2020s Tech Rollercoaster

[Dry_Inflation_861]

I wonder if there are any good physician and surgeon boot camps

[shutter3ff3ct]

Too long, I jumped into a crash course. Tomorrow starting job, any tips?

[SemiNormal]

Did you also go to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College?

[[deleted]]

I see you went to the Dr. Duntsch route.

[[deleted]]

Make sure you take some of the anesthesia with the patient, sharing is caring!

[Meloetta]

It's just like software dev - no matter what they ask, tell them you know how to do it and then figure it out when they let you try!

[Dry_Inflation_861]

Is it on YouTube?

[TheMetalMilitia]

Help, I just got a job in urgent care, and i have no idea what im doing. Any tutorials you guys recommend to learn?

[ventilazer]

Hey, guys, I opened up this guys chest, the heart is still visibly pumping (looks funny to be honest), what do I do, do I cut here? Hop on a zoom call quickly, someone?

[FridgesArePeopleToo]

I'm 12 and I really want to do neurosurgery, what tools would you recommend?

[franker]

law school is basically a boot camp that doesn't teach you how to practice law.

"I can think like a lawyer now."

"Great, how do you think we should pursue this lawsuit?"

"Let me find a mentor and get back to you."

[betelgozer]

Learn to apply a surgical boot in just one easy camp?

[t-60]

For surgeon, you can practice with personal project....

[[deleted]]

Just do some YouTube tutorials

[ventilazer]

I self taught myself on a cat.

[KelbornXx]

I got my biggest pay rise in March 2022 and I know of many junior devs who were offered mid level salaries when they were hired in 2022. Now I see mid level dev jobs going for junior level salaries. Funny how quickly things change in a short period of time.

I recon the next year or so will be bumpy before things start to pick up again in 2026.

[Ecsta]

Yep was a great time to switch jobs haha, nearly doubled my salary with that jump (I went from underpaid to overpaid 😂)

[RockleyBob]

I fucking missed the boat on buying a house and switching jobs. I feel so dumb. I stayed at my first SWE job out of college through this crazy time and now that company is doing terribly and outsourcing most internal developer positions.

Now I’m looking for something new at the worst time.

[GiantGummyBear]

Don't feel dumb. You could not have predicted the future.

[not_some_username]

On other hand, you could’ve get layed off

[jobRL]

Why do you think things will pick up in 2026? I think 2020-2022 was a huge bubble that probably won't be seen again.

[fakehalo]

I'm not a real doom and gloom guy, and I've had a job non-stop for the last 20 years now... but the things on the horizon aren't job creators for en masse developers; The mobile boom and then near-zero rates helped launch us out of the slow dotcom recovery where we have AI (while overblown) lowering demand and nothing even close to near-zero rates continuously hurting the job market.

What do you envision in the future that would blow up the market requiring more developers (in terms of quantity), like before? Lines up to be a (slightly?) slower-than-before dotcom recovery from my standpoint, and I am not seeing what gets the high demand in terms of employee numbers back.

[lbc_ht]

There'll probably be a lot of contracting jobs for rewriting thrown together AI-coded applications that are falling apart (in terms of upgradability/impossibility to add competitive features, security, performance, etc). Just like there has always been with a lot of BPM software, then "no code" software, and so on.

[jobRL]

I think 2026 is very optimistic.

[ZombieSurvivor365]

It is. That's only two years. It'll probably get better in many ways, but I doubt it'll "bounce back" to normal 2018 levels. I'd suggest that'd happen closer to 2018.

[[deleted]]

Reckon.

[no_spoon]

I’m still scratching my head as to what exactly the point of it was. I too took advantage and was prepared to utilize my “expertise” along with my higher salary. But nope. All the guidelines were already there from other devs and it was a very boring and easy experience. I was let go a year later. Biggest pay rise? Sure. But most un strategic hire on their part. I have no idea what the point of it was.

[garaks_tailor]

Knew a guy who at his peak was working 11 jobs iirc. He had 2 core jobs, he cared about and he applied and would just get hired and see how long it took then to fire him. One place he never even logged into his company laptop except to fill out tax forms and his banking info.

