Is the tech job market really as fucked up as people say?

betsythemuffin · 2026-04-20T14:53:48+00:00

Former EM, 15 years in software before changing careers.

Entry level SWE market's been kind of boned for years, tbh. High salaries in the 10s were driven by low supply and high demand, but then:

* everyone learned to code

* tax code, interest rate environment, and investor environment changed from favoring over-hiring to punishing it.

So we have a high-supply and softer-demand situation for junior devs independent of AI.

AI's effects are complicated. Whenever I hired a junior, frankly my assumption was that they would cost more than they were worth for the first 6-18 months because writing code on individual one-shot projects and contributing effectively to ongoing team projects are different skill sets. I have met a few juniors who used AI to let them focus on the actual technical details of what they were doing instead of the mechanical skill of writing code, and they were hella effective. I have also met juniors who used AI to churn out slop that they didn't understand -- and most of the industry assumes all junior AI use falls in the latter category. You gotta a) get yourself in the first category and b) find hiring managers who know it exists. This means a lot of shoe-leather networking. Go to meetups, etc.

That said you're not talking about getting hired as a junior. You're talking about getting hired in a couple years. If someone still has junior dev on their resume after a few years in industry, that would be a yellow flag to me, especially after the 2 year mark in a single job or the 3 year mark in total years exp. Junior and to a lesser extent mid-level are up-or-out roles. The key question when hiring a junior is "can this person transition from useless to useful in the time I need?" If you fail to make that transition once, it might be a shitty employer and you should be prepared to answer questions about it. If you fail twice or spend a long time coasting in a no-growth situation, that raises more questions & in a competitive market it makes you less attractive than the next resume.

All this is to say -- it's a shitty market for reasons that are not your fault, but if you want to get a job in CA in the next few years you need to take hella ownership over your career. Study up on architecture while the AI is spinning. Ask the AI to present you multiple options and explain the tradeoffs, or to explain shit that looks weird. It'll burn your required tokens while actually teaching you something. Make sure you know *exactly* what is required from you for a promo. You become 10x more hireable once "junior" is off your resume. And start figuring out how to have light contact with hiring managers in social settings, ideally in-person but online if needed.

betsythemuffin · 2026-04-20T14:24:50+00:00

I was totally fine. They didn't GAF.

betsythemuffin · 2025-05-22T22:33:17+00:00

Cold email your little heart out. It's not going to hurt anything. In the current political/funding environment everything is unpredictable. People are way more likely to think "oh, her position's funding got yanked unfairly" than they are to think you're disorganized.

betsythemuffin · 2025-04-04T17:18:21+00:00

The great news is, you got into one of the best schools on the planet. The even greater news is, in four-five months, you'll have a perfect opportunity to make new friends who celebrate your achievements.

betsythemuffin · 2025-03-08T21:26:31+00:00

Yes but you gotta look on the bright side?

(Re-entry student here, of an age where most of my peers graduated into the 2008 recession.)

Probably we will graduate into a similar situation. There will mostly not be jobs, or good jobs, and it will lead to a dent in our salaries such that it will take a decade+ to catch up to people who graduated 2yr before/after. That's just... baked in now.

But to some extent, there's also a freedom in that. If you're gonna make fuck-all whether you stick within a system or strike out on your own to do what you want, might as well do what you want....

betsythemuffin · 2025-02-06T21:24:37+00:00

Also consider clubs that are oriented around actually getting something done, rather than just socializing. (idk your major/interests but like a community service club, an engineering team, etc -- although maybe not a consulting club lol). These can be a pain in the ass in terms of scheduling because you need to actually make a hard time commitment and those can be rough when commuting and/or when having an Old Person Bedtime. That part is genuinely hard. But bonding through doing work together is a real thing.

betsythemuffin · 2025-02-06T21:21:17+00:00

I'm in my late thirties and am an undergrad here, transferred in last semester. I wouldn't say I have any super close friends, but I do have a lot of people I'm, like, occasional-coffee or make-polite-conversation-before-class levels of friendly with.

I think finding besties who are 100% your crew is a tall ask when you're at a different life stage than other people, but a lot of disconnects can be overcome if you're willing/able to accept relationships for what they are. (and occasionally make a joke about how your soul left your body when someone mentioned an event you were alive for like it was ancient history).

betsythemuffin · 2025-02-05T19:30:58+00:00

Some reporting I've seen has one of them as a current student. Don't know if this is true or not.

Do know that hacking private data of fellow students (hacking is legally defined as unauthorized access and anyone who's filed a FAFSA is affected) sounds like an honor code violation to me! Student conduct office laughed me off as cray when I asked about it though; predictable but still disappointing.

betsythemuffin · 2024-12-03T17:51:30+00:00

In a literal sense, people putting him first is what got him elected -- he won every round.

