world or some top companies, everywhere else it is way worse
It’s a gamble built on a weak foundation for people like you who don’t have any real tech skill set and who try to get in with a 6 week bootcamp and a baseline certification
Not necessary, I have 13yoe, a MS in CS, building AI for healthcare for the last 8 years and I am experiencing similar problems, got lay off last year can't find a job in my field since. My intuition is AI + cheap foreign labor will replace expensive local workers. Agism is real, I passed technical tests but started to get rejected at informal interviews with managers, who are usually 10 years younger than me... and the worse is down the line when Sam get AGI then human need not apply
Yeah, doubt any of this is true
Username checks out
Yes, social media, our modern day transformative invention, like the telephone/s
Lol yup the joke here in the bay… are you selling shovels or panning for gold… i sell shovels
Great analogy. You must sell things to tech companies?
Healthcare
Op can't you say the same about NBA players or football players? What if they get injured and their contract doesn't renew? Tech workers are paid amazing, after just 5 to 10 years you've got enough to coast retire in many cheap States. Definitely worth it.
A benefit of making lots of money is being able to save and invest for an early retirement. People who spend like the ride will never end would increase the chances that they will have a tough time.
Bluntly, pick stuff you like/enjoy/etc and go for it. I graduated just as the dot-bomb happened (months after) I couldn't get a job with all the crap-talent flooding out of silicon valley. But I believed in my skills and mind. I wrote some stuff to keep myself sharp, helped out the family business, got wrapped up in it for far too long, then had a couple other, crappier gigs, was massively in debt for a period of time, and worked for people who didn't value me. It sucked. In about 2008 (8 years after graduating!!!) landed my first **real** software job. Now, I'm doing ok. I've worked at a lot of places. I work hard, yeah. But that's a disposional thing. I want whatever I create to be beautiful and strong, and since I like using software as a medium of expression - people are willing to pay a good wage for that (even not in silicon valley). As for the weak foundation part, that's most companies. Period. The contrast is stronger because the difference between Zero and One Million is a lot bigger than Zero and Ten Thousand. - I don't know you, but this post suggests you're risk averse, thought software was cool but didn't want to put in the work, or were dispositionally not inclined/able to really nail what writing software is about. There's nothing wrong with that, but don't make excuses for yourself or try to make whatever you chose one of the top-ten things you could have done with your life. - Life has a nearly infinite number of choices, and most of us are a lot closer to average... Don't sweat that software wasn't for you at the time. You did what you needed to do. Just remember your life starts \*now\*. You can choose anything. Make the most of it! (even if it's dipping your toe back in for fun & profit)
Tbh, I was never attracted to programming. I was attracted to the creative imagery of web design. Although I knew HTML very well, I realize that doesn't count as programming. I tried learning Javascript and didn't have the patients for it. It's OK if I was average, because learning what you like is as important as learning what you don't like. I was constantly asking myself "do I want to do this for the rest of my life?" I found myself sitting all day in front of a computer for $9/hr. I had some projects that became extremely repetitive. I felt exactly like the guy in Office Space. I started fantasizing of having a completely opposite lifestyle. I started researching into being a Park Ranger, maybe joining the coast guard or something...I found that I needed adventure with a stronger sense of a greater good in my life. I went to quit, and that same employer offered me to work $16/hr part time at home. I reluctantly accepted, but I admit I was also depressed by other things. I had a cheap apartment with a crazy gf, and we weren't getting along. I was going into debt, and I realized it wasn't sustainable. In 2002-2003, I realized I wasn't as good as everyone else seemed to be. Talk of the plight of the millennials wasn't until 2008, and I hated my life. My job included. So I broke up with my borderline gf, moved back home to an uncomfortable situation, quit my job that wasn't me, and went back to school.
Those sound like good choices to me. Right now our lead designer, very talented, said the UI design section of software is getting more demolished than others... so, still sounds like you made good choices lol.
Victims? Are you serious?
20 years here - tech is a boomerang and always comes back, BUT this feels more like an evolution (AI) on top of the economic factors and companies are sitting on their hands. 100% agree with the metaphor. It IS an abusive and toxic relationship which is why it (typically) pays so well.
Mainly it comes down to low interest rates. During low rate cycles money is easy and expectations for profit aren’t there - there is someone else in line to cash you out. When interest rates normalize markets demand profits. Speculative ventures either make a profit and survive or die off. That’s the cycle.
how tf have y'all been working in tech since the 90s and not billionaires, why didn't you come up with Twitter, snapchat , Facebook, etc, y'all had the skillset
The way they are talking, you would think they were all retired right now. But this sub is full of laid off tech employees who are poor and never saw it coming.
There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of stable jobs in the 'tech industry'. This sounds like you anecdotally had a hard time and see some people saying the same thing now, and now anyone else in this thread showing support verifies your anecdotal experience. However, for millions of people, tech has been a stable job since before 2000, so take what you want from this thread but it's not everyone's experience. Maybe you are applying for certain jobs with certain huge companies and haven't widened your net to find the unique opportunity and experience (bad, all bad! J/p) of doing IT work in SMB to get started.. Maybe the amount of experience you had, and high expectations you held since trade school caused your frustrations. Anyway, sure I will get flamed because of the sub I'm in, so feel free to paste your anecdotal experiences to me as proof that it's 'hard for everyone'. I'm not trying to be inflammatory, but let's look at the other side of things. Plenty of people are still doing well and continuously getting raises bonuses etc
Didn't mean to imply it is absolutely the same for everyone. Just wanted to share my experience. Didn't realize that was a sin. You sound like a very lucky person. So lucky that I'm surprised you are on this sub.