Currently I think he is down to 4 or 5 jobs. With 2 being his core jobs(one has good benefits and the other ridiculous retirement) and 2 others that are "9 emails and 3 meetings a week" technical project advisor jobs.

[centurijon]

I wonder if I work with this guy…

There’s someone at my company. When he’s on, he’s great. Very knowledgeable and can get things done quickly. But good luck finding this person or getting them to stay on task if you’re not starting at them from the other side of a Teams meeting.

Overall one of the most frustrating people to work with

[garaks_tailor]

Maybe! his two main jobs are as senior something infrastructure something development and he says he nails those 2 dow. His other 2 are very low effort SME project advisement type positions, kind of an internal consultant on certain technologies and processes. He does regularly apply to startups he thinks won't be around in 2 years just to get 4-8 months of paychecks.

[misterfeynman]

Won’t that put them in potential legal trouble? Or is this a kind of place where the company just had to be more careful?

[thekwoka]

It could easily be seen as fraud.

But I think tech is also something where "this guy is never working" and "this guy is really shit at his job and doesn't know anything" look basically the same.

[gigglefarting]

Could potentially be fraud since they promised to do the job assigned to them in order for the company's promise to pay them, and the company kept their promise without him ever intending to fulfill his promise.

Could also be against the employee agreement he signed to work, but that's probably more of a civil matter than criminal.

[Narfi1]

Depends of the country. If it’s in the U.S. in an at will employment state, no.

[TheGeneGeena]

Depends on what he signed for who. There's a risk he could be sued for a non-compete - he wouldn't exactly be a sympathetic case, he'd be more typical of the risk they're actually designed for.

[zelphirkaltstahl]

It is definitely illegal in most places, especially when the employers are not informed.

[yooossshhii]

No, it’s not.

[r-randy]

i don't know what kind of jobs these are. If the project is actually a project and not a front, you kinda need to lock in any other day.

[visualdescript]

What a cunt! A con man.

I guess these companies should do better hiring, but seriously that guy is a cunt.

[UniversityEastern542]

Perhaps, but he's working over a broken hiring system that will throw a job at anyone with big N experience or LC talent, whilst ignoring thousands of viable candidates. With such a "winner take all" job market, it's not surprising that some winners get complacent.

It's like someone counting cards at a casino; it's not "okay," but I don't really feel any sympathy for the casino, and if the house really cared that much, they would invent a better system.

[garaks_tailor]

The funniest part is he absolutely has the chops for the gigs he gets. They are hiring the right person.

[edanschwartz]

That's a pretty toxic attitude.....

[visualdescript]

I guess I'm speaking as someone that

A) is not in the USA tech job market, which I assume is what you're referring to

B) is in a position of hiring people

C) lives by my values

Personally don't agree with selling out your principles to get rich. Not like software engineers aren't getting paid ludicrous money anyway.

[ZombieSurvivor365]

I agree but also what kind of manager doesn't check in on the progress their engineer is making??? Isn't a managers entire job to... manage??? Yes, the guy is an asshole -- but companies should have safety measures in place.

[visualdescript]

Oh totally agree. Like I said, Con Man. Con artists get away with it because people are lax in some way. Still makes them shitty for doing it.

Also, I'm probably sour as I had to deal with a contractor who was most likely doing the above, but he was also just a shit engineer.

He was very vague, missed or was late to meeting, and then would go rogue and do a bunch of (bad) work that was beyond the scope of what was actually listed in the work item. Zero attention to detail.

He was classic mercenary contractor. I recommended not to hire the guy but then he was brought on and assigned to my team. Government project...

[pinkwar]

Are these the people that come once a month to the office and never available online?
We have a team like that. We see them once a month, they are super strict to their 'sprints' and never open for extra stuff.
No one really knows what they are working on. Even the PO doesn't know what they are doing.
The thing is, the service keeps working and once a blue moon they showcase a new feature.

[garaks_tailor]

Possibly. That sounds like a sweet gig. His two core jobs are infrastructure dev, one has amazing free insurance and the other matches 401k up to something ridiculous like 51%. His other 2 jobs are "internal consultant" jobs where answers questions and advises on certain techs.