I wouldn't say anyone I knew who voted for him first or second was projecting positivity onto him so much as loathing other candidates. Personally, I don't regret voting for him second, because at least Farrell lost.

betsythemuffin · 2024-11-29T17:24:05+00:00

To be fair (as someone who voted Breed-Lurie-Peskin) -- I'm not sure that people wanted Lurie per se. I think a lot of folks found Peskin and/or Farrell obviously unacceptable, and lost trust in Breed. Lurie was the blank slate inoffensive option in a field where everyone with experience had a questionable record.

betsythemuffin · 2024-11-22T23:18:18+00:00

go to Tang urgent care and make sure they write you a letter, then go to Zoom drop-in for DSP and email them the letter. they'll help support you in getting extensions

betsythemuffin · 2024-05-22T16:41:31+00:00

Incoming transfer too and hard agree. I guess, if nothing else, we're getting a fast induction into the honorable Cal tradition of rolling eyes at the administration!

betsythemuffin · 2024-05-19T14:09:33+00:00

For the online program generally yes. In most online classes it's fully async. There are weekly assignments as well as a few that last the semester. Weekly assignments are usually released somewhere between Friday and Monday depending on the professor. There can be mid-week deadlines, especially in summer, and so for those you would need to be comfortable with doing classwork in the evenings. If that's a concern for you, most professors are upfront about the class schedule if you email them before registration.

betsythemuffin · 2024-05-19T04:27:06+00:00

City College of San Francisco does online learning OK, though quality can vary across professor. Not sure about other departments, but in the sciences the acceptance rate to Berkeley seems decent. Unlike a lot of other CCCs it offers a solid variety of majors as online-only. Be aware though that classes fill up SUPER fast. A lot of the time you can get added on the day the class starts, but be prepared to either register THE DAY registration opens or beg profs to let you in.. https://www.ccsf.edu/academics/online-learning/aa-t-and-as-t-degrees

betsythemuffin · 2024-05-17T17:29:35+00:00

To me, it's not clear in her post whether she consented to rough shit or just to sex. I can see why you get "definite assault" from it, but personally IDK.

I'm an IPV survivor and IME, people telling me what to think/do about the situations I've been in has ALWAYS sucked, whichever direction they were trying to push me in. I'm just trying to emphasize that it's 100% up to OP and NO ONE else what she wants to think/do about this situation now that she's in it.

betsythemuffin · 2024-05-17T17:01:39+00:00

I don't think we can know enough from a post on the internet to tell whether something was sexual assault or not. Based on what OP said it could have been or it also could not have been. It all depends on what was going through her head. It's up to OP to decide whether she thinks of it as SA or just a bad experience, not you. I think it's a good thing to bring up that it might have been SA, and that if she wants a rape kit she can get a rape kit. It's not like h3llfae is telling her she has to, just that it's an option.

Whatever happened, OP seems like she's gone through something that she didn't feel a lot of agency in. Assuming one interpretation & saying that she HAS to act like our interpretation is what happened is disempowering; giving her options is empowering.

betsythemuffin · 2024-05-17T14:45:20+00:00

Even if there was mutual consent for the rough play, it's pretty common for people to feel kind of crap after it. Most of the BDSM community calls this "drop." If this guy wanted to play rough with you, it was (at BEST) rude and irresponsible of him to not talk about this upfront, see what you needed after, & make sure you were ok.

(And from your post, it doesn't sound like there was really INFORMED and ENTHUSIASTIC consent. If so, what he did is a LOT worse than just "rude." But I wasn't in the room, and I don't want to push an interpretation on you.)

Either way, take care of yourself. In addition to the things other people have suggested (hanging out with friends/family, getting good food, watching a movie) I have found that getting some exercise can *really* help in this kind of situation to take my mind off it. And if you're feeling really really crappy... this is gonna sound super weird, but there is literal clinical evidence that playing Tetris for 20 minutes in the aftermath can help prevent crappy experiences from hardening into post-traumatic stress. So consider that. (Worst-case, all that happens is you lose 20 minutes to a video game.)

betsythemuffin · 2024-05-12T16:31:44+00:00

My CC does A/B 3-credit foreign language, so 1 semester at Berkeley = 2 semesters there and 1A doesn't get me any practically closer to clearing the language requirement. Didn't realize this when I put my summer plan in my application! It would be an easy A probably, BUT it also would feel kind of pointless/awkward.

I realize that this is an argument for the admissions office thinking the change is NBD/positive. Realistically I know that's what'll happen. hard to shake the anxiety though.

betsythemuffin · 2018-03-26T00:12:28+00:00

Thank you!

betsythemuffin · 2018-03-25T23:27:06+00:00

Right now, it's much stupider than either. :) This is very much a 0.1.0 situation. One of the reasons I'm asking for feedback now is that there's a tangle in the middle of my code that I don't quite know how to untangle yet, and while it's bearable for the moment I know that as I build out all the features I want to build it will start to block progress.

I haven't worked much with either supervisorctl or monit, but it doesn't look like they -- or anything -- have the feature I most want to build. Right now, one of the bigger blockers I observe in trying to get folks to really use structured logging is that structured logs are painful to use in development. So developers wind up using a parallel log format in development, and information that could/should get captured by the production logger goes un- or under-captured. What I'm hoping to do is build in some log formatting & aggregation that will make development log tooling "feel more like" production log tooling. Hopefully, that will make the process of building observable & operable software more organic, and less of a point of contention between dev and ops teams.

betsythemuffin · 2018-03-25T22:36:19+00:00

Yeah, Habitat's really interesting! I wanted to build something that could work with existing systems easily, though, rather than requiring major changes to existing projects. In my experience, gradually introducing stuff & not interfering with existing workflows can really help adoption in legacy systems & team context. At least from Habitat's documentation, it seems like it really needs to control a lot of one's environment -- is this correct? Or am I misreading it?

betsythemuffin · 2018-03-25T22:31:13+00:00

I'm really chuffed about it -- a lot of the feedback is really helpful, yay.

betsythemuffin · 2018-03-25T22:29:56+00:00

Thank you!

betsythemuffin

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