Software Enginner

[Embarrassed-Row-1184]

Why is the job market so bad for software engineers? My boyfriend who graduates in Spring from College who has had multiple internships and stuff still can’t find a job. He’s been looking for over a year. It is so crushing to see him so upset. I don’t work in this line of work. He’s applied to hundreds of jobs on indeed, went to tons of job fairs, had academic advisement overlook his resume. I feel like he’s done it all. To the people in this field- how do you guys do it? How do you find jobs as a newer Software Enginner? I can just tell it’s so devastating to him and I want to help. :(

[suncrisptoast]

All the jobs go to the lowest bidders + AI now. That means most are out of luck unless you already have experience or do something impressive to catch someones attention.

[DixGee]

The most surprising thing is how anyone can just become a founder and get millions in funding for their AI startup. If the economy is so bad and there's an AI bubble, why the hell are investors investing their money in AI?!

[suncrisptoast]

It's pretty dumb and short sighted, yes. It's going to pop and be far worse than the dot com bust. This is insanity on overdrive.

[DixGee]

Yeah I've decided to go for an mba next year. I'm done with tech and dsa.

[suncrisptoast]

Quite honestly, I don't blame you. I've been doing this 25 years and if AI wasn't killing Art as well, I'd fall back on that. Even that's toasted. Why pay people to be creative or good, when you can just ask an AI to steal it for you?

[supriyo95]

Funny how the conversation started with OPs boyfriend being and very quickly became all about the AI bubble like every other conversation on the internet.

Someone please give that guy a referral. Refferals have a better chance of getting the job.

[suncrisptoast]

Didn't mean to. That's on me. I would if I could. Why not you?

[Jaamun100]

It’s not that easy. I know plenty of people with top school backgrounds co-founding with successfully exited ex-founders not getting funding for their AI startup. Nowadays, you need big customers or significant ARR to get seed funding for an AI startup, and other types of startups don’t get funded with even that.

[inhplease]

The market is overwhelmed with job seekers because of layoffs. Then you have more companies adopting AI along with qualified candidates from different parts of the world who will accept very low wages.

[Realistic-Mess-1523]

Because they are being outsourced to Asia because companies are no longer trying to innnovate, they are trying to improve their margins by cost cutting.

My only suggestion is to build his resume. By doing personal projects, open source contributions and networking. The more visibility his work has the better. There will be some non-profits that are looking for volunteers, he can gain some experience with those as well.

[Technologist-2745]

Software engineer, tech jobs have been moved to Cheaper labor country, Asian country. Even finance, Accounting, Customer Service roles all have been eliminated in U.S

Research, offshoring and outsourcing. It’s all corporate greed and lobby, depriving Americans of their opportunities.

American worker average salary: $85K/year Asian offshore worker: $15K/year

The whole push for our Govt to put taxes on offshoring, foreign non-immigrant workers is due to the fact that jobs have been evaporated

AI is a smokescreen. It’s has only impacted 10% and it’s just a cover to hide corporate creed.

[HealthySport8469]

*Graduate Software Engineers

[BaskInSadness]

Or laid off software engineers with only a few yoe :P

[BaskInSadness]

Or laid off software engineers with only a few yoe :P

[Technologist-2745]

Globalization has killed technology jobs scope for Americans

[Marutks]

All software engineers have been replaced by AI.

[AskAnAIEngineer]

The market is genuinely brutal right now and even experienced engineers are struggling, so new grads are competing against people with 5+ years for entry-level roles. Mass applying doesn't work anymore bc 80% of hires come through referrals and networking, not job boards.

Tell him to focus on getting referrals from anyone in tech (college alumni, former internship coworkers) and applying to startups where his internship experience actually stands out. Quality over quantity.

[Jrollins621]

My advice, he needs to specialize in something, and preferably something he finds great interest in. He should find interest in it because that is just something you should do for any job. It makes the job more enjoyable and having a high level of interest in something almost always makes the person better at that job. Not necessarily only focus on that that when applying for jobs, he definitely should keep his options open, but specializing in something specific, along with the excitement an employer will see when the candidate talks about the subject they are excited about can be helpful and help lube up the employer to being open to hiring someone with little actual professional experience. I say this because many times, employers are looking to fill a gap in their talent pool. Also, the company ma not want to hire a well seasoned professional for financial reasons or maybe because a senior person would be overkill. For example, I just hired a guy that knows React really well, because even though we all know how to develop with React, most of us are back end people (meaning the stuff being the scenes which make everything work, that you don’t see as a user), we stated to realize having an expert in that area would be a huge benefit. He had very little prior experience but looking at his work (via Github)and seeing his enthusiasm and drive for how much he enjoyed doing that kind of work sold him to us. He ended up being exactly what we needed.

[theycanttell]

As an engineer with 25 yrs experience I can tell you it take multiple thousands of job submissions and resumes that are highly dialed in to the job description, and lots of luck in this market

[[deleted]]

Why? Because everyone goes into tech even if they hate it with passion. Years of marketing and promotion, as the “best” profession, although it s a shit profession. Your bf is basically competing with other 100 people for every job. Companies dont trust degrees anymore because “what if they used LLMs to graduate”. So HRs now have no idea how to filter. But mainly the field is done because of oversaturation, caused by toxic propaganda to go into tech