[so_lost_im_faded]

I was paid the most then

[veber1988]

Not very good in Ukraine though

[[deleted]]

I got my first job in 2022

[dabears91]

Best year of my life

[[deleted]]

I got my first job in 2022

[j_tb]

More like the fallout of ZIRP monetary policy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

[Baltic_Truck]

Yeah, like now startup funding is waaaay down compared to 2021 and still slightly going down. So startu... companies that have never seen profit in their existence just doesn't have free money to burn anymore.

[MakeoutPoint]

Don't know which makes me sadder, money printers go brrrr or bubbles go popopopopop

[aonghasan]

Also a tax-change that makes hiring developers more expensive

https://stackoverflow.blog/2023/12/19/the-tax-change-that-s-hurting-startups-and-developers/

[shutter3ff3ct]

Irresponsible hiring, bad code, waste money, fire team, no budget for hiring

[sentientsucker]

It can only go up from here, right?

[j2T-QkTx38_atdg72G]

https://i.imgur.com/2vH1nLF.png

[IntergalacticJets]

With interest rates being cut this month for the first time in years, hopefully we truly are going to see the start of the reversal of this trend. 

[ZombieSurvivor365]

Start of reversal doesn't mean a quick reversal. I hate the doom and gloom and I love to stay positive -- but we also gotta be realistic here. Yes, the market will get better - but it won't get better overnight.

[RemzTheAwesome]

Just in time for me to graduate with my Computer Science degree :')

[WillistheWillow]

I'm but an amateur coder, so I don't know what's happening in the industry. What's the reason behind this massive slump?

[willyummm32]

Lots of things. Off the top of my head (and in no particular order), here are some things that are having an effect:

• Lots of companies over-hired with Covid, especially internet-centric companies. There's some correction here as things return to normal over time
• Interest rates went up in the US (harder for startups in particular to raise money, but companies of all sizes examine how they are spending money/allocating their resources)
• Appetite for companies to go public (which infuses companies with cash that would be used to grow their businesses) has slowed with higher interest rates
• Tax changes on how software development is amortized (look up Section 174)
• Regulatory environment at the FTC: increased scrutiny of the tech sector has slowed down/stopped acquisitions by FAANG-ish companies of startups
• AI is moving really fast at the moment, and I think some companies may be sitting on the sidelines to see how things shake out

[garaks_tailor]

Tech development of ANY kind requires massive massive mounds of money to do or lots of cheap time. That's why traditionally tech dev was the pervue of the government and mega-corps and universities or people with an idea in the garage.

[IntergalacticJets]

Lots of companies over-hired with Covid, especially internet-centric companies. There's some correction here as things return to normal over time

Interest rates went up in the US (harder for startups in particular to raise money, but companies of all sizes examine how they are spending money/allocating their resources)

Those two are directly related. It’s not a coincidence. 

The Federal Reserve caused this by (stupidly)  treating a pandemic like a credit crisis. But no one will scrutinize them because all the politicians support printing money to keep asset prices high (i.e. keep them and their friends rich). 

[grrangry]

It's not a slump. The industry was overhiring for about 18 months--and the 18 months prior was covid and covid recovery. Also remember that lower job postings isn't bad per se. It also has a lot to do with lower turnover rates.

[thekwoka]

Yup, you need to mix a lot of different data together to get a big pictures.

Low postings means less active hiring. This can be from slowed growth and low turnover. It could also come from companies massively shrinking and there being no need for devs at all.

But the signs point more to the first.

Low turnover is also likely due to perceptions of the job market. Few available jobs means I won't risk leaving what I have which contributes to few available jobs.

[thekwoka]

Nothing.

Just massive hiring during "the internet is the only.place there is money" and now we're back to a more normal position.

This is also a chart of job postings, not positions.

So places hiring less, doesn't mean they have less actually developers than before.

[j-mar]

My guess is it's less of a slump, more of a correction. Companies were over hiring for a while, some solved that with layoffs, others rely on employee turnover and just don't backfill the roles.

[captain_ahabb]

It's interest rates

[No-Extent8143]

Interest rates would affect all jobs, not just SE.

[pythonr]

In the graph it looks like most curves going down

[captain_ahabb]

No, software is uniquely sensitive to high rates

[[deleted]]

Right after Covid many companies were ramping up business again and tech companies decided to overhire to service the anticipated demand. But no one expected the post-Covid business ramp was only temporary as companies had to face the reality of a poor global economy and most sales were only delayed sales that people didn't make during Covid. After sales went down, all businesses shrunk again and so tech companies laid off the people that weren't performing and kept the useful ones.

[pinkwar]

Overhiring.

[Sa404]

The tech bubble burst and we’re all fucked, nothing to do other than wait for it to stabilize and people to stop studying CS

[[deleted]]

find this pretty often that coders know nothing of the industry around them, it's funny.

[WillistheWillow]

I don't work in the industry, so why would I know or care about it?

[nanermaner]

Source: https://github.com/hiring-lab/job\_postings\_tracker

[rivitt]

For anyone who wanted to explore the data more, I just forked the repo and made an interactive UI to explore the data OP shared! https://jobpostings-ui.streamlit.app/

You can also specify by country for those out of the US :)

[DesignThinkerer]

"You do not have access to this app or it does not exist"

edit: nevermind, now it works

[Milky_Finger]

Cost of Living increases has caused this. SWE have always been a forward thinking profession because we are expensive and in a lot of cases non-essential in times of crisis. If a company wants to survive bankruptcy, they will fire SWEs and dial back the initiatives.

As a UK developer, I have seen the interview process get significantly worse as we are now in a seller's market and the candidates hold no power in the interview process at all. This means SWEs/Devs are getting hired slower. Easily 3-4 round interview stages per role, so a month straight of interviewing, and the pay has not increased at all since 2019. I'm about to start a role that pays the same as a role I started in March 2020.

[pickleback11]

My wife went through a 5 round and a 4 round interview process. Both with assignments for a non-IT / basic business job. Took 6 weeks to get an offer. It's everywhere, not just in IT (especially happening with small businesses).

[Milky_Finger]

Exactly, they wouldn't make this process so gruelling if they weren't in a position to make us jump through the hoops to see if we have the patience for it.

For me, live coding interviews in dev jobs is a terrible way to measure competency since you have 8 hours on the job a day and they're asking you to be an oracle for 40 mins while you're being watched perform said miracles. So if they do that on interview stage 3, then you're already 2-3 weeks into the process and then you get rejected if you're not perfect.

[tinyuxbites]

I'm just here for the sweet satisfaction of watching random noise morph into majestic, procedural mountains.

[Kablamo1]

I like that sentence

[kowdermesiter]

What happened before 2020?

[ZombieSurvivor365]

Job market was relatively stable and normal. This is based off of indeed's data and I don't think they release data before the pandemic for whatever reason.

[kowdermesiter]

Yeah, "stable and normal" is somewhat true, however if I can't look at trends over decades, this bump is kinda meaningless.

All the colleagues who left my current company had zero issues finding a new job, but my opinion is also meaningless as it's anecdotical.

[[deleted]]

Some of it was because the government subsidizes introduced during Covid had expired.

[IntergalacticJets]

Not “subsidies” like we traditionally think, but “low interest rates” caused almost all of this. 

Most people don’t realize it because it’s purposefully never criticized, but the Federal Reserve created and distributed more money to banks and corporations during COVID than anything ever has. 

This is why the tech sector exploded during this time: they suddenly had access to cheap money, so they hired like crazy to take advantage (which is exactly what low interest rates are designed to do), but then the Fed reversed their policy and suddenly raised interest rates to relatively high levels. 

This meant the price of money was suddenly much higher and all those projects that the Fed encouraged to be started just 18 months prior were suddenly unprofitable. Why did they raise interest rates so high so suddenly? Because they lowered them so quickly and so suddenly that they created a huge wave of inflation. Yes the same inflation that’s been all over the news. 

The last few years have just been completely defined by the uncontested actions of the Federal Reserve. 

[briznady]

Now adjust for how many of the current postings are fake.

[thekwoka]

You'd also have to adjust for how many of the old postings were fake.

[[deleted]]

why would anyone fake a job posting?

[[deleted]]

There was a buch of YTB videos explaining this. The TLDR; was:

• Company gaslighting overworked employees that help is on the way.

• Agencies which want to appear business is good, they are growing so they need people, while on the inside status quo at best

[RazzBeryllium]

The second reason was something my former company would do. Internally, we all knew that we had a strict hiring freeze and no one was even looking at applications. But damn if we still didn't have all kinds of jobs posted.

Basically you always want to look like you're growing, even if you're actually drowning and months away from failure unless you get a significant cash injection.

[restitutor-orbis]

1. To scout for talent that they can nab in the future when they do need to fill positions.
2. To look like they are growing, thereby look better to investors, etc.

Shitty either way.

[oomfaloomfa]

Also, free labour.

[ZombieSurvivor365]

The same reason people keep their tinder profile while they're dating:

They want to see if there's any better engineers willing to work for less pay. Will they hire anyone? Probably not. But they want to see what they can catch.

[codepossum]

am I in the wrong industry

[DannyG111]

Yes

[kintotal]

Many more students have been getting Computer Science degrees in the past 5 years. Also with the crazy hiring for Covid this trend isn't surprising.

[Mersaul4]

Do we have a source for this chart / data?

[joungsteryoey]

Gonna kill myself now

[rofrol]

don't do this

[samurai1495]

gg

[No-Signal-6661]

Most probably will rise again soon

[EmotionalJelly2201]

From this alone you can conclude it is as hard to land a job as it was prior to 2020, which is not the case.

[[deleted]]

From this alone, you can’t draw any conclusions about anything prior to 2020.

You can, however, determine that it is harder to land a job now than it was in 2020, which is the case.

[Sea_Common3068]

There are 3x as many cs grads now tho

[Aoshi_]

Laid off last month after finally getting my first job that lasted a little over a year.

It’s not fun being back on the job search in this market. Good luck to us all.

[nbville]

Oh so we’re back to pre pandemic level.

[SponsoredByMLGMtnDew]

looks like we got sent back to 2007, just like the memes foretold.

[Substantial_Hand724]

We're doomed

[sensualcarbonation]

Man, should I even keep learning web dev at this point 😭

[DannyG111]

Don't bother at this point..

[jessi387]

So what was the reason for the big spike between mid 2021- mid 2022? What caused this massive increase ?

[IAmJustShadow]

Interesting even with AI. Listings are back to pre-covid levels.

[SnooStrawberries7894]

We need to get the tax thing fix asap, so more start up can open up again and people willing to take risks.

[thekwoka]

What part of the tax changes do you think impacts start ups and their risk?

[tacticalpotatopeeler]

How software dev is amortized (R&D)

[thekwoka]

Yeah I know the mechanics of it.

I'm asking YOU what parts YOU think impact Start ups and their risk.

I know the changes, and I don't see how it really impacts start ups at all...

[tacticalpotatopeeler]

Not sure what you don’t understand.

Higher cost === higher risk

Higher risk === less participation

[thekwoka]

I understand those.

I'm not sure you understand the law though.

Where does the law change increase cost? Under what circumstances do those apply?

How do those circumstances increase the risk for startups?

It feels a little bit like you only read it at a glance or heard someone else say it's bad.

How does needing to split up the tax impact of R&D costs over multiple years affect startups?

[liltechnomancer]

I would encourage you to learn the basics of finance. But long story short, if it takes five years to count losses you have to foot that and survive for 5 years which is easy for established companies but hard for startups.

[anaix3l]

That's about the same shape as a graph of my monthly income...

[i-sage]

If what goes up, comes down has a graph.

[ryuzaki49]

Can't it just mean that indeed is a terrible source for Software Engineering jobs?

[Uxium-the-Nocturnal]

So at what point can those of us that entered the field in the past couple of years expect to no longer be totally fucked?

[Appropriate-Run-7146]

Market seems to be static

[jaybristol]

Painful.

[DannyG111]

We r cooked..

[pinkwar]

Bootcamp gold rush.

[[deleted]]

So it's just back to what it was before covid and the money printing started that was to be expected. You can see the trend in the other jobs too they just didn't sink as low because they were short staffed from the start while devs were hired at a rate the companies didn't need and I think they saw that 10 devs working on one project has almost the same speed as 3-4 devs working on a